Justin Achilli

Fallout forced players to decide on skills or allocate points without seeing how those choices would affect how the game played.Over New Year's, I was playing a tabletop game with Will and Ned when Will said that he would estimate that the primary emotional response a player has when playing a computer RPG is regret. It sounds absurd, that an entire entertainment genre and medium are made up of predominantly negative experiences, but there's something to it.
In a computer RPG, it's inherent that once a player makes a choice, that choice walls off certain content. If you kill the prince, for example, you don't see the "didn't kill the prince" content. Unless the game is completely open-ended, it's impossible to tell a convincing story. Unless the game restricts certain content after certain player decisions, it's impossible to tell a plausible story.

Well, perhaps not impossible, but certainly tremendously difficult to the point of no one yet having done it. The greater point, however, is that something's being set aside that, as a player, I can't experience, and that's the origin of the regret. In many cases, replayability solves part of this, as you can always revisit that excluded content by coming back and making the choices that open it up to you, but, one, do you want to go back through and undertake the whole story again, including the vast amount that will be repeated content and, two, how do you know which choice to make that opens the previously obstructed content to you?

Being able to respec a character who already exists is a functional way of ameliorating regret at prior choices made without adequate information. World of Warcraft charges the player for the feature, while tabletop D&D 4e allows respecs as part of standard advancement.I think this is a problem. In particular, I think this is a problem when the story is elevated to a state of precedence over the game. That might sound weird coming from a guy who spent 15 years working on "storytelling games," but the distinction is in the medium. In a tabletop game, the gamemaster, as a participant in the game process, creates the relevant content on demand. It might not be available instantly, but in most cases, the gamemaster won't waste time designing the cult's lair beneath the wealthy socialite's estate if the group decides they want to hunt werewolves along the interstate headed out of the city. In some cases, the gamemaster will have that designed beforehand, but there's always an opportunity to reroute the story should the players choose, which isn't an option in a computer game with linear plot and progression.

For myself, even the process of character creation is often a source of regret. At the beginning of a game, when I'm asked to make a character, I'm making decisions the impact of which I can't possibly know. I haven't played the game, so I don't know if I'll enjoy the play of the fighter-type more or if a spy results in more interesting play. In some cases, entire swaths of content become unavailable immediately, as with the starting areas in World of Warcraft (which I can at least travel to as a character of a different race, but, as a noob might not have the knowledge that I can travel to those other areas).

Hence, the regret. I've been forced to make a choice, but I haven't been given the proper information to make it. Does something else exist as an option? What if that would have been a better choice for me?

It's odd to think that when a game ships, it does so with the developer's knowledge that a given player is never going to see a significant portion of it. It's a bit like buying a full tackle box but only needing a few bobs and lures -- why make the rest of the box's contents and bother putting them in the box? Granted, someone, somewhere is going to see the content that someone else doesn't, but there's something undeniably odd about releasing a product that the developer knows won't be used completely. As a player, I know those other lures and bobs are in the tackle box, and I want to use them, but by the construction of the tackle box, I just can't.

In most cases, I can research my options, such as by finding a FAQ or walkthrough or by asking a community of players. That's outside the game, though. That's not playing the game, that's an additional amount of preparation I have to do before actually playing the game. While certain hardcores might enjoy that bit of pre-game, that's not what your average player is going to enjoy.

The Fable series does a good job of teaching the player controls and world lore before her choices become a critical part of the game's flow.The challenge, then, and the way to manage this critical information is to design the game and the story so that the preparation occurs within the game environment and before the character makes a significant choice that affects what content the player participates in and what is held away from him. This may break immersion, but that's okay -- the very necessity of the information is because the player will be playing the game. It's not going to suddenly wreck an epic if a mouseover box tells the player his range increment will double, because he's already put the DVD in the drive and is manipulating the controller.

(As I write this, I've learned from @criticalhits that WotC plans to offer a solo D&D game that "helps generate [the] character while playing." That's a great idea, and an excellent example of introducing the player to game concepts with a progressive information flow. Fill in the blanks as to what you want to do and how you want to play as you're playing, as opposed to learning world lore and control schemes in a vast block beforehand.)