[GhanBuriGhan]

from what you've described, you prefer something around the Bloodlines level.

I have not played Bloodlines so I can't say if that is an accurate assesment or not. The truth is the issue of linearity is mostly a non-issue for me, I don't think of it as a factor when I buy games. Some of my favorite story based games are KOTOR, KOTOR II, Deus Ex, NWN2 OC, F.E.A.R. and Mass Effect. As I have only played each of them only once I have no real way of knowing what their 'linearity level' is but I suspect it is around 1-2.

I think you are too hung up on this "missing content" issue. If at the end of a game you have the feeling that you have had a good ride, it should not matter to you wether you "missed" anything - the question is: did you have fun and did you get your moneys worth? It isn't relevant if you are going to replay to see the "missed" content, although that would be a nice bonus for those who like to do that. If the game offered you a more interesting experience because it adjusted to your character choices at the price of some content you didn't see, hasn't it been a better experience?

[Gareth]

Those Lone Wolf gamebooks were particularly terrible. I'd read them and then realise when I reached the end that I'd read less than half the pages! What a rip-off. 

[Morbus]

I know this is just a 'wouldn't it be cool!' thread, but keep in mind that the complexity of dev scales exponentially as you increase in your non-linearity scale.

That's not necessarily the case. You can simply have shorter games instead.

[hilf]

Since the question in poll is "what nonlinearity lvl is enough to appeal you?" not "what nonlinearity lvl you like the most?" my answer is 4. I strongly based on description:

Level 4 - Different paths for each built. Dialog Trees finally evolve past the illusion of choice, often providing paths to solve problems. The Moral scope becomes broader, going past the good/neutral/evil selection. Bloodlines fits the bill fits the bill I think.

Obviously i wont cry if this lvl is higher than 4.

[Gareth]

That's not necessarily the case. You can simply have shorter games instead.

Yes, but this is the point. It multiplies. You'll reach a point where you start having to halve the game length every time you add a new game factor to consider. 

[Morbus]

Yes, but this is the point. It multiplies. You'll reach a point where you start having to halve the game length every time you add a new game factor to consider. 

Lol, theoretically, that would be case.

But it's possible to plan something ahead and do everything according to plan without much compromise. After all, there are plenty of plot constricting mechanism that don't look bad or cheesy. Of course some settings are better than others to that effect.

[Shemar]

I think you are too hung up on this "missing content" issue. If at the end of a game you have the feeling that you have had a good ride, it should not matter to you wether you "missed" anything - the question is: did you have fun and did you get your moneys worth? It isn't relevant if you are going to replay to see the "missed" content, although that would be a nice bonus for those who like to do that. If the game offered you a more interesting experience because it adjusted to your character choices at the price of some content you didn't see, hasn't it been a better experience?

I realise it may seem that way from my posts, but in reality, while I am a completionist, missed content is not such a big issue. What happens is that in discussions like these I post with an 'all else being equal' assumption. The 'missed content' is essentially the same issue (for me that I only play games once) as 'amount of content'. While it is secondary to the quality of the content, once you take the quality out of the discussion then the quantity is what determines the value of the game.

On to your main point: I generally play games as a character that fits well into the story, I don't go out of my way to resist the flow of the story or play a character that does not fit in it, so a well designed game will (appear to) adjust well to my character choices, even if it is completely linear.

There are many times that the dialogue choices would not include the one I really want to give, or I would come up with a solution to a problem (quest) that the game was not designed to support, but I think these are issues of design and not really related to whether a game is linear or not. Overall, I have to say that linear games have a better chance of adjusting to my actions than non-linear ones, as the developer of a linear game has a lot less uncertainty of what my character has done and where he has been to work with in presenting each new situation to me.

[Joey]

I don't think the amount or the effect of choices is particularly important. Rather, it all depends on the manner in which the choices are posed; or how they aren't. Let me elaborate.

Oblivion can be regarded as fairly non-linear. A series of quests must, indeed, be completed in a certain order, but on the other hand, you have access to most individual quests from the get-go and you can visit any town you want once you're out of the sewers. While Fallout theoretically allows you to go anywhere you want, you're heavily guided into going to Shady Sands and Vault 15 first, then Junktown, then the Hub, because your information is limited. For practical purposes, Oblivion is more non-linear in its geography. It's also more non-linear in its quests, because there is no minimum level that must be met to do anything.
Let's contrast it with Deus Ex. Deus Ex, being half of a shooter, is much more linear. The order in which you play through everything is set, and you can't go back to any place unless the game takes you there. There are multiple approaches to finishing things, but you're rarely ever given the choice of objective.

