Player Motivations and Narrative Engagement in
Digital Games
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER
OF SCIENCE
Marco Vesco
11353937
M
ASTER
I
NFORMATION
S
TUDIES
Game Studies
F
ACULTY OF
S
CIENCE
U
NIVERSITY OF
A
MSTERDAM
October 26, 2020
1st Examiner 2nd Examiner
Dr. Frank Nack Dr. Sander Bakkes
Informatics Institute, UvA Utrecht Center for Game Research, Utrecht University
Player Motivations and Narrative Engagement in Digital Games
Marco Vesco
University of Amsterdam 11353937 Supervisor: Dr. F. Nackmarco.vesco93@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Motivations of play are central to the understanding of how players experience game narratives. In order to provide a foundation of evidence on how player motivations affect narrative engagement, a quantitative survey analysis is designed using the Dark Souls1 trilogy and its online player community as a case
study. A compatible empirical model of motivation is adapted to assess players on several scales relating to 3 overarching components (i.e. Achievement, Social, Immersion). Due to the lack of literature on this topic, a preliminary model of narrative engagement in digital games (i.e. the degree of participation in different parts of a multi-layered storytelling) is introduced, distinguishing between in-game and out-of-game components. The study shows that, within the context of the Dark Souls trilogy, having a higher desire for discovery increases attention toward explicit as well as subtle sources of storytelling while playing. Additionally, it increases the likelihood of revisiting the game after learning new information on the lore. At the same time, no motivation of play notably affects the interest in seeking or discussing information on the narrative (outside of the game). Lastly, the findings show that being oriented toward achievement and social aspects of the game does not impact narrative engagement in a meaningful way.
1 Introduction
Video games have come a long way since their inception in the early 1970s, but despite their enormous popularity they are far from being considered “transparent”. Transparent is understood here in the sense of Murray [1], i.e. a frictionless storytelling technology. Murray suggests that “eventually all successful storytelling technologies become ‘transparent’: we lose consciousness of the medium and see neither print nor film but only the power of the story itself. If digital art reaches the same level of expressiveness as these older media, we will no longer concern ourselves with how we are receiving the information. We will only think about what truth it has told us about our lives.” [1], p.26.
1 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-trilogy
Given that interactive media allow users to cocreate content and narratives, the level of expressiveness invoked by Murray will largely depend on the sophistication of players’ input. Simultaneously, the adaptive nature of digital technologies and AI toward the individual needs and capabilities of a user makes ludonarrative software potentially able to exceed the reach of other, non-ergodic media such as books or film [2].
Although we commonly refer to these interactive pieces of software as “games”, we are in fact talking about complex software programs which can emulate any medium as well as simulate different types of games, such as board games and sports. They are, in other words, integrated cross media packages [3]. As a result, more so than in any other medium, digital game creators keep pushing the boundaries of interactivity and storytelling as new hardware and technologies rapidly become available. This degree of complexity poses many challenges to the dissemination of game literacy [4], which is directly related to the quality of players’ input and, ultimately, the transparency of games as a storytelling device. In fact, having a naïve understanding of games can be common even among passionate game players. Expert players will often be familiar with specific types of games but have a narrow view of the medium as a whole and fail when asked to describe games analytically, instead describing them judgmentally [5].
The academic discussion surrounding ludonarrative has been evolving parallel to the development of game studies as an interdisciplinary field [6]. Within its effort to shed light on this medium, a tension between interactivity and the traditionally rather rigid structures of storytelling has emerged, which can be summarized in the question: How is it possible for a game to tell a story if players are able to interact with it? [6]. The question is twofold, as we need to understand both how games tell stories and how players interact with games.
In order to answer this question, we ought to examine the way interactive stories are uniquely able to integrate a vast array of narrative techniques. Furthermore, we need to investigate what underlying motivations drive players to take on these journeys. Exploring this combined problem-space is a necessary step to unravel the complexity of the medium and achieve a better understanding of how narrative design and player agency can work together (or against each other).
Therefore, the present study aims to contribute a detailed look at how player motivations relate to narrative engagement in digital games. To achieve this goal, the Dark Souls2 trilogy and its online
player community are considered as a case study. Dark Souls is one of the most prominent examples of video games stretching the limits of crossmediality and storytelling. In the context of this paper, narrative engagement is conceived as the player’s degree of participation in different parts of a multi-layered storytelling. The paper begins with a section on related work. The literature discussed in this section serves to establish the theoretical background and problem spaces that the study is attempting to address. Next, the study’s approach is explained, and the research question is formulated based on operative definitions of narrative engagement and player motivations. In addition, the focus on the Dark Souls trilogy and its online community is explained. The paper then goes into the survey design, recruitment and performance. A description of the dataset and cleaning procedure is provided, after which the methods of analysis are reviewed. Next, the factor analysis and resulting scales are discussed. Finally, the findings of the regression analysis are reported, followed by discussion and conclusion.
2 Related Work
The related work section starts with an overview of how the controversial nature of narrative in games has been approached by professionals as well as academics. Following, the evolution of narrative-driven games is considered, with respect to the opportunities and challenges derived from technological advances. Dark Souls is then examined as an example of successful integration of ludic and narrative design. Lastly, the role of player motivation is discussed along with existing definitions and models.
2.2 Game vs. Story
Contrary to much of the literature on the subject, Frasca [7] claimed that the polarizing methodological divide between ludology and narratology, which was foundational for the field of game studies and peaked in the early 2000s, was based on an erroneous understanding of the participants. Therefore, the debate between scholars who focused solely on game mechanics, rejecting the very notion of narrative in games (i.e. ludologists) [7], and scholars who argued that games are closely related to stories (i.e. narratologists) [7] never really took place. As a result, the apparent dichotomy at the core of the debate is still unresolved.
Any debate over definitions tends to weaken strong interpretations of the terms involved. Rather than looking for clear-cut absolute meanings, a more fruitful practice when dealing with complex concepts such as “game” and “narrative” is the use of definitions
2 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-trilogy
that are not taken as the true meanings of terms, but instead are chosen based on the useful distinctions they provide when it comes to analysing and designing game systems [8]. According to Ryan [9] game developers have been approaching narrative in a similar, pragmatic manner, adapting and combining various existing models and methods. However, when compared to other areas of video game design, knowledge about narrative design is scarce [10].
