   Choice in Games
  I'll be using Bioshock as an example, but I haven't played much more than 40 minutes into it A.T.M so don't worry, I can't reveal too much.I've been thinking a lot about the choices we have in games lately, as you may already know. But after playing Bioshock and reading some of the articles posted about the choice between whether you harvest the little girls or not, it got me thinking about why we do what we do in games and how it relates to who we actually are. When it all boils down, the answer on everyones lips seems to be "it doesn't really matter, it's a videogame". But just because it's a game, does that make it O.K to kill little girls for you to become stronger?The game really does look at the human response quite a bit throughout the experience. Truthfully, I havent finished the game yet, so I can't say just how much at the moment. But from what I've seen, the game also seems to be a -dig- at the human response. For instance, the fact that the entire city is crawling with insane people who have genetically altered themselves to be that way. They kill everyone and anything in their way just so they can splice themselves up some more. And whats the first thing you do when you get down there, after seeing the chaos? You splice yourself up with some electro power.Depending on whether the user chooses to splice themselves more is up to them, building your stats up to become stronger. Quite frankly I was a little disappointed to hear I wouldn't go insane from splicing myself too much, but what are you gonna do. What comes in to play next are the little sisters, the lifeblood of Rapture. The things you want. The things you need! Any experienced FPS player will gladly harvest the small girls in order to obtain more ADAM. "Hell yeah, more ADAM means more weapons!". So, of course we will. But after watching a little girl squirm for her life between your hands and begging you not to kill her, harvesting her seems like a pretty savage response. Where are the limits?Although the choice in Bioshock to harvest the girls habours different gameplay effects, the choice merely makes you pick one or the other to get a different ending. You can harvest the girls, get a lot more powerful and the game is a ton easier. Or you can let them go, get a different ending and pat yourself on the back for not killing small children. That's what people think of. They don't think about the fact that they are killing a small girl so they can become stronger and succeed in their overall mission; this is what I was referencing before, the poke at the human response to the current circumstances. Even though you are in a world where everyone is insane, you still follow suit.I think in order to implement a real kind of choice for a player, then the choices need to have equal pro's and con's; both should excel and hinder you in some way. This will force a choice from the player that isn't derived from the necessity of success; instead of the user basing their choices on statistics and how the choice will effect their game, they will base it on personal choice, what they want to do. This reveals quite a bit about the specific user that an engine could use to it's advantage to change gameplay and the way objects or characters appear to the player. Say if you choose to harvest all the little girls and you become all nicely spliced up, then after a while whenever you see one of their tunnels your player may walk slower and look towards it, hindering your view of the next room. Maybe everything but the tunnel will go a little blurry.I think that the usual "good response = good story and happy characters vs bad response = stronger character but alternate ending" is just not going to cut it. It's too simplified and you pretty much are telling the player to be bad so they can become stronger. There needs to be an implementation of emotion somehow.Discuss if you like.   
Quote:Original post by skribble_styleI think that the usual "good response = good story and happy characters vs bad response = stronger character but alternate ending" is just not going to cut it. It's too simplified and you pretty much are telling the player to be bad so they can become stronger. There needs to be an implementation of emotion somehow.I don't really follow. The emotion is in the player. The choice offered seems fairly balanced, if you take emotion into account. Given the choice between "good behavior = power + good story" and "bad behavior = power + bad story," everyone would choose to be good. The "interesting" part is when you use power as a reward to tempt the player to be "bad." It makes it a viable choice. And you can still finish the game if you're "good," right?I haven't been paying much attention to this game (it certainly isn't going to run on anything I own), but based on your description it sounds pretty damn disturbing. But it also sounds very deliberately disturbing... and whether that's some sort of social commentary or just an exercise in making players queasy, it wouldn't be as effective if the choices were more equal.Edit for further tangential thoughts:As a species, we've evolved the ability to empathize with other people. As a side-effect, we sometimes end up empathizing with representations of people, even when we know they're not real. That's what makes fiction work. But it doesn't mean we can't tell the difference. Just because you'd kill a bunch of girl-representations in a videogame to get some equally imaginary weapons doesn't mean you're a danger to real little girls.So yes, that makes it okay. But you don't have to do it if you don't want to.   ;  'It doesn't really matter, it's just a videogame.'I had a lot more written, but it wasn't terribly coherent. Basically, RPGs lack the content to implement much more and they can't be totally balanced or the decision is meaningless (since it doesn't effect gameplay). And I think that faced with the in-game decision as simple as they are, the visual/plot representation of the gameplay choice is/should be meaningless in your decision making process.   ;  But that's what I mean.The emotion is in the player, yes, but they are not using it because of the dynamics of what video games are. Tempting the player with power to become evil will just make the player become evil. The reason people like to play video games is the existential feeling of succession; we are driven to advance, that is life. Video games feed off this, knowing that we simply want to win to make our character advance, hence the reason MMO's are so popular even though most lack in substance. It is this reason that I think choice in games should be equal between good and bad, to reveal a "true" choice from the player. Lets go to Bioshock again. FYI, once again, going insane is not part of the gameplay. Say you use too many plasmids and splice yourself so much that you begin to lose control of certain aspects of gameplay, but you became more powerful than you ever could have before. You would have less control over your movement, breathing, posture, aiming and attention, but you could destroy everyone a lot more easily. However if you don't use plasmids, your accuracy increases 10 fold, your relations with characters are better, your attention to detail may increase; adding slight glows around objects you should pay attention to, making them more obvious to the eye. A mix between splicing and normality will give you the best of both worlds etc. I just think that players should be given an EQUAL choice between good and bad, having both selections help and hinder you in gameplay and story.This is where the player has to decide for themselves, not for the game. Should I kill this little girl and become more insanely powerful, or should I let her go and increase my skills the different way, which will make me as powerful, just in a different way? It's the difference between a choice for your statistics and a choice for your morals.   ;  Except there is no choice for morals. It's a (single player) video game. Whatever affect your decision makes is moot as soon as the program closes.   ;  There's a funny thing about emotions... no people will have the exact same reaction to a situation, and for the same reasons.  Making choices that bring about a emotional response is great, it gives more to the game, but you can't expect everyone to feel bad because they killed the little girl... everyone is different.  All you can hope to do is put the material out there... how people take is is completely up to them.   ;  Not totally true. Although I do agree that the response from each player is totally different, I don't think that you can pull an emotional response from one player and not from another. I think if certain method were placed within a games engine to process information that was user specific, then you could alter the games engine to facilitate this.Alas, I've also thought of the power of persuasion the game would need to implement for the player to really be swayed one way or the other. A circumstance which the player needs to really think about, an element which is not yet integrated into any game we've seen. I believe the engine needs to take the player experience into account; what they look at, how frantic they get, their weapon of choice, how often they sneak, whether or not they obtain certain items in certain areas etc. These elements need to be studied by the engine in real-time and transfered into data that is implemented into game-play on the fly.You can tell a lot about a player from a weapon that they favor. Shot-gunners love to run around blasting, occasionally hiding at a corner for a few seconds and then leaving to run and gun again. A pistol user will focus on accuracy and will more often than not go for head-shots. A machine gunner favors cover and peaks to take short bursts, occasionally switching positions for a better view.Tons of statistics can be taken from such simple studies and could be added into the engine, creating a user defined world without them even knowing it. This, I believe, would create a more immersive and personalized experience. It's sketchy at best, I know. But it's an idea!   ;  I just finished the game a few days ago, and I never harvested a single Little Sister.  I know for a fact that my real-world sense of morals kept me from doing so.  The great thing about this is that the game actually rewards you if you avoid the instant gratification of 160 ADAM (the reward for harvesting/killing a girl).  If you rescue a girl, you only get 80 ADAM, but you get a huge bonus a little bit later in the level.  You'll eventually find a teddy bear stuffed with 200 ADAM and a few other nice bonuses like health packs and new plasmids (i.e. spells).  This happens every three sisters you rescue, IIRC.  So the true "Harvest vs. Rescue Little Sisters in Bioshock" equation is...160 ADAM x 3 Little Sisters + Bad ending + Feel bad = 80 ADAM x 3 Little Sisters + 200 ADAM + Plasmid + health pack + Good ending + Feel goodIgnoring the different story and the player's emotions (or lack thereof), you're looking at 480 ADAM vs. 440 ADAM + other good items.  So the real question is will you be evil and take the quick reward, or be good and wait patiently for a potentially better reward?  Its not quite as simple as killing hookers in GTA, and the game is better for it.- Mike   ;Quote:Original post by ortorinThere's a funny thing about emotions... no people will have the exact same reaction to a situation, and for the same reasons.  Making choices that bring about a emotional response is great, it gives more to the game, but you can't expect everyone to feel bad because they killed the little girl... everyone is different.  All you can hope to do is put the material out there... how people take is is completely up to them.Not actually the case, I'll share what you can do at some point in the future.This is the big problem for story-games, and what makes them inferior to movies and novels as a storytelling medium.MGS and Final Fantasy give the players very few choices, and the choices they made were insignificant, and that is why they are so immersive. Movies and novels have no choice - no choice means optimum immersion capability.Well almost...Edit: scribble style - we are thinking on the same lines... what do you think is the key to it? I've spent 6 months figuring it out and pretty certain I have the answer.   ;  I think games have the potential to be more immersive than other media, precisely because of the potential for player choice. I think they fail because players continually bump into reminders that it's "just a game" -- including the inability to make the choices they want to make.   