Högskolan i Skövde

The study examines how story choices in video games affect the player’s sense of agency. A literature review was done to understand and define the terms used. Agency is the power to take meaningful action and see the consequences of those actions, also connected to the player’s sense of control. The type of story choices used were meaningful, ones that change the game state, and inconsequential choices, that do not change it. An artefact was created to present these choices through dialogue, in the form of a video game. After playing through the artefact, players were asked to fill in a questionnaire and some participated in follow-up interviews. Results showed that inconsequential choices can affect the player negatively if they realize that the choices were not real, while players requested more meaningful choices. For future work it is of interest to, among other things, examine player’s definition of meaningful choices.