I am Andres Saladrigas, student of the Bachelor’s Degree in Video Games by UPC at CITM. This content is generated for the second year’s subject Project 2, under supervision of lecturer Ricard Pillosu.
Index
- What is a quest?
- Quests, types and orientation
- What are quest for, and How to do it?
- The four main Xs
- Quest vs mission
- How to manage the player attention correctly
- Receiving quests
- What you want to avoid
- How to come up with ideas
- How to manage the process of creating a quest?
- How to make a good quest, wrap up
- Webgraphy
- Videography
- Exercise
What is a quest?
By the cambric dictionary, a quest is "a long search for something that is difficult to find, or an attempt to achieve something difficult". But what happens when we talk about videogame quests? What do players and developers understand by quest?
When we talk about Questing in videogame, we usually refer to a journey that the main character is taking by his own will or a specific task that was given to him. Quests go from the main story, to parallel ones to minor details or even unrelated plot lines that totally differ from the main narrative of the game.
Quest have been evolving with the years, as so does videogames. As so, we can expect the design process of quest making to vary from game to game. As games change and genres are created, quest do so. We can’t expect the same from a single player platformer or from a 3D open world game, and less from a multiplayers MMORPG. Each genre wants to fulfil some basic necessities for the player for a certain amount of time, designing a whole adventure that accomplish this goals.
With so many types, years of evolution, and direction criteria, how can we start to understand the basic criteria of a good quest design in a sea so full of information like the internet? In the next article I will help you learn the basic and not so basic that you need to understand without drowning in articles or videos. Nerveless I will attach every article or video I used in the creation of this article, if you would like to dive deeper in the matters.
As you may expect, we’ll be probably referring some games in the process, like Nier, Fallout, WoW, Witcher and others.
Let’s get to it.
Quests, types and orientation.
Tera Killing quest
If we classify quests in types, we will find 5 main structure that repeat in almost every game
- Killing
- Looking for someone/something
- Deliver something
- Gather items
- Escort someone
By reading this, you will probably think about any game you have seen and classify the quest in this 5. But why does many games center in only this main 5 structures?
It’s a fact of design. Usually quest are used to move the player attention to the right spot, and with this structure, is easy to tell where the next important area is or where is the next zone for you to grind.
But is it really a good quest design to follow this structure? The short answer is, no.
Quest in fact should focus the attention of the player in different things, but in an organic way. They should not be guidelines to follow around until completing the game that would make it boring. Like filling a list when going to the super market. We want the player to understand the basics, to be motivated to explore with his tools and by his means.
We want to create quests to reward the player for their curiosity and involvement in the deeper story, not to make the player search for quest looking for the reward itself. As quest it should be a reward, a story, an adventure that he will enjoy thanks to his effort and achievements.
Quests are there because the world it’s alive, and everyone has something to solve, and you are there to take on this adventures.
Be sure to be creative and not to fall into the last 5 main types. Create quest that go on and make the player explore more, look farther into the lore, see every detail in the game, and create meaning for the things in the map. Take advantage of your surroundings, people, and enemies and give them meaning through a quest. Your final goal as a designer it’s not for the player to arrive to the end, but to enjoy the ride that will mix your game with their reality, make him feel emotions and think about it like he will think about problems in the real world.
What are quests for and how to do it correctly?
Depending on what designers you ask you will get different answers. What most of them have in common are 4 main uses. Let’s tackle each one individually to expand our knowledge
Creating a playground for the player to develop his own character.
Fall out New vegas quest
Taking a quote from Chis Avellone, quest designer for fall out series:
"I think players should have freedom to create their own destiny. What you should be giving them is a playground for them to roleplay their opportunities"
One important factor in know a day’s games as designers, we want the player to feel free while playing. They do like to see they are making their own destiny and decisions, and that each steps matter. It’s not always a factor of how many routes the player can take or how many decision he may have, it more how we develop the experience for them.
A Good example of freedom can be seen on the fall out quests. The fall out series incorporates many RPG elements, having lots of stats, abilities and special perks. Naturally, depending on your character selection and stats progression, you character can evolve into different rolls, even to the point of having very specific skills.
Quest designers from this game have taken this as a possibility of giving each player a whole new experience depending on your roll on the game. In the process of quest design they decide a problem which is given to the player and multiple ways to achieve it and some possible outcomes. The rest depends on how the player feels more comfortable of completing the main objective.
