All Choice No Consequence: Efficiently Branching Narrative

In this 2016 GDC talk, Pocket Gems' Cassie Phillipps offers a crash course on how to create meaningful story branches without making narratives that are convoluted, confusing or shallow.

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[BroudbrunMusicMerge]

Hey y'all - this is clearly a presentation based off experience with a specific kind of game. And although the speaker does seem to be conflating their specific kind of game with _all_ games, y'all don't have to talk-down the advice _entirely._ It has some widely-useful takeaways: The feeling of choice is very important - an important choice that 90% of players don't realize was important at all is essentially wasted resources, regardless of genre

[EurojuegosBsAs]

I get people don't like being told they are dumb. But that doesn't make her wrong. Interesting talk that reminds us about the practical consequences and the underlying principles of the design choices we make. Thank you

[Faefire]

Woah... reading the comments ...quite a few people seem hung up about the "feel important" rather than "be important" part of the talk. Look, its not that deep.
Phillipps never says that the choices should be inconsequential. Just, that it is more important for the player experience to make choices that "feel important".
Which you just can't deny. Phillipps is absolutely right: If a choice is super important but doesn't feel that way to the player it is still a bad! Choice.
And it won't be enjoyable to play.

If there is enough time for everything, that's obviously great, but most often there is a looming deadline and one gets sidetracked by branches and sidequests and convuluted storylines. I found her talk to be very informative and helpful.

PS: Some of the comments I read were pretty messed up. So just to clarify:
- A targeted demographic of young women is valid. A game is not superior just because it targets young men.
- A game is also not automatically inferior just because it is played on mobile. That is a matter of taste and goals.
- Her gender does not negate her experience and success in her field. Take her advice or leave it, but do not make it about her gender.

[sand]

Man, I understand why it's necessary to skip out on serious consequences for decisions, but the artist in me wants to write/read a narrative filled to the brim with choices that have major impact and consequence. I think the reader/audience can tell when you're faking them out. I've been so grateful to games that actually gave me consequences, but I feel so jipped when a game offers me a choice that I deliberate over for a long time and then it just says "whoops! Looks like it worked out the way the devs needed it to anyway!" It makes me want to stop playing the game when this happens.

The tough thing is that this is the real world. There are time constraints, budget constraints. It's just a shame we so rarely get to see games go completely wild with branching narratives.

[lilitbeglarian]

Fantastic talk! I know some people might be hung up about 'feeling like they matter' portion, but many triple-A industry games (including universally celebrated ones) are laid out in this fashion. At the end of the day, people respond to emotion and reactivity more than they respond to JUST content- and I enjoyed the more business-minded presentation. Many talks focus on the design and the narrative but games (for most people) is a product and every single quality product on the market is heavily based in research and data. To ignore this reality removes a very powerful tool from the arsenal as a game designer.

[diversetribe]

It’s interesting to hear people say keeping choices in line with the story is a bad thing, then say so many bad things when stories make no sense based on making countless choices. It becomes a beast of a narrative and almost impossible to control when you give too many “deep” choices. Imagine the insane branching from a simple NPC interaction that determines if you become king of a castle or a piece of toast on an alien dinner plate. Huh? Exactly…

[andrewzuo]

The point here seems to not be that consequences don't matter but that consequences should be subtle.

[Armitage]

You can also focus on how a story can be told. A good example of this is probably Disco Elysium.
Why not adapting the atmosphere, the tone or the goals as the story unfolds? There are so many other things to try in storytelling!
Searching for an efficient formula on how to do things is probably the best way on how not making that game you dream about. I suppose it all depends on the primary objective.
Not a fan of speeches that give advice on what not to do. Seeking elegant solutions to seemingly insoluble problems is part of the joys of game dev.

[simjans]

She mentioned that it's crucial that the player *feel* their choices are important.

This can be done with meaningful choices or without, therefore she says one should avoid too many meaningful choices as they require more resources to implement.

What if one generated truly meaningful choices procedurally, relying on systemic design to derive the consequences of the choices? Then, I think truly meaningful choices could be done for a constant upfront cost.

