Role choices, fake choices and blind choices

[Doorknob22]

Porn games rely heavily on the choices made by the player. Unlike action games, players don’t expect to use their reflexes when playing porn, maybe because aiming and shooting with one hand is difficult. But choices have their downside as well, as they stop the story’s flow and present an artificial interface (choices menu) which reduces immersion. In this post I’ll discuss three types of choices typically found in adult visual novels and why some of them should be eliminated.

I’ll start with an example from my game, Vae Victis - Khan. In the beginning of a quest, your MC enters an inn to meet with his agent and is presented with this menu:



This is what I call a fake choice. Despite having two options the player has no reason to leave the inn when he just entered it. Hence, it’s a fake choice: technically it’s there but there’s no reason to choose it. You’ll often find such fake choices in games where you can “peek or not peek” to a girl in the bathroom or where you must exhaust all conversation paths before the plot continues. If the developer knows what the players will choose or the plot will not continue unless a specific choice is made, why present fake options in the first place?

For the record, I intend to remove the fake choice presented in the example in the next update, realizing it contributes nothing to the game.

The next problematic type of choice is what I call a blind choice. In a game I played recently the mc sneaks into a house to search for clues when suddenly he hears someone at the door. Now the game asked me whether I wanted to hide in the living room or in the bedroom and my choice determined how events would fold.

How the hell am I supposed to know which choice is better or what each of the choices will do?

Unless the player takes pleasure in randomly following an unknown path, giving the players blind choices is like giving them no choice at all, only informed choices are real choices. This problem is especially painful in virtual novels due to their linear nature where you can’t go back (barring loading saves and mouse-scrolling back). In action games the player usually can simply retreat if there are too many aliens in a room.

Which brings me to the only choices in my opinion which should be included in a virtual novels: role choices.

The player assumes the role of a character in the game and the best choices should reflect the choices he makes as that character: do you want to help that girl or to help the bounty hunter chasing her? Do you wish to attack the gangster or try to negotiate? Presenting a role or morality based choices helps the player to identify with the main character better and feel better connected to the game. Fake choices and blind choices add very little and only disrupt the flow of the game.

 

[gunderson]

Devil's advocate: fake choices can be role choices even if they don't contribute to the game's story directly. For example, say you want the main character to greet somebody. They can just say 'Hi Veronica!" and be done with it. But what's wrong with offering the player three choices like, "Hey Veronica!" "How was the game last night?" or "What up, slut?" Each can have their own individual response from the character (for example: "Goddamn it, Jeff, my name is Becky!" or "What game? Do you know who you're talking to?!" or "Fuck but that was hot, Jeff. I'll be your slut any time.") and still feed back into the same main path. Even if it doesn't change point values, it can still help the player get a feel for how they want to play the character. You also don't have to tell players whenever a choice doesn't meaningfully change the story.

 

[Doorknob22]

Devil's advocate: fake choices can be role choices even if they don't contribute to the game's story directly. For example, say you want the main character to greet somebody. They can just say 'Hi Veronica!" and be done with it. But what's wrong with offering the player three choices like, "Hey Veronica!" "How was the game last night?" or "What up, slut?" Each can have their own individual response from the character (for example: "Goddamn it, Jeff, my name is Becky!" or "What game? Do you know who you're talking to?!" or "Fuck but that was hot, Jeff. I'll be your slut any time.") and still feed back into the same main path. Even if it doesn't change point values, it can still help the player get a feel for how they want to play the character. You also don't have to tell players whenever a choice doesn't meaningfully change the story.

I agree. By “fake choices” I meant choices the player can’t avoid or have no real incentive to.

 

[bobdickgus]

Devil's advocate: fake choices can be role choices even if they don't contribute to the game's story directly. For example, say you want the main character to greet somebody. They can just say 'Hi Veronica!" and be done with it. But what's wrong with offering the player three choices like, "Hey Veronica!" "How was the game last night?" or "What up, slut?" Each can have their own individual response from the character (for example: "Goddamn it, Jeff, my name is Becky!" or "What game? Do you know who you're talking to?!" or "Fuck but that was hot, Jeff. I'll be your slut any time.") and still feed back into the same main path. Even if it doesn't change point values, it can still help the player get a feel for how they want to play the character. You also don't have to tell players whenever a choice doesn't meaningfully change the story.

That is actually a role choice, the player can choose how MC behaves and gets corresponding flavor dialog so there is nothing wrong with it. It isn't a fake choice it is a roleplaying decision.

 

[gunderson]

I'd argue that it is a fake choice since it doesn't actually have any affect on the story. That's usually what devs describe such choices as: whatever dialogue option you make, you get the same overall outcome, so the choice part is fake. A real choice would be one where only "What up, slut?" resulted in her showing you her boobs. The choice I described has no storyline effects and unlocks no scenes.

