Elden Ring, an open world game by From Software has used almost exclusively hiddenguidance systems to guide the players. This study provides insight on players’ experience ofplayer agency and freedom of choice. This is a pilot study into the subject of Elden Ring’ssuccess as an open world game while keeping visual guidance to the minimum. This researchwas conducted with a mixed methodology combining a quantitative survey for backgrounddata qualitative semi-structured interviews for further in-depth analysis. Data has shown thatall participants have experienced some form of player agency in Elden Ring, alongsideexperiencing different hidden guidance systems throughout different parts of the game. Thisstudy can be helpful for game developers and players alike to see how a successful openworld game guided players’ experience without using visual guidance. To conclude, based onthe data, it should be noted that the concept of agency is a construct that is decided by theplayer.

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.

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation investigates game design elements and their impact on player experience, intrinsic motivation, and learning outcomes. The research encompasses three projects, each delving into essential aspects of educational game design and their impact on student learning. The first project addresses a design gap by creating an educational game, exam- ining its effect on motivation and learning outcomes. The second project investigates player agency’s role in games and its influence on experience and outcomes. Two prototypes are designed that differ in the level of player agency afforded to the students. The study analyzes how this experimental manipulation affects player experience, intrinsic motivation, and learning outcomes. The third project analyzes the relationship between the learning inventory and the puzzle environment. More specifically, I will evaluate why students faced challenges when answering questions that focused on predicting the output and it’s connection with the learning environment. The overall focus of my dissertation is player experience, intrinsic motivation (to learn), and learning outcomes, which are examined through qualitative and quantitative research methods.</p>

This research investigates how players can be encouraged to alternate between offensive and defensive play within the game Martyr of Carnage (MoC), through the use of nudges. Nudges are subtle design elements that influence behavior without restricting choices, and they are commonly used in marketing, business, and government sectors. This study aims to extend the application of nudge theory to game design and find out if the theory is effective in altering playtester behavior in our game. The research was conducted using iterative game design methods, where various nudges were integrated and tested within the game environment. The main findings indicate that incorporating nudges in games serves as a useful analytical tool, effectively guiding player behavior and enhancing the overall gaming experience of Martyr of Carnage.

A narrative paradox occurs when the suspension of disbelief falters due to tension betweenthe urgency of the narrative and agency used by the player to pursue non-narrative activities.In this paper, we do a close reading on the video game Persona 5 to examine which elementsare utilised to limit or avoid narrative paradoxes. The analysis consisted of categorising thegame’s events, whereafter a few non-obligatory events from the game were chosen for anin-depth analysis. This served to find out which desire: agency, urgency, or both, the eventsmotivate through its narrative. We introduce the concept of the Plot Bubble as a tool withwhich to create narrative structures that are less prone to causing narrative paradoxes whencombined with relevant narrative elements. The narrative structure and elements of Persona 5are used as practical examples of how such design choices can motivate the player to act inaccordance with the narrative context, as well as to support this desire through the actionsavailable in the game world. / En narrativ paradox inträffar när ens upphävande av misstro fallerar på grund av en spänningmellan narrativets brådskande karaktär och behörigheten som spelaren har för att utövaicke-narrativa aktiviteter. I denna text gör vi en närläsning av TV-spelet Persona 5 för attundersöka vilka element som används för att begränsa eller undvika narrativa paradoxer.Analysen bestod utav en kategorisering av spelets händelser och därefter valdes några fåicke-obligatoriska händelser från spelet till en djupgående analys. Detta tjänade till att ta redapå vilken begäran: spelarens behörighet, narrativets brådskande karaktär, eller båda,händelserna motiverar genom dess narrativ. Vi introducerar konceptet intrigbubbla som ettverktyg till att skapa narrativa strukturer som är mindre benägna att orsaka narrativaparadoxer i kombination med relevanta narrativa element. Den narrativa strukturen ochverktygen i Persona 5 används som praktiska exempel för hur sådana designval kan motiveraspelaren att agera i enlighet med den narrativa kontexten, samt att stödja denna begärangenom handlingarna som finns tillgängliga i spelvärlden.

Creative Project Abstract: The creative project of this thesis is a script prototype for Underland, a crime drama video game and digital playable story that demonstrates writing and design methods for negotiating narrative and player agency. The story is set in October 2006 and players are investigative psychologists given access to a secure police server and tasked with analysing evidence related to two linked murders that have resulted in the arrest of journalist Silvi Moore. The aim is to uncover what happened and why by analysing Silvi’s flat, calendar of events, emails, texts, photos, voicemail, call log, 999 call, a map of the city of Plymouth and a crime scene. It is a combination of story exploration game and digital epistolary fiction that is structured via an authored fabula and dynamic syuzhet and uses the Internal-Exploratory and Internal-Ontological interactive modes to negotiate narrative and player agency. Its use of this structure and these modes shows how playable stories are uniquely positioned to deliver self-directed and empathetic emotional immersion simultaneously. The story is told in a mixture of enacted, embedded, evoked, environmental and epistolary narrative, the combination of which contributes new knowledge on how writers can use mystery, suspense and dramatic irony in playable stories. The interactive script prototype is accessible at underlandgame.com and is a means to represent how the final game is intended to be experienced by players. Thesis Abstract: This thesis considers writing and design methods for playable stories that negotiate narrative and player agency. By approaching the topic through the lens of creative writing practice, it seeks to fill a gap in the literature related to the execution of interactive and narrative devices as a practitioner. Chapter 1 defines the key terms for understanding the field and surveys the academic and theoretical debate to identify the challenges and opportunities for writers and creators. In this it departs from the dominant vision of the future of digital playable stories as the ‘holodeck,’ a simulated reality players can enter and manipulate and that shapes around them as story protagonists. Building on narratological theory it contributes a new term—the dynamic syuzhet—to express an alternate negotiation of narrative and player agency within current technological realities. Three further terms—the authored fabula, fixed syuzhet and improvised fabula—are also contributed as means to compare and contrast the narrative structures and affordances available to writers of live, digital and live-digital hybrid work. Chapter 2 conducts a qualitative analysis of digital, live and live-digital playable stories, released 2010–2016, and combines this with insights gained from primary interviews with their writers and creators to identify the techniques at work and their implications for narrative and player agency. This analysis contributes new knowledge to writing and design approaches in four interactive modes—Internal-Ontological, Internal-Exploratory, External-Ontological and External-Exploratory—that impact on where players are positioned in the work and how the experiential narrative unfolds. Chapter 3 shows how the knowledge developed through academic research informed the creation of a new playable story, Underland; as well as how the creative practice informed the academic research. Underland provides a means to demonstrate how making players protagonists of the experience, rather than of the story, enables the coupling of self-directed and empathetic emotional immersion in a way uniquely available to digital playable stories. It further shows how this negotiation of narrative and player agency can use a combination of enacted, embedded, evoked, environmental and epistolary narrative to employ dramatic irony in a new way. These findings demonstrate ways playable stories can be written and designed to deliver the ‘traditional’ pleasure of narrative and the ‘newer’ pleasure of player agency without sacrificing either.