The Definition-Context-Purpose Paradigm and Other Insights from Industry Professionals About the Definition of a Quest

TL;DR

This paper explores how industry professionals define quests in games, revealing diverse perspectives and proposing a new paradigm to inform academic understanding of quest design.

Contribution

It introduces the definition-context-purpose paradigm, synthesizing industry insights to guide future research on quest definitions.

Findings

Diverse personal definitions of quests among developers

Identification of key themes informing quest design

Proposal of a new paradigm integrating elements, purpose, and context

Abstract

Among academic communities there is no single agreed upon definition of a quest. The industry perspective on this topic is also largely unknown. Thus, thee purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of the definition of a quest from industry professionals to better inform the academic community. We interviewed fifteen game developers with experience designing or implementing quests or narratives, and process the interviews using thematic analysis to identify trends. We identified a variety of personal developer definitions. However, we also discovered several themes that may inform future academic work. We introduce the definition-context-purpose paradigm as a synthesis of these trends: elements of a quest, purpose of a quest, and context of a quest. Finally, we discuss the developer's reaction to a recently proposed quest definition as part of a push towards a general quest definition.