Concept
Choice point
You might say: the decision
A choice point is a state in which two or more actions have different consequences worth weighing.
- What it does
- Creates agency and makes the core loop more than a sequence of button presses.
- Ask
- What can the player choose, and what trade-off does each option carry?
- Trouble
- Two buttons lead to the same useful result, one option wins in every relevant state, or the player cannot explain what choosing differently would change.
Parts
- Viable alternatives: Alternatives are actions the player can actually take and has a reason to compare in this state.
- Trade-off structure: A trade-off makes desirable outcomes compete: getting more of one costs something else.
- Decision information: Decision information is the evidence available before commitment, including the current state, known rules and clues about other players.
- Decision pacing: Decision pacing combines the time available to consider one choice with the rate at which fresh choices arrive.
- Consequential choice: A consequential choice produces a difference the player can perceive and that matters to subsequent play.
Connections
- See also: Choice space
- See also: Decision window
- See also: Goal state
Sources
- Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, ch. 3, excerpt PDF p. 3: choices, outcomes and changed relationships
When a player makes a choice within a game, the action that results from the choice has an outcome.
- Tynan Sylvester, Decision-Based Gameplay Design, Difficult Decisions; Tangible and Obvious Results; Decision Recognition, Evaluation, and Design
Each decision always offers at least two strongly competing options, which makes it difficult, and thus, interesting.
- Daniel Cook, Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect, Option Complexity and Time Pressure
Which options are the most meaningful?
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Choice point" (choice-point) 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