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joshmlabelle
@joshmlabelle

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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.


mintexists
@mintexists

Even if my choices don’t matter, it means a lot when I think they matter. Two examples- I was playing Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and the game wanted me to scare off a bird for some reason. I distinctly remember not wanting to scare off the bird, and being unable to make the choice matter, which rlly hurt the image that I was able to make choices. Another example is when I was playing @fish’s (I think) Disco Elysium CSS post, and I went back to play it again to see what the other choices were, and then realized that there were no choices, it was just the same outcomes. However, because I thought my choices mattered and made a difference, it engaged me much more in the process, as I weighed each option carefully to choose the one I wanted most. Maintaining that illusion really means a lot


exerian
@exerian

the thing that annoys me with the choices matter stuff is that they seem to strip character from companions/npcs. me, personally, i'm going to avoid you if you're too formal and nice. that's sus af. i need me some sass. i need some irreverence. why do all of the npcs react the same way to sass and rule breaking stuff? it'll kill the game for me if choices matter and all npcs react the same way to the choices.


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in reply to @joshmlabelle's post:

Really good points here. One thing I had never thought about before was how players are more inclined to choose the "nice" dialogue options and such because they usually result in more content, which was really interesting. I'd assume a big reason why players choose the nice options on their first playthrough is also just that they don't want to be mean :D

The mean/nice choice trope also fails because it’s ultimately a fake choice. Once I’ve decided to be mean or nice, why would I deviate from that? Doing so is just going to make your character seem unhinged or at the very least two-faced.

in addition - think about how often the "dark" choices are like, just...needlessly cruel? really often these "choices" that "matter" are just flimsy, like "help this person, it's barely an inconvenience" vs "punch them in the neck for no apparent reason, smile." or "be polite to this person, who i might need later" vs "be an asshole to them for no real gain"

its funny that we're referencing ME here because one of the first big games that comes to mind for this stuff (and one of the worst offenders for "be a somewhat decent person" vs. "be an unacceptable psychopath in public") is KOTOR lol.

anyway point is, idk how much we can really engage with "choices matter" as a concept unless we also confront how unappealing the "dark" choices can be, in contrast with the "light" choices. it's not only about the possible effects of those choices. they're often just not interesting. or not things anyone can see themself doing, especially not if theyre trying to Save The World or whatever.

yeah. no one thinks they're evil, there should be a compelling reason why acting like an asshole is desireable because otherwise general social norms about how being mean is not nice will be the default for most players. eta: not to mention the aspect of notionally playing a hero.

I think disco elysium does a great job with this, varying between "there are no good options", "the immediately nice option is morally disgusting so ripping off the bandaid now is better", "this person is pissing you, the player, off, don't you wanna do somethin about it?", "you'll avoid spending the $100 you don't have if you do it", etc.

I think the thing is in the words "meaningful choice".

So often the "mean/evil" options in these games have no meaning behind them, no motivation built by the narrative, so it just feels like senseless dickery. Even evil people have a motivation, a sense of "how does this benefit" me, and the story as written clearly was only interested in painting a heroic path, so it treats these options as such an afterthought that there's no benefit to be had. They're a box checklist feature, not a narrative arc. Actually letting you disrupt the precious story they've devised would be too much work.

i often (reluctantly) resort to checking guides or forums to see what impact a certain choice will have for games like this, to make sure i'm not accidentally missing out on something that would've otherwise improved my enjoyment of the game

its never a good feeling to have to spoil yourself out of fear of missing content

I ran into this really hard in Pokemon Legends. I ran into a choice that had no clear large consequences, but I had to choose in order to proceed at all (which clan leader will accompany you for a brief period). I was anxious about missing out, and so put the game down. I talked with friends about it, and apparently it was extremely minor, basically the same game function with a different character for 15 minutes of gameplay.

But my that point, my momentum was already broken and I haven't picked it up since. Which is a shame, because I was really enjoying the game.

in reply to @mintexists's post:

I really agree with your take here - and I think one of the key points of it are linked to replayability. It's a lot less 'stressful' I guess, with regards to a kind of completionist/FOMO, if you can enjoy something with in shorter loops that's great, as being 'locked' into certain routes without opportunities to see other 'branches' without huge investments in time/manual save points at opportune moments is a faff. (also the DE post was @Fish)

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