The power of choice

Being surrounded by hardcore gamers for 50ish hours a week is an interesting situation to be in. As someone who fancies design, this is a great asset to help shape my design perspective. Having this sort of direct path to gamer feedback from hundreds of simultaneous perspectives affords me opportunities to simply listen, compute, and learn. A common theme I've been hearing a lot lately, is that people want choices. Nobody wants to be mindlessly dragged along through a story while playing a game. If they did, they would go watch a movie.

This is one of the primary differences between modern games and movies. A player's interactivity with the narrative being told. I'm not saying that there aren't loads of amazing lessons we can learn from movies, I'm saying that in a gaming environment people don't just want to be told something, they want to be involved with it.

This statement doesn't necessarily mean that every game should have multiple endings or branching dialogue choices. It can be as simple a difficult encounter. If the player fails this encounter, the story ends in defeat. Here, the player had a choice, how to handle and interact with the encounter, and the story was changed based on their direct control. However, with save points and the ability to resume the story, this choice has minimal impact. The choice is there, but the choice has nearly no impact or meaning. While this is better than the zombie effect of mindlessly going through the motions, there are better solutions

When a choice carries with it the weight of meaning, it can do wonders to help engage a player. If a player knows that the decisions they are about to make has a genuine impact on the world, they now have the power to control the narrative.

While meaningful choice is good for engaging our players, overdoing it can be terribly taxing on a player. Think about playing a game where every single choice you made has the potential of locking you out of later content. It would be possible for players to back themselves so deeply into a corner, and exhaust all of your options, leaving you with a premature end to your journey. While this could appeal to some players, it would not be appetizing for general consumption.

So what do we do? This is one of those situations where the answer is something I hate to say out loud; it almost makes me feel dirty. But the simple truth is: we lie. We give the players perceived choice, an illusion that their choice is really important, but don't allow them to stray so far off the path that the narrative is damaged. We convince our players that the choice they are making really has weight, that it's important. Thus allows us to get our players mentally engaged and really feel that they are in control of their world. In reality, we've made sure that they are never outside of the safety of our nets.

Let's look at WoW (you knew it was going to happen.)  WoW gives players a huge number of choices to make at any given moment. It's an MMO, and there are hundreds of options open to every player at any time.  You can go do quests, you can go pvp, you can do a 5 man, you can raid, you can go farm, you can hang out and be social, etc, etc.  The actual number of choices available in WoW is staggering.  The question with WoW is: are these choices meaningful?

Choice beyond what to do with your time seems to have nary an impact on the world.  Probably the most meaningful choices within the game are made during character creation, during the distribution of talent points, and with the selection choices of gear, enchants and gems.  Sadly, the community itself has stripped much meaning from these talent build and gear choices, giving players the "one and only option" for optimal performance.  While I do believe WoW has some meaningful choices in its gameplay, I don't think it's enough. 

So where can we inject some choices into WoW, even if they are only perceived?  Looking at Cataclysm, it seems that this is the track the developers are on.  We've seen a number of posts on the forums where the designers really want to give players options, specifically with gearing, where there is no "one true answer", but multiple answers that yield equal but different results.  With the overhaul of the stats system and the ability to re-forge armor, I think they are on the right path here.

I can only hope that we see a continuation on this path as more information about the future of WoW is released. Quests would be a natural and logical place to include some player driven narrative. Why must I kill that quest NPC to complete this quest?  Why can't I hire a mercenary to do it for me, or slip some poison into his drink?  Where are my choices on how to tackle this objective?  I don't feel that every single quest should have multiple solutions for victory, but giving me a choice once in a while would be a welcome addition.  This is especially pertinent to those of us who have multiple high level characters and more gold than we know what to do with. I could opt to rush in weapons flying for my first play though, then pick the stealthier option my second time around. The third time through, I could go for one of the methods I'm familiar with, or simply drop coin to get the job done. Regardless of how, the quest got completed, and I had a real choice.

I'd also like to see some choice injected into group play and raiding.  By now, many of us have seen the Plagueworks in Icecrown Citadel.  Here is a perfect example to add some spice to a player's raiding experience. 

