Game Dev Notes

03/09/15

Game Jam is at March 27-29th.

Short GDC talk about how awesome it was:

• Modular AI
• Oculus Rift is awesome
• Go to GDC next year!

Today's talk, by Patrick A Wilkening, about player agency.

Choice, meaningful choice, narrative choice.

Examples so far: Mark of the Ninja and Walking Dead.

Timing adds urgency.

Why is talk about choice important? Player agency. That's the feeling of making a choice in a game. Agency is one of the most important aspects of games. No other medium really provides this feature.

What makes a good choice?

• Not black and white
• Trade-offs
• Incomparables
• No right answer

Avoid "choice by calculation". Don't go too far in the other extreme and provide complete incomparables. Otherwise, players will fall into their camp and not choose outside it, and thus they don't have meaningful choices.

For more on this thought, see the excellent Magic: the Gathering player profiles Timmy, Johnny, and Spike.

Branching:

• Open
• Closed

Open-branching requires a lot of content. Closed-branching requires good or clever writing.

Concept: Illusion of Choice. Provides the feeling of agency for the player while using minimal development resources.

Spec Ops: the Line example. You have a choice of who lives and dies for whatever reason. There's hidden options even! End result is the same, more-or-less, but the choice is important to the player.

When the illusion breaks. If consequence is poorly executed, then the player is frustrated at lack of real agency.

A good way to present a choice is to present a morally ambiguous choice. The problem: the majority of players choose the good options in the game, as players ignore the incentives to be evil.

Discussions ensued: being good is usually a better reward. FTL properly rewards "evil" decisions.

Studies show two-thirds of players go straight-good.

Perhaps a result of consequences of player action in the actual game.

How to make good-vs-evil a more 50/50 split?

Beyond: Two Souls has a good split?

Spec Ops: the Line has a good split on good-vs-bad decisions. The mob scene. Shoot them! Shoot them! Super-selfish vs. doing bad things for the sake of doing bad things.

Made real-life sim thing of the U.S. Senate. Having kids going over the merits of the compromise of 1851 (slavery compromise). How do you make kid's role-play as pro-slavery? How do you get them into that state of mind? Make them act out of self-interest, not think about the evils of the act.

Bringing all the ideas of choice together....

All the concepts of choice working together can really provide a powerful experience.

End of talk.

Questions/Comments

• Less balance of good vs. evil in the second Mass Effect
• FTL is good at forcing bad decisions
• Final Fantasy XIII: You Don't Like Hallways?
• Quick decisions make them less meaningful
• Too many decisions, even meaningful ones, numb the player
• Quick Magic vs. Hearthstone talk