Concept
Consequential choice
You might say: my decision changes something
A consequential choice produces a difference the player can perceive and that matters to subsequent play. Different animations alone do not establish different strategic consequences.
- What it does
- Connects agency to learnable outcomes and a changing next decision.
- Ask
- What will choosing differently change now, and what will that difference enable or constrain later?
Parts
- Discernible outcome: An outcome is discernible when the player can identify the relevant change and connect it to the action.
- Integrated outcome: An integrated outcome changes the larger course of play: resources, position, relationships, progress or future actions.
- Decision variation test: Replay a decision across changed resources, threats, positions and goals, recording why the preferred action changes or stays the same.
Connections
- See also: Feedback step
- See also: State change
Sources
- Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, ch. 3, excerpt PDF p. 3: actions change overall game relationships
When a player makes a choice within a game, the action that results from the choice has an outcome.
- Jesper Juul, Design (MIT CMS.608 lecture, 2008), slide 8: discernible and integrated action/outcome relationship
Meaningful play: When relation between action and outcome is discernable and integrated
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Consequential choice" (choice-consequences) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal