By Richard Wagner [fatherwags]

If interaction is what separates games from other entertainment media like film or books, then game worlds should not only influence our actions, they should change as a result of them.

In Mass Effect, there were many moments where I had to make choices about how I would interact with the world. One of the earliest, and most memorable, was when I had to choose whether or not to exterminate the Rachni, a formerly hostile alien species that had nearly wiped out all other life forms in the galaxy.

Some people might have made that choice without much thought, but it was one that I sat and considered for about five minutes – not a typical behaviour when playing a videogame. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t spend five minutes considering my choices in Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4: MW) combined. Sure, it wasn’t the most plausible or original circumstance, but this felt like a choice that mattered more than which gun I should pick up or which window I should snipe from.

“In order for an ending to be satisfying, it first needs to recognize the players’ actions and how they will have affected the world.”

When I saved this species, I had visions of how, even though everyone thought I made the wrong decision and had likely caused the deaths of millions of people, the aliens would help at a critical moment in the coming conflict. There would be a huge battle that would be on the brink of being lost, but the Rachni would arrive and decide the victory, justifying my earlier choice and vindicating their lives in one heroic act.

But it never happened – my choice didn’t make any difference in the game.

Another recent game where I was led to believe that my choices mattered was BioShock. In this game, what seems likely to be the key moment of choice actually removes the player’s ability to choose. That the decision to save or kill Andrew Ryan is not made by the player is part of what makes the moment so powerful.

But that isn’t a choice at all; the important choices are what you do to the Little Sisters.

These decisions are what determine the kind of person you become and your effect on the world. Choosing between harvesting or rescuing these genetically altered children affects your own chances of survival, and are the choices that matter in BioShock because they have consequences. There are certainly the resulting feelings of regret you may feel after you kill a Sister, but there’s also the effect on the world. If you take the life of two Little Sisters, you irrevocably alter the future of the world to which you return. Instead of being filled with weddings and family, if you kill instead of save, the world is filled with death and brutality.

But these different endings didn’t really feel much different, because, in large part, they were so short that they didn’t provide me with enough time to have an emotional reaction.

In these games, like so many others, even after I kill all of the bad people, save the world, and/or rescue an utterly helpless, walking stereotype, it doesn’t feel like the world is changed any more than is Burnout’s Paradise City after I win a new class of license. It doesn’t feel like the worlds are, in any emotionally significant ways, reflecting my influence.

One way developers have tried to reflect gamers’ actions is through multiple endings, but aside from wholesale changes based on simple ethical dichotomies (the prosperous versus the suffering kingdoms from Fable come to mind as do the examples from BioShock) or minor changes based on events (the presence or absence of Carth Onasi at the end of Knights of the Old Republic depending on whether you tried to kill him or not), those endings don’t seem to adequately reflect the nature and importance of the players’ actions.

In order for an ending to be satisfying, it first needs to recognize the players’ actions and how they will have affected the world. In BioShock, why is the world above the waves affected by the choices made by the player at the bottom of the sea? It’s affected because once the player kills the central villain the developers assume there is nothing left in Rapture to change. There is no option to attempt to rebuild or to utterly destroy Rapture. Therefore, the player’s humanity is evaluated based on his or her saving or harvesting of Little Sisters, and s/he is then given the world which s/he deserves. The ending isn’t so much a product of actions, as a judgment imposed upon actions. If a character harvests the first few Little Sisters and then realizes and regrets those mistakes, subsequently saving all of the others, does s/he deserve the same world as a character who gleefully slaughters every child s/he encounters? It is, of course, impossible for developers to know how the player feels about their actions in a game, but certain inferences and interpretations could certainly be made, which would then affect the way the world is changed. If this level of subtlety is applied to considering the impact of players’ actions upon the worlds, it will create worlds that feel more like products of players’ decisions, and less like worlds that are products of developers’ decisions.

