Deconstructing Open-World Game Mission Design Formula: A Thematic Analysis Using an Action-Block Framework
This provides game designers with a systematic, data-driven tool to analyze and improve mission design at scale, though it is incremental as it builds on existing thematic analysis and visualization approaches.
The researchers tackled the problem of repetitive mission design in open-world games by developing the Mission Action Quality Vector (MAQV) framework and an action block grammar to analyze 2200 missions from 20 AAA titles, using LLM-assisted parsing and an interactive dashboard to reveal design patterns and trade-offs, validated through a mixed-methods study with players and designers.
Open-world missions often rely on repeated formulas, yet designers lack systematic ways to examine pacing, variation, and experiential balance across large portfolios. We introduce the Mission Action Quality Vector (MAQV), a six-dimensional framework-covering combat, exploration, narrative, emotion, problem-solving, and uniqueness-paired with an action block grammar representing missions as gameplay sequences. Using about 2200 missions from 20 AAA titles, we apply LLM-assisted parsing to convert community walkthroughs into structured action sequences and score them with MAQV. An interactive dashboard enables designers to reveal underlying mission formulas. In a mixed-methods study with experienced players and designers, we validate the pipeline's fidelity and the tool's usability, and use thematic analysis to identify recurring design trade-offs, pacing grammars, and systematic differences by quest type and franchise evolution. Our work offers a reproducible analytical workflow, a data-driven visualization tool, and reflective insights to support more balanced, varied mission design at scale.