Games are all about choices. The famous game designer Sid Meier is often quoted (or misquoted, depending on who you ask) as saying, “Good games are a series of interesting choices.” That’s great in the abstract, but I’ve recently been asking myself, “What’s an interesting choice?”
As often happens when I ask myself questions, I give myself answers. I would say that an interesting choice is meaningful, informed, and limited.
- Meaningful Choice: Some choices in games just don’t matter: whether you’re X or O in tic-tac-toe; or the color of your character’s eyes in a computer RPG. None of these choices move you a step closer to victory. Other choices do move you down the victory trail, but are so obviously the correct choice as to be no choice at all. (“Do you want to play the card that will score you 10 points, or give it to your opponent?”) These are two extremes, but neither are particularly meaningful.
- Informed Choice: The players should know what effect their choice will have on the game. Asking a player to blindly choose between Door #1 and Door #2 with no clue as to what’s behind those doors is unfair to the player, and unfun if the door she chooses has a hungry tiger behind it. (A real challenge with this issue is that new players will never be as informed as experienced players, and some choices that look blind to newbies actually have effects that become clear over the course of the game. You can address this by adding more tips and examples to the rulebook, but that adds to rules bloat, so that’s not always the right way to go. Like I said, it’s a real challenge.)
- Limited Choice: Ah, the classic problem of analysis paralysis — that phenomenon when a player is so overwhelmed with choices, his turn takes forever as he ponders the ramifications of every choice he could make. Now some players are just slow (*sheepishly raises hand*), so you can’t avoid this altogether, but it’s something to keep in mind. If possible, don’t front-load the choices, but let the player’s decision tree grow over time.
Obviously, I’m just scratching the surface here, mostly talking to myself as I try to turn vague game-design proverbs into somewhat practical advice. Have I succeeded? Try out the newly-repaired comment box below and let me know.
As a distillation of a very complex concept, this is absolutely excellent. I mean, maybe this is all obvious, but each choice should meet these criteria. Well said, sir.
Thanks! One other criterion worth addressing (brought up by the esteemed Kevin Wilson) is that choices should be fun. What’s that mean, exactly? Eh… I hate definitions of “fun” but he’s got some good thoughts I’ll steal and post later this week.
“The players should know what effect their choice will have on the game. Asking a player to blindly choose between Door #1 and Door #2 with no clue as to what’s behind those doors is unfair to the player, and unfun if the door she chooses has a hungry tiger behind it.”
Funny, I like that aspect of Doom (not knowing what’s behind the doors, in any way) better than Descent (even though set-up and maintenance in Doom was extremely high overhead).
Maybe I’m just broken. 🙂 (Or maybe the fact that I love rogue and Hack (and even worked on NetHack) says something about this, too :-P)
I agree with Joshua that, while a player should have a good idea about the possible result of a decisision, part of the fun of games is not knowing exactly the result of your choices. One reason people return to the same game again and again is to unlock the results of decisions. Losing and then saying, “Now I know not to open that door next time,” can be frustrating but if done right can be just frustrating enough to make players want to keep playing.
I’m a big fan of choice limitation as a method to keep games fresh and fast. It cuts down on analysis paralysis in the short term as you said, and if there’s an element of chance involved in selecting the available choices, it cuts down on predictability and makes it harder for a single dominant strategy to emerge. Adding pre-luck as a choice selector also removes long-term analysis paralysis, too, as it makes it almost impossible to plan for future moves.
I’d be interested in a further exploration of what makes a choice meaningful: your other option(s) must be comparably beneficial, but must suggest different paths down which the game could go. (A choice between a 5 point green card and a 5 point red card is as much of a non-choice as the ‘score or discard’ example you gave.) They must also come with an opportunity cost of some kind. This could be as simple as you having to wait a turn to take another choice, or it could be more complex. For instance, choosing one card over another in a drafting game means giving your opponent a chance to take that other card, making your turn actively influence your opponents’ turns… a highly meaningful decision.
Great write-up. Very thought provoking!