First the will present a broad problem to a player in a way he may feel attracted or interested with the sufficient amount of information that will help him get an idea of what is he going to face. Then let the player decide how to tackle the problem. If he has come up with strength as a main feature of his character he will have the possibility of firing his way out of the problem until achieving the objective, or if he’s a sneaky thief he may have the possibility to infiltrate and achieve the objective by avoiding face to face conflict. It’s important to give the player a controlled space where he can fall completely on the roll he has decided to take his character, this will help for immersion and will give the player the feeling of control over the world, making him feel more realistic and attracted to it. What quest designers here want to avoid, is to design a quest that forces the player to act out of his roll.
When it comes to decision making in games, letting the player know the consequences of his action before is important. At the same time, is substantial for the player to have the opportunity to go around and change his mind midway through the quest. This usually involves presenting the player with a decisive factor previously unknown that will make him thought about his action. This will deeply affect the sensation of the player into a more realistic experience, in real life decisions have consequences and different perspective depending on who you ask, and the player knows this.
A way to guide the player through the experience, guiding him without him deliberately knowing so
Word of Warcraft quests
This is a delicate one, depending on your game and your design criteria you may want to lead the player through the gameplay avoiding him to get lost thought the game and steps to follow. If desired so, using quest to guide him must be dealt with extreme caution, as players like to feel the freedom as we told on the point above.
In an interview, the gameplay director from Word of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King, Jeffrey Kaplan, explain how quest has been used in the series to create a safe environment where they are introduced to key concepts, deep into main mechanics, explore the world, and master the environment.
We will need to be careful and explain the nature of the design here.
Many RPGs uses the different types of quest named before, to orientate the player attention to certain aspects of the game, rather than designing the quest to create a more engaging experience and in the process give some hints of what should be next.
If we a designers create quest for the purpose of moving the player to the next spawn, quest, or town, is highly probable that the players will lack interest in our quest, because they can find those by their own means without someone telling them what to do. What we want to remember is that players must be attracted to quests, they should like to make them and not just for the reward.
And this lead us to the next point.
Creating a World that feels alive and develop the player immersion in the game even further
Witcher 3 quests
When we talk of quest design is impossible not to talk about the big reference that is the Witcher games. For the ones that do not know, and are interested in quest design, I suggest them to play at least the last game and complete some quest with a designer point of view rather than from the player’s perspective.
What CD projeckt Red has accomplished is to create a whole new world with a quality implementation of quests and narrative. Their main objective and structure around quests that we will take more about, is centered in giving every quest, eve with the smallest ones, a history, a twist and a meaning to be there. Rather than making quest just to fill the number of hours that the player is in the game, in the Witcher games, each quest has an objective. From making the player to interact and understand more with Gerald, the main character, for them to understand his personality or create compelling side stories that the player would love to hear.
Through all human history there is one thing that humans have always loved, storytelling. From painters in caves to middle ages troubadours, from literature to movies, people do love a good story, and that’s why this designers nailed it. Each quest have been work around and creating a narrative, dialogues and they all feel real. They decided to give al histories a decision making factor where there is no evident wright or wrong answer, and each with their own consequences you will have to live with. By creating an atmosphere where decisions are important and lively characters that will react to your decisions, the player feels more immersed on the gameplay and recreates real life structures that he may identify with from the outside word, giving it a sense of realism.
Here quest are not a task you need to do, but an adventure you desire to make to found out more about the characters and the world. Quest themselves will reward you with further understanding of the word. Recreating multiple narratives and complex emotions that are happening all at the same time.
If you read or ask anyone, they will tell you, that one of the most important things that make this games so important is how they manage to make the world a living structure rather than a location where the main history is happening.
Each quest is a unique adventure that the player life’s, with a deeper narrative meaning. Some of this with even greater stories than most games.
Give the player many possible activities to kept him in game with a freedom of what to choose from
Skryrim quests
Doing many times the same thing, like grinding, or farming, it’s very annoying, and we live in a world where we have a lot of competitors. AS developers we want players to be involved in our games the higher amount of time possible, not only for the economical factor, but because if they stay with us it means we have done it correctly and they will keep with us in the future. That’s why designers create different kind of quest with different purpose to fulfill different needs for all the players. If he desires to explore or to collect items for crafting, he may have the possibility to do so and at the same time walk through and amazing narrative that will keep him interested in our game.
