Background. As video games increase in popularity and more people look to them as their primary source of entertainment, discussions around how they can affect players’ engagement become more important. One such discussion is around player agency, a player’s sense of control over the games that they play. Within this discussion, a new type of thinking regarding player agency has started emerging, where it gets divided into the amount of control a player experiences and the amount of control that they actually have. One way to see the difference between the two types of player agency is to look at linear and branching narratives. In a branching narrative, the player’s choices dictate the flow of the story, while in a linear narrative, the player chooses how to react, but the story itself is unaffected. Objectives. Our objective with this study was to explore how player engagement differs between a linear narrative and a branching narrative, and if there is a difference when going from one to the other. Methods. This was done by creating a game demo that contains both a linear narrative, as well as a branching narrative and conducting a user study where participants played the game and answered a questionnaire on their experience. Results. In our findings, no significant difference in engagement was observed through Pearson’s chi-square tests between the different narratives. However, there was a significant difference based on what order the narratives were presented. Participants that played the linear narrative first had significantly higher engagement levels than the participants that played the branching narrative first. Conclusions. We conclude that more research should be made, but we find there is a positive effect on engagement when both a linear and branching narrative presented in the same experience, and the linear narrative is presented first.

The study examines how story choices in video games affect the player’s sense of agency. A literature review was done to understand and define the terms used. Agency is the power to take meaningful action and see the consequences of those actions, also connected to the player’s sense of control. The type of story choices used were meaningful, ones that change the game state, and inconsequential choices, that do not change it. An artefact was created to present these choices through dialogue, in the form of a video game. After playing through the artefact, players were asked to fill in a questionnaire and some participated in follow-up interviews. Results showed that inconsequential choices can affect the player negatively if they realize that the choices were not real, while players requested more meaningful choices. For future work it is of interest to, among other things, examine player’s definition of meaningful choices. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p>