The central workspace that turns separate assets into a coherent and connected game ecosystem
The Content Management Tool (CMT) is the primary module for transforming isolated assets into interconnected game resources that work cohesively, taken directly from the T3.2.1 manuscript.
It transforms: assets into resources, resources into relationships, relationships into interactions, and interactions into gameplay.
The Content Management Tool (CMT) is the primary module for transforming isolated assets into interconnected game resources that work cohesively. As defined in the proposal, the CMT distinguishes between fully AI-generated content, AI-assisted content, and content produced through traditional manual methods. It can structure content and, more importantly, enable analysis, improvement, and adjustment of game elements based on feedback and their role within the overall game design.
During Reboot Erudita game development, we decided to integrate these capabilities into the AI-assisted Game Design Assistant and the REBOOT platform rather than treating the CMT as an isolated tool.
This technical decision marks an important change enabled by AI. Analyzing a single game asset in isolation provides limited value. A video, document, character, question, or location only becomes meaningful when the system understands which game it belongs to, which player receives it, when, where, what prior information it follows, and what interaction it is expected to trigger.
If these relationships are not clearly described by the game designer, analyzing the asset in isolation cannot reveal whether it works correctly within the game. However, when the same functionality is integrated into the interconnected AI-assisted Game Design system and the REBOOT platform, the system can identify gaps, inconsistencies, and missing connections across the entire design.
This becomes especially relevant when designing a complex game such as ERUDITA.
The complexity of ERUDITA is driven by several interconnected game features. Different parts of the story, evidence, and knowledge are distributed among different virtual characters. Some virtual characters deliver predefined information according to the game design, while others operate as AI agents, capable of interacting dynamically with the human player.
At the same time, the story and plot evolve through the interactions between human players, virtual characters and AI agents. Players do not all possess the same information, and what happens when they meet, exchange evidence and make decisions cannot be completely scripted in advance.
This creates a network of relationships, information flows and interactions that cannot be represented through a conventional linear game map. It requires a different way of mapping the game architecture.
The Content Management Tool therefore becomes much more than a content repository. It functions as the central workspace that turns separate assets into a coherent and connected game ecosystem.
A game designer may begin with isolated assets such as videos, images, text, historical documents, characters, questions, heritage statements, geographical locations, messages, evidence, rewards, and learning resources. The CMT connects and organizes these elements so they function as game resources rather than remaining as independent files.
ERUDITA illustrates why this transformation is necessary.
The game does not follow a conventional structure in which every player receives the same information and progresses through the same sequence. Instead, each player follows an individual journey and is associated with a different virtual character, a Seeker, who carries a predefined portion of the story, evidence, and personal perspective.
For example, one Seeker may carry a historical document, another a damaged register, another a testimony, and another evidence related to the Esteves Foundation. None of these elements provides the complete answer on its own. Their meaning emerges progressively as players meet, compare information, and connect the evidence.
This creates several layers of interaction that the game designer must manage simultaneously.
At the simplest level, a virtual character can have a predefined set of information and perform a relatively linear function: delivering information to the human player. Even in this seemingly simple situation, the designer must define what information is delivered, when it appears, where it becomes relevant, and how it contributes to the plot.
In ERUDITA, this can mean a Seeker delivering a video, a document, or a personal revelation before the player reaches a particular heritage location.
The human player, however, does not simply assume the virtual character's identity. The relationship is deliberately different. The human becomes the virtual Seeker's supporter, investigator, and decision partner.
The virtual character has a story, a wound, partial knowledge, and a reason to search. The human player helps that character interpret evidence and decide what to do next.
A third, more advanced relationship emerges when the virtual character becomes an AI agent living inside the player's phone. The player can exchange information with the agent, ask questions, interpret evidence, and make decisions together.
The virtual character is therefore no longer simply delivering scripted information. It is an active participant in the game experience.
This creates a dual structure: the human player experiences the physical world, while the virtual agent experiences the game through the digital layer. Both perspectives must remain connected to the same plot.
The complexity increases because ERUDITA follows a distributed-information model.
Not all players receive the same information.
One player may know something another does not. One may carry a document while another has seen a video that provides the context needed to interpret it. Another may have reached a heritage site whose historical significance alters the meaning of the evidence.
This is intentional.
ERUDITA is designed around the principle that knowledge is distributed across the players, and the complete narrative gradually emerges through interaction.
The game begins with solo journeys. Each player follows the path of their own Seeker and receives specific information through videos, documents, heritage statements and messages.
Players later reach INFO POINTS, where human encounters become part of the gameplay. They arrive carrying evidence already obtained during their individual INFO LEVELS.
For instance, one Seeker may arrive with evidence concerning the origin of a cultural report while another brings a damaged transfer register. Separately, the documents remain incomplete. When the two human players compare them, however, they may begin to establish a sequence such as:
The importance of this model is that the conversation between the human players is not scripted.
The game determines the conditions of the encounter, the information each participant carries, the questions that may need to be answered, and the plot boundaries that must be respected. But it does not prescribe the conversation itself.
This makes the experience much more authentic, but it also makes the design considerably more complex.
The overall architecture of ERUDITA evolves progressively:
Different players can meet at different levels and at different heritage locations across Peniche.
A location such as the Fortaleza de Peniche, Porto de Pesca, Museu de Rendas de Bilros, Igreja de São Pedro, or Gruta da Furninha is therefore not merely a geographical point. It can simultaneously serve as heritage content, narrative context, an information trigger, an encounter point, and part of the progression mechanics.
The game designer consequently needs to see much more than a linear story.
The designer needs to understand:
The CMT makes this network visible.
This is where the Content Management Tool becomes central.
Its role is not simply to generate individual game assets. Its role is to map the relationships between them.
When the game designer applies functions such as "Level to Characters", the system must connect character, player, level, evidence, location, interaction, learning objective and plot progression.
Without such a tool, these relationships become increasingly difficult to visualise.
The CMT helps the designer identify questions such as:
These are not simply content-management questions. They are system-design questions.
We faced precisely this challenge while developing ERUDITA.
The complexity was not primarily the number of videos, documents or characters. The real difficulty was understanding who knows what, at which moment, and what becomes possible when different pieces of knowledge meet.
We needed to map:
The CMT structures this thinking.
It allows the designer to move from seeing the game as a collection of assets to seeing it as an interconnected network of information, people, virtual agents, places, interactions and decisions.
Once the game designer has completed this integration within the REBOOT platform, the system can analyse the complete structure through a single action and identify gaps or inconsistencies that would be extremely difficult to detect by examining the resources individually.
The Content Management Tool therefore represents an important bridge between content production and game system design.
It transforms:
Watch the video and complete the Web Designbed template to map these relationships.
Nevertheless, there remains considerable value in physical visualisation.
During the development of ERUDITA, we also created the entire game using an intentionally old-fashioned approach: placing the game structure on the wall and using LEGO scenarios to visualise players, virtual characters, locations and interactions level by level.
This physical representation provides something that remains extremely useful even within an AI-assisted design process: the possibility of stepping back and seeing the complete game ecosystem at once.
The digital CMT and the physical model therefore serve the same fundamental objective from two different perspectives:
To make the invisible architecture of the game visible.