For many online games, this is also a factor of profitability. Many of these depend on a public that is playing a game for years, and in some cases with monthly subscriptions and they need new content to stick around and complete, and with a variety of actives we assure they will stick around with us, rather than with any other entertainment method.
Supporting the main and core idea of the game.
Nier: Automata quests
With our game pillars set and known, we must decide to create an experience that reinforces the core of our narrative structure and that complies with the feeling we are willing to induce in the players mind.
If our pillars are clear, this should not be a problem.
When creating a quest and its narrative, we must think what pillar do we support with this adventure, or the other way around, in case of creating a quest from scratch, we can grab our pillars and decide what element we want to support with our quest.
Its important that our game, as a hole, spins around some key concepts and that each character, quest, narrative and structure supports it to grant the player with a dense and stable message.
In this case let me tackle Nier: Automata as a great example of how quest goes around the main theme of the game. If you have played it, you may have notice how the game tackles the meaning of life, or existentialism. Without many spoilers, you play around in different perspective and live how each specie or each individual handles its meaning of existence. Main pillar in this case: existentialism, and quest go around it to show the player in a subtle way everything they can from it, from different political and philosophical aspect, to the reactions of everyone to the common problem. Each quest step by step will complete the meaning of the game and teach the player what the history wants to tell us.
By following this formula, the quest will give bits of information to the player that he will thread and start to understand, and in the process he will naturally look forward to more, to find out what’s the real story behind the scenes.
The four main Xs
3D Mario game design
If we talk about Game Design in general sooner or later we will arrive to a main techniques many games follow. The 4 main Exes is a structured way of presenting something to the player for him to be able to adapt to it and learn from it. It can be apply to any aspect of design process and it being used in online games, single player games, RPGs and platformers.
In an interview with Koichi Hayashida, Lead designer in the super Mario 3D last games, he talk about how he has been working in this philosophy of design, coming from a Chinese poem structure, kishotenketsu, in which it first introduces a concept, then develops it, after getting better understanding, giving it a twist and finally offering a conclusion.
This exactly are our four main Xs. That followed in this order will help our audile toward completing an objective or a problem. Well proceed to explain them:
Explore the word
First we introduce a concept for the player to explore around it, think about it and develop a specific orientation towards it.
Expand the area discover
Now that the player understand what’s happening, let make sure he master this new idea, giving a safe environment where he can put to test the use of their new abilities, but in case of failing, there is no penalty.
Exploit mechanics
Once they have accomplish to master it, will add a twist to it, adding a sense of importance to every decision or action made. Now we are not working on a safe environment any more. Adding a sense of danger will increase the player tension and give more meaning to what he is doing.
Exterminate
At the end we arrive at the conclusion, were the player is presented the opportunity to end a task, and if he has mastered all the previous steps and put it into practice, it will be easier and beneficial to him. Granting a sense of reward toward the self-improvement process. Making the player feed capable and good about its own progress will be a perfect feedback to keep him engaged.
You may asked yourself, what does this have to do with quest design?
Taking it back to the narrative and the Witcher, this structure have been used, with great results, on the process of how to tell a story. First and introduction, then an expansion, a progression with a twist and finally a conclusion. And Quest are a perfect tool to give stories to our players. If we master this technique, we’ll have the perfect storytelling device that will make our audile love questing, what we want to.
But it’s not only about narrative and creating efficient story telling structures, but also about tutorials. Yes tutorials. If you think about it, many games uses quest as a tutorials to teach the players how to play a game. Surely if you have play any MMORPGs you can relate to this.
Different task are usually given to the player at the start of a game for him to follow around and understand the basic mechanics of it. If a designer mixes all that we have talk about before and this 4 main Xs concept, he will be able to create not a series of individual shores to complete in the tutorial, but an experience in which he the player will learn and master the skills while giving meaning to the world around it.
Let’s not forget this techniques are not just for storytelling, but for introducing any new element, from story to mechanics. It have been proven to be an excellent technique in level design introducing new mechanics in Mario’s 3D game every level without the need of classic written tutorials. This main steps have been studied through the year and have been adopted by many games because the have proved to be the most efficient way, until now, to follow an organic order in character building, skill sufficiency or quest development.
Quest vs mission
There are many words used to describe them, quest, mission, tasks, even shores. But is there any difference between them?
