Hi, fellow GameDevs. I'm working on an FPS. Come on .. keep on reading! :) The game has two factions and the player can choose on which side to play. The story on each side is broken into several pieces which take place all over the world. Each location has around 5 missions. Now comes the interesting part. All those 5 missions are connected in such a way that if you fail one mission it alters the story line. For example, first mission: an enemy general is planning an attack on your base. Your mission is to assassin the general. If you succeed you prevent the attack on the base (and do counter attack in the next mission), but if you fail you have to defend the base (in the next mission). Though, in some points I'd like the different story-lines to merge again, otherwise it gets too convoluted. I mean .. first mission divides into two results, those two divide again and so on .. it gets too massive. Whenever player dies, he/she can read some text on the screen of how the result influenced the story. Then the player can select to "Accept result" or "Retry mission". But my main concern is this: Would the player accept failing a mission as an actual result? I fear that they will try again until they succeed. It's all fine and dandy but then they would only see the main story line. I don't want to take the retry option away from the player either. Only limit it in some way .. I mean in real life when something goes wrong you have to life with the consequences. It's only sometimes when you can retry. Thanks in advance!

You can't really stop people from reloading a saved game or retrying - and if you tried to stop them, they'd resent it - so I think you need to tip the balance a little bit in your favour to prevent them from doing that.

I guess the obvious way to tip the balance is not to let on that they've failed the mission. Simply show it as mission completed and move on to the next level. There are any number of games where "dying" at a particular part of a level is unavoidable, so they need not necessarily know that they've failed. They may think that they would never have been able to complete it.

Another way would be to make it clear from the start that these decisions will come up, and give people motivation to go on if they fail. Make it clear that certain endings won't happen, certain missions won't be played, or perhaps reward them for failure with an achievement or powerup that they wouldn't get otherwise. After all, if they failed, they're probably struggling a little bit and an extra weapon or a few more grenade might come in handy.

Depending on how the plot worked out, you could easily have missions connect.

In the example given, if you assassinate the enemy commander, you start a counterattack. However, if you fail to assassinate the enemy commander, you'll have to build up a base defense, and fight. But after the base defense, you can still counterattack. You could even give different starting bonuses depending on which mission you came from: if you assassinated the commander, the enemy starts out with a worse base and little standing army, while if you failed to assassinate the commander, you would start out with a medium base, but your enemy would be prepared.

However, the real question becomes this: is failure always an option? Some missions failing works. Your objective, if failed, isn't going to cause you to lose the overall campaign. But if you're down to your last base, and the enemy crushes you, do you lose? Because if you can lose every mission and still "win," a lot of the hardcore gamers are going to be very upset.

For most games, failure is NOT an option. Which is why you get extra lives, or "try again" screens... or in some extreme cases... having to start over from the beginning.

Sure you could have the game continue if the player failed to assassinate the commander... but it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun or easy. Judging by the ideas given... it would just become harder and harder to win. Fail to kill the commander and the enemy army is stronger. Fail to defeat the army, and they call for backup, making it even harder to defeat them. Fail to defeat the backup and you're probably going to end up captured or killed. Fail to escape from enemy prison, and you get executed or die of old age.... etc.

While it's possible to let the player fail, is it really worth it? If you don't want to make the game increasingly harder for each failure (the realistic approach), then you're going to spend a lot of time trying to balance out both possibilities (accomplishing and failing) to make sure that one route isn't more difficult than the other. (or easier)

The reason most games don't allow failure is because of that balance, and because it means twice the game to make... if not more.

It's like the alternate universe theory. In one universe you get up and go to work on time and the day goes off without a hitch. In another universe, you leave for work late and get in a fatal car accident. In another universe you leave for work early, your boss notices this and gives you a promotion.

The question is... do you really want to work out scenarios and different storylines for every failure or accomplishment the player makes? Not only do you need to come up with the storylines, but if you don't balance out the gameplay, it could be a disaster.

Just something to think about.

In games, the player forgets himself and be under the game spell in a way similar to the hypnotic state. He merges himself along with the game character, sharing feelings and thoughts.
If the player suffers from a defect or failure, he won't like his game character to endure that pain.
No body needs to fail. Failure is not an option.
In my opinion manage your fates to be two successful paths with a third option of failure.
That way you'll have all your 16 or 32 endings in addition to 62 failure fates endings. The player will play the game with so many possibilities; failure is not one of them.
Emad Michael
My games blog: http://emadmichael.wordpress.com/

Failure is fine. Play the Megaman Zero games. I don't know about all of them, but the first one has missions you can fail. It alters the later levels. Of course, people will reload, but to prevent that, you can give them a side up when they fail.

You might want to look into Colony Wars. Its an old Playstation (as in, the first one) space shooter. In that game, if you failed a mission, rather than giving you a game over, it would put you on a different story branch. The game had (IIRC) five different endings, depending on how your missions progressed. Also, it allowed you to get back on to your desired mission branch if you succeed in later missions. I wish I could find a screen-shot of the mission board, because it perfectly displays the concept, but Google turns up nothing.

The reason I feel that it worked is because failing gives you different story content than if you had won all the time, and that failure isn't "permanent." On a few hard missions, I would just suck up the loss and then win the next mission to get back onto the story track I wanted to be on. I also didn't mind failing because I planned to see all the missions/endings, so I just mentally marked the mission as "win on the second play-through."

But anyway, it seems very similar to your idea, so you might want to see if you can grab a cheap copy of the game or one of its sequels. I think it worked out extremely well, and the game got pretty good reviews.

Thanks for the replies!

@sybixsus - You're right. I shouldn't let the player know it failed but simply show as mission completed. And then the player can choose to load a saved game if they wanted to or continue.

@doomhascome - Of course the final result is final. It's just the different paths that lead to it. I was thinking that if you lose in one region but manage to win all the others (or at least over 50%) then you can get a special mission in those regions to wipe out the enemy once and for all.

@Konidias - That's what I wanted to hear. You're right about the increasing difficulty when you're not winning all the time. But it would be more of not having to do or doing certain missions, not a totally different story line for each forking. Even if it creates an unbalanced line, it's the choice the player made.

@Rycross - Thanks. That's the concept I'm after. I'll look that game up.

I like your idea and may have an example of how failure could be rewarding...

I seem to recollect a game called Samurai Warriors (PS2 2004) having unlockables that required you to "FAIL" in certain tasks (that in turn wouldn't affect the overall outcome of the mission or the story line). Perhaps giving players incentives so they want to see the failure options would make the idea of failure a little bit more pallatable...

In some cases, these failures (or successes) would unlock a different story path, or give you the chance to collect a rare item - and there are those of us who do enjoy exploring different paths or getting a cool item in the game.

I hope this encourages you to give the "FAILURE an option" a try. :)

In Civilization, when you lose a unit, you simply have a new situation and the game keeps rolling without missing a beat.

Maybe try not plastering "YOU LOSE" on the screen, or giving them the idea that you're not following the "main" storyline; just keep it moving.

You'll have to be creative to make it look like its actually all going according to plan - like they're not playing a "choose your own story" game where they keep picking the "I suck" option.