Managing and controlling digital role-playing game elements: A current state of affairs

Abstract

Role-playing games (RPGs) are interactive gaming experiences designed and driven by the intricate development of narratives and characters. However, these games also highlight elements, such as combat, exploration, creativity, and crafting. Game developers helped to shape the market by incorporating RPGs into digital media; however, they suffered restrictions in their game design and storytelling caused by technological limitations. Fortunately, academia has studied these challenges and mitigated these latter issues to better understand and connect digital RPGs with their analog versions. Our research offers a comprehensive overview of studies centered on technologies for managing, generating, and controlling digital RPG elements. We aim to characterize Artificial Intelligence research within this domain and elucidate the diverse techniques employed. In this context, we examined 72 papers about Procedural Content Generation (PCG) in RPG, which were identified by mixing a database search with a snowballing method. In this paper, we provide an overview of PCG techniques investigated within the realm of RPGs and present the trending approaches for future developments in the field.