Exploring Defamiliarization Techniques on Non-Player Characters
Sereen HAMIDEH
Level Design
Exploring Defamiliarization Techniques on Non-Player Characters
Defamiliarization is a literary technique used to“ make things previously familiar unfamiliar to encourage reflection.” I wanted to find the intersection between this literary technique and game design, specifically how it relates to NPCs. To me, NPCs( or Non-Player Characters) are vessels in which the player experiences a game world, so it was a natural progression to blend defamiliarization and NPCs. I chose three techniques to implement on an NPC and decided to make a testing quest and a control quest to ensure that the data would only be focused on the techniques and nothing else.
I built a standalone Starfield level with“ A Blue Thumb” as the testing quest and“ A Green Thumb” as the control quest.“ A Blue Thumb” contained all the defamiliarization techniques, while the control quest had the same narrative beats
but did not contain the defamiliarization techniques. I collected player responses through pre- and post-surveys, then compared all the playtester data to see if the hypothesis was proven correct.
The results confirmed that most players preferred the defamiliar version of both the quest and the NPC. For various reasons, players liked when the NPC was acting strangely and did look deeper into the actions of the NPC while engaging with the defamiliar quest. This project took 11 months to complete and offers game designers and narrative designers a way to create more engaging narratives and characters within that narrative.
38 LEVEL DESIGN