Title
Achieving the illusion of agency
Abstract
Games with a strong notion of story are increasingly popular. With the increased amount of story content associated with games where player decisions significantly change the course of the game (branching games), comes an increase in the effort required to author those games. Despite the increased popularity of these kinds of games, it is unclear if a typical player is able to appreciate the rich content of these games, since any given player typically only experiences a small amount of that content. We create a non-branching game that simulates branching choices by providing players with choices followed by immediate textual feedback. We hypothesize that this game, where player decisions do not significantly change the course of the game, will maintain the player's sense of agency. Experimentation showed that in a text-based story with forced-choice points there were in most cases no significant difference in players' reported feelings of agency when they experience a branching story vs. a linear story with explicit acknowledgement of their choices.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1007/978-3-642-34851-8_11
ICIDS
Keywords
Field
DocType
increased popularity,player decision,small amount,increased amount,non-branching game,rich content,typical player,text-based story,linear story,story content
Simultaneous game,Strategy,Game mechanics,Video game design,Computer science,Turns, rounds and time-keeping systems in games,Repeated game,Sequential game,Screening game,Multimedia
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
11
1.02
7
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Matthew William Fendt1163.68
Brent E. Harrison214918.46
Stephen G. Ware35812.85
Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera4329.47
David L. Roberts533837.87