Developing a New Major

improving players’ choices – by tracy fullerton and some other folks – her game design owrkshop is a good book – in 2nd edition as of 2009

choice is an important aspect of fun in games

choices have to have consequences to be meaningful choices, should affect whether they win or lose – because players want to win – motivated to do stuff to try to win, move closer to winning/sets them up to lose (lose = lose points along the way, lose inventory, lose the game), drama doesn’t come from teh story but from the choices – more important/critical decisions = more drama/more tension, don’t have hte same level ofdecisions over and over (don’t want hte game to get repetitive), don’t let the player get caught in a looop of bad situations and impossible choices over and over and over – shake things up with unexpected events to change their circumstance – game has to recognize if player is stuck and do something different (might give a clue, point to a hidden resource that will change the game power balance — but don’t want random events to seem arbitrary or to wipe out your player’s hard work – so the bigger the event coming (the greater the chance of catastrophic damage tot he player) the more warning you should give or ways around the big bad event

should be choices all the time – otherwise game has nothing going on and that’s boring

want to have no inconsequential decisions at all if you can help it (blue cloak/red cloak – why choose if they don’t give ya different abilities), some minor and necessary, lots of important and critical – have a variety to make the tension go up and down — they recommend looking at inconsequential and minor decisions to see if they can be reworked to become more important end if not then eliminate them to highlight the really important decisions – means don’t make them micromanage every single resource in the game every moment of the game, maybe add feature to automate some tasks

list of decision types from the article

Decision types

• Hollow decision: no real consequences
• Obvious decision: no real decision
• Uninformed decision: an arbitrary choice
• Informed decision: where the player has ample information
• Dramatic decision: taps into a player’s emotional state
• Weighted decision: a balanced decision with consequences on both sides
• Immediate decision: has an immediate impact
• Long-term decision: whose impact will be felt down the road

nice example from the article about how to make a decision more important – “The key to making this decision interesting is for the player to know that the golden arrow is the right choice, but also to know that if he uses the golden arrow now, he won’t be able to use it later when he has to fight the evil mage. To make this decision truly dramatic, the player must be put in a position where both paths have consequences. If the player doesn’t use the arrow now, his faithful companion, who is not immune to dragon fire, may die during the battle. However, if the player uses the arrow, it will be much harder to destroy the evil mage later on. Suddenly the decision has become more complex, with consequences on both sides of the equation….the decision is a combination of the previous decision types. It’s an informed decision because the player knows a lot about situation he is in, it’s a dramatic decision because the player has an emotional attachment to his faithful companion, it’s a weighted decision because there are consequences balanced on both sides, it’s an immediate decision because it impacts the battle which is taking place with the Dragon, and it’s a long-term decision because it impacts the future battle with the evil mage. All these combine to make the decision of whether or not to use the golden arrow a critical choice in the game, and this makes the game interesting.”

type of decision – “Dilemmas are the situations where players must weigh the consequences of their choices carefully, and in many cases, where there is no optimal answer. No matter what the player chooses, something will be gained and something will be lost. Dilemmas are often paradoxical or recursive. A well-placed dilemma and trade off can resonate emotionally with a player when encountered during the struggle to win your game.” – examples – cake cutting, prisoner’s dilemma – in each case can construct a payoff matrix (programmer needs to do that to build the consequences into the game)

another type of decision – puzzles – “There’s an innate tension in solving a puzzle. If you tie this into a system of rewards for solving the puzzle and punishments for failure, the puzzle transforms into a dramatic element.” – not just in puzzle games, lots of fps games have puzzles – “plant bombs, unlock doors, find medical kits in a labyrinth of rooms, and figure out how to use weapons and explosives in just the right way…advances the player towards his overall goal. If a puzzle doesn’t enable progress, it’s a mere distraction and should be redone or removed. A puzzle may also advance the storyline. You can use the puzzle to tell the player something about the unfolding plot. ”

another kind of choice – path thru the game – if just one path then no fun, no decisions – “consider treating the structure in a more object-oriented approach. Giving each type of object in the world a simple set of rules for interaction, rather than scripting each encounter separately often leads to creative and unusual results.”, can have several objectives for payer to choose between to give them different paths thru the game (civilization games do that – playes can choose to advance science or military or farming…)

don’t need puzzles in multi-player games to build tension – competition with other players

rewards & punishments = consequences- “you don’t want to punish players so much that they stop playing your game. But often, the threat of punishment, if not the actual punishment itself, carries a dramatic tension that can add layers of meaning to even the most trivial choices a player makes.” – 3 levels of rewards – “Rewards that are useful in obtaining victory carry greater weight. Rewards that have a romantic association, like magic weapons or gold, appear more valuable. Rewards that are tied into the storyline of the game have an added impact.”

rewards and punishments related to anticipation – talks about skinner boxes and operant conditioning – we anticipate a reward when we do things that in the past have given us a reward – could be created thru limited visibility (can’t see more territory till you’re ready to develop it)

also related to surprise – somthing happens they weren’t anticipating, thngs happen randomly, but not so often that they’re not longer valued, have to seem to happen wihtin the realm of possibilities (talks about foot soldier with 1 to 5 kill power and ogre with 1 to 20 power – could randomly happen that hte foot soldier occasionally kills the ogre – would be a good surprise for the foot soldier)

rewards & consequences related to progress – gotta give them something to keep them going to the next level, give them some payoff for finishing a quest/leveling up, talks about mini-arcs = think about how long players are going to stay at your game at any one time and within that itme period they should be able to feel like they made some progress, moved thru a mini-arc that ends with something memorable or pivotal in the game story

need some big reward at the end – they made it thru the whole game, want some closure, want some big reveal – could be an animation that’s way cooler than the rest of the game, find out something about the character that you didn’t know

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Decision making, Game design, Games, Prisoner's dilemma, Video game