Much of the literature relies on well-established understandings of storytelling, which emphasize concepts such as “story arcs” and the “Hero’s Journey” [11]. Indeed, the premise and tropes of many video games are based on constituent elements which have been documented by narrative theory since long before the advent of digital technology [12]. However, Koenitz [13] criticizes the overreliance on a traditional view of narrative, particularly as expressed by Jesse Schell in “Game Design Workshop” [14]. Schell rejects the idea that interactivity fundamentally influences narrative by claiming that the mechanics of traditional storytelling are somehow innate to human communication [14]. In the same book, Tracy Fullerton posits that the classic dramatic arc of increase and release in the tension of a story is structural to games just as much as any other dramatic medium [14]. These totalizing assertions are problematic and reductive, as Koenitz points out, because they are based on a narrow, colonial perspective of storytelling that ignores many non-European forms of narration which feature entirely different structures and mechanics [13].
2.3 Academic Perspectives on Ludonarrative
Complementary to the discussion on the nature of narrative in games is the question of whether traditional literary theory and narratology are suitable for analysing interactive stories.
Janet Murray's book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of
Narrative in Cyberspace [1], first published in 1997, introduced a
wide audience to the storytelling potential of the new medium. Most notably, Murray is responsible for the introduction of two sets of related and influential analytical categories for interactive narratives: affordances and aesthetic qualities. Affordances include the participatory, procedural, spatial and encyclopedic features of ludonarrative works, while aesthetic qualities are the emerging acts of immersion, agency and transformation that occur during play [13].
The distinction brought by Murray is founded on the idea that the standard notion of narrative needs expansion as a result of being outdated and poorly suited to describe interactive stories. This perspective has been supported by many scholars and commentators, including Celia Pearce [15], Marie-Laure Ryan [9] and Henry Jenkins [16]. Accordingly, Jenkins introduced the concept of emergent game narratives, i.e. stories which are not pre-determined but rather emerge as a result of players’ actions and their interplay with the dynamics of the game [16]. Another similar example is extraludic narratives, described by Anderson [6] as the storytelling that takes place between players about game-play stories. The unfolding of this phenomenon is unique to
games as a medium because of the coalescence of audience and storyteller in the role of the player [6].
On the other hand, Juul [17] illustrates the dangers of generalizing the concept of narrative: “The narrative turn of the last 20 years has seen the concept of narrative emerge as a privileged master concept in the description of all aspects of human society and sign-production. Expanding a concept can in many cases be useful, but the expansion process is also one that blurs boundaries and muddle concepts, be this desirable or not. With any sufficiently broad definition of x, everything will be x” [17], p.8-9. Aarseth [3] also criticizes this tendency, claiming that if any meaningful experience in a game is to be considered an emergent narrative, this label can hardly be limited to game-based situations and we run the risk of being unable to distinguish narratives from any other type of human experience. As a result, Aarseth proposes a model based on classical 20th century narratology which ties together the basic ontological dimensions found in ludonarrative works and illustrates their variance. These four dimensions are World, Objects, Agents and Events, all broken down into their respective variables based on the tension between ludic and narrative pole (as outlined in Figure 1).
The dimensions of Worlds and Objects describe player agency and gameplay rather than inherent narrative aspects, while Agents and Events describe author agency. The removal of player agency, therefore, is not to be interpreted as a measure of narrativity, but instead as a reduction in the challenges that authors must face in order to convey story elements within their work [3].
Figure 1: Aarseth’s four-dimensional model of game narrative
The framework of traditional narratology, however, only provides high-level descriptive analysis that does not result in design principles which can be formalized and applied to different works. Additionally, it forces a dichotomic approach which takes narrative as an antagonistic element to interactive design, rather than exploring the potential of a combined design space [18].
2.4 Narrative-driven Games
Although the advent of real-time 3D graphics and the fifth generation of consoles (i.e. Nintendo 643 and PlayStation4)
marked the shift to an increasingly narrative-centric approach to video games, storytelling has always been a part of game design [12]. In the early stages of the medium the narrative component was absent or kept to a minimum due to the significant hardware constraints but providing context to the fiction through boxes and instructions booklets was already a staple of game marketing [12]. Today, games featuring expansive, morally complex narratives are among the best-selling of all time; notable examples include the games in the Grand Theft Auto5, Final Fantasy6, Elder Scrolls7
and Metal Gear8 franchises [19].
Kuo et al. [20] propose that the evolution of ludonarrative can be understood as the increasing integration over time of the domains of player, narrative and gameplay. With the increase of their graphical fidelity and narrative complexity, digital games have progressively introduced “dynamic storylines that adapt to player decisions (player/narrative integration), sophisticated game mechanics that bolster interactivity (player/gameplay integration), and seamless transitions between segments of exposition and play (narrative/gameplay integration)” [20], p.4. This expansion in the capabilities of the medium, however, comes with potential drawbacks that might be counterproductive towards certain design goals or even break immersion if left unchecked. For example, in modern story-driven RPGs such as the Mass Effect9 series players
have come to expect a certain degree of agency. This ability to make choices with meaningful narrative outcomes facilitates immersion and investment into the avatar, but simultaneously prevents players from experimenting with alternative personas [20].
Additionally, in order to deliver cinematic moments games no longer have to rely on pre-rendered cutscenes which show a significantly higher level of visual fidelity and are sharply separated from interactive segments (e.g. 1997’s Final Fantasy
VII10). Instead, in the high-budget action-adventure game
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End 11 (released in 2016) the protagonist is
often acrobatically traversing the environment, shooting or solving puzzles while simultaneously holding a conversation with their AI companion. Meanwhile, the game is seamlessly transitioning in and out of hands-off moments (or entire sections) of more heavily directed exposition without encountering any loading screens. Yet, the more narrative and gameplay blend together to create increasingly believable experiences, the more traditional, abstract mechanics (e.g. improving the avatar’s
3 https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/nintendo64/index.jsp 4 https://www.playstation.com/en-nz/explore/ps1/ 5 https://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto/ 6 https://www.finalfantasy.com/ 7 https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/ 8 https://www.konami.com/games/eu/en/products/mgshd/ 9 https://www.ea.com/games/mass-effect/mass-effect-trilogy 10 https://square-enix-games.com/en_GB/games/final-fantasy-vii 11 https://www.unchartedthegame.com/en-us/games/uncharted-4/
abilities by obtaining and distributing experience points) are at risk of disrupting player immersion [20]. This disruption has been defined as ludonarrative dissonance [21], meaning a discrepancy or conflict between gameplay and narrative which if experienced might result in the inability for the player to feel connected to either, forcing them to abandon the game or simply accept that it cannot be enjoyed as both a game and a story.
