Choices Must Be Meaningful is rule one of my series on choice in game design.
When games allow players to make choices, each choice must provide distinct gameplay options for the player.
Let’s explore some ways choices can effect the gameplay experience.
Choices can let players navigate multiple content paths
If players can choose between level A and level B, they are more likely to replay the game to see the option they skipped. Also, by varying the difficulty of the two levels, frustration can be avoided if players get stuck on one of the paths.
Choices can impact story
Interactive storytelling is a thorny subject. While games can provide multiple paths of story progression for the player, they often do this in a way that seems like a facade. Sometimes only cut-scenes are modified. I contend that this is not enough. All gameplay choices should effect the gameplay itself. Here’s an example from Dragon Age:
If you choose to start the game as a mage, you play as a wizard who has just completed his training. One of your friends, Jowan, is not so lucky and tells you that the wizard circle is going to make him Tranquil (basically turn him into a robot). He’s planning an escape, but needs your help to destroy a sample of his blood held in the tower phylactery so that the wizards will not be able to track him down.
At this point you have a choice: You can either help him out or reveal his plan to the chief enchanter. I (being a trusting person) decided to help him out. This leads to a dungeon crawl. After destroying his blood sample, Jowan and the player are caught by the authorities. Jowan reveals that he is actually a blood mage (an outlawed form of magic). The player gets chewed out and then sent to join the gray wardens.
Dragon Age: Origins
My brother (being a duplicitous tattle-tale) told the chief enchanter about Jowan’s plan. The result: he had to accompany Jowan through the dungeon, to keep watch over him. Even the cut-scene afterwards was basically the same! He still got chewed out, but the chief enchanter eventually stood up for him.
My point is: while seeming to give the player a choice in Dragon Age, this choice is utterly hollow. A more impacting option would be to make the player confront Jowan directly.
Choices can offer different risk/reward balances
Allowing players to choose different paths with known different risk/reward profiles allows divergent strategies to be pursued by the player.
One game that gets this right is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. In Dungeon Crawl the player must explore different dungeon branches to either collect runes that allow the player to pursue the Orb of Zot, the game’s MacGuffin, or get various rewards that make life easier for the player.
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Finding the right order for going through the branches allows the player to formulate a dungeon descent strategy, and also make tactical decisions based on the rewards the player has found so far. For example if the player has no poison resistance the difficulty of the swamp, a branch that contains the first rune most players go for, is increased. This may lead players to first attempt to battle through the orcish mines, a somewhat difficult area, in order to seek out some source of poison resistance.
There are probably more methods in which choices can be made meaningful in games. Can you think of any? Next time I’ll be exploring why the outcomes of choices should be obvious.
The solution to this is to add factions like the bandits shown above. These guys represent groups that think you’re the weak link. Their hostility counter grows each turn whether you attack them or not, causing them to attack every so often.