Still! Like any sane-minded person, I obviously like Deus Ex better. Here's why. Deus Ex doesn't always feel the need to put you in front of choices. But it still reacts to you! Walking into the ladies bathroom isn't a predefined choice. Killing a friendly trooper after having finished the first objective isn't a set choice. Murdering the terrorist leader isn't a choice posed to you either, because everyone up to that point told you specifically not to do it.
But to all these things, the game has an answer. It has consequences that you don't expect, because you were never put in front of a choice. Whereas Oblivion would have two persons, one asking you to do x, and another asking you to do y, and Mass Effect would have you able to solve it through obviously positioned Renegade and Paragon options, Deus Ex tells you to do x, nothing more. If you have a bit of creativity and come up with option y, the game, amazingly, actually recognises that! The big difference between these methods is thus, that Deus Ex, in a lot of cases, asks for your creativity.

Let's compare other games. Arcanum's character editor isn't so great because it has so many skills - it has only one melee skill, as opposed to Blade and Blunt! - but because of the creative combinations you can make. A dashingly handsome, but evil mage? Sure. A Halfling gunsmith who can barely lift his own rifles and who only takes diminutive party members? Go ahead. A savant idiot who uses dumb dialogue but does have the intelligence to build fantastical technological contraptions? Done that. Again, creativity is king. Compare to Mass Effect, where you're a sniper rifle wielding Shepard and the game makes sure that throughout its course, you wield sniper rifles and attack from afar.

So in the end, I'd pose that I enjoy creativity, rather than linearity or non-linearity, and that the two aren't linked. I'd also point out that the poll is a bit single minded, in that I enjoy the fact that games are different from each other.

[Calego]

Who'd've thought that the concept of nonlinearity would be hard to represent on a linear scale?

Heh, it's a good poll though, Callaxes, a noble effort. I generally agree with Joey there. There's many different ways to present nonlinearity in gameplay -- Oblivion allows you to set your own schedule, Deus Ex allows you to choose your methods, Arcanum lets you define your own personality. All good things.

[JuJu]

I also mostly agree with Joey that there are different kinds of non-linearity. I'd just propose to split them into at least two categories: What I'd call non-linear interconnectivity and freedom(I almost said sandboxiness).

Freedom is the amount of choices the player has. If it is possible to access every location, every quest and character from the beginning the game has a lot of it. All the sandbox games (Mount&Blade, Space Rangers) has a lot of this but usually the content you can access is only loosely connected to other parts of the game. 

Non-linear interconnectivity is the number of different ways that actions in one part of the game interacts with other parts in more ways than just providing you with more resources. Linear games have only one way to proceed and therefore only one way how the different parts interact. Sandbox games usually have one linear plot and a lot of unconnected content, therefore their non-linear interconnectivity is also low.
The indie platformer Iji would be a good example of what I mean. Although there are no more choices in the game than the typical platformer, just to either shoot the aliens or sneak past them, what you do at any part of the game has great impact future plot and gameplay.

I hope this makes sense....

[WCG]

Can I vote for #11?   

I think our whole premise about games might be wrong, due to the purely superficial resemblance between games and movies. Books and movies are linear and passive, and therefore great media for storytelling. Games, however, are not. There's an inherent conflict between linearity and player freedom. After all, you can't tell a great story unless you can get the "player" to follow along.

Bottom line? Games shouldn't try to tell a story at all. Instead, games should create the setting (the gameworld, the NPCs, the rules, the AI, etc.) from which each player can create his own "story." Ideally (I'm sure we don't have the technology for this yet), the gameworld might continue realistically whether the player is there or not. But either way, the "story" should be unique to the player, allowing his choices, and the actions of his character(s), to create whatever story there is. In this situation, the question of linearity wouldn't apply at all.

Yes, the game developer might set up situations all through his game that would be story potential. Or he might (again, this is probably beyond us right now) set up realistic AI for every NPC, such that "stories" are inherent in the setting (the results of banditry, jealously, crop failures, war, etc.), from both NPC and player actions, plus chance (different on every play of the game, so that the situations would be unique for each player). And, of course, the developer would use his own creativity to set up his unique world - including, if he wished, world-encompassing dangers. But it would be entirely the player's actions that would determine the "story."

If you're curious, I posted more about this just recently on my blog:

http://garthright.blogspot.com/2010/03/role-playing-games-arent-movies.html

But basically, I think that mainstream game developers have gone in the wrong direction with games (many of them are still fun to play, of course). Only a few Indies are beginning - just beginning - to explore what I suspect will be the future of gaming. This will be a very creative future, because it will unleash the creativity in all of us. (I'm not claiming that everyone will write his own story, although the popularity of after-action reports on the Internet shows how this is starting to work already, but just that we'll each "create our own story" with our actions in a game.)