Therefore, game designers should consider the level of integration that is appropriate to the experience they intend to provide in a game. In the case of story-driven games, the ludic and narrative features should work harmoniously to minimize the occurrence of ludonarrative dissonance.
2.4.1 Dark Souls. One notable example of consonance – as
opposed to dissonance – between gameplay and storytelling is Dark Souls12. In this critically acclaimed trilogy of action
role-playing games the themes of Western European medieval fantasy are used to tell the story of a mysterious, decaying world filled with deadly encounters.
Creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s design philosophy is to give players a sense of accomplishment through overcoming tremendous odds [22]. The player-created avatar in Dark Souls is a cursed undead warrior who is extremely vulnerable to enemy attacks as well as traps. Defeat is expected to occur many times during a playthrough, resulting in the loss of sizable amounts of progression. This unforgiving gameplay loop is but one of the ways in which the games convey a sense of vulnerability, growth and ultimately accomplishment [23]. However, such an outcome is only achievable if players, beyond the frustration of the moment, must admit that their avatar was defeated because of some identifiable mistake they made. [24].
Figure 2: Screenshot of Dark Souls III
At the same time, the storytelling of Dark Souls is designed to be non-linear, requiring player agency and imaginative effort rather than passive reception in order to form a comprehensive picture [22]. The (incomplete) information on the events of the game
12 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-trilogy
world (also known as lore) emerges from bits and pieces of item descriptions, brief interactions with enigmatic NPCs (non-player characters), as well as the curated worldbuilding of environments and monstrous creatures. The pattern of ambiguity extends to the multiplayer systems [6]. Player characters can visit someone else’s world in the form of enemy or ally phantoms, but in-game communication is limited to two methods: a set of avatar gestures such as waving or pointing forward and an indirect hint system, which uses a combination of prewritten words to post messages that appear on the ground to random players.
Figure 3: Example of item description in Dark Souls III
Although the narrative aspect is not as prominent as the combat-oriented gameplay, the two components work harmoniously as they are both comparably challenging in terms of the deductive reasoning required of the player: in Dark Souls, information on the gameplay is just as scarce as information on the game world [24]. Vella [25] posits that these mechanisms are designed to prevent the player from arriving at a stable cosmic understanding, preserving a sense of mystery and gesturing towards a whole that escapes their conceptualizing grasp. Furthermore, although Dark Souls may not be a special case in the kind of aesthetic mechanisms it presents, what sets it apart is a matter of degree: “it simply foregrounds a sublime quality of mystery that [...] is integral to the formal structure of digital games” [25], p.10.
2.5 Player Motivations
When comparing interactive software with pre-digital media, the array of reasons why people engage with digital games is amplified by their crossmediality: ludonarrative software can assimilate forms and functions of older types of media, but its narrative potential is not limited to imitating them [24]. Lindlay [8] suggests that these fundamental but unacknowledged differences in the type of experiences players are seeking are at the root of the misunderstandings around interactive storytelling. For example, the perception of ludonarrative dissonance [21] – which manifests in statements such as “cut scenes break immersion in the game” or “the gameplay is repetitive and has nothing to do with the story” – largely depends on the individual player’s expectation, motivations and play style. A different player referring to the same game might not experience any
conflict between these systems and find their combination well executed [8].
The literature on player types and motivation is rather uniform and mostly centered around Bartle’s original work on player types in Multi-User Dungeons [26] [27]. Bartle devised four main categories for players based on their in-game behaviour in relation to the two axes of action – interaction and player orientation – world orientation. The world-oriented types are Achievers and Explorers. While Achievers prefer action, Explorers privilege interaction. Killers and Socialisers are player-oriented, the former preferring action and the latter preferring interaction with other players. [27] In their meta-synthesis of player types, Humari and Tuunanen [26] find that current studies can be summarized into five key dimensions encompassing the motivation/orientation of players: Achievement, Exploration, Sociability, Domination and Immersion. Compared to Bartle’s categories (achiever, explorer, socializer, killer) only Immersion is added from other literature as a construct on the same level of abstraction.
A different approach to dividing the user population has been focused on the intensity of play, commonly articulated as a continuum or sometimes dichotomy between “hardcore” and “casual” modes of play [26]. This division is central in popular literature and discussion. Ip & Jacobs [28] define hardcore players as more dedicated to gaming and more engaged across the board. On the other hand, Stewart [29] defines them in terms of level of immersion in the game world. Hardcore gaming behaviour has mostly been measured as average playing time over a period, average length of playing session, attitude and time invested in game related activities (such as being active on game communities and insider forums) [30]. While these parameters can be used to measure the intensity of certain player behaviours, they do not relate to the underlying factors that drive people to play. Therefore, they are not conducive to meaningful and useful distinctions about player motivations.
3 Approach
As outlined in the related work, the issue of the relationship between gameplay and narrative has not generally been considered in relation to the motivations and consequent play/interaction styles of players [8]. Acknowledging the differences in the type of experience players are seeking and the impact they have on their behaviour could prove beneficial in research as well as design applications. Indeed, understanding why and how different players navigate game stories is essential for solving the theoretical tension between narration and interaction. Additionally, it holds significant implications for the field of personalised gaming [31] in the form of narrative adaptation (i.e. the use of techniques to produce meaningful choices tailored to the player) [31]. Advancing our comprehension of ludonarrative in such a way requires dedicated analytical tools which fit the qualities of the medium. The ongoing push for the development of a wider theory of interactive digital narrative
(IDN) calls for a specialized, evidence-based approach in order to achieve an accessible body of interactive narrative design knowledge [10].
This combined necessity translates into the research question for the present study: how do player motivations affect narrative engagement in digital games?
