Poll: The Paradox of Choice - Gaming Disappointment Abound?

[Heatseeker]

So I've been hearing about this "paradox of choice" recently that's basically the more options you have the harder it is to make a choice and as a results most people end up wondering if it's all worth the bother i.e. they feel there's more to loose making the decision than could be gained.

(for more info there's some great talks here: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
and here: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html )

As I was watching these speakers I began to think about the current trend in the games industry of players pushing for more and more choice in games.This is in part, why we've been seeing games that flaunt a "choice system" where the players in-game actions directly affect the final outcome e.g. Bioshock/Mass Effect etc. or even the simple choice of what order to complete objectives e.g. GTA, Saints Row etc. or maybe the choices involved in what kind of character to be e.g. Oblivion/Fallout 3, and again those which provide some kind of world simulation e.g. Total War and Civilisations and of course Spore where the player can decide how each of the game elements look and react.

In all cases it's about providing the player with more choice allowing them to have an individualised experience and therefore increase their happiness with the product. So more choice is good right?... not always. Suppose the choice in games increases further and we come across situations where we're inundated with choice; RPG's where the player is buried in piles of skills and classes to pick, 100 different missions to pick from at a time, big political decisions to make and 20 dialogue options per step of conversation. For every additional choice the player will inevitable feel unsatisfied, what if I did this here or that there and so and so forth until they decide to go back and there's masses of quick saving and quick loading and the game is no longer about having an experience but having the unatainable "perfect" experience.
Or maybe they wonder whether they would've had a better time with another game.

Are we as humans incapable of dealing with too much choice?
How much choice is too much choice?
Does the game need to change or the player?

EDIT: fixed second link

 

[ben---neb]

Too much choice does result in indecision. But games like Mass Effect offer only the illusion of choice. Sure you get to make a lot of seemingly important decesions but the actual gameplay you get hardly differs at all.

This is of course because no one has the time or resouces to create a game with say two totally different gamplay experiances depending on your moral alignment. Instead you get a compramise that works reasonably well but still shows the flaws.

 

[The Rockerfly]

For the record the second link is broken but the first works and it's very interesting.
In all fairness most games don't really have enough choice in them, it's either one or the other. Take Bioshock for instance, you had a choice between being evil, good or something in the middle and neither really effect gameplay massively.
I do agree with the video, when choosing my TV, I found it ridiculously hard to choose my TV, sound system, gaming system and chair, the amount of choices was ridiculous and I think when multiple fields are involved or if the field has a lot of different competitors then the amount of choice is too much. Although this could be only for entertainment, maybe in say science or education the amount of choices are different because its usually a case of right or wrong. Again though there is the arts which there are amazing amounts of choice, for example a 3 minute song could have so many different combinations, there can be too much choice for a lot of people. So in reality too much choices are common but in video games there aren't really enough.
Yet. Give a few more years; look at the difference made in video games in the last 2 years.
Sorry, this is going off topic from gaming really.
P.s. Sorry for the wall of text

 

[The Rockerfly]

Oh and welcome to The Escapist. If this is one of your first posts, you will enjoy this site very much.

 

[Heatseeker]

Hey! thanks, I've been lurking for years and this is always the forum I think of when I want a generally intellegent discussion about games and the like.

Sorry, this is going off topic from gaming really.

I wouldn't jump the gun that quickly, I'm often suprised by how much of the real world is reflected in games.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Hey! thanks, I've been lurking for years and this is always the forum I think of when I want a generally intellegent discussion about games and the like.

Sorry, this is going off topic from gaming really.

I wouldn't jump the gun that quickly, I'm often suprised by how much of the real world is reflected in games.

Yeah I suppose you're right, especially with games attempting to become more realistic nowadays. Oh and thanks again, that site has some really interesting videos on them asides from the ?Paradoxes of choices"

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I'm with Sid Meier on this, "A game is a series of interesting choices." Not having any choice might be easy and entertaining but it isn't a fun game. Being able to choose between two things that are near identical is not interesting.

Having lots minor choices that don't seem to make any difference is not interesting. The game needs to either limit choices to things that make a difference to the game or change the game so that the choices make a real difference.

 

[veloper]

Voted for "Just the major choices please". I'd rather have a few real choices that matter, rather than a ton of cosmetic choices. More than that would be asking too much I think.

I don't think the gaming industry, particular the RPG developers who should care about this crap, know how to deal with choices in their games.
Typically we get the good/neutral/evil option, which is mostly cosmetic and has no significance in gameplay. If we're lucky there's a different cutscene at the end of the game.

Not even getting started on how retarded and cliched the concept of good/evil has become.

No Peter Molyneux, the whole are you good/evil thing, is NOT a revolutionary new-fangled idea. Your take on originality sucks parkinsonian monkey balls.

Let's take a look at the usual fake choices we get:

1. Pick sides between either team A or team B. One team will usually be crazy psychotics and the other team are saints. You can side with the psychos, but both teams would give the same reward anyway - so much for choice.
2. Have your PC act good, indifferent, or stupidly evil, where the first 2 choices are identical and the last one sometimes going slightly different in the short run.
3. Choose the order in which you want to complete the game missions or side quests. There are no limits or consequences, you can just pick any job when you feel like it. Bethesda is famous for this one. That's not non-linearity, that's just making everything trivial and inconsequential.
4. Weapons are usually grouped in categories like axes, swords and spears and you can choose to specialize, but in the end all types function nearly identically and all the weapons add is visual variety, but no actual variation. In this case why not give everyone swords and nothing else, it's what most players pick anyway.


What an actual choice in a computer game should be like? At critical points during a game the player should be given an informed choice between different tactical advantages.
These tactical advantages should be big and game altering on scale of what Engineering(catapults) does for civ4 or Planetary invasion does for GalCiv2.
Such choices could then be dressed up as team A vs B or "save my puppy" RPG style, or whatever fits the setting.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Choices are nice, but rules make you push the story

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that freedom in games stops a story progressing or that linear stories are always better than branching stories? I would disagree with both.

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

I want enough freedom that I can do a mission however I'd like and have a different outcome each time. But I also want freedom to do whatever I want to do from square 1.