Of course, I could always be wrong. 

Bill

[Justme]

Bottom line? Games shouldn't try to tell a story at all. Instead, games should create the setting (the gameworld, the NPCs, the rules, the AI, etc.) from which each player can create his own "story." Ideally (I'm sure we don't have the technology for this yet), the gameworld might continue realistically whether the player is there or not. But either way, the "story" should be unique to the player, allowing his choices, and the actions of his character(s), to create whatever story there is. In this situation, the question of linearity wouldn't apply at all.

[Intelligence]So you like MMORPGS.

[Shemar]

While I could not possibly disagree any more intensely or passionately with the premise that games should not try to tell a story (which I will not go into because I see no point in trying to sell a color TV to the color blind), MMOs in their current form are also incapable of many of the things he is asking for, like the world reacting realistically to the actions of the player. At least the big commercial MMOs I have played are so static that nothing ever changes no matter what the player does.

[galsiah]

...premise that games should not try to tell a story...

Just to be clear, WCG is against the "tell", not against the "story". It's easy to see why you'd want to disagree passionately with throwing out story (which no-one has suggested); it's much harder to see why you'd object to a switch from a "told" story, to a created one. Clearly it's simpler to construct a good story at design time, than to have one emerge during gameplay - but that doesn't make the goal of emergent story less worthwhile.
Note also that abandoning a static story doesn't need to mean the abandonment of communication of static ideas/ideals/concepts/messages/situations. A designer's vision can be communicated through the game-world itself, rather than through a particular story that happens within that world (naturally, this requires a world that isn't hopelessly generic).

[Intelligence check failed]So you like MMORPGS.

Fixed.

MMORPGS (in anything like their current form) are almost entirely wrong for the kind of approach WCG is advocating. For the creation of interactive 'story', you want the player to have as much agency as possible to shape events. If there are thousands of players in a given world, each will have a tiny impact on world events, and very little authorship of any significant story. Things would need to be pretty highly simulationist/procedural/process-led, but that's probably where similarity with MMORPGS would end. Of course you could try to overcome these issues in a MMORPG situation, but I don't see how it could reasonably be achieved.


I agree with WCG in general, though I don't think it makes sense to say that all games should/will be this way. There's nothing wrong with games that are fairly linear, and tell a pre-defined story, so long as they entertain. I'd just say such games are very dull in terms of exploring the potential of games as a medium.
Once we're talking about games that do aim to explore that potential, I think it's unhelpful to use the term 'story' at all - it just encourages thinking in terms of linear/static trivializations of a game world. I wouldn't aim for "emergent story", or "player-authored-story" or similar - just for an interesting game-world where the player has a high degree of agency, and a load of interesting stuff happens. Shipping in a load of terminology invented to talk about books/movies/reports/plans... might be helpful in constructing a generally linear game, but it's likely to be an impediment to more interesting progress. [again, that's not to say that a static/linear story can't be hugely interesting in literary terms - it's just dull in game-design terms]


In answer to the OP, I require very little non-linearity to be entertained as a player - though more is usually a good thing. I find highly non-linear setups by far the most interesting, but I guess it'll be a long time before any such game really gets things right.

[Shemar]

...premise that games should not try to tell a story...

Just to be clear, WCG is against the "tell", not against the "story". It's easy to see why you'd want to disagree passionately with throwing out story (which no-one has suggested); it's much harder to see why you'd object to a switch from a "told" story, to a created one. Clearly it's simpler to construct a good story at design time, than to have one emerge during gameplay - but that doesn't make the goal of emergent story less worthwhile.

Actually you are wrong. I very passiontely and completely disagree with the "created" story. The strong story is the main reason I play RPGs and also the main reason I dislike non-linear "sanbox-y" RPGs. In fact the only reason I would ever play an RPG without a powerful linear storyline is if it included a good turn based combat system (see AoD).

As a player I have zero interest in pointlessly wallowing around worlds without a purpose. For many people maybe exploration and contact with the new and unknown is a purpose on itself, but I find below zero interest to it (in RL and in games alike).

I do not expect many people to have the same tastes like me in this forum, which is why I said I see no point in trying to sell color TVs to the color blind, by which I meant that in this forum I do not expect people to even be able to comperhend why I like linear story-based games. It has also been discussed to death in another thread so there is no reason to flood this one about it either.

In theory one could create a game where the 'emergent' story is as good as a (mostly) pre-written linear storyline, but in practice that would just mean a much much shorter game for me, so a much lesser value to the game, since I honestly see zero value in the non-linearity (gameplay wise I actually see it as a negative as non-linear games are usually filled with dead time).