The Player Experience and Design Implications of Narrative Games

Abstract

Narrative games focus on the plot, character interactions, and sometimes have story variations depending on how the player interacts with them. This study adopts user experience approaches, such as interviews, think-aloud protocol, and grounded theory, to examine the player experience of commercial narrative games. We identify four types of players’ interactional patterns that include exploring the story, projecting the story, playing the game, and watching the story. Based on the study of the player experience, we derive a set of principles from these interactional patterns that game designers can draw upon when designing narrative games. These principles include player-avatar dynamic, a strong interactive space for the player to explore, placeholder for projecting an emergent narrative, inclusive game design to enhance accessibility, using an interactive feedback loop to adapt to the players’ playstyle, quick-time events and emotional connection to the characters, and more complex options to romance/relationships in narrative games.