In order to delineate the scope of the study, ludonarrative is considered to result from the intersection between the author as storyteller and the player as interactant or active audience. In the case of non-linear forms of game narrative (such as Dark Souls), it could be argued that the original creators deliberately pass the mantle of narrator to the players as a whole. However, this is only partially the case: narration is enabled by the author inasmuch as they exclusively hold complete knowledge of the events and provide the structure and tools necessary to tell the story. Given this framework, emergent or extraludic narratives (the storytelling that takes place between players about gameplay stories) are not included. Furthermore, ludonarrative software combines multiple narrative devices and, unlike non-interactive media, offers more than just storytelling. As a result, the investigation of how individuals relate to game narrative has to take into account competing players’ interests and start from the understanding of why different types of narration are – or are not – participated. Therefore, the concept of narrative engagement in digital games can be initially understood as the player’s degree of participation in different parts of a multi-layered storytelling. Finally, player motivations encompass the various interests that drive people to play and influence their actions (or lack thereof) within a game. A quantitative survey analysis, more specifically a regression analysis, will be conducted to answer the research question. The survey will be centered around the Dark Souls13 trilogy as a case
study on the relation between player motivations and narrative engagement. The two concepts will be operationalized in order to form an online questionnaire, based on the features of Dark Souls and its online player community. The data will be analysed through a series of linear regressions, considering player motivations as independent variables and different modes of narrative engagement as dependent variables.
3.1 Dark Souls as a Case Study
Developed by Japanese software house From Software14, the
games of the Dark Souls series are regarded as some of the most influential work of the last decade in the entertainment games industry [32]. Dark Souls 15 first reached the market in 2011 as a
spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls 16, released in 2009 by the
same studio with only minor success. As of 2019 Dark Souls,
13 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-trilogy 14 https://www.fromsoftware.jp/ww/
15 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls 16 https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/demons-souls-ps3/
Dark Souls II 17, Dark Souls III 18 and Dark Souls Remastered 19
have collectively sold over 25 million copies across all platforms [33]. The commercial success of the games is remarkable, considering the uncompromising nature of their design. With the release of Dark Souls, the game’s tough-but-fair difficulty and ambiguous storytelling were lauded by critics and players, resulting in a strong word-of-mouth campaign driven by increasingly active online communities [6].
The Dark Souls trilogy and its online community will be considered as a case study to effectively investigate the problem spaces of player motivations and narrative engagement. All three games will be taken into account, since they share the same “DNA” when it comes to gameplay systems, storytelling techniques and art direction.
3.1.1 Narrative Engagement. Dark Souls stands out as a
pivotal case in the study of narrative engagement because of the online “plot hunting” which the games have inspired on an unprecedented scale. The ambiguity and puzzle-like nature of the narrative, in combination with the limited in-game communication features, certainly contributed to the formation of dedicated online communities across different platforms. Communities where players could share their interpretation of the events and chronology of the game’s story (lore) [6].
The scale of this phenomenon allows for an investigation of ludonarrative which is not limited to the act of play, extending to interactions on social media and internet forums. Specifically, these interactions consist of speculation and learning about the lore of the game. As argued by Anderson [6], “the Dark Souls online community exemplifies features like many other online fan communities found on internet forums – text posting, storytelling, images, jokes, news, and events – and these features make the Dark Souls community a practical site of analysis for discovering the intersections of community, communication, and narrative” [6], p.3.
Simultaneously, such a way of exploring the lore of Dark Souls is enabled by the deliberate design choices and storytelling techniques utilized. This variety of ways, both explicit and subtle, in which narrative information is conveyed to the player enables a detailed look at the level of engagement with different sources of storytelling during gameplay. In other words, the narrative techniques of Dark Souls cover a wide range of methods that digital games employ to tell stories.
3.1.2 Player Motivations. The Dark Souls trilogy lends itself to
the study of player motivations due to its multi-layered design which emphasizes player agency. Any one of the games can be approached with widely different purposes and playstyles. On one
17 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-ii 18 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-iii 19 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-remastered
hand, the flourishing speedrun (i.e. the practice of completing a game as fast as possible) scene20 is an example of “pure”
gameplay [24]. On the other hand, the vast online community dedicated to uncovering and piecing together the lore is a testament to the depth of the narrative.
Exploration is encouraged by the non-linearity of the spaces and rewarded with unique loot (i.e. items and equipment), useful shortcuts, hidden locations and characters. As for avatar customization, the action role-playing game features provide plenty of variety in terms of gameplay and aesthetic choices. At the same time, the optional multiplayer components of asynchronous, indirect exchange of information (hints and bloodstains) as well as synchronous, direct assistance (summoning) or sabotage (invading) allow for individual play, cooperation and competition [34]. Additionally, despite the lack of explicit options for mitigating the harsh difficulty of the encounters, summoning help in the form of other player or non-player characters can significantly decrease the challenge factor (due to the functioning of the enemy AI), accounting for differences in expertise and competitive drive.
4 Survey
Because of the lack of evidence-based literature on the concept of narrative engagement in video games, this study is exploratory in nature. A regression analysis was designed based on quantitative survey data, with the goal of gathering a significant foundation of evidence to help answer the research question of how player motivations affect narrative engagement. The structured questionnaire was developed based on the common ludic and narrative features of Dark Souls 21 (2011), Dark Souls II 22 (2014)
and Dark Souls III23 (2016).
Participants were required to agree to an informed consent form in order to partake in the survey, which took around 5 minutes to complete.
4.1 Survey Design
The first part of the survey (see Appendix 1) contained a section about demographics and playtime. Participants were asked to indicate their age, gender and interval of hours played for each game. The core of the survey consisted of 44 questions to be answered on 5-point construct-specific fully labelled Likert scales. More specifically, 28 questions concerning player motivations, followed by 14 questions concerning narrative engagement; lastly, two questions about pre-existing knowledge, namely, “How familiar are you with Japanese culture?” and, “How familiar were you with the lore of Dark Souls before you started to play?”. These items address players’ interests and knowledge which
20 https://www.speedrun.com/darksoulsremastered 21 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls 22 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-ii 23 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-iii
might have influenced how they approached certain narrative aspects of the games.
