Design values of digital role-playing games

This thesis is about the design values of digital role-playing games. Design values is an underresearched topic whereas digital role-playing games has become a chart-topping genre. Design values refer to designers' individual values and principles that guide the design process and so take part in shaping its outcome. With their flexible rules and lack of quantifiable outcomes, role-playing games are an exception among games. Role-playing games have had to adapt to the digital medium and they may be closer to digital games and their conventions than their tabletop origins, but they offer experiences distinctive enough to warrant their own genre in digital gaming. The goal of this study was to discover design values from digital role-playing game postmortems to see what values drove their design decisions. The postmortems were gathered from an online publication, Gamasutra, and they covered 16 digital roleplaying games within 15 years. Using content analysis and affinity diagram, the study identified six value categories ranging from pure design values to more general game development values. Player expression focused on strengthening the experience that players' characters are their own and that the game world reflects their actions. Player engagement saw value in broad appeal, cooperation, simple controls, exploration, immersion and clear goals that all provide to attaining players and keeping them engaged with the game. Gameplay priorization put an emphasis on gameplay and its seamless integration with other game elements. Open design valued openness to design input in a collaborative environment. Restrained design emphasized simplicity and quality. Development management focused on issues arising from leadership, ambition, adaptability, efficiency and team spirit