Putting choices in a box: A case for quantifying videogame agency
Keywords: videogames, agency, videogame studies, choice, interactivity
Research question: Agency in videogames exists in ratios and spectrums. Both player agency and videogame system agency influence the gameplay experience, but in very different ways. A large amount of player agency results in videogames that feel like malleable sandboxes or immersive narratives, whereas a large amount of system agency results in videogames that feel like rigid stories or complex simulations. Play with these values enough, and many such genres start to emerge. But which player-system agency ratios go into these genres and videogames, if we reproduce them using just these two parameters? Secondarily, in what ways can the results of my project be properly explained and disseminated among practicing videogame designers (the target audience for the paper)?
Hypothesis: By tweaking the ratios and quantities of player and system agency, we can produce the essential cores of many videogame genres or individual videogames. These results can be quantified as points or areas on the axes of player-generation agency ratio and agency saturation percentage. The initial classification and value assignments for these genres will not be an easily objective task, and this difficulty may in fact shed some light on the topic of videogame genre quantification as a whole. That being said, by viewing the trends of videogames and genres in this way, we may be able to see which general aspects of agency design in videogames have yet to be explored.
Significance of project: Many modern videogames are designed with powerful and effective mechanics. They’re leaps and bounds beyond anything that was seen in the industry, even 20 years ago. Though individuals might claim or refute whether videogame innovation is presently stagnating, all agree that there are unexplored (or at least underexplored) genres that should be taken advantage of. A verified and quantitative approach to determining which genres are being passed by on is one step towards addressing this potentially large hole.
Description of project: It’s been the dream of many an open-world videogame developer to properly implement so called non-player character (NPC) ‘news events’. These behind-the-scenes code events, resulting from actions made by the player, would inform how NPCs interact with them and might even be brought up dynamically in conversation. This concept has always been of interest to me, representing a fascinating balance between player agency and system agency in videogames. While talk of exciting features like ‘news events’ and agency trends are common in both industry and academia, they often fail to invigorate agency in genres that stray further from the open-world role-playing videogame (RPG) concept. Furthermore, they often focus solely on player agency, ignoring the importance and uniqueness of system agency. To accomplish the task of quantifying and mapping genres using the previously mentioned agency axes, I will develop a simple yet malleable population simulation videogame. The system will have modifiable parameters according to the axes, and will change its available features according to the state in which it is configured. By mapping genres onto these axes (and verifying their positions), it will become trivially obvious which areas of the graph have yet to be mapped by today’s videogame genres.
Description of methodology: By developing the simple configurable videogame, I will be able to perform user testing. By pre-configuring the system, allowing participants to play the videogame in its current state, and then asking them to give their opinion on the genre of the version they played, I will be able to verify that the mechanics that I assigned to each genre (and therefore their grid placements) are valid. Once my system is verified and the gaps in the grid begin to become apparent, I will then lay a framework for how such a wellspring of research could be disseminated among active and working members of the game design industry.