Going back to the start of the article, where we define a quest, we defined it as a difficult or mayor objective. But let’s think about games, if you think carefully there are two main structures, one that follows this description and other who doesn’t. This is where I draw a line.
First of all if you think about more RPGs if you think in a common mission, a gathering or killing quest. Where someone ask you to do something and then gives you a reward. What we have just described it’s what I call a mission. A mission is given by an NPC to the player asking for help and not much detailed or narrative structure of relevance is made around it. There are game that are full of this ones. This missions are more like tasks or shores you need to complete, and the motivation to made them are completely extrinsic, if we talk about the psychological aspect of the player, usually the only motivation the player has to complete them is the gear and experience reward, not because there are interested. And from a design perspective, it’s what we mention earlier, they are made to point the player thought the game. Complete a mission and get loot as a reward. There is no more to it.
MMO missions
Then there are the Quest. Here we can find anything that has more of a narrative core structure that is aiming to astonish the player and make him emotions and inside the game, they give meaning to whoever is playing them. As we described, there are usually mayor and more complex or difficult. Looking closely this quest are usually guided in small steps that the player must follow to organically found and complete a mission without the new of explicitly telling him how to do it or where to go. Usually the experience, the history, and the design gives him an idea on what’s the next logical thing to do and they will head right in to complete it. If we analyze this structure, we may find that the main plot does fall into the category of quest as does main side quests, they all follow and important narrative that guide the player through an experience toward completing some task without them being extremely obvious. But what about the reward? As missions have loot, the rewards for quest are more wither and not always son physical. Most of the time the quest itself is a reward, like we told earlier, giving the player the opportunity to explore and go around with an interesting story they can interact with, and with it comes the meaning it comes with ne narrative, supporting the main idea or pillars of the game, giving the player a wider view of the problematic, more understanding and knowledge that keeps the player hungry for more quests. Rewards are also the emotions, the cinematics and the music that he player experiences during an adventure. Rewards can be subtle, you don’t need to tell the player here is your reward. If done correctly they will come looking for more thrilling experiences rather than go back looking for specific quest for more loot.
Skyrim main mission
The main point here is to understand there are two ways to tackle a problem. Through missions or quest. From a quest design view is more beneficiate to go for quest, even if they are small, no need to go big, but give all the missions a meaning of being in the world by combing them an transforming them into a quest.
If you find yourself with lots of task and missions but no real meaning, thing on a creative way of grouping them and transform them into a quest with more subtle way of giving objective. Give out the possibility of and adventure and an experience rather than just a couple of objective to fulfill in other to get something. Sure you will be giving out some kind of payment, because it’s natural that the world reacts positively to your effort, but once again, offer emotions not gear. It’s a game not a market.
How to manage the player attention correctly
If we desire to make create, good experiences for the player we must also look to the psychological factors that will help us deliver a good and quality experience directly to our users mind.
Here we will come up with some ways to gather your player’s attention correctly and some facts about human behavior that may help us create new content.
At a psychological factor, what makes player go on and desire quests? One of our goals is to satisfy his needs with a quality product, but in the other hand how can we make them desire a new experience or attract their attention intelligently to new areas?
When it comes to creating solid quest , we can take into account some behavioral patterns that most people follow.
Sets and collection: probably you may have seen videogames or even tabletops games that uses sets of items to gather the player’s attention toward some mission. When it comes to completing a collection and gathering items from a set, a basic human instinct is triggered. The origin comes from many years ago were the human’s walk around discovering and gathering resources, creating through the years a feeling of needing to take or possess something. At the same time, it mixes up with the satisfaction people feel when completing a whole set of things and looking them all together. It gives feeling of empowerment to the players, as he was able to obtain all the articles. Same experience of competition comes, if you may remember, when you finally finished a table traditional puzzle. Seeing all the pieces together forming and image game us a satisfaction after all the time looking at the individual elements. Looking at the hole is more than looking to all the parts together.
When it comes to rewards as loots for mission inside quest, it’s suggested to offer unique things, like skills, or custom apparel that the player may not be able to obtain by his own means, centering a motivation from the player to complete the quest. This will reinforce the idea of questing as a unique experience.
Illusion of power : as talked before, giving the player freedom and the ability to choose different options in questing gives him the idea that his decision matters. Further, down taking his action to the main history and affect the experience by the consequences of his actions creates for the player a positive experience, helping the feeling of power over his acts, being unique and related.
