The effect of visualising NPC pathfinding on player exploration

Kay, Madeleine and Powley, Edward ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7317-7304 (2018) The effect of visualising NPC pathfinding on player exploration. In: Proceedings of Curiosity in Games workshop at the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), 7-10 August 2018, Malmö, Sweden. (In Press)

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Abstract / Summary

Foregrounding AI behaviour through visualisation is an under-explored but potentially powerful technique for influencing player behaviour, particularly in terms of sparking the player’s curiosity and encouraging them to spend more time exploring the game environment. This paper looks at visualising various methods of enemy NPC pathfinding in a 3D Metroidvania game. We demonstrate a number of cases where player exploration and player deaths are affected by either a change in pathfinding method or by visualising the pathfinding process. This suggests that the choice of pathfinding algorithm and the option for this to affect the visuals of the game are useful considerations for game designers.

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