4.1.1 Player Motivation Questionnaire. The player motivation
questions used for this study were based on Yee’s empirical model of player motivations [35] developed for massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-games (MMORPGs), which includes a total of 40 items. The main dimensions of motivation measured by the model are Achievement, Social and Immersion, each divided in multiple subcomponents. Despite the similarity of game features and genre tropes, Dark Souls differs from MMORPGs in a few key aspects, most notably, its single-player focus and its lack of extensive in-game communication and social features. These features include a text chat, the ability to form guilds and the persistent, simultaneous presence of large amounts of player characters in the same instance of the game world (only limited to a few within Dark Souls). Therefore, the questions from the original questionnaire were adapted where needed. For example, the term “money” was replaced with “souls” (Dark Souls’ form of currency). Furthermore, a total of 12 items were excluded as they did not translate to Dark Souls.
The resulting player motivations questionnaire included 28 items. Its subcomponents (see Table 1) retained the definitions of the original study [35], save for Socializing and Teamwork, which were altered to match the differences found in the multiplayer experience of Dark Souls. More specifically, the definition for Socializing was changed from, “Having an interest in helping and chatting with other players” to, “Deriving satisfaction from helping other players”; the definition for Teamwork was changed from “Deriving satisfaction from being part of a group effort” to, “Having an interest in playing with others as a group”. Consequently, the item distribution was slightly altered compared to the original study: one item measuring the enjoyment of working with ally players was moved from the Teamwork to the Socializing subcomponent. Lastly, the model differed from the original in the Relationship subcomponent, which was absent since none of its items translated to Dark Souls.
Table 1: Subcomponents of player motivation, grouped by the main component they fall under
The Achievement Component
• Advancement. The desire to gain power, progress rapidly,
and accumulate in-game symbols of wealth or status. • Mechanics. Having an interest in analysing the underlying
rules and system in order to optimize character performance. • Competition. The desire to challenge and compete with
others.
The Social Component
• Socializing. Deriving satisfaction from helping other players.
• Teamwork. Having an interest in playing with others as a
group.
The Immersion Component
• Discovery. Finding and knowing things that most other
players don’t know about.
• Role-Playing. Creating a persona with a background story
and interacting with other players to create an improvised story.
• Customization. Having an interest in customizing the
appearance of their character.
• Escapism. Using the game environment to avoid thinking
about real life problems.
4.1.2 Narrative Engagement Questionnaire. No previous
empirical studies were found about narrative engagement in digital games. The concept of narrative engagement – the degree of participation in different parts of a multi-layered storytelling – was operationalized (see Table 2) starting with two main dimensions. The first is in-game engagement, which concerns the level of interaction with the sources of storytelling during the act of play. The second is out-of-game engagement, which tackles the participation of players to the online conversation and speculation about the game’s lore.
Table 2: Subcomponents of narrative engagement, grouped by the main component they fall under
In-game Narrative Engagement
• Direct Storytelling Engagement. Seeking and paying
attention to explicit sources of narrative while playing the game.
• Indirect Storytelling Engagement. Seeking and paying
attention to subtle sources of narrative while playing the game.
Out-of-game Narrative Engagement
• Individual Engagement. Learning about the narrative by
consulting sources outside of the game.
• Social Engagement. Actively participating in the conversation about the narrative that takes place outside of the game.
• Narrative Incentive to Play*. The likelihood of revisiting
the game as a result of learning something new about its narrative.
* Not a measure of players’ narrative engagement, but rather a measure of
the effect that narrative engagement (outside of the game) has on their desire to play.
With regard to in-game narrative engagement, a previous study involving the narrative techniques of Dark Souls II [36] identified environmental storytelling, item descriptions, non-player characters and cutscenes to be the four major techniques utilized
to tell the story of the game. For the purpose of this study, in order to cover every layer of narrative design, game mechanics and metanarrative were added as significant storytelling techniques. An example of game mechanics used as a storytelling device is using “humanity”, a consumable item in the first installation of Dark Souls, to kindle bonfires, granting gameplay related benefits as well as suggesting a connection between humanity and fueling the flame (a core theme in Dark Souls is the cycle of darkness and light). In terms of metanarrative, the games include many parallels and references to Japanese folklore as well as other media, especially pulling from influential Japanese manga and animation [37] [38]. Ultimately, in-game narrative engagement was subdivided in Direct Storytelling Engagement and Indirect Storytelling Engagement. The first scale included three questions measuring the level of engagement with explicit or direct narrative techniques (cutscenes, item descriptions, non-player characters), while the second scale included three items measuring the level of engagement with subtle or indirect narrative techniques (environment, mechanics, metanarrative).
As for out-of-game narrative engagement, the various ways of exploring the lore outside of gameplay were classified as Individual Engagement or Social Engagement. Individual Engagement was divided into three items: the amount of learning about the lore done by consulting written online content, audio-visual online content, or other types of online content (memes, podcasts, songs). Social Engagement was articulated in two items: the frequency of making online comments, posts or any other type of content discussing the lore; the frequency of talking about the lore with friends.
A distinct aspect about out-of-game narrative engagement is how it could influence players’ desire for gameplay, acting as an incentive to play. This was translated into an additional question asking how often players went back to playing the game as a result of learning something new about the lore. The item is not a measure of players’ narrative engagement, but rather a measure of the effect of out-of-game narrative engagement on their desire to play.
4.2 Participants
The survey addressed the online player community of all three games in the Dark Souls trilogy. The main purpose of reaching this combined user base was the attainment of a significant sample size.
Participants were recruited on Reddit24. Reddit is a link
aggregation, content rating and discussion website which functions as a gateway to external internet content, but also increasingly emphasizes interaction within its own communities and reinforces its own user-generated content [39]. The website is structured in what are called subreddits, or pages that focus on a
24 https://www.reddit.com/
specific topic, created and maintained by users. Dark Souls communities exist on many other websites, but Reddit can be considered as a meeting point that ties them together overall [6]. Specifically, the most active Reddit communities (subreddits) for Dark Souls, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III were chosen. These community hubs are named r/darksouls25, r/DarkSouls226 and
r/darksouls327. At the time of writing, they counted approximately
281000, 143000 and 331000 users respectively. Since some of the users might have been active on more than one of the subreddits, they were instructed not to take the survey multiple times. Before the start of the questionnaire, participants were also asked to only take part in the study if they had played at least one out of the three games. Additionally, they were asked about their total playtime for each of the games. This information was later utilized to ensure the players’ familiarity with the subject matter. Furthermore, an attention check was included in order to test whether they completed the form truthfully.
