Hello I recommend watching this TED talk:

">Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?, before responding to this post. In the lecture Dan Gilbert talks about happiness and that people in general have incorrect assumptions about happiness. We tend to overestimate the long-term impact good/bad events will have on our happiness (impact bias). This is not that relevant to games as we often are interested in rewarding the players in the short-term. Another much more relevant point (in regard to games) is that if you make a choice that you are stuck with you actually mentally adjust so that you are more happy with the decision. If you have the option to change your choice you are less happy with the choice you make. Most game designers tend to think that choice makes players happy the ability to change your mind and change the choice you are making makes players happy. Actual experiments show the opposite is true. Some game concepts tries to maximize the choices the player have and gives the player the option to change his choice. Many games allow the player to save the game at any point, which means the player can change his choice by reloading previous saved game. Since the primary purpose of most games is to entertain players and make them happy I think this is something every game designer need to consider. What do you think? Is there any other areas these incorrect assumptions impact the game design? How do we change the design of the game based on this? [Edited by - Opwiz on February 14, 2009 8:11:01 AM]

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Original post by Opwiz Most game designers tend to think that choice makes players happy. Actual experiments show the opposite is true.

Then call the experiments into question, because that conclusion clearly doesn't hold for all game players. It's an absurd statement to say that choice makes players unhappy, because minimising unhappiness would be effected by minimising choice while choice is a requirement for even being a player in the first place.

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Some game concepts tries to maximize the choices the player have and gives the player the option to change his choice. Many games allow the player to save the game at any point, which means the player can change his choice by reloading previous saved game.

That's not maximising choice, that's providing no choice at all. If a choice has no impact, it isn't a choice, agreed? Minimising impact (where I can 'rewind' the game state) approaches zero impact, and correspondingly approaches the absence of choice.

The player spectrum is very broad, and there are players who like games to play out like movies with little choice, and there are players who like complete control, with a lot of choice in their actions. The latter group enjoy games with many meaningful choices, and the former group aren't worthy of our time (my opinion).

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What do you think? Is there any other areas these incorrect assumptions impact the game design? How do we change the design of the game based on this?

First you have to show that the "assumption" that players enjoy choice is incorrect. I don't think you have managed to do that - the assertion is absurd.

I agree with Argus.

The assertion is silly and not based on any evidence I've ever heard of.

Ever hear of Railroading in RP games? That is essentially offering no choice by the DM/GM/[insert title here] forcing things in a particular direction (offering no choice)

It is one of those things are complained about by a large fraction (probably a majority) of people who play RP games and have ever had that happen to them. I've never heard of anyone (other than the DM/GM) saying Railroading was a good thing.

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Personally, I find both conclusions to (at best) possibly apply to a majority of gamers. I find both to be incorrect for me.

I enjoy changing past choices to see what would happen. Especially in games. Sometimes I'll replay entire battles (in something like Wesnoth) to see what would happen if I used a different strategy. Or even entire campaigns to see what a different 'experienced' unit set does to my level of success.

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Original post by Argus2 Then call the experiments into question, because that conclusion clearly doesn't hold for all game players. It's an absurd statement to say that choice makes players unhappy, because minimising unhappiness would be effected by minimising choice while choice is a requirement for even being a player in the first place.

I should not have said "Most game designers tend to think that choice makes players happy.". The point I tried to make (that I explain further down in my post) is that the ability to change the choice you are making makes the person less happy with the actual choice the person made.

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That's not maximising choice, that's providing no choice at all. If a choice has no impact, it isn't a choice, agreed? Minimising impact (where I can 'rewind' the game state) approaches zero impact, and correspondingly approaches the absence of choice.

I don't understand your logic here. If you are about to make an important choice in the game, if the game allows you to save before making your choice you have the ability to change your choice at any point after the game. As the study suggest, it is the ability to change the choice you are making that makes us unhappy.

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The player spectrum is very broad, and there are players who like games to play out like movies with little choice, and there are players who like complete control, with a lot of choice in their actions. The latter group enjoy games with many meaningful choices, and the former group aren't worthy of our time (my opinion).

This goes back to my statement that choice makes us unhappy, that was an incorrect statement, what I really wanted to say is that the ability to change the choice you are making makes the player unhappy. So I'm not trying to state that games without choices makes the player more happy.

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If you have the option to change your choice you are less happy with the choice you make.

In the context of a controlled psychological experiment, that makes sense.

But I don't really buy how you're trying to apply it to games. A good example would be an RPG where you can spend points building your character as the game progresses, like Diablo II. A player can spend his points wisely or unwisely. If I add the option of redistributing those points, sure, the player who made a good character build might be less sure and less satisfied with his choice, but the players who made bad choices will be relieved that they don't have to scrap all their work and start the game over again.

You're right insofar as the availability of quick save/load is probably a bad thing. You don't want to encourage perfectionism. But you can't apply "changeable choices are bad" as a blanket statement or blunt instrument.

Fascinating lecture and interesting topic, though I think we're about to go down the same old save game debate that pops up in this forum again and again. Time and again the debate ends in an "agree to disagree" stalemate because of how difficult it is to make a player accept loss and how difficult it is to design interesting situations involving loss.

Coming from someone who used to save and restore just to walk dialog trees and saved and restored to watch all 4 endings of Deus Ex, I don't know that unwinding a choice makes me dissatisfied. What it allows me to do is explore the fullness of the game, and I like that I'm getting full and complete use of the product-- the whole experience. I doubt that I'm alone in this.

And I don't think this applies just to saving and restoring-- take a game which gives you choices in how to approach a challenge: I find it far more fulfilling to experiment, to try different spell combos or weapons or avenues of approach. If I defeat a boss (typically an irrevocable choice that moves the whole game forward) I might go back and try to win the fight a different way if the combat was engrossing enough.

