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There's always a risk that the player may see any and all options as being traps.

This is not true. For example you are given an opportunity to be promoted, but accepting the offer will also mean that you will be separated with your current partner for the next two years. This is not a trap because the logical effects are observable. The game is not trying to trick you, but to give you an opportunity to evaluate what you think is important to you.

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And being asked to play a game through twice is not a bad thing if the choice makes the game sufficiently different that it increases the replay value. In this case the initial choice should also be of a type that the player will consider more than one option to be valid choices (not an ethical or philosophical choice where the player would feel untrue to themselves to answer in a different way.) If you want the player to replay the game you want the game to be significantly different on the second play-through that the player isn't bored, but having them make a different choice at the beginning of the game is not necessarily the best way to do this, because the player might just make the same choice again.

This is correct. For Webbit's scenario, it seems like a trap because the player will think, "If I kill the kid nothing will happen to me, but that can't be true, because there is a sequel. Something has to happen if I kill the kid. Is the game going to penalize me for being cold blood? Is the game trying to make me regret my decision and come back to make a different choice and have to play the same 20 years again?" Not any kind of reason that will make the player play the game again qualify as 'replayability'. For instance, the player may interpret the endings as delayed 'gameovers' due to an early the choice. He wants to replay the game not because he wants to try something else but that he thinks he had made a wrong decision. But there was no way to tell which decision would be correct, so that player is forced into thinking that the designer wants him to just go trial-and-error.

One important factor in making a decision hard/ugly or just important is delaying the results. Very often in a game any choice you make is immediatly played out. "I am going left... I am dead. I am going right.... Success". To make a decision more important/hard the consequences of that choice should come back at a later time.

Take a classic scenario. Early on in a game you are given a chance to either befriend or make an enemy of another character. There might be some slight impact at that point, to make it seem as if the decision has played through, but the real point of the choice could come out near the end when this character either helps you defeat the bad guy or becomes the bad guy's apprentice. (I guess this is similar to KOTOR?)

This also allows the game to still have save games, without the risk of the player basically "tasting" every possibility by saving before any choice and just quickly trying either one out.

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Original post by sunandshadow Webbit - If you are thinking of having an expansion work off a saved game file from after the player completes the original game, that won't work very well. Players don't generally save after finishing a game, but you could automate that, but if there are months of delay before the expansion pack is released players may have deleted the file in the meantime.

It worked pretty well in the Quest for Glory serries. At the end of each game it asked you if you wanted to create a special save for use in the next game. For the most part it was just bringing over your stats and and some of your inventory, not altering the game based on previous choices as mentioned here. However if you had managed to become a paladin by completing an optional subplot in a previous game that would carry over, which affected the story in the next game somewhat.

Baldur's gate allowed you to bring a character into the next game as well, although with even less impact on the story of the game. If I remember right it even allowed you to import a character from any save, not just an end game one, and then leveled up the character to a minimum starting level for the 2nd game.

As long as you make it clear to the player that the save will allow them to import their character into the next game I think players will be willing to hold on to a save file. Personally I wish more rpgs did this. It would be more seemless than the approach used by games such as KOTOR2, which had an npc ask you some "subtle" questions about how the first game ended.

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Original post by Wavinator I think an ever interesting choice would be opportunism versus loyalty.

How about, loyality to a cause you believe in versus loyality to others you care about?

Scenario: A game about a revolution or civil war or something along those lines. The main character wants to join the "enemy" side, but has to abandon his friends and family in order to fight for what he believes in. The alternative is living a lie, and perhaps having to fight against the side you believed in.

Taking this idea of flimsy loyalty further is interesting.

Ideally, both choices would be open and lead to two different storylines. If you chose to stay with your family you would be drafted and given opportunties for sabotage/defecting to the other side. Or if you joined the "enemy" you can have experiences that make you realize you were wrong to believe in their cause. Basically, I like the idea of being able to change sides in a war game, and making the choice to do so have a big impact on the game.

I suddenly really want a game about the Spanish Civil War (read up on it: Every extreme of the polticial spectrum from fascism to anarchism clamoring for control, Multiple back-stabbing factions on each side, hopeless underdogs winning battles by willpower. It's really begging to be made into a game.)

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Original post by Kylotan How about having to choose which of your 2 companions has to make the fatal sacrifice that is the only chance that the other two of you can complete the quest? Players tend to get emotionally connected to their companions and the chance of losing one permanently could well be tough.

I tend to agree with your statement but I believe the amount of characters in the party will significantly affect the feelings towards the outcome. Whenever I play a party-based game, I'll have two or three favourites and the rest will never get playtime. I didn't shed a tear when Aerith died because Tifa was my preferred female character. Hell, I could of off'd my entire group except for Tifa and Cid.

Just wanted to say great observations in these posts! (I'd love to engage in depth, as usual, but I've been a bit short on time of late).

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Original post by Brien Shrimp Scenario: A game about a revolution or civil war or something along those lines. The main character wants to join the "enemy" side, but has to abandon his friends and family in order to fight for what he believes in. The alternative is living a lie, and perhaps having to fight against the side you believed in.