4.3 Survey Performance
Data collection lasted three days from June 29 to July 1, 2017. A total of 5884 participants completed and submitted the form during that time frame.
The questionnaire was developed using Google Forms28 and
participants were recruited on r/darksouls, r/DarkSouls2 and r/darksouls3 by means of a post linking to the questionnaire.
5 Results
The data collected through the online survey was analysed using IBM’s SPSS29.
The results section consists of several parts. It begins with an explanation of the exclusion criteria and a brief description of the dataset. Then, the methods of – factor and regression – analysis are reviewed. The factor analysis is discussed, along with the reliability and descriptive statistics of the scales. Finally, the findings of the multiple linear regressions are explained.
5.1 Dataset Cleaning and Description
First, in order to obtain a valid sample, the participants who failed the attention check were excluded. The attention check consisted of comparing two equivalent items: one measuring the importance of having a character that can “solo” well, and the other measuring the importance of having a self-sufficient character (that does not need help from other players). These entries ask the same question, phrased differently - playing solo means playing
25 https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/ 26 https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/ 27 https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/ 28 https://www.google.com/forms/about/
without the help of other players. Therefore, a difference between the two answers of more than 1 point (out of the 5-point Likert scale) was considered as failure.
Additionally, in order to ensure familiarity with the subject matter, participants needed to have spent a significant amount of time with at least one out of the three games. According to the website HowLongToBeat30, which collects statistics on
user-submitted play times, at the time of writing the average single playthrough time (for all play styles) in Dark Souls, Dark Souls II and Dark souls III was 60, 62 and 47 hours respectively. Furthermore, within this study’s sample, the median value (interval) for the total play time on all three of the games was found to be 100 to 200 hours. As a result, the participants who indicated less than 50 hours of playtime on all three games could confidently be excluded from the study.
Based on these criteria, a total of 627 participants were excluded, leaving 5257. The average age of the participants was 23 (min. 12, max. 72), with a standard deviation of 5.56. Regarding gender, 95% of the participants indicated to be male, 3.3% female and 0.4% other than strictly male or female. For every game, the median interval of hours played was between 100 and 200, and the mode was more than 200 (min. between 0 and 1 hours, max. more than 200 hours).
5.2 Analysis Methods
Firstly, the goal of the analysis was to reduce the number of variables and ensure the reliability and validity of the model. A factor analysis was conducted in order to properly distribute the items between the various components (i.e. latent factors) and arrive at internally consistent scales. This was done both for the player motivations and narrative engagement item sets. After forming the scales, reliability coefficients were calculated for all of them.
Furthermore, the mean score and standard deviation of all variables were calculated as measures of central tendency to provide a broad description of the participants, their motivations and level of engagement.
Finally, the goal was using the model to help answer the research question of how player motivations affect narrative engagement. To do so, a regression analysis consisting of five multiple linear regressions was conducted. Within each linear regression the player motivation scales were treated as independent variables. In addition, four variables were included as covariates to control for possible effects of age, gender and pre-existing knowledge (i.e. familiarity with the lore of Dark Souls and Japanese culture) on narrative engagement.
The four narrative engagement scales and the Narrative Incentive variable (measuring the frequency of revisiting the game as a
result of learning something new about the lore) were treated as dependent variables. Each linear regression showed the relationship between the independent variables and a single dependent variable when controlling for covariates.
The analysis assumed absence of multicollinearity between the independent variables. This requirement was checked by looking at the VIF coefficients. In order to assess the validity of the model, the adjusted coefficient of determination (adjR2) was
calculated for each linear regression. Lastly, the linear regression coefficients were interpreted to establish whether player motivations have a significant influence on narrative engagement.
5.3 Factor Analysis, Reliability, Descriptive
Statistics
First, the player motivation variables were divided into three groups based on Achievement, Immersion or Social. A factor analysis with varimax rotation was conducted for each set of variables. Based on standard procedure, factors were evaluated using the scree plot as a guide and a minimum eigenvalue of 1 (or close to 1) was required. The item distribution between rotated factors also had to meet the theoretical expectations. Moreover, a factor loading cut-off of 0.5 was used. All relevant factors reported eigenvalues above 1 and were retained. The factor loadings on the rotated factor matrix confirmed the expected item distribution of the scales. Most loadings exceeded 0.7, although the ones on the Advancement and Mechanics scales were suboptimal (between 0.5 and 0.7). Five items out of the 28 did not load sufficiently on any component and were excluded from the model. Specifically, the excluded items were: importance of acquiring new weapons and equipment; importance of knowing as much as possible about the game mechanics and rules; importance of being immersed in the fantasy world; enjoyment from trying out new roles and personalities with your characters; frequency of playing to relax from the day’s work.
As a result, four out of the nine scales were reduced to two items (see Table 3). A reliability test was conducted using either Cronbach’s alpha or the Spearman-Brown formula, since the assumption of tau-equivalence required by Cronbach’s alpha cannot be met by two-item scales. Because Cronbach’s alpha is the preferable measure of scale reliability, it was still employed for scales containing more than two items. Overall, the reliability coefficients for the player motivation scales (see Table 3) were satisfactory, although the Mechanics scale reported a Spearman-Brown coefficient below 0.6.
The mean and standard deviation for the resulting player motivation scales were calculated (see Table 3). The two control variables were also included. The average scores of Discovery, Customization and Escapism suggest that most respondents tend to be especially driven by the desire to explore and generally be
immersed in the world of the game. Furthermore, the high mean score in the Advancement component denotes their interest in gaining power, which aligns with the combat-heavy gameplay of Dark Souls. Lastly, although cooperation (Teamwork) is not favoured as a way to play by most respondents, the option of helping other players (Socializing) emerges as significantly appealing. This indicates that through the summoning system – which allows players to mutually benefit from playing together – the participants tend to enjoy occasionally helping randomly selected players in need, rather than sticking with specific players and forming a group. With regard to pre-existing knowledge, on average the respondents indicated to be somewhat familiar with Japanese culture and scarcely familiar with the lore of Dark Souls before starting to play.
