Deconstructing Open-World Game Mission Design Formula: A Thematic Analysis Using an Action-Block Framework

2026-03-18

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of systematic methods for quantitatively analyzing pacing, diversity, and experiential balance in open-world game quest design. It introduces the Mission Action Quality Vector (MAQV) and an action-block grammar, integrated within a six-dimensional quest quality framework, to develop the first interactive analysis tool capable of structurally parsing and visualizing large-scale quest corpora—demonstrated on a dataset of 2,200 quests. Leveraging large language models to parse community guides, model structured action sequences, and generate MAQV scores, the approach faithfully reconstructs underlying quest design logic. The method reveals patterns in repetitive design trade-offs, rhythmic grammars, and quest evolution, offering both theoretical insights and practical tooling for scalable, data-driven quest design.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Natural Language Processing: Question Answering

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Community question answering
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success

Abstract

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.

Problem

• open-world games
• mission design
• pacing
• experiential balance
• design variation

Innovation

• Mission Action Quality Vector
• action block grammar
• open-world mission design
• LLM-assisted parsing
• gameplay sequence analysis