Date of Submission
9-2026
Type of Work
Exegesis and Creative Work
Principal Supervisor
Dr. Lola Montgomery
Associate Supervisor
Anne Chesher
Keywords
Agency; player agency; interactive narrative; role-playing game (RPG); Disruption; rupture; Alain Badiou; Bertolt Brecht; fourth wall; moral choice; video games; turn-based gameplay; narratology; ludology; technological redundancy; ontology; ontological reordering; practice-led research; interactive storytelling; procedural rhetoric; Brechtian estrangement; player interpretation; systemic ethics.
Audience
General (G) - suitable for everyone
Abstract
Disruption is a practice-led research project exploring how interactive storytelling can articulate meaningful moral choice through the design of game systems, mechanics and narrative structure. The project examines how player agency, invention and ethical decision making can create conditions for what Alain Badiou describes as a rupture, a moment that reconfigures the ontological and social order of a world (Alain Badiou, 2005). Through iterative prototyping, the project investigates how mechanics such as relationship management and metrics, moral choice and an invention system grounded in player-shaped experimentation can produce ethically resonant outcomes.
This research draws from Frasca’s ludological argument that videogames communicate meaning through simulation rather than representation, allowing ethical significance to emerge procedurally rather than purely narratively (Frasca, 2001). Complementing this, Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt informs the project’s use of fourth-wall disruption and deliberate defamiliarisation, interrupting immersion to provoke critical reflection on complicity, agency and power (Bertolt Brecht & Willett, 2015). Vonnegut’s Galápagos further shapes the project’s thematic investigation into the human condition, particularly the notion of redundancy, where human intellect and invention become both a catalyst for progress and a liability. This influence informs Disruption’s design of player-driven invention as a double-edged system, one that empowers agency while exposing the unintended ethical and societal consequences of technological intervention (Vonnegut, 1985).
Drawing on narratology, ludology, semiotics and philosophical frameworks of agency and moral reflection, the research questions how game design can encourage players to recognise and be cognisant of the consequences of their decisions within a simulated and highly dynamic socio-political context. A heuristic practice methodology was adopted, integrating artefact creation, journalling, observation and player feedback to examine how emotional engagement, ethical tension and systemic responsiveness emerge through design.
The exegesis argues that the interplay between authored narrative and systemic mechanics can generate new insights into the design of interactive moral agency. The resulting creative artefact demonstrates that moral choice is not solely an outcome of dialogue or branching paths but is embedded in the procedural structure of the game world, its rhythms and its systems of causality. This research contributes to discussions on meaningful choice in games by showing how creative practice can reveal new methods for integrating ethics, agency and narrative design in ways that challenge and transform player experience
Recommended Citation
Marc, R. (2026). Disruption: Generating ethically meaningful forms of player agency [Master's dissertation, SAE University College]. Creo.