These three last facts are three important factors taken into account in the Self-Determination Theory that covers some important factors about human motivations. If you fill these three basic needs, competence by free will and good outcomes, autonomy by letting him figure out and deal with the consequences and relatedness by creating situations that make him think like in real life, you are sure to provide a better experience.
If you think about it, all of them are things we have been telling until now.
Endowed progress effect: turns out people are more prone to complete task and find out more about mission and quest when they receive news from someone else behalves, they feel more the need of completing it. It usually involves empathy and how the player receive a good feedback from helping other, making him feel like his able to solve everything. That why most quest, have specific NPCs created to deliver a quest and walk the user through it.
Humans do not like to leave thing unresolved: as a social being do not usually like to let thing midway through, feeling usually pushed to finish what we already started. This comes to play with the player feeling of responsibility and ego. Understanding will help us balance quest for the player to be motivated enough to complete quest, but not to saturate the player with so many quest that he may feel annoyed, losing al meaning for each quest, and as said before, completing each quest just to get rid of it.
All this feeling and emotions that comes from rewards in general are call positive reinforcement, in the behavioral theory. We expect to fortify and increase the frequency of a desired act by giving prices that will unleash a reaction in the player. This feeling will produce dopamine and other neurotransmissions that will satisfy the player. The body will understand that if done an action A he will be desired feeling B, and will start asking for more of A in order to get B. In our case A is questing, missions that lead to B a reward that produces a neurotransmission leading to a good emotion.
The same way the designer may punish the player for some action, and apply him a penalty, and as above, the brain will understand that action A will lead to unpleasant action B, and will try avoid it. This last one being a positive punishment.
However, psychologist suggest that we present better result with positive rewards rather than with negative punishments. Meaning it will be more effective for the player and the designer to center on good things rather to teach him what not to do.
My objective here is to give you little bits of information that can be useful from the psychology point of view of the player, but it is a whole area of study, if you are interested I suggest you go and look out for behavioral theory in the internet. There is much to learn from it.
Last, when talking about attention we may want to hold close to attention studies in the psychology field.
I will work my best to explain this briefly, if you feel interested and want to dive deeper I suggest starting at the beginning of neurophysiology of attention.
Attention can be divided into two main branches, Voluntary and involuntary. As the name suggest, voluntary attention comes from inner interest, inner motivations of the player, and involuntary attention is determin by external factors that calls the user attention.
A good example may be, when thinking a about something you like and you are immersed into it, but suddenly a loud sound happens and you inmediatly turn to look what happens. First, your attention is attracted to the object of interest, voluntary attention, but the loud sound then changes your focus of attention to an external factor that you have not secesarily decided to pay attention, that is involuntary attention.
However, how does this comes down to quest design? When designing an experience, we would like to take the players attention by any means; this means using known factors that may affect his focus. For external factors, we can design structures around these main points that will help you gather his attention:
Intensity or strength: if any sense catches outside information with different strength and intensity than the other stimuli, the mind will direct your attention toward it. Loud sound effects, Visual effects or colors, vibrating controls.
Change and contrast: When some external factor is different and makes a high contrast with the other elements, it will call the player’s attention. Some element with evident different design over other, different colors than the usual pallet in screen, different enemy sizes, anything that varies from most of the elements seen.
Repetition : when elements repeat with much more frequency than expected. Sound that are constant, or even spawn point, where enemies repetitive go out
Movement: any unexpected movement from any element will trigger a basic effect on users and will direct the attention towards it; it comes from being safe and knowing your surroundings. If an enemy moves to quickly in the screen, your attention will probably go towards it
Some more internal factor to gather the player atteinton, we have coverd them previously
Interest: Creating a variety of different objectives and quest to be sure some tackle your audience intersts
Motives : what does the player desired when coming to your game? Fun, challenges, stunning graphics. Be sure to understand the need of your audicene
Mood and attitude: the players mood it’s an important factor to manage his attention. In the next section, we will talk about some point to avoid while designing to help us make a better experience and let the players be in a better mood, a good game will keep him in a great attitude, and this will help his vision of the game.
Receiving quests
Maplestory quests
With all this data we can talk about how to gives players quests in a great and ordered way.
Its important o be creative and do not follow the standard MMORPG style of giving quest pointing to npcs with exclamation marks or light bulbs over their head, as talk before we would like to create a more organic feeling.
