Abstract
Over the years video game creators have tried to create narrative systems where the player could have the power to change the world. To have agency, and face the consequences of his choices. These systems took a variety of shapes, and a range of solutions were adopted. Regardless of the chosen approach, the deciding factor on whether these systems succeed or fail at their main goals lies in how engaged they can make the player feel with their world and their personal stories. This work addresses the issue of complex game mechanics and their relation to the player experience while engaging with an emergent narrative single-player game. In this document we describe the tests made in order to try and discern a possible correlation between the two, as well as the systems implemented to be able to carry out the tests themselves. In order to achieve this, we present the components of player experience we desire to test, such as Interest, Perceived Competence, Agency, Effort and Tension, and the testing scenarios we built to test these, using Crusader Kings 2 as a base framework. Furthermore we extensively describe our testing methodology as well as our statistical analysis of the data recovered, and how we've only found significative differences in the competence dimension. Finally we comment on the results extracted from this experiment and our suggestions for further work and exploration into this topic.