Player agency

Player agency is a player's perceived ability to make meaningful choices that affect events or outcomes in an interactive work. It depends on both available actions and how the work responds to them.

Meaningful choice: A choice whose alternatives differ in consequences, values, or later possibilities. Choices feel agentic when alternatives lead to outcomes that matter.
Player choice: A decision made by a player among available actions in an interactive system. Agency is experienced through decisions the game makes available.
Choice architecture: The design of how options are presented and structured to influence decisions. Option framing affects whether game decisions feel open, pressured, or consequential.
Illusion of choice: A design in which apparent options produce little or no meaningful difference in outcomes. It offers choices without the consequences that support strong agency.
Narrative transportation: A state of deep involvement in a story world and its events. Consequential choices can strengthen involvement by making players feel implicated in events.
Interactive narrative: A narrative form in which actions or decisions influence how a story unfolds. It provides the broader storytelling structure in which player agency operates.
Game mechanics: Rules and procedures that define how a game operates and how actions produce results. Mechanics determine which actions can produce consequential outcomes.
Quest design: The design of objectives, tasks, and their associated choices and consequences in a game. Quest structures can make player decisions alter goals, allies, or outcomes.
Linear narrative: A story that follows a largely fixed sequence of events regardless of audience decisions. Its fixed progression contrasts with stories that change in response to player decisions.
Moral choice: A decision involving competing ethical values or obligations. Moral decisions make agency carry responsibility as well as control.

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