Important Choices Must Be Informed Choices

A somewhat impromptu post here, but on a topic I've wanted to register some chatter on for some time.

One of my design "pet peeves", especially when it comes to RPGs, has been called out by Edge in their June 2006 issue. I'm so glad a well-read source has come out and voiced this concern, because it's a significant one: too many games force you to make an important choice before you know how it will affect your game.

Or to put it another way: games will ask you things like how difficult you want it to be or what character class you'd like to play as before you have any idea of what effects your choice will have on your play. How hard is the game relative to others of its type? How much experience with similar games am I expected to have? These questions and many more remain unanswered and usually not even hinted at when the time comes for me to make a game-defining choice.

Besides the obvious alienation and/or frustration a player may feel at being forced to make an irrevocable decision before they have any meaningful criteria upon which to weigh their options, there is a greater loss suffered. The fact is that making interesting decisions the consequences of which you can predict or hypothesize about can often be the most fun part of a game to begin with. In real-time strategy games, this helps explain why defeat can sometimes be the greatest experience you can have. It can encourage you to re-visit the challenge and approach it from a different angle.

Now, I don't mean to gloss over the fact that many developers have in fact attempted to remedy the problems associated with games that are highly influenced by early, relatively uninformed decisions. Some games like those in the Civilization series (esp. Civ 4) have done an admirable job of trying to explain which difficulty level you should start with, often based upon your experiences with past Civ games.

But I prefer that, whenever possible, designers work this need into the game much the way a good tutorial can work relatively seamlessly into a well-thought-out game. For example, when I was designing a fantasy RPG I called "Octavia", the game's design revolved around the idea that players would gradually make more and more significant decisions about what powers to develop and how to use them, and in particular the beginning of the game would seek to introduce players to the central concepts, let them feel those concepts out a bit, and then as them to make some decisions about how they will focus their character's development for the rest of the game.

Okay, so I'm not the first (or even the 30th) designer, amateur or not, to attempt such a thing. Certainly many titles could be cited as heading in the same direction. But it seems like we never get much farther than the "prolonged/enhanced tutorial" level of thoughtfulness when it comes to dealing with this issue.

If I ever pick the Octavia idea up again, I'd like to try to extend this concept further into and throughout the game. For example, the game's original concept included a focus on demonstrating (and letting players play with, of course!) the karma-esq nature of destruction-begetting-destruction and peace-begetting-peace. How about designing the game such that players are encouraged (if not forced outright) to incrementally make decisions as to how they will further their character's development. Think of a system akin to dual- and special/elite-classing in D&D. You develop your character along the lines of the original "rails" you chose to follow. But then as time goes on you eventually fork or branch your efforts into other paths.

This probably sounds a lot like a traditional RPG. The trick is in designing it in such a way that the decisions you make about forking or branching your focus are meant to reflect your new-found or further refined understanding of the game both in terms of how to "master" it further and also in terms of how you will most enjoy it.

Okay, so this is all pretty abstract and high-level. Still, I'm glad a source like Edge has brought some attention to an important, and relatively practical, concern such as this. I hope to see much more experimentation with these kinds of ideas in the years to come.