The Good and Bad of Game Design

     NYU’s Game Center video about Designing Narrative Choice into video games showcases the concerns of combining gameplay with a story. The speakers for this video believe that player choice allows the gamer to communicate what he or she wants and feels. This means that the choices the player makes should have consequences that entertains or enlightens the gamer while furthering the narrative. The game designer can cheapen the story and the player’s choice if he or she provides various choices, but allows only one choice to let the player move forward in the game. This is an issue seen in many games when the player can select a dialogue choice, but is forced to choose a particular dialogue option after exhausting the other choices.  This creates discontinuity and lessens the player’s sense of agency.

     However, making all the narrative choices in a video game can also weaken the importance of a story. If players feel like there is a right or wrong decision to be made, they may continually restart the game to see if their choices had the consequences they wanted. The writers for the Walking Dead video game found a way around this by telling the player their action would have a consequence, but not when or how those consequences would appear. This allowed players to make fun, impactful decisions while keeping them invested in the current narrative.

     This video made me reconsider games with discontinuous stories and why they are that way. Often the game designer has to work within the purview of his or her team, meaning the choices the designer can add is largely determined by the skill and number of artist and programmers. As a result, designers often sacrifice the story in favor of other game elements. That being said, I think the Walking Dead writers were ingenious for making the story the heart of the game instead of surviving zombies. I doubt the game would have been as nearly as moving if the team had undermined the development of the story.