An ending will also be satisfying when it’s given an appropriate amount of emphasis and time. When we spend time with characters, investing ourselves mentally and emotionally in their histories, relationships, and lives, we want to see how all of those elements are affected once those characters have completed whatever epic quests they happen to be engaged in. If they’ve come to understand the destructive nature of blind loyalty, we want to see how that changes the legacy of their past. If they’ve gained a newfound sense of confidence and independence, we want to witness how that affects their relationships. If they’ve been hardened and detached as a result of having to make difficult and brutal choices, we want to observe the consequences played out after the climax is finished. There’s a reason why narratives, generally, provide falling action after the conflict is solved – it enables us to appreciate the significance of that resolution for the characters and their worlds. In terms of the amount of time that should be devoted to falling action, it depends on the quality of the story (no one loses sleep wondering what happens to Marcus after the light mass bomb is detonated at the end of Gears of War) and the quality of character development (no one really cares how “Soap” MacTavish relates to his family or friends at the end of CoD4: MW). But for a game that has a competent plot, reasonable character development, and takes dozens of hours to complete, a denouement that lasts the same amount of time as the closing credits would seem to be a reasonable expectation.

A different approach to reflecting players’ decisions in a game world is to allow the game world to persist after the conclusion of the narrative. One common part of the persistent world is to have non-player characters (NPC’s) respond to the avatar based on the players’ actions. For example, having NPC’s respond in awed tones when the avatar speaks to them, having them recoil in fear when the avatar approaches them with horns sprouting from his head, or having them comment on the player’s actions or identity (”You’re Lord Nerevar, aren’t you? You saved Morrowind from Dagoth Ur, didn’t you?”). While this is certainly helpful when trying to convince a player they’ve affected the world, it’s not enough; if anything, after a certain point it just becomes repetitive and annoying.

The other major problem with the persistent world approach to games, is that developers seem to assume that leaving a world devoid of bad things is enough to give players a satisfying sense of influence. However, an absence of something is a far less potent reminder of influence than is the presence or creation of something new and different. Games are essentially subtractive. They are generally created around the principle of removing enemies from the game world and sometimes around the principle of making the environment look a little more or a little less busted up. But this is not a particularly powerful or satisfying human endeavour.

After I’ve completed the main quest in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (TES: O), the environment changes – the sky is no longer an obscene red colour, Oblivion gates are marked only by crumbled pillars, and there are no daedra wandering aimlessly around the countryside. But rarely am I reminded of this change (only whenever I happen to wander by a shattered Oblivion gate), and the more time I spend in the world without the abundant indicators of evil, the less I remember what I have removed from the world.

What developers need to do is provide gamers with opportunities to create and build within the world. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (and its expansion packs) had several moments like this. There was a quest to build a statue of Boethiah on Khartag Point, there was a chance to build a new family home, and in the Bloodmoon expansion you could actually help to build a new settlement. While the first two creations were in relatively isolated locations there was no reason to revisit, the third was somewhat centrally located and passed relatively often. Every time I traveled through that village, I was given vivid and clear reminders that I had an influence on this world. I had created something.

It is this mechanic that is so utterly lacking in so many games, and it’s one of the most powerful means of making it clear to a player that they have, in fact, affected the world in which they are playing. The power of creation is what enables games to truly become the mirror of the player, and the more creative options a game provides, the more powerful the players’ involvement in the world will be. For the three creative examples I just mentioned, you are given a choice whether to undertake the quests, but are not given any choices about how the statue, family house, or settlement will look, how big they will be, or where they will be located. So even though you are given the option to create, it still feels vaguely unsatisfying and limited.

There are, of course, numerous games that allow players to create—the decal system in the Forza Motorsport series, the tattoo and character creator in Rock Band, or even the base-creation options in real-time strategy games—and look at how compelling those experiences are for so many people. Why? Because they allow people to put small parts of themselves, of who they want to be, of whom they can be, into the game worlds.

Those kinds of creative experiences would be exponentially more powerful when integrated into games where players invest dozens or hundreds of hours into their characters, worlds, and stories. The gaming experiences would be truly revolutionary if the worlds were truly a reflection of who you are and the way you play the games. In Mass Effect, if the Rachni had arrived at the final battle and turned the tide, it would have made me feel like I had affected the future of the galaxy. I might even wonder if I would have lost the battle if I had made a different choice, or if the battle would have been much more difficult if I hadn’t saved them. In BioShock, if the endings had been more substantial and allowed me more time to reflect on the story and characters, I might still be thinking about the significance of that game over a year later. In TES: O, if I had been given the chance to create and design a town, or influence the reconstruction of the Imperial City, I might still be playing the game and might even have bought the Shivering Isles expansion in order to see how else I could influence the world. More importantly, instead of being just (great) games, they might have become touchstones in the history of videogames; they might have changed game design to become more empowering and engaging for players and revolutionized the industry, rather than just passing and quickly forgotten distractions.