Narrative Control and Player Experience in Role Playing Games: Decision Points and Branching Narrative Feedback

摘要

This paper reports an experimental study that investigated two research problems: first, how does narrative structure mediate the phenomenological experience(s) of role-playing games (RPGs)? Does branching narrative feedback heighten the experience of role-playing in terms of Flow and character identification? And second, what are the effects of salient decision points (narrative controls) on the player perception of narrative structure and complexity as well as control over the player-character? Does higher perceived complexity lead to heightened effectence and Flow? To what extent are these effects context-dependent in terms of narrative feedback mechanisms and overall structure? Two hypotheses were developed based on prior research: 1. Branching narrative in an RPG leads to improved game play experiences compared to linear narrative and 2. Presence of salient decision points in a RPG leads to improved experiences of game play. A 2x2 factorial experiment was conducted to test these hypotheses.