With all the attention resources, we may come up with good and a natural flow to direct the player involuntary attention towards quest.
Skyrim organic quest element
As fall out New Vegas does, for example, they do not point you directly to a mission or tells you what NPCs to talk. The create stimuli that calls the player attention, in combination with level design, that will lead the player to be curious and look more information about some stimuli, in the process he will encounter different elements, from the environment or NPCs that make inform him and then naturally talk them about something interesting.
With an example, it will be easier to understand. Player arrives at an enormous different looking building, he enters and see a great space, and he will naturally go to explore it and desire to know where he is. The level design will guide him toward a counter, where many sounds come from, he will talk and learn about this new coliseum, and there he will receive news of weird things happening lately.
Analyzing this sequence, the player attention is caught by involuntary and external factor, from the building that let him wonder were he is, to the sounds that will make him go toward there, where his curiosity is satisfy and explained and then offered the possibility of a new quest calling his attention telling him weird and unexpected things.
Attention is limited; remember not to overwhelm the players with to much information
But be creative, it’s not necessary to set a lightbulb or a mark near the player, use vibrations to tell about main character intuition, make triggers for the player to hear noises when he passes, create different and weird elements that caught his attention. Make him go for the quest in a more natural sense.
Finally, we do not always need a hub to list all quest and challenges the player needs to follow. There are many ways to do it.
First following a standard RPG Quest library where he can be up to date with all quests and objective, in which case we need to be very careful not to saturate the player, usually making each mission to loss the real meaning and player interest. Some games here limit the number of quest the player can take, for them to not be overwhelm a center in some of them, usually making users more immersed in each quest and play it by their means rather than tackling them as solving the closest conflict point in the map.
Other way may be a more discrete way like in Mario or Zelda games, where the plays is offered different things to do, at the end quests, and they may complete them by following a narrative and flow of the game, without the need of any list or reminder. In the same case with Mario game, giving smaller quest all the time to players but the interface lets you know that there is something you may need to find or gather around, without telling a single text line.
Follow the best approach for your game, but usually, the more organic and natural, the better.
What you want to avoid
WoW image
Either if you are new, or experienced in this designer’s universe, it is always useful to look on the errors from other games, to learn from them and not follow the same steps. In this case, we have the luck of having some articles from Game director Jeffrey Kaplan from Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which shared some design approaches and issues that in their long MMORPG experience they have come up with. Without further to says, let us get to it.
The Christmas tree
This effect is what he calls when the payers are submerge in a world or part of it that the in map, or even the main map it is so full of quest givers that there re flashpoint everywhere talking the player’s attention. This usually overwhelms the players and make quest look as task, where the player will feel the need of getting rid of them as soon as possible.
Excessive unnecessary text
Even though we encourage giving a history and narrative to quest, it is important that the story, lines and description gather the important information and tell no more or no less. Do not make text just to fill space. Use words to transmit your idea or criteria, could be in lines or paragraphs.
Not knowing your game
Understanding what your game is about is vital, it may sound obvious, but in many cases, takin external references or even coming with ideas, we need to think if our own game structures supports it. Specialize in what does your game do well and do not try to copy unnecessary mechanics or ideas from other games.
Bad Quest balancing and placement
Test your quests, play them and think about the accessibility the common player will have when the can accept a quest. Level, stats, abilities, they are important. Make sure he is able to complete it. It is frustrating for the players, to accept quests that are impossible to solve
Small variety
have in mind the amount of quest and their objective that the layer has in every stage. It may come to time where he may found only certain types of quest that support similar objectives and this limits the player’s freedom of choice that will make him tired eventually.
How to come up with ideas
In game design, we are all the time farming for new ideas and ways to do and cretae things. We need to be open minded in order to develop the sufficient creative skills to solve our daily challenges. How can we be sure to have always great and achievable ideas? Coming back to how the mind works, I have come up with a method to help you develop new ideas over time with ease.
It all comes down to patterns. As human beings, our minds are prone to follow some structures and ideas that we gather in our brain and form kind of nets that connects points of information, in order to memorize, store and retrieve information from our head. When we learn new things, our mind forms organize structures and patterns, with time , we develop the sufficient skills to find this new patters every way we look, being it easier to divide new knowledge into small bits and to solve problems. Many of us surely has played many games that through repetition, teaches the player to follow some steps to learn a mechanics the game centers on. When your brain incorporate this knowledge, you usually start to find similar patterns and think like in the game in real life. Two main examples comes in mind, Assassins creed and the witness.