Table 3: Reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha / Spearman-Brown), mean and standard deviation (5-point scale) of independent variables
Scales / Variables No. of Items ɑ SB M SD Advancement 3 .618 3.42 0.78 Mechanics 2 .552 2.89 0.97 Competition 3 .739 2.64 0.98 Teamwork 3 .787 1.89 0.80 Socializing 2 .785 3.97 0.98 Discovery 3 .737 4.45 0.64 Role-playing 2 .869 2.32 1.11 Customization 3 .658 3.40 0.99 Escapism 2 .739 3.03 1.07 Japanese Culture 1 2.59 1.08 Lore Knowledge 1 1.57 0.94
Achievement Social Immersion Control Variables
Next, the narrative engagement variables were divided into two groups based on In-game or Out-of-game Engagement. A factor analysis with varimax rotation was conducted for each set of variables. Again, factors were evaluated using the scree plot as a guide, a minimum eigenvalue of 1 (or close to 1) was required, and a factor loading cut-off of 0.5 was used. The loadings on the rotated factor matrix confirmed the expected item distribution of the scales. The factor relating to the Indirect Storytelling scale reported an eigenvalue of 0.94, however it was retained based on the scree plot and high factor loadings. All other relevant factors had eigenvalues above 1 and were retained. One item, measuring the amount of learning about the lore done by watching online videos, did not load sufficiently on any component and was excluded from the model. Most of the remaining factor loadings rested between 0.6 and 0.8, although the loadings for the Social Engagement scale were rather weak (just above 0.5).
The reliability coefficients were also calculated for the narrative engagement scales (see Table 4). The Social Engagement scale scored insufficiently on the Spearman-Brown coefficient (below 0.5). This will be taken into consideration when discussing the study’s findings and replicability. The reliability coefficients for the rest of the scales were adequate, being close to 0.7.
Mean and standard deviation were calculated for the four scales and for the Narrative Incentive to Play variable (see Table 4). The results suggest that on average the respondents are highly engaged with all parts of the in-game storytelling of Dark Souls. Outside of the game, on the other hand, they seem to be more prone to individually engage in the exploration of the narrative rather than socially. Furthermore, the act of discovering new information on the lore of the games is generally considered to be a moderate incentive towards gameplay.
Table 4: Reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha / Spearman-Brown), mean and standard deviation (5-point scale) of dependent variables
Scales / Variables No. of Items ɑ SB M SD Direct Storytelling 3 .746 3.99 0.84 Indirect Storytelling 3 .700 3.85 0.85 Individual 2 .685 3.61 1.03 Social 2 .454 2.19 0.76 Incentive to Play 1 2.73 1.09
In-game Narrative Engagement Out-of-game Narrative Engagement
5.4 Regression Analysis Findings
The assumption of absence of multicollinearity between the independent variables was met based on the VIF coefficients. Furthermore, the independent variables reliably predicted all dependent variables (see Appendix 2). The best overall fit was recorded for the In-game Narrative Engagement scales. Specifically, the independent variables (i.e. player motivations) predicted close to 25% of the variance in the level of engagement with the storytelling elements of Dark Souls, both explicit and subtle. With regard to Out-of-game Narrative Engagement, there was a sizable difference in the proportion of variance predicted between the Individual and the Social scale. The independent variables only predicted 4.2% of the variance in the level of engagement with external sources of information on the lore of Dark Souls. At the same time, they predicted 14.7% of the variance in the level of active participation in the conversation about the lore. Lastly, the adjusted coefficient of determination for the Narrative Incentive variable was 16.4%. This means that the independent variables as a whole could reliably predict 16.4% of the variance in the likelihood of revisiting a game in the Dark Souls trilogy after learning something new about the lore.
No statistically significant results were registered for any of the control variables. Therefore age, gender, familiarity with Japanese culture and familiarity with the lore of the games before starting to play did not significantly influence narrative engagement. In order to compare the effect size of every independent variable on the dependent variables, the unstandardized coefficients from each of the linear regressions were considered (see Appendix 3). This was possible because all the employed variables were measured with 5-point Likert scales.
The most notable predictor across the board was Discovery, which measured the desire for finding and knowing things that most other players don’t know about. Compared to the other independent variables (i.e. player motivations), Discovery yielded the highest estimates for every dependent variable. Holding all other variables constant, a 1 unit increase in the Discovery score predicted close to a 0.5 increase in both Direct and Indirect Narrative Engagement during gameplay. Furthermore, for every unit increase in Discovery, an increase of above 0.4 in Narrative Incentive to Play was predicted. On the other hand, Individual and Social Out-of-game Narrative Engagement were not affected to the same extent by Discovery.
Regarding the rest of the player motivation variables, their effect on narrative engagement was either low (between 0.2 and 0.1) or negligible (below 0.1). For example, Role-playing was the only other independent variable that produced significant, albeit minor, increases across multiple dependent variables. Other minor effects were observed for Advancement, Escapism and Teamwork.
6 Discussion
The results provide a number of useful insights to address the research question. The main dimensions of the player motivation scale utilized in this study were Achievement, Immersion and Social. Immersion, particularly in the form of the Discovery component, was the only strong predictor of narrative engagement. This component measured the desire for finding and knowing things that most other players don’t know about, including exploring the world and encountering hidden quests, NPCs or locations. More specifically, a higher drive for discovery equally increased the participants’ level of engagement with explicit (i.e. cutscenes, item descriptions, non-player-characters) as well as subtle (i.e. environment, mechanics, metanarrative) storytelling elements in Dark Souls31. Similarly, it increased their
likelihood of revisiting a game in the Dark Souls trilogy as a result of learning something new about the narrative (lore). However, it only marginally increased the participants’ level of engagement with external sources of information on the lore of Dark Souls. The same was true for their level of participation in the conversation about the lore.
