The Definition-Context-Purpose Paradigm and Other Insights from Industry Professionals About the Definition of a Quest
This work addresses the problem of defining quests for the game development and academic communities, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing industry insights rather than proposing a novel solution.
This paper tackles the lack of a unified definition of a quest in academic and industry contexts by interviewing fifteen game developers to gather their perspectives, resulting in the introduction of the definition-context-purpose paradigm as a synthesis of trends to inform future academic work.
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.