Level Design Guidelines Applied to Procedural Open-World Games - How to implement level design in procedural open-world games following the intended game experience

Sammanfattning

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) is widely used in open-world games to address issues of scale and content creation. However, it is often driven primarilyby technical considerations rather than experiential intent. This thesis investigateshow level design principles and practices can be used to drive procedural generation algorithms in open-world games while being aligned with an intended gameexperience. The concepts of game experience, open-world games, level design, andprocedural content generation, are used as the four foundational pillars of this work.This thesis explores the interconnections between level design and the rest of thepillars, and synthesizes the findings into a set of design guidelines divided into 3categories: game design, guidance, and spaces. These guidelines are then used ina practical prototype that explores how experiential design principles can be translated into game systems through different PCG techniques. The research adoptsan exploratory approach grounded in Research Through Design, positioning implementation as a means of probing feasibility rather than empirical validation. Whilethe prototypes are not evaluated through player studies, they exemplify how leveldesign theoretical tools can be used to inform procedural systems that follow playerexperience considerations. This work contributes a conceptual framework and practical grounding for future investigations into experience-driven PCG in open-worldgames, highlighting both the potential and the importance of the presence of leveldesign when implementing procedural generation algorithms.