You'll definitely need a way to make sure that the player is emotionally engaged in the issues of the struggle at this point, otherwise they'll probably powermax and go with the "best" choice.

One way to do this is to bar it from being anything other than a situation that becomes possible only after you've made choices and risks that make the game guess that you're invested.

EDIT: Minor fix

[Edited by - Wavinator on April 4, 2005 1:09:48 AM]

This is a very interesting thread and very good question. I want to second intrest86 with the ideas how the response to the player regarding his decisions should be brought back to him. One very necessery thing is that all results are not immediate. On the other hand, this brings up more questions that are not so trivial when the effect of the decision is not immediate. Here is few just from the top of my head:

- Does the player notice that the events take place due to his decisions
- Does the player notice his decisions made it better or worse
- How to present the alternatives

In general I think it is necessery to give clear view to the player what happened and why. In many games that have a sort of 'simulation' running under the hood, the adjustments (decisions) that the player makes vanish to the mass of variables that are simulated. Eventually the player maybe steered the system towards a certain state, but there is no sufficiet feedback (also immediate) that is clearly related to decisions that the player consciously made.

Now thinking about it - one category of choises can be to pick between the immediate benefit or the long term benefit.

LessBread mentioned Schindler's List and I feel this deserves to be elaborated upon as it is a wonderful example of what is in my opinion one of the hardest choices we can face.

When I read about or watch a documentary regarding the Holocaust I always proposition myself with the dilema "If I was witnessing this, would I try to stop it or would I ignore it to protect the lives of myself and my family?".
The humanitarian in me immediately thrusts out his chest and insists that of course I would do all I could to intervene and save as many innocent people as possible. But then I stop and I look at my family, my friends and I wonder if in that situation I could risk the ones I love for people who are unfortunately not as important to me.

In the case of Schindler's List, even when he was actively helping his workers he was still a silent witness to the atrocities carried out upon them and he had to remain silent in order to help them further.

Imagine a fictional situation in which you are undercover as a guard in a work camp where the inmates are beaten, tortured and killed as forms of punishment (possibly not that far from reality). The player would be forced to witness these acts without any intervention on his part in order for his disguise to remain intact, thus allowing him to be instrumental in the downfall of the camp. While it would be possible for the player to try and save a person about to be killed, they would be forced to weigh the life of this one person against the lives of everyone in the camp - not to mention their own.

The difficulty comes in conveying the emotion of such a decision in a game. Movies make their viewers sympathetic towards characters they wish to use in emotional situations, either by throwing a scrap of information about the character to the audience to interest them or by making the victim seem helpless i.e. The one-armed man in Schindler's List.

This could be an intersting way of making a choice hard for the player. Using the same example as above, the player could became emotionally attached to an inmate but is then placed in a situation where he must choose between the life of this character or an important character such as the leader of the resistance (with whom the player has no emotional connection).

In reality what makes a choice hard is that most of the time you won't have much time to make your decision, and so it is not the choice itself that is hard but the outcome. It could make a game more involving if a decision had to be made in a split-second. Obviously each choice would need to allow the game to progress rather than one resulting in an annoying game over screen.

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Original post by MrP In the case of Schindler's List, even when he was actively helping his workers he was still a silent witness to the atrocities carried out upon them and he had to remain silent in order to help them further.

For a more fun and butt-kicking variation on this dilemma, take a look at Sin City. Specifically, pay attention to Hartigan's sililoquy when the police are interrogating (read: horribly beating) him. Great books, excellent movie. Lots of tough choices, and plenty of tough guys to make them.

I agree about the consequences being the tough part, but I'd say that consequences are what choices are all about. Anything that burns a bridge, closes a door, or otherwise brings about some permanent negative change is a "tough" decision.

Decision-making is a process of weighing outcomes, and when one result is infinite (i.e. - I'll _never_ see this girl again, or I'll _always_ have just one eye, etc.), it's hard to beat that. So, the toughest choices are those that pit two indispensible needs against one another. Crime or injustice, betrayal or compliance, death or dishonor, these are all situations in which something will definitely happen, and it will definitely be momentous, but just what it is is left, in part, up to the agent.

As to the Schindler’s list, I don’t think it’s a good idea to put player in such morally biased situation where one group is definitely victimized and the other is ‘monsterized’. In this type of scenario there is little space for player’s individual reaction and ‘moral’ stance. Actually the player is presented with rather lame choice: to become hero at the expense of his family or to become reasonable person (coward) at the expense of the victims.

BTW, although emotionally disturbing as it is the situation is not very logical. How come that a quite sensitive person (as the choice presented obviously depicts him) chose to become concentration camp administrator or guard? Most probably he would avoid places designated with barbed wire and armed guards. And if player makes such decision like a rescue of an inmate in a split of a second he would most probably end up being shot on the spot since he would have no time to analyze the consequences of such critical course action.

How about this example of a hard\ugly choice: a ruthless dictator has to choose whether to keep a capable subordinate for the sake of the state interests or get rid of him cause he might become too prominent to be a subordinate.