The Choice of Games and a Game’s Choices
I’m sure most people reading this have interacted with some form of media that has given them a choice — my questions today are;
- Was it really a choice?
- Was there any significant effect, or consequence?
This topic is one of passion for myself, and will potentially develop into me just having a gripe. If I was asked; in gaming, what makes a choice matter? I’d say that said choice must branch the story in some way, it must carry consequence that alters the path and eventual end of one’s journey. Too often do I see narrative games present options to interact with, only to find they are largely superficial — offering perhaps a different response from another of the characters at the most, but the story otherwise remains the same. Yet these games love to advertise themselves on their ‘choose your own adventure’ elements! Choices for the sake of having choices equates to poor design, and an overall narrative of diluted significance.
Players will often replay a game to witness the routes and alternative options the first playthrough, for the sake of completionism. However, I’d wager they’ve likely stopped caring about the results or the story by this stage if the choices are vainly implemented for the sake of themselves. The magic of gaming is having the agency to affect story, and witness the results of our meaningful actions and decisions (Murray, 1997). But as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many choices ruin a narrative experience.
That being said, not all inconsequential choices in games are inherently bad nor merely ‘for the sake of it’, as I’ve been putting it. Nay & Zagal (2017) write of choices that exist purely for the player’s perception of a character, but otherwise have no effect on the overarching narrative present. An example used is from The Walking Dead: Season Two (2013), where a dog that attacked the player has been accidentally fatally wounded from the encounter; the player is given the choice to end its suffering, or leave it to slowly die. Is the player’s character compassionate? Unable to will themselves to commit the difficult deed?
Regardless of the choice, the story continues on as though nothing happened — all that has changed is how the player perceives themselves or their avatar in the game’s world. This presents an interesting interaction regarding player investment and role-playing; their immersion within the world. It offers opportunity for player’s to project onto their in-game avatar, and empathise with that character’s humanistic qualities. This is certainly an avenue of effective storytelling, but should a game be permitted to claim that the choices matter, when the narrative in question remains unchanged regardless?
Now that’s an interesting question to ponder the next time you find yourself in a narrative experience.
While this iteration of narrative choice in a game is somewhat more acceptable, I still argue that they should carry at least some form of consequence; manifesting in the player’s character changing or recalling it as part of the canon narrative. Though there was a reason for the example’s choice in question, without physical evidence of events occurring it feels like a cop out, like cheating players out of what they purchased — a story game where the choices actually do matter, and mold the world around them.
So what to do about creating a story game with or without choices that matter? To put it bluntly, we should stop beating around the bush when it comes to these types of games. You either have a narrative adventure where player choices shape the events, or you have a linear narrative with some interactive flavour at best, and nothing more. Let’s stop trying to have both, let’s stop cozen avid readers, players, and consumers.
Bibliography
Carlquist, J. (2003). Playing the story: Computer games as a narrative genre. Human IT: Journal for Information Technology Studies as a Human Science, 6(3).
Iten, G. H., Steinemann, S. T., & Opwis, K. (2018). Choosing to help monsters: A mixed-method examination of meaningful choices in narrative-rich games and interactive narratives. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (p. 341). ACM.
Murray, J. H. (1997). Hamlet on the holodeck: The future of narrative in cyberspace. MIT press.
Nay, J. L., & Zagal, J. P. (2017). Meaning without consequence: virtue ethics and inconsequential choices in games. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (p. 14). ACM.
Simons, J. (2007). Narrative, games, and theory. Game studies, 7(1).
Telltale Games (2013). The Walking Dead: Season Two. Telltale Games.
