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Elizabeth Bouquet, Ville Mäkelä, Albrecht Schmidt
Exploring the Design of Companions in Video Games
In Mindtrek '21: Proceedings of the 24th International Academic Mindtrek Conference. Tampere, Finland, June 1 - 3, 2021. ACM, New York, USA. (bib)

Companions are game characters that accompany the player throughout a longer part of the gameplay, complementing their character or skill set, and serving as part of the narrative. Because of their significance in many games, companions can have a great impact on the player experience. In this paper, we take a broad, practical look at the design of companions. We propose a design space for companions that comprises seven main aspects: appearance, sentience, individuality, behavior, communication capabilities, relation to the player, and significance. We discuss each of these aspects in detail, and analyze how they have been applied in existing video games. Our work demonstrates the diversity of game companions and serves as a supporting tool for companion design.