Taylor Roseberry
Level Design
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Escort Quests: Best Practices for Improving Engagement
My thesis project was an exploration of what positively affected engagement and
engagement in an often-loathed aspect of to conduct prior to planning and designing
methods that could be used to increase
Role-Playing Games: escort quests.
The goal was to identify and implement
a combination of different gameplay,
narrative, and AI design techniques
in a unique Fallout 4 escort quest that
the artifact in order to implement the
research in a way that would present the
potential best practices in the artifact
in a manner that allowed for relevant
playtesting data to be gathered.
attempted to avoid common player Over the course of the project’s 12-month
engagement. and caveats when it comes designing
critiques in order to boost player
The first step in the process was
identifying what players liked and disliked
about escort quests. From there, I was
able to determine three areas of focus
for improvement: moment-to-moment
gameplay, quest and world narrative, and
interactions with the AI companion.
I then focused on deeper research in
each of those areas, assessing how they
contributed to player engagement, and
findings from previous studies about
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motivation. This research was necessary
LEVEL DESIGN
period, I was able to identify best practices
escort quests for RPGs. This allowed me
to develop a deeper understanding of what
factors affect player engagement, not only
with regards to escort quests but also on
a broader scale. It has made me better at
designing with engagement in mind, which
can be applied to different facets of level
design.