www.gamasutra.com Episode Five in my series of video “lectures,” made in association with Gamasutra. Co-written with James Portnow, cofounder of Divide By Zero Games. This episode marks our first entry of Game Design Corner, where we look specifically at elements of game design. Loosely modeled after Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation reviews. I can be reached at floydo_animation at yahoo dot com. James can be reached at jportnow at gmail dot com. Like the intro/outro music? Download the full tracks here! Penguin Cap www.carbohydrom.net Illusional Hop Download the full album at the artists’ website! www.baddudesmusic.com
Video Games and Choice
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April 17th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Cool, interesting, well-paced, and unprecedentedly capable of keeping track of what you’re talking about.
but could you please, please PLEASE not speed your voice up? I’ve got the time to listen to you at a lower, slower, less annoying pitch.
April 17th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
This was pleasantly informative aaaaaaaaaand pretty funny. ^.^ In case you’re curious, I was linked here from the Mass Effect 2 boards.
April 17th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I love your videos! You have some real gold in these
I’m looking forward to watching and learning many more. P.S. Thank you James for sharing your knowledge 
April 17th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Definitely a nice, quickly comprehended view of problems versus choices in video games. Looking forward to more of these.
April 17th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Another great video. I do have one point to make though. As someone who has played through Bioshock multiple times and has both havested and resuced the Little Sisters there is no clear right or wrong choice. Your led to believe that you’ll receive a better reward for harvesting them, thus the lure of the quick and easy evil path, but in fact if you rescue them receive approximately the same amount of ADAM as well as Plasmids you can’t get any other way.
April 17th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
@kazyBarbarian fuck you man. your a dick. it would be different if i had said “OH MEE GODXXXX YOU FUCKFASSE U GOTZ N0 1DE4 WHATCHU TALKUIN BOUT DUMBASZZ!!!
But I Didn’t, so shut the fuck up.
April 17th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
@dcent2 HOW DARE U DISAGREE WITH A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE !?! I REFUSE TO HEAR YOU OUT!!!
April 17th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Actually, (and please hear me out), in bioshock, if you killed a little sister you got a buttload of ADAM, (which could get you upgrades) but if you saved her, (which really is the easiest choice because its so hard to kill the little kid) you got a teddy bear filled with a buttload of upgrades. So it was a choice, and had little to do with the progression of the MAIN story of getting out, so yeah, like i said, it was a choice.
April 17th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
its kinda sad how most morality systems are “be good and get something shiny or be an ass and get something less shiny at best.” also when the choices make no difference in the game’s path or story
April 17th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I just overall do not like “choices”, everytime when a game gives me a “choice” it annoys me that it’s not a “problem”
but I’m a gamist
April 17th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
hahaha funny good and true lol
April 17th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
@l2ic3 Getting people to talk “seriously”, about gaming ruins any interest in it. You just sound like a ****ing idiot if you try to say, “In HALO, you can see the Master Chief suffers from a particular form of psychological feeling, towards his lack of a known mother, increasing the, ” etc, you get the point.
April 17th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
If you got rid of the cartoony voice and took yourself a little more seriously, you could have a quality video here.
April 17th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
good vid man its good to see something different than reviews or walkthroughs keep it up also what tools do you use to draw your images?
April 17th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Chrono Trigger is a really primitive example of choice in games. Whether you choose to help the girl find her cat or eat the old guy’s food, it didn’t reward you but it certainly made you think (in the trial sequence)
April 17th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
the voice sounds a bit like mordin
April 17th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
AWESOME!!!!!!!
April 17th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
You are correct though, there is still a problem to be solved. Namely:
*The problem of personal preference*. How do I play the game in which I enjoy it the most?
And in THAT sense, EVERY choice becomes a problem, even a choice like a cosmetical one (what colour of armor to wear in WoW). Which again, brings me back to the grey area of my first post.
April 17th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Why is clearing the room the quickest absolutely the best way? Is there a timelimit on the game? Do I need to catch the train after I finish the level? How do you know I am playing a game where bullets are sparse?
Maybe I enjoy elaborate shootouts?
April 18th, 2010 at 12:22 am
I think in some respect Army of Two TFD has begun to address this issue. I do believe that it still has a long way to go. But the fact that some of the decisions result in a situation that either way something bad will happen, of course this means that in some respects the game forces the player to make a “bad” decision. But the fact that the developers said, you cannot control every outcome, to me at least shows that they are beginning to offer choices not just problems.
April 18th, 2010 at 12:50 am
@thewonkydonky to use your example, that is still a problem to be solved, the different ways to clear the room are different answers to that problem, the best one would be the one that clears the room quickest, least bullets, no casualties…etc. there are prob a few ways to get this done but there is still one perfect solution and other, slightly lesser ones that get the job done as well
April 18th, 2010 at 1:32 am
Definitely the funniest of the series but also the least interesting. However I love these videos and hope to see many more issues both large and small tackled by this guy.
April 18th, 2010 at 2:06 am
I missed the point? To me, the point Floyd wanted to get across is that a “choice” is a situation where the player can select different ways to advance trough the game, but none of these ways presented give him a specific advantage in the way he progresses trough the game. Correct if wrong.
In your examples, the mentioned consequences of your decisions only become apparent AFTER you made the choice. So this is not a textbook “problem”. It falls into the gray area I mentioned before.
April 18th, 2010 at 2:36 am
AND, if anything GTA4 is exactly what he’s talking about -
You can kill Playboy and get his crib, or you can not and get NOTHING.
You can kill Dwayne and GET NOTHING or you can keep him alive and get a bonus for it.
April 18th, 2010 at 2:52 am
I’m fairly certain you just missed the whole point of the video.