En route to the final boss of the wing, players are presented with two bosses to kill.  Both are required to open the door to the final boss of that wing.  I'd like to see a meaningful choice here where the raid group is given the option to kill only one of the bosses.  Y our choice would change a mechanic on the final boss.  Let's say that killing the Slime Boss causes the final boss not to spawn slimes.  Alternately, killing the Plague Boss causes the final boss not to drop plague on the ground.  Thus each raid to make a meaningful choice that exercises some control over the obstacles in their path. As the raid leader, I know my raid isn't the best at movement, and so we would want to kill the Slime Boss, allowing us to remain stationary during the final encounter.  Afterwards, if we want, we may open up the option to defeat the boss we were locked out of. This choice could be bolstered even further by the introduction of weekly quests.  Let's say my quest requires me to kill the Slime boss before the final boss, but my guild is better at the plague boss.  Now we have a choice.  Do we try an encounter that is harder for us in order to reap the extra rewards of the quest?  Or do we forgo the quest to ensure our timely victory through the wing?

Choice has the power to take me out of the narrative and give me control over my world. By giving me the ability to choose what happens in my world I am transformed into being part of the world, not a byproduct of it. Give me a compelling choice that has real impact deeper than "what color mount should I use?" Give me the opportunity to mess things up, without letting me break it. Give me an option later to fix any major damage I've caused. Make my choices unique and different from the exact same choices everyone else makes. Allow me to make the choices that forge my own story. Even if the choices are only illusionary, I still want the opportunity to make them. 

About that great idea you have .....

I work with a lot of gamers. Literally hundreds of gamers, most of which have dreams of making it big in the industry. Many, if not most, of these young wide eyed gamers want to be game designers. This interests me greatly. I ask them why they want to be a designer, or what their opinions on design elements are, and the majority of them don't have concrete answers. The most common response is "I love games", or "I have great ideas".  This leads me to believe that they don't fully understand the role of a designer, or that they haven't thoroughly researched the position. This is understandable to a degree, the term "designer" has taken on hundreds of definitions and no two design roles are identical.

Further dialogue with these potential designers yields the comment "I can't draw and don't know how to program, but I can totally be a designer!" as if design is the easy job to fall into. Or they have "A great idea", and are convinced that their vision is going to revolutionize gaming. Noble as their intentions are, I believe this approach in mindset is flawed at best. Design, like any other area of study, requires and iterative mindset. We have to learn to crawl before we can run. With this in mind, I urge all of you aspiring designers out there to pull away from making the next revolution in design. Spend some time playing old games and dissecting their design. What works? What doesn't? It's just as important to understand the failures of previous work than the successes. While few things in life are guarantees, I can tell you that your vision of "the next big thing" will fail miserably if you don't understand the basic principals of game design.

Gaming is a huge industry, there are literally millions of people out there playing games. Most of which have some idea of what they like, and what could be better. Yet very few of them take the time to understand exactly what elements failed in a game, or what succeeded. Anyone can say "I like this" but can you fully articulate what you liked, why it was successful, and how you could improve that success further? Then do the same with what you didn't like and discuss those failures? Being and effective game designer requires a keen eye for detail, and empathetic mind that understands the "what, why, and how" of gamers. It also requires a huge amount of collaboration, get the idea of being the sole designer out of your head asap. Even the big famous designers would be liars if they took all the credit for themselves.

Most of the aspiring designers out there, if ever given the shot, will make it into the industry in an entry-level position or with a smaller company. In these positions it's a far more effective use of your time to design strong and effective elements, than to design new ideas with a high risk. There are many lead designers out there who have a proven record of success, let them be the vision, and you be the student. Work with your teams and other designers to learn from their experience. This concept sounds dull to many I'm sure, but the Sistine chapel wasn't Michelangelo's first painting.

I'm not trying to invalidate anyone's ideas or concepts. Keep a journal of these things, a good idea never expires. But let's be realistic about the industry. It's not likely that anyone will get a job as a designer and be told to make their own ideas and concepts off the bat. Stay grounded, start with the foundations, and be the best at what you do. Work your way to the top then bust out that journal you've been keeping over the years. Once you're at the top of the totem pole, you'll have the tools, the content, and the team to make the vision reality.

That idea may make a great game, and is a wonderful dream to keep someone sated. But the idea doesn't make you a great designer. While the experience and the act of working towards that dream can.