The following article is only the viewpoint of the author and may not reflect the opinions of Antlion Audio as a whole or the viewpoint of any other member of the staff.
It's been a minute since I wrote about game design, and as a strategy gamer coming off some mild disappointment in Europa Universalis 5's design decisions (Mostly because the 4th game was such a magnum opus that the 5th struggled to live up to, more than it's a bad game), I decided today's article will be about the choices you make in a game. For those unaware, I held a variety of job titles in the games industry for 13 years prior to joining Antlion, including lead game designer roles and I like to use this space to muse about games now and then.
The decisions we make within games are, at the core, the very game itself. Whether it's when to jump as Mario or spending hours planning your character for a Dungeons and Dragons game, these decisions are what drives almost every game forward.
However, there's a lot of bad choice design in games and I want to pull back the curtain a little so as you play you'll think about these decisions differently; and maybe change the way you look at games from a critical level. I break these choices down into three categories:
- Good Choices
- Boring Choices
- Non-choices
Good Choices
I believe there's really only one core trait of good choices and one factor that acts as an 'emotion maker' on the choice you make.
Is the decision interesting?
I know, broad. That's what it boils down to though. Interesting in this context is subjective, an interesting decision for an FPS gamer may not be the same for a turn-based strategy lover. I think the shorthand for this is to ask yourself, "Does this decision meaningfully change the way I am interacting with the media?"
While not the only thing that makes a choice interesting, in this section I want to focus what I call timeliness.
In essence this is the thesis of this whole article is the idea that the closer the gap is between when the decision is made and when the outcome bears results the more dopamine your brain will get. Fast turnaround between "good" choices and immediate results equals more enjoyment.
For example, what made Overwatch (the original) so unique was having to make a fast choice on death if your team needs you to swap characters. The impact is quick and it completely changes the way you interact. A choice is made and it is very interesting and quickly created joy when it worked out (and sometimes when it failed spectacularly).
Conversely, and maybe unexpectedly, the longer the turnaround between good choices and results does not mean less enjoyment, but rather more satisfaction. To put it another way, "I love it when a plan comes together."
An example of this, to circle back to Europa Universalis, you may spend several hours making decisions to find allies, build up their trust, fortify your front lines, and wait for the exact moment to strike a more powerful nation (often when they're busy fighting a war somewhere else). Many small decisions all leading to one gigantic choice over the space of hours of play. It is extremely satisfying when it all goes to plan and heartbreaking when it does not.
These two levels of timeliness are mutually exclusive with the individual decision, but not mutually exclusive within the game. A game could have both, but each decision can only do one.
The holy grail is, to create many small decisions that having immediate and meaningful impact that all coalesce into a a decision that creates that long term satisfaction feeling. Easy to say, hard to do.
Boring Choices
A lot of games, especially in the day and age we live in of rogue-like everything, there's a lot of boring choices out there. These are choices that have an impact, but the impact is either small or fundamentally changes nothing. Vampire Survivor-like games are replete with these. Would you like 1% more damage or 1% more defense? I'm going to pick on Brotato for a moment but I want to say that it isn't a bad game because it has some boring choices. In fact I think it is quite a good game, but it's a well known product that is a great example.
Leveling up in Brotato is, individually, all boring choices. The impact per upgrade is minimal and generally does little to impact the overall run. I am confident in most builds you could just pick randomly or pick whatever the highest rarity is and be fine.
Selecting a character, however, is interesting. Because the effects are so large it changes the very nature of how you're likely to play the game.
Survivor-likes didn't invent boring choices, most of the nodes on Path of Exile are boring choices with a few good choices deeper in the tree, most of the build-queue in Civilization is a boring choice. The list goes on and back in time to the very start of gaming.
Boring choices help break up the gameplay, but provide no real value to the game beyond that. Especially since most of them are there to offset some kind of staged growth of the opponent. 1% more damage and then because you gained a level the enemies gained 1% more defense. Now you feel more powerful but the game hasn't changed at all.
Non-Choices
The most insidious of the three. Non-choices are decisions you make that are not actually choices at all. They can be as benign as a dialogue tree that, no matter which response you choose, gives the same reply or as dangerous as a slot machine bonus round. Think things like blind boxes where you have 3 face down cards and you get to pick one.
Fallout 3 famously changed their end-game dialogue options after their DLC because no matter what you did you had to die in the end; even if there was no reason for you to die. The first version of the game locked you into a choice that wasn't a choice at all and players complained so much that Bethesda changed the ending to the game!
When it comes to blind boxes, there's a fascinating study that showed the difference between someone with a gambling problem and someone without one is their physiological response to "near wins" in these kinds of non-choices. Games have picked up on this and use similar tactics to achieve the same result: Get you to spend more money.
Imagine a slot machine. Non-addiction prone people see 7-7-Cherry and think "I lost" while addiction-prone people see 7-7-Cherry as "I almost won" and their body reacts as if they HAD won. Dopamine and all.
These non-choices are decisions you make in a game where the outcome is random and/or your choice has zero impact on what happens next. If you're not looking out, these decisions can feel impactful, but in the long run they leave you feeling hollow, providing zero long term satisfaction.
There's a second type of non-choice as well, which are decisions where what you should do are so strongly in favor of one that the others become meaningless. You may have situations where you are presented with options but one of them is simply stronger. You could go out of your way to make the game harder and choose "incorrectly", but for all intents and purposes, this isn't a choice at all.
In D&D (5e), assuming you have the gold, there's no choice between Splint armor and Plate armor (unless 5 lb is somehow going to matter). Plate is just better with the exact same requirements and drawbacks. It's a non-choice.
Let's wrap this up
In summary, that holy grail remains to watch for games where your decisions do something immediate and feel immediately impactful while building towards one or more decisions that you've been planning all along; and when executed, deliver a feeling of satisfaction of a job well done. Don't get hung up on the quick and easy small blip decisions and don't ever fall for non-choices. In fact, I say boycott them whenever possible. Give it some thought the next time you're thinking about a decision in a game, what kind of decision is it and how much does it tie into other things you're doing, how quickly will you see the results of your choice, and how is it impacting how much you enjoy the game. You may start to find you can better identify the "why" behind what games you love most!