Creating Meaningful Choices in Single Player First Person Shooter Levels with Modifiable Spaces
By: Andres Gonzales
Supervisor: Jonathan Skinner
Masters of Interactive Technology degree conferred March 24th, 2007
Thesis / Project completed: March 21st, 2007

This thesis proposes a design technique for introducing meaningful choice in single player FPS maps with the intent of enhancing the level of immersion. This method involves the integration of alternate paths within a single player FPS environment giving players meaningful choices. The intent is to help enhance the experience found in games that tend to rely solely on realism to create immersion.

Most single player FPS’s use linear levels due to the complexity of creating the environments found in these games, which means that introducing alternate paths increases development and testing times. The modifiable space method proposed in this project compensates the overhead of alternate routes by including them within a space that the player encounters several times. This space changes in some way, generating different routes that provide the player with meaningful choices.

To obtain the results this project used a single player Half Life 2 level designed applying the modifiable space technique, and held testing sessions where a group of participants played the map. The results suggest that the method was effective in creating an immersive experience, and that meaningful choice provides an invaluable model for enhancing the level of immersion in videogames.

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