I am sure many Assassin’s Creed player, once they master the climbing system, the start seeing real life buildings and unconsciously look for parts were they would be able to climb if it was like in the game. Or for example in The Witness were the players is forced to look for path and patterns in nature to follow some lines and complete puzzles, and when coming to real life, players may find patterns in nature where they haven’t seen anything before.
Assassin’s Creed climbing and The Witness patterns
As referenced before, this comes from our brain capability of pattern recognition skills. Once you master a subject, it will naturally show you things that follow the same structure.
The important factor here is to take advantage of this natural talent we all have and use it in our advantage. As you master and understand all points we have come up in this research, from thinking it for day and looking for examples and games were they take form, our brain will naturally start to think this way and will provide you with daily life information that follows the thing we have been looking for. Thins way you will have much more material to come up with ideas or refine them, and at the same time they will be natural and relatable to players, adding a great touch to the designed experience. Think about thins concept for days and sleep well, during night your brains goes down to different stages were it will naturally review and incorporate your knowledge in your mind. Come up with ideas think about them, relate them to the structure you have learned here and sleep. Yea you read that right, sleep it is a key element when learning new pattern and coming up with new ideas, creativity.
If you master a subject am sure it will work.
Last if you are interested in the subject and like to know more about how our mind works on patters I, once again suggest you to google it. I am sure you will learn new concepts that may help you in everyday life, as so in quest design.
How to manage the process of creating a quest?
I will start with two quotes from the team members of the Witcher 3 quest design team
"Quest design is not level design. It’s not story design. It’s not cinematic design. It’s–it’s a job that combines those things and facilitates and coordinates those teams."
"This is the first place I’ve ever had this specific breakdown of responsibilities. It’s how we make our quests, by having dedicated quest designers who are, in essence, directors of the many individual stories that a story is made up of."
I will make a guide with how to manage the process of creating quests inside a studio. This information is based on the directives that the Witcher team uses.
First Steps
As you may expect, the first step is to come up with an idea for the chapter or side quest. Then sit down and write down the ideas for your quest. Collect these quest ideas and write them down into the game design document. Many ideas are collected but not all of them are going to be in the game. Once you are sure of the idea, go on and talk to friends and coworkers. Be sure the idea and the story have a level design sense, a gameplay, and narrative. If you are done talk to the lead designer and in the process, modify anything needed
Logic steps
Now that you have define, what the experience is going be like, start to organize and take care of the planning. Make a list of what do you need. Dialogs, characters, items, anything. In addition, document it so any team in the studio know what to do.
Once done create placeholder dialogues and create a scrip for how does the quest must go on. If you have any cinematics, specify how will they be, or anything of importance that will lead the team making it help understand what to do
Quest and World Structure
Now we go on to produce the quest, let us take in mind the bases of our game, thematic and mechanics. Respect the basic rules of your world, like timing, or especial events, and design the quest in order to follow those. Decide and implement how the player will need to react with the desired entity that will give out the quest.
Start development
Once everything before is done start to structure your quest as events and triggers, set the dialogues, information, cinematics everything how it will happen. By these steps, you will already have the sufficient tool provided by your team to create a solid base to work and test the quest around. You may use your previous lines or elements need as placeholders for you to be able to test around the quest
Testing
Now with all set up, testing it is the next step, go around and test with the colleagues your quest, modify anything need. Remember that quest must be done for the layers, and offer them an experience. Play it and check balance, timing, difficulty.
Once everything is running well, go on and develop the characters, videos, narrative, items or anything needed to complete the less technical aspect of the quest
Working with other teams
Now working with others teams, it’s important to have a good communication and goals set very clear, what do you knew, what is your main idea of doing it, and any other important information to help other teams develop the things needed. In the process, many things could be changed for suggestion or technical issues, so be prepared to move around your main strategy.
Once everything is done, test it and see if it satisfies the need of the desiring experience.
In the Witcher 3, the quest where tested in every moment after each step. Even the smallest quest go through a QA process that assure that every detail was is perfect
Remember you may want to follow this structure, but it is not the only one. It will work for any team with different areas and groups. If you like, you can use it or modify the steps as you see fit in your team.
This is how CD Projeck Red used to classify their team when creating the quest.
