Honours Project

My work in progress Honours Project for 4th year at University.

Does an adaptive content progression system within a game, tailored to the player's actions and interests, provide a meaningful or measurable increase in the entertainment value?

How will this be achieved:

• Convert the gameplay and narrative concepts of an RPG game to a text adventure format. Focus on implementing only the features and content relevant to the demonstration of an adaptive content progression system. Avoid or abstract other areas of the game where possible or necessary.
• Create and adapt a model of player based on Bartle’s Taxonomy. The model will include 4 categories of player: Killer, Achiever, Socialiser, Explorer. The model will be continuously adapted and tuned based on the player’s actions and choices during a playthrough.
• Provide content based on the player model. For example, players interested in exploring will be provided with exploration-themed content and scenarios in-game.
• During the evaluation stage of the project, provide two versions of the game – one with adaptive content systems and the other with a static, predefined progression path. Tester’s will not be aware which version they are playing. Versions will be abstracted as “Version A” and “Version B”. A questionnaire will be provided at the end, asking players a few questions related to the experience of both versions. Data from questionnaires will be analysed to determine if a substantial difference is measurable.