It's tough I think to talk about synthetic happiness in an already synthetic environment. Conventions of real life don't apply. We have a perceptive haze over our expectations because we're having an experience in a world that we believe MUST work a certain way in order to be enjoyable.

Take the issue of fairness: In real life, one might have to accept that some oppressive force has overwhelming odds in their favor and cannot be beaten. This foe may be able to reach into our lives and push us around in any number of ways. Yet in a game this is likely to be intolerable.

Let's use dragons, for example. Fantasy often screws up depicting what dragons are supposed to be. What makes them SO terrifying is that they should be attacking from range in a universe where few can fly. They don't stand around allowing you to hack on them. Yet if a fantasy game implemented flying dragons that nuked areas but couldn't be hit, randomly immolating the unlucky player, we'd cry foul. And that's because our synthetic happiness depends on the synthetic universe obeying certain rules which are completely arbitrary.

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Original post by drakostar In the context of a controlled psychological experiment, that makes sense. But I don't really buy how you're trying to apply it to games. A good example would be an RPG where you can spend points building your character as the game progresses, like Diablo II. A player can spend his points wisely or unwisely. If I add the option of redistributing those points, sure, the player who made a good character build might be less sure and less satisfied with his choice, but the players who made bad choices will be relieved that they don't have to scrap all their work and start the game over again.

And what this amounts to is hours lost because you didn't understand the universe the game was presenting. In Diablo 1, I tried making a Rogue that didn't use magic at all and died once I got down to the caverns. The game let me make a choice which was suboptimal but not obviously so. I wasn't unhappy because I was given a choice, I was unhappy because there was an implied assumption in how I could play the game which wasn't true.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by drakostar A player can spend his points wisely or unwisely. If I add the option of redistributing those points, sure, the player who made a good character build might be less sure and less satisfied with his choice, but the players who made bad choices will be relieved that they don't have to scrap all their work and start the game over again. And what this amounts to is hours lost because you didn't understand the universe the game was presenting. In Diablo 1, I tried making a Rogue that didn't use magic at all and died once I got down to the caverns. The game let me make a choice which was suboptimal but not obviously so. I wasn't unhappy because I was given a choice, I was unhappy because there was an implied assumption in how I could play the game which wasn't true.

It's not always a bad thing. Most choices are going to be sub-optimal, and *many* players enjoy trying to find the optimal choices. In an FPS I can choose to use all of my ammunition shooting into the sky, which is a sub-optimal decision, but I can't really blame the game for allowing me to shoot the sky even though it would be impossible to win by doing so. Finding optimal choices may involve lots of deaths and failure, which some players will like, and other players will hate, so I'm agreed with Drakostar - it depends on the player.

I think part of it is weather or not the system is zero sum. If it is, then players who care about having the perfect build will hate that they wasted some points and can no longer get it perfect. If it isn't zero sum, then you can build more in other directions and just not use the wasted parts. It takes longer but you are never prevented from getting there.

In the research the long term happiness level is compared an owner of an object that cannot be changed, versus the owner of an object that could be changed.

I understand the meaning of the research, but I am puzzled while in some life situation it seems to be valid, in other it doesn't seem so.

For example, FFXI is an MMORPG with classes. I started the game as game as Thief. When I was at high level, I played again as White Mage. I was happy with both roles and I was happy that I did not need to change my character. Does the knowledge of the research indicate that FFXI should NOT have let me replay as White Mage? Is the result of the research applicable in this context? If not, what context can it be applied to?

How do you suggest that the result of the research be applied to game design (other than your comment about game saving, since saving serves practical functions other than to allow choices)?


I would to point out that the research in the context of game design, is missing the comparison between the happiness level of those that inreversible chose one painting, versus those that could keep both paintings while knowing that some people would be forced to choose only one.

The equivalent would be like this:

Photo Class 1: The student would develop two photos, and would choose one to keep. (As in the research)

Photo Class 3: The student would develop two photos, and can keep both. They could donate any or none of them to the department.

Which class will be preferred? One year later, students of which class will be more happy? I think that in game design, the normal issue is more closely related to this context, because a game is usually design like life. The player could usually restart the game if they strongly dislike an outcome. So in that case, the situation is equivalent to a comparison between:

Photo Class 2: The student would develop two photos, and would choose one to keep. They could change their mind and swap with the other. (As in the research)

Photo Class 4: The student would develop two photos, and would choose one to keep. They could change their mind and swap, but they must also reattend all of the class lessons or pay $100 per exchange.

According to what you would expect from the research, students in Class 4 would end up being more happy with their the photo they kept than the students in Class 2. Because the more you increase the barrier to revert a decision, the more the brain would accept the current status. But is the relation monotonic? Is there a cost so low that the ultimate happiness is the same are roughly the same in both classes, but the majority of students will choose class 2:

Photo Class 5: The student would develop two photos, and would choose one to keep. They could change their mind and swap, but they must pay $1 penalty. (Note that this $1 is not mailing fee that could be justified, it is a penalty just for the sake of it.)

Will the students of Class 5 still be significantly happier given that the majority of the students would still prefer Class 2 before they take the class?


[Edited by - Wai on February 14, 2009 3:22:56 PM]

Thanks everyone that has replied so far. I find the topic to be very intriguing.

It might be true that the conclusions of the study can't be applied to choices made in games. I'm still not convinced it can't. One conclusion you can't draw from the study is that games as a whole become less fun if the player have the ability to change the choices made (some tend to argue against this position that I do not hold), e.g. having the ability to change a choice can add to the amount of gameplay and amount of fun the player can extract from the game.

I'll try to respond to more specific responses tomorrow.