4 ms·

So much of the computer adventure gaming / MMO style could benefit from understanding how these books worked. Everything is so linear these days with no failed

So much of the computer adventure gaming / MMO style could benefit from understanding how these books worked. Everything is so linear these days with no failed paths. While some games may present choices you can usually find a strategy guide that shows all the ones that will fail as everything is fixed. Still the maps match up with a lot of the examples I have seen of flow charts/maps/grids from authors who scope out their stories and then fill in where its important and interesting with the actual text we get to read

jug 9y ago
I wonder how much of this is due to poor understanding vs lower effort to save development costs.
- tetraca 9y ago
  I always thought it was a matter of economy more than anything else. If all you need to do is produce text it's very "easy" to build a massive branching storyline with lots of failure conditions and truly modifying developments since text is cheap. When each of these branches also need additional hours of voice acting, more characters to design and animate, more locations to model, etc it becomes increasingly expensive to make a storyline that has strongly branching paths. There was a time where there was a nice sweet spot that allowed for a decent amount of creativity and branching and opportunity for failure, but as games started to have more and more of these details, developers started making choices more minor, making choices that are illusory, and building at most 2-3 endings that only really branch very late game or mostly rely on mechanics (oftentimes how many people you killed) so that there is less that needs to be adjusted in terms of plot. Secondarily, you also likely have pressure to make a game that is enjoyable for as long as possible and caters to as many people as possible, which discourages building/allowing critical failure points like the pie in King's Quest V, and maybe also discourages branching too hard so that all content that can be experienced is mostly easily digestible in one playthrough (the subtext being, if you're only ever going to be paid once per user in the context of a single player game, that any path not explored by most people is essentially a massive waste of money so the experience should be streamlined to a tunnel as far as possible to a cost limit the minimum expected adventure).
- deleted 9y ago
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Jonnax 9y ago
Have you played a game called Heavy Rain? It has multiple protagonists that can die during the course of the story and the plot will continue moving forwards. But also there's scenarios where you have to convince a person to take your side and it's possible to fail. I didn't play their later game but I hear that their new one 'Detroit' is going to really build on the idea of failure and continuation.
jghn 9y ago
I remember at least one of the old SSI D&D games had moments where if you failed to do the right thing the game was unbeatable. Not sure how that sort of thing would fly these days.
- lsaferite 9y ago
  I, for one, would love for a game to give me choices and for those choices to have in-game consequences like failing to complete the game.

jug 9y ago

I wonder how much of this is due to poor understanding vs lower effort to save development costs.

tetraca 9y ago
I always thought it was a matter of economy more than anything else. If all you need to do is produce text it's very "easy" to build a massive branching storyline with lots of failure conditions and truly modifying developments since text is cheap. When each of these branches also need additional hours of voice acting, more characters to design and animate, more locations to model, etc it becomes increasingly expensive to make a storyline that has strongly branching paths. There was a time where there was a nice sweet spot that allowed for a decent amount of creativity and branching and opportunity for failure, but as games started to have more and more of these details, developers started making choices more minor, making choices that are illusory, and building at most 2-3 endings that only really branch very late game or mostly rely on mechanics (oftentimes how many people you killed) so that there is less that needs to be adjusted in terms of plot. Secondarily, you also likely have pressure to make a game that is enjoyable for as long as possible and caters to as many people as possible, which discourages building/allowing critical failure points like the pie in King's Quest V, and maybe also discourages branching too hard so that all content that can be experienced is mostly easily digestible in one playthrough (the subtext being, if you're only ever going to be paid once per user in the context of a single player game, that any path not explored by most people is essentially a massive waste of money so the experience should be streamlined to a tunnel as far as possible to a cost limit the minimum expected adventure).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Jonnax 9y ago

Have you played a game called Heavy Rain? It has multiple protagonists that can die during the course of the story and the plot will continue moving forwards. But also there's scenarios where you have to convince a person to take your side and it's possible to fail. I didn't play their later game but I hear that their new one 'Detroit' is going to really build on the idea of failure and continuation.

jghn 9y ago

I remember at least one of the old SSI D&D games had moments where if you failed to do the right thing the game was unbeatable. Not sure how that sort of thing would fly these days.

lsaferite 9y ago
I, for one, would love for a game to give me choices and for those choices to have in-game consequences like failing to complete the game.