{"id":737,"date":"2010-01-29T23:14:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T07:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/?p=737"},"modified":"2010-01-29T23:14:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T07:14:54","slug":"day-352-meaningful-choices-in-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"Day 352: meaningful choices (in games)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I talked briefly<\/a> about Surviving High School before.  It\u2019s an iPhone game with a few semi-fun minigames.  But the main gameplay and actual enjoyment of the game (for me, at least) boils down to two important aspects: good, funny writing and meaningful choices.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another iPhone game that I downloaded later, which strips away the cartoony visuals and production values of Surviving High School while retaining the core two mechanics called Choice of the Dragon<\/a>.  You can also play it in your browser by visiting the link.<\/p>\n

I love both of these games, despite (or perhaps even due to) their simplicity.  With Choice of the Dragon, it\u2019s as much an original online Choose Your Own Adventure book as a game.  But the choices are more numerous and, like most games, slightly less punishing.<\/p>\n

I remember a single wrong choice in a CYOA book often ending in disaster, death, and a sudden end to your journey.  Here, while the choices you make certainly matter (and \u201cbad\u201d choices will have consequences), the reader\/player isn\u2019t instantly killed.  There\u2019s time to recover by making better choices and often content that you would never see if you had made the \u201cgood\u201d choice initially.<\/p>\n

Due to the stuff I\u2019m currently working on and the realization that this is something that really satisfies me as a player, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about what meaningful choices in games mean.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the people who made Choice of the Dragon have released a version of their scripting software (ChoiceScript) that allows anyone to create a similar game by simply writing text (and following certain formatting rules).<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to give myself the challenge of seeing whether I can craft a small but enjoyable ChoiceScript game by the end of February.  If I succeed, I\u2019ll certainly post it here so everyone can play it and give feedback.  If I don\u2019t, you\u2019ll probably never hear about it again.  Either way, attempting it should be a learning experience when it comes to how to best present meaningful choices to a player and what types of decisions and consequences feel most satisfying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I talked briefly about Surviving High School before.  It\u2019s an iPhone game with a few semi-fun minigames.  But the main gameplay and actual enjoyment of the game (for me, at least) boils down to two important aspects: good, funny writing and meaningful choices. There\u2019s another iPhone game that I downloaded later, which strips away the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[316,282,25],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year26","tag-choice","tag-design","tag-video-games","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}