[LK-]

As a game player, rather than a game writer/coder, the fact that branching makes players "feel" as if they have choices that matter makes me feal cheated in some way. This is probably why I've stayed away from games/stories where my choices don't seem to matter. I played games quite a while ago (played them many times over, in fact) where the choices I made really did make a difference to where the story went, how the game played out--those games provided me with some of the best gameplay I've ever had because my choices DID make a difference in the outcome of the game. I actively look for games where my choices really make a difference, not just seem to. Alas, there aren't games these days where choices really mattter. I wish the industry would move toward making player choices change the games/stories in meaninful ways. Because then the gameplay is more personal, much more fun, and much more replayable. I know the bottom line is time and money. I just wish the bottom line would be player enjoyment and investment in a game/story series. It certainly would keep me coming back for more (ie purchasing more games/stories which in turn would generate more money for the game companies). And, of course, that's just my opinion.

Even so, it was a very fascinating and enlightening talk--even if it only confirmed that as a player my choices in games really don't matter.

[TESkyrimizer]

I remember playing EI. I respect their pragmatic business model in outsourcing content creation but I don't much like their games. They feel incredibly linear.

[FranciscoSciaraffia]

Feels like its extremely important to consider the target audience of the games she uses as examples.
Also when she talks about branches she only talks about the "pointless branching", never about actual branching narrative.
And I don't know, isn't it common sense that a good linear story feels better than a mediocre one with pointless branching?
I've yet to play a game with ACTUAL fully realized branching. Only games with pointless branching and different endings.
And I agree branching is a huge risk when you're AAA game and each minute of dev costs you a bout a couple million dollars.

[badunius_code]

So, they've gathered data from a very specific audience, which is mobile interactive* story players, and now presenting it as the ultimate truth "people don't want the consequences of their choices".

* _interactive_ as in, there's buttons you have to press to advance through the mostly linear storyline.

[dontnormally]

What a great talk! You have a really effective demeanor on stage as well.

[jipjomon]

I love all the comments saying "ackshually only mobiles games should be like this!" while ignoring that The Witcher, Mass Effect, Fallout, TES, and the vast majority of other mainstream successful RPGs follow this exact formula. Even The Witcher 2, which goes out of its way to split into two major branches that affect the whole story, still ultimately has Act 3 play out in the exact same location and in a very similar way, regardless of what you chose. But people hold that series up as an example of great choices, and it's mostly /because/ it does exactly the things laid out in this talk (i.e. a very strong core story, immediate responses to your choices, a focus on making the choices feel difficult and not just right vs wrong, little choices affecting how characters react to you in fairly small ways). Fallout New Vegas probably has the most choicest choice of any mainstream AAA non-CRPG I can think of, but you still always wind up going through the same core plot beats and ending the game with a fight at Hoover Dam, regardless of the faction you pick, and 99% of the choice is mostly inconsequential moment-to-moment dialogue stuff.

[tiagodarkpeasant]

"felling" of choices without actually having one is the one flaw that destroys the game for me, that removes the replayability, the problem is that they count on people finishing their first run, i usualy start a new run before finishing a previous and that is why i discover the choice is fake and stop playing

[lauralai]

Great research! Great talk based on the outcome of the research on games! Interesting and competent talk! Thank you!

[MisterMonsieur]

*This talk should have been titled "How to FAKE a Branching Narrative Story, " because she admits @ **5:35** that "you should not design for replays." In other words, Pocket Gems works on the premise that most players will likely only play their game ONCE, and thus they'll never know/ see what (if any) are the consequences of their choices. Pocket Gems is faking a Branching Narrative, presenting players with false "choices" that prompt a different line of dialogue, but are just a "unique way to reach the same goal" (**7:20**). And she says all of this on stage, on camera, with no shame. Wow.*

[voldlifilm]

I've been playing with the notion of open world rpg games that don't have a main story line or mainquest. Do games like Skyrim need an overarching singular story? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of this being your character and your experience in the world? If you remember the first Fable, they make a big deal out of becoming the character you want to be yet the story had set points you had to hit, such as going to jail. That never sat right with me. I guess what I am asking is if having a story in an open game is actually hampering the openness of the experience.

[GustavoSilva-nyjc]

7:57 And this totally didnt get anyone mad