It's often taken as an article of faith that if a game has choices, those choices should "matter". 1 star reviews for choice-based games are littered with this kind of feedback. On nearly every game I've worked on, one of the earliest pieces of narrative documentation will dutifully repeat this idea and explain how on this game, unlike most games, choices actually WILL matter, often without clearly defining what this means.
A working definition of "choices matter"
In my experience, when a player complains that choices "don't matter", they felt that any, all, or some combination of the following constellation of experiences was missing:
- Choices have an immediate impact, leading to the player accessing material that feels qualitatively different. ex: investigate the crime scene or research at the library leading to different scenes and info; fight or negotiate; go visit this character or that character, etc.
- Choices have delayed, recurring impacts that feels significant. ex: picking up the gun or the crowbar pays off once or multiple times; make a connection with this character or that character allows you to rely on their expertise at key points
- There is a significant and ongoing change in the state of the world. ex: an important location burns down or is taken over by another faction; a character dies or leaves; player advancement
- Decisions have noticeable recurring or cumulative impact, not fading into the background after initial branching. ex: a character remembers that you chose to help them instead of someone else; repeatedly screwing over an ally leads to them treating you differently than if you did it one time
- End states are significantly differentiated. ex: player accesses significantly different content in the end game; choices the player doesn't necessarily even remember making are called back
- The impact of choices is clearly signaled. ex: the game makes clear that what's happening is happening because of a choice you made. I've seen players complain about choices not mattering in games with hundreds of thousands of words of differing content simply because they had no idea the impact their choices were having on what they were seeing.
But depending on your game's pillars, audience, and fantasy experience, it's worth examining whether choices should really matter in your game, or if they should be there to serve some different purpose.
My chief example of a game pillar that can conflict with choices mattering is "player expression". Everyone with access to analytics for game choices can attest that "evil" or "mean" options are rarely picked by players on a first playthrough. In Mass Effect, even the relatively heroic "Renegade" route was picked about 10% of the time compared to the "Paragon" options.
I want to propose that this is not inherent, but something that happens because players are trained out of picking options they might otherwise pick because of the most common ways in which designers make "choices matter". Players are trained to expect that the "mean" or even "lightly sassy" options will lead to punishment, often in the form of less content or fewer "social" rewards from characters (ie characters liking and opening up to you).
An example of this effect in action from my career
On one game I worked on, we put in a lot of effort to craft funny, sassy options to say to the characters. The choices in this game were almost entirely about player expression in a game all about player expression, from how the player dresses to how they decorates their homes. In our forums, players would post screenshots of the choices, laughing at the options and daring each other to pick the "sassy" one. I quickly realized that players wanted to pick these options, they wanted to define themselves as snarky or funny, but they were scared to do it, expecting these options to result in nerfs to friendship levels with the characters. As players began to pick the options and discuss the payoffs with each other, they realized these choices didn't matter... and they were _excited_ and _relieved_. Suddenly they were able to express themselves and pick the choices they wanted to, the ones that best represented their desire for how to interact with the character, and not have to worry about losing points or facing consequences for it.
When players see that it is not the case that we'll punish them for their choices by making them "matter", it often frees them up to enjoy making choices purely as a means of fantasy and self-definition. Sometimes deciding to be mean or nice in the moment matters more when [blank] WON'T remember that. Sometimes what really matters is what your choices say about you.
An addendum with another place where making choices matter can backfire...
Making choices matter can also backfire in games that are highly completionist but not geared towards replayability. On one game I worked on, we made a quest involving choosing between two competing fashion designers to make what the avatar would wear to a fashion show runway.
Approaching this from a "choices matter" perspective, we would have wanted to create two completely different dresses that reflected the different styles of the designers and gave a clear payoff for the player's choice. Perhaps we'd even want to add a few differing accessories depending on small choices the player made with each designer.
But this was a game where we were nearly always working on an absolutely razor thin art budget, and getting even one new dress created for a quest was a tough sell. The choice of designer became flavor, with the dress given to the player in the quest being identical regardless of their choices.
It was amazing to see that players on the forums became upset and anxious about the choice immediately. They were frustrated that the quest seemed to imply there were two possible dresses, one of which they could never attain. When players discovered that there was only one dress, they were, again, excited and relieved.
Go figure. FOMO can be a hell of a drug.
great post. I'm actually really in love with dialogue choices not having consequences while gameplay choices do... FFXIV has played with this a bit and players seem to instinctively understand that they can choose any option and the outcome of the conversation will be the same. in a fully linear narrative this really lets the player feel immersed without, like this post mentions, suffering from that FOMO!