You may adapt this process to a simpler, indie studio or even for yourself. Take into account the same steps to follow. Change and iterate with placeholders and design an experience with all we have talk about before. Test it modify and once it working, work in the final details like final dialogs, art, models and anything appearance related. This model will help you to work only properly and importantly do not loose working hours in irrelevant or unused creations.
How to make a good quest, wrap up.
Witcher 3 quests
After all this, how can we wrap up all the information and set some guidelines to create good and compelling quests? I have gathered some advice from different articles and videos. Taking the best out of each tip, I will present you a compilation of important tips, you may already know or not, to follow, creating compelling side quests. Some of the tips will come from the great and only game designers of the Witcher
The world is a quest mining spot
When looking for quest ideas, from the narrative, NPCs and presentation of them, look to your word and creation, thinking what cool concepts could come out of it, following the game genre, theme and style. Do not be stuck with the traditional concepts already know to the players, play with their expectations and arrive to new ways of presenting a quest. When it comes to ideas, Mills says:
"I look for the core themes, the ideas that could support some sort of emotional, mental investment in what’s actually taking place… ". "Then I develop those with the story team, and from there you have a quest."
When it comes to ways of giving quest out, remember to play with the player environment. A quest could come from anywhere, npcs, notes, objects, enemies or other quest. Your creativity is your boundary.
Think about the four main Xs.
When telling a story, remember that following the simple structure can be the key. Every arc in the story must have a presentation, a progression, a twist, and an end.
Do not fear to tell a story
People love good stories, and if your quest comes allow by following a story they will be sure to love it. Create worlds, interaction, characters and dilemmas for the player to interact and get involved.
Mill also told us to do not be afraid of dialogue, implying that it is part of a storytelling. Inspiring designer to use interesting scenes and dialogues to demonstrate the character point of view. I done correctly, dialogs can be as good as the other parts of the quests.
Understand your audience.
AS we know that anyone loves stories, we must also understand the target audience of our game to present quality contented they expect. This content varies from genre and age. Knowing your players will assure you to satisfy their needs. It is important not to confuse this point with making easy or difficult quest, or violent and vanilla quest. Create a quest with the emotions and ideals that you may want to evoke in the players mind, it is important to give the sufficient tools to the players and trust they may connect the dots.
Freedom of play and relatable content.
As exposed before, it is important to fulfill your players feeling of autonomy, letting them decide what and how to do it. Let them live the experience how they would like to, set clear objective but no to specific, that will block your user creativity.
In the other hand, use story telling as a device to make the players think about the game as if he would in real life. Present him with twists, issues and problem with consequences, do not be too obvious about the good and the bad and give meaning to all the missions that compose the quest you are building.
Know your tools and equipment
It is important to know what tools you have and what are you technically capable of doing. Once you understand your grounds and possibilities, you will avoid hitting with technical issues that will be obstacles in the development of the game
Remember
As Boyarsky said in an interview:
"Consciously or not, as someone plays a game they’re actually writing their own characters…", ""Side quests are a way for players to fully realize these characters and tailor them to what they imagine inside their minds."
Webgraphy
Making Games Classics: Quest Design in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: http://www.makinggames.biz/feature/quest-design-in-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt,6896.html
Gamasutra: Designing side quests? Study these 7 games (and some Chris Avellone pointers)
Gamasutra: What are the defining qualities of a good side-quest?
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/291290/What_are_the_defining_qualities_of_a_good_sidequest.php
Gamasutra: GDC: Learning From World of Warcraft’s Quest Design Mistakes
Gamasutra: ‘It can never be that simple’: Designing the quests of Cyberpunk 2077
PCGamesn: a quest design masterclass from CD Projekt RED
https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/the-witcher-quest-design-cd-projekt-masterclass
Videography
Extra credits Videos: Quest design 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAkP5VjIv8
Extra credits Videos: Quest design 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs
Ethos Video: How to make compelling side Quests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecu2I2BBfCk
Adam Millard Video: The four Fundamental quests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6luOrhlzvrc
Game makers Toolkit Video: Anatomy of a Side Quest: Beyond the Beef
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1yR7WYqgM
Game makers Toolkit Video: Super Mario 3D World’s 4 Step Level Design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBmIkEvEBtA
Exercise
There is a PDF with a exercise for you to practice and start getting the main idea and process of quest design. If you want to check it out you may download it here