31 https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/dark-souls/dark-souls-trilogy
Therefore, engaging in narrative exploration and speculation outside of gameplay does not seem to be affected by player motivations to the same extent as engaging in the storytelling during gameplay. Perhaps this facet of the phenomenon would be better explained by motives outside of what drives people to play the game. This hypothesis is supported by the finding that – for individuals with a high desire for discovery – learning about the lore outside of the game does provide a significant incentive to revisit Dark Souls. In other words, the results highlight a separation between experiencing the narrative IN a game and exploring the narrative OF a game. The desire to discover the world of the game significantly affects players’ narrative engagement during the act of gameplay, not regardless of the context.
Additionally, other types of player motivation (relating to the Achievement and Social dimensions) did not negatively impact narrative engagement in any significant way. Such outcome could have been expected when it comes to Achievement, if storytelling were to be seen as an obstacle to advancement, mastery of mechanics or competition. Instead, an increase in the Advancement score predicted a (very) slight increase in the level of Individual Narrative Engagement outside of the game, which pertains to the exploration of the lore of Dark Souls through online content.
Another aspect of the data that should be discussed is that the MMORPG player motivations model developed by Yee [35] could be successfully adapted to the study of motivations in Dark Souls, with some minor adjustments. While this was the anticipated result, as both studies apply to games in the – broadly speaking – action role-playing game genre, it still holds significant implications for the empirical analysis of player motivations as a whole. Hopefully it can set a precedent for further iterations of the model applied to all kinds of game types, based on the cornerstones of achievement, social and immersion-related motivating factors.
One limitation of the present study is the focus on a single game series. Although using the Dark Souls trilogy as a case study allowed for a detailed analysis of player motivations and narrative engagement, it came at the cost of excluding other types of narrative structures in games. In particular, the storytelling of Dark Souls is non-linear and thus very different from most big-budget blockbuster releases, which tend to provide a more straight-forward cinematic experience. Similarly, many games that include narrative elements have rather minimal plots and focus almost solely on the ludic aspect, such as the games developed by Nintendo32. Moreover, despite the rich features of
Dark Souls enabling a variety of player motivations to come to fruition, there are certainly aspects that are much more prevalent in other games. For example, players that are especially interested in communicating might find the options available in the Dark
Souls series too limiting in that regard and gravitate toward different genres, such as MMORPGs, social online games or team-based multiplayer games. This seems to be supported by the evidence that the participants, on average, indicated to be scarcely interested in playing with others as a group (as measured by the Teamwork scale). Therefore, future studies might look at different genres and narrative structures (even minimal ones) in order to form a comprehensive picture across a wider spectrum of game types and play styles.
On a similar note, Dark Souls first and foremost appeals to players who enjoy challenging action-combat. Competitive behaviour and preference for action-oriented games has been demonstrated to strongly appeal to a male demographic [40]. Unsurprisingly, the sample was male-dominant, with 95% of participants identifying as strictly male. Therefore, despite the inclusion of gender as a control variable, the study’s findings cannot be confidently generalized to different genders. Future studies might investigate the role of gender in the relationship between player motivations and narrative engagement.
Furthermore, there are ways in which the player motivations model as well as the narrative engagement model could have been improved. On one hand, the limited in-game communication features of gestures and asynchronous hints present in Dark Souls could have been translated into survey questions, even though they did not exactly match the MMORPG communication features of the original scale. This would have resulted in a better rendition of the social features of Dark Souls and, possibly, provided a more complete spectrum of player motivations. As far as narrative engagement in digital games is concerned, the model was a first attempt at operationalizing and measuring the concept, using Dark Souls as a case study. While the construct validity and reliability were overall adequate, the factor loadings on the Out-of-game Social Narrative Engagement component were weak and the scale reported a low reliability coefficient. In future research, the problem could be addressed by increasing the number of items per scale.
The exploratory nature of the study also leaves room for expanding upon the concept of narrative engagement or considering different ways of operationalizing it. For example, with regard to film and television narratives, engagement has been measured in terms of narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence [41]. Of course, integrating different approaches would require taking into account the added complexity of ludonarrative software over non-interactive media. The investigation of how individuals experience game narratives should always consider the competing interests of players and begin with the understanding of why different modes of storytelling within the same product are – or are not – participated.
Finally, an inherent limitation of the study is the reliance on self-reported measures. Future studies might complement self-self-reported
data with the use of observational methods. On top of avoiding possible response biases, this would enable the analysis of player motivations as well as narrative engagement through less conscious behaviour.
7 Conclusion and Future Work
The present study was motivated by the need for advancement in the understanding of digital games as a complex storytelling device, especially from a pragmatic, evidence-based outlook [10]. Video games are an interactive medium that effectively allows users to cocreate content [2]. Unlike non-interactive media, they offer more than just storytelling. In addition, ludonarrative creators make use of multiple devices of storytelling within the same game. Therefore, the framework for this paper stems from two complementary observations. Firstly, it is argued that the investigation of interactive digital narrative cannot disregard the role of player preferences and motivations of play. Secondly, that it should be founded on the understanding of why different types of game narrative are – or are not – participated. Thus, the research question posed in this paper is how player motivations affect narrative engagement in digital games.
The results indicate that motivation of play does influence narrative engagement. Yet, from a variety of motivation parameters, the player’s desire for discovery (i.e. finding and knowing things that most other players don’t know about) was the only meaningful predictor of higher narrative engagement during gameplay. More specifically, it was found to increase the participant’s attention toward all sources of storytelling and motivate them to return to the game after learning new information on the lore. However, player motivations did not affect the level of engagement outside of the game to the same extent. This means that no motivation of play strongly influenced the participant’s interest in discussing or seeking information on the lore. Lastly, no component of motivation was found to reduce narrative engagement in a meaningful way, both in and out-of-game. Therefore, achievement and social aspects of motivation did not notably affect any form of narrative participation. The purpose of this study was a preliminary exploration of the relation between player motivations and narrative engagement, using Dark Souls and its online community as a case study. As Hamari et al. [26] argue, the fact that motivations and behaviours might differ between game types does not render measuring them futile. On the contrary, it highlights the necessity for a systematic investigation across different genres. In order to expand upon this foundation of evidence and advance our understanding of interactive digital narrative, future studies on the topic might consider a variety of narrative structures and game genres as well as player demographics and levels of expertise. Additionally, the concept of narrative engagement in digital games might be further developed and integrated with knowledge from non-interactive media research. Lastly, it would be worth considering the use of observational methods to complement self-reported measures.
