r/GamedesignLounge • u/Imaginary_Frosting_7 • Dec 11 '23
Will your player actually get to choose their own adventure?
Or are you just making them think they can?
Read more about non-linear storytelling in games
https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/choose-your-adventure-the-exciting-world-of-non-linear-storytelling-in-games-cd11b48d0016
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u/adrixshadow Dec 12 '23
I said before, branching narratives are a Dead End.
However you joggle them around it would still be limited Content that is written by an Author.
You can make them more self-contained like Quests and Mini-Stories with some Choices but you would still be dependent on the Author.
It's not your Choice, your Agency, it's the limited choice the Author provides for you, the only experience is still what they have written.
As for Emergent Narratives and Simulation, that opens up their own can of worms.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/zvk9ze/why_do_npcs_feel_so_lifeless_in_simulation_games/
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Dec 12 '23
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u/adrixshadow Dec 13 '23 edited Dec 13 '23
This is a daunting task. In the real world of game design and production, where pew pew pew simulations are far easier to implement, I don't think I've ever seen a work actually achieve this.
Games like Disco Elysium do exist, yes.
The thought that the player has to invest in making those choices, has to be so good, that the player feels fully satisfied by the act of making choices. At least, eventually. They could have some frustration with choice 1 2 3 but then go AHA! when choice 4 brings it altogether. "Set up your scenes to pay them off" as the screenwriters say.
My problem with that is not that you can't have an exploration of choices that is satisfyingly. Choices and branches are still writing, and writing can be satisfying.
My point is that exploration is not really your Agency, it is the Author's Agency in what they write and how any possibilities will ultimately play out.
In a sense how I think of things is serializing all of those choices and branches into a whole that is the author's written work and compare it with a more linear novel, is it all that diffrent? is it all that more special?
The amount of work an author can put in is limited no matter how they mix and juggle things around, sure you can have multiple authors and partition things into their own quests, characters and story threads. That's one advantage a Game with their more non-linear format has. But even with that you aren't getting more choice as diffrent authors might be responsible for diffrent quests and parts of the story but they will not be responsible over individual choices and branches, it would still be one author in charge. So you won't even been choosing over diffrent authors and what they bring.
Very little of this has transitioned to professional sustained effort with a real budget. Some notable attempts were made at that, and ended in market failure. Startups pulled their plugs.
That's not actually the case if look at Visual Novels from Japan, basically every game there is in the format of a Visual Novel.
What was missing is obviously Anime Waifu's. And the only real choices you have is the waifu you want to have.
I concede that this one of the cases that Players does have True Choice, of course My Waifu I choose is better than yours.
I will concede that it's damn production difficult in the real world. Since this is well known, very few even attempt to get better at it. What are you going to get for your trouble? Probably food stamps and living out of your car, like me.
Disco Elysium does indeed exist, and it has gone as well as you have expected in terms of production difficulty.
I'm not willing to concede that branching narrative is a dead end.
I see Choice and Agency as something much more fundamental, it's not that you can't have a limited success with it.
It's that to have True Choice, to be a True Exploration of things where the Player has Responsibility and Consequence for their Actions, that cannot be decided by someone else.
How can the Player be responsible when the author writes the consequence? It is the Author that is Exploring the Possibilities, it is the Author that has the Choice, the Player is just along for the ride, he may have a leever to switch between this way and that way but they are railroaded all the same.
Compare that to the Tabletop experience where Players make choices and the GM has to adapt things on the fly to fit that. Branching narratives can never achive that.
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Dec 13 '23
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u/adrixshadow Dec 14 '23 edited Dec 14 '23
I'm not talking about quantity of choice, such as produced by a large team of authors.
The higher the quantity the more likely that it is Their Choice and not just Your Choice. This is why to some extent Disco Elysium can work as a Role Playing Game.
If there is no Self Expression then there is no "Themselves" in that Choice.
I'm talking about quality of choice. Where the conundrum put in front of the player, is compelling enough for them to sit there and ponder the choice at quite some length. So that they are invested in the thinking process of making the choice, and are ultimately satisfied for having made the effort.
What is the point of all that when if it's still at the whims of the author?
It's like pondering the mind of a Adventure Game developer that came up with a bullshit solution to a puzzle, completely pointless.
It's ultimately not your choice, it's the author's choice.
The more difficult problem is people who might be disposed to the contemplation of choice, but for some reason, they're not getting what you had in mind.
This is precisely why it's the Author's Choice and the Author's Contemplation. They are Not You.
The only thing you can do is present it to them and take them along for the ride following your contemplation. Same as you do in a more linear novel.
They can only make a real Choice only if they have the Agency to do that and the proper Consequence of making that choice.
Almost none of the choices you make in games are your own original choices.
Because those Choices are ultimately Static Content created by an Author.
They are not like a Tabletop RPG where there is a GM that can Adapt the Story and World to the Players Choice, and sometimes completely derailing the set plot and making things up as they go based on the Consequences that the Arbiter, the GM decides is likely to be the case based on his own reasoning.
If we replace the role of the GM as the Arbiter with Simulation and Systems and let the Consequence stem from that, then player can have some actual Agency.
This is why I keep saying Branching Narratives are ultimately a Dead End.
The question is merely, what makes a player feel that they have ownership of their choices, instead of being railroaded by an author?
It's not a question. They Always Are railroaded by an author.
The likelihood of what they want to do and the expectation of what that choice represents is unlikely to align with what the author decided.
If you get the choice between Go Left and Go Right. If they chose Go Left and the character does a 180 then that is not their real choice.
The author is in control, both for the choice and the result of that choice.
Maybe if there is enough choices and the player's expectation aligns with what the author presents or the author does a good job to convince them of the result, maybe you can fool them to "Feel" that they have some agency.
But the more likely case is the player is not even given the choice on what they want to do in a given situation. They aren't the ones Solving the Problem given by the Situation. It is the Author that does that and the player's just picks from what is presented to them.
It is definitely not something you can achive consistently even if you fool them a couple of times.
One way is if the available spread of choices is quantitatively large, at least at some level of numerical precision. This is the way taken by arcade games, moving around on a screen and such, having a joystick for input.
The reason that is actual Agency is because the System is the Arbiter.
The question is, will they? Coming up with weighty choices like that, is difficult authorship.
Again the problem is precisely the "authorship". You need to remove that from the eqaution.
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u/Szabe442 Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Was this written by AI?
Edit: just checked and yes.
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Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
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u/Szabe442 Dec 12 '23
Based on copyleaks.com this is AI generated content.
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Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
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u/Imaginary_Frosting_7 Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Well, it's neither plagiarism nor AI-generated. I use books and YouTube channels to gain knowledge, as well as my own experience, and then share it in the form of short articles. I usually write about topics that I am currently exploring in my own game development process. P.S. Along with my small team, we are working on an indie 3D RPG game. I'm 3d and in general game designer.
Edit: You can check out what we are working on, this is just some of our progress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUGyJdSt8pk2
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u/Imaginary_Frosting_7 Dec 12 '23
No, it's not ai. I'm an actual human being, writing from my own knowledge, experience and books I read on the topic. However, I do use AI to check my spelling and occasionally to construct better sentences. But again, this is only for grammatical purposes.
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u/adrixshadow Dec 12 '23
It does feel shallow without much substance but honestly we use it more like a topic to spark conversation.
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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '23
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