Presenting Rewards With Effective Pacing To Heighten Engagement: Goals as a Basic Unit of Organization in Level Design
Titus THOMPSON
Level Design
Presenting Rewards With Effective Pacing To Heighten Engagement: Goals as a Basic Unit of Organization in Level Design
My thesis artifact, The Wheel of Life: Notes on Cyclicality, is a game that synthesizes classical Indian tradition with modern algebra. It is a celebration of culture, an invitation for players to apprehend universal truths, and a love letter to someone special in my life.
My research drew on narrative theories— the Aristotelean Story Arc and Stanislavski’ s concept of acting beats— to establish best practices for pacing in level design. From this perspective, each player’ s journey through a game tells an emergent story with its own pacing structure, whether the game tells a conventional story or not. The artifact explores ways that activities and rewards can shape a coherent pacing arc, even across diverse play styles and preferences.
To analyze pacing over time, I used a best fit linear regression model to study how core game components— activities, rewards, and aesthetics— contribute to player engagement. Preliminary data suggests that this method is effective in most cases and may provide a viable framework for modeling the rhythms of gameplay and for quantifying the factors that contribute to engagement overall.
At the time of writing, I have spent 1,000 hours on this project and intend to continue my work in this area. I hope it offers players a chance to transcend themselves by playfully solving the game’ s mysteries, just as I had to step beyond myself as I approached its subject matter with curiosity and respect.
44 LEVEL DESIGN