 

[bobdickgus]

I'd argue that it is a fake choice since it doesn't actually have any affect on the story. That's usually what devs describe such choices as: whatever dialogue option you make, you get the same overall outcome, so the choice part is fake. A real choice would be one where only "What up, slut?" resulted in her showing you her boobs. The choice I described has no storyline effects and unlocks no scenes.

It had an effect on the story though, the player experiences a different dialog and scene(most likely to their enjoyment).
A fake choice would be a inner monologue about how MC really shouldn't say something like that for the "What up, slut?" choice and redirects back which happens far too often in a lot of games.

 

[Staimh]

Depends on the game
There are porn games which use RPG open world style mechanics
In these it is often reasonable to have choices which just add flavour or even deliberately present distractions

If we are talking about a VN primarily for fapping then fake choices are probably a waste of time
A blind choice or two may still be valid but for this type of game you probably don't want too many

 

[MrSilverLust]

As someone very close to release its first porn game, I must admit I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to best give choices to the player. I came to similar conclusions to OP.

I’d also argue that the “I slut” example given above is a RolePlay choice and there’s nothing wrong with it, even if just a few dialogue lines change. However, to make it more meaningful, my idea was to tie every single choice in the game to a personality point system. In this example, the 'Hi Veronica!" would give the mc “Nice Guy” points for example, where the "What up, slut?” would give him “Douchebag” points.

This only becomes relevant if the points can then be used for something like unlocking certain scenes. At a certain point you will have a lewd scene if you have 10 douchebag points and a different one if you have 10 niceguy points. This is a system that I enjoy and is already present in many games. Where I think the formula can be improved is by tying every choice to that system. Also, it should be clearly displayed on screen which stat will be changed by which choice, to avoid having the player making blind choices. As a player, I should know if I am being a nice guy or a douchebag, and it might not always be that easy to tell them apart. Why should the outcome be hidden? How does that improve the player experience? The more information he has, the better he can make the choices that lead to the content he wants.


Regarding the blind choices, I think it’s very tricky to avoid them as a dev. The truth is the player never knows what will happen after making a choice. Let’s say MC is in a party and he can either get wasted or be responsible. At the end of the night, if he got wasted, he can fuck the BlondChick. If he keept sober he can accompany BrunetteChick home and be invited to “have some coffee”. This is a blind choice and I’d still argue that it can be done well if there are enough clues and context about what kind of guy the different chicks want. I think this has the potential to be the best kind of choice in a game if the player can reliably put 2 and 2 together and figure out what choice he has to make to get the outcome he wants. You know, like a detective or something. That he is rewarded by actively reading and thinking about the story. But maybe then this cannot really be called a blind choice? Not sure. Either way, I think these two things can improve these kinds of choices:

1 – Make the choice and the outcome close together so the player can just rollback and lose only a few minutes. A scene should not be dependent on a random choice made 3 episodes ago.

2 - Make it clear why a certain option is possible or not. When the BrunetteChick don’t want you to take her home, make it clear that’s because mc is wasted. That way the player can rollback and not drink so much if he really wants the BrunetteChick.


Anyway, these where the conclusions I came to, but it’s always a tricky thing to pull it off. I do enjoy thinking about this stuff though. Making choices is 90% of the gameplay in a visual novel. It’s important that this thing is done right.

 

[Alcahest]

Like so much else, this is a matter of opinion. As a player, I prefer the "Peek" into the bathroom because it makes me feel that I'm more actively doing something sneaky. So I have included some of that in my game. I don't want those kinds of "fake" choices all the time, to always peek into every bathroom, but they can be used to enhance the game.

I haven't played your game, but I like the look of that choice in your screenshot. Entering an inn and having options what to do, that brings back memories of many great games. And is it really a fake choice? I don't know, not having played your game, but if the player can chose to interact with his agent now or wait, if there are other things to do in the game at that point, then it's not a fake choice, since the player can choose to do this quest now or resume it later. If you already gave the player the option to start this particular quest by his own choice, knowing he was supposed to meet with his agent at the inn, then it seems meningless to give him the option to now bow out of it. But if the player didn't know this, or the quest was not started by his choice, it is not meaningless or "fake" to give him a choice to do it later.

 

[Sphere42]

There is another possibility for your "fake choice" example: UI/gameplay. This probably doesn't apply to VNs much but in most other games, especially sandboxes, you will quite often have an option to not engage with a particular plot line or even abort it in a non-progressing way. In order to truly be a fake choice there cannot be any other content the player could engage with instead.

These tend to be fairly non-immersive so you might want to avoid them for other reasons but it is easy to construct perfectly reasonable examples too, such as meandering through a house party with options to approach/leave multiple different people whose conversations do not interact or otherwise conflict (e.g. chatting with 5 different friends about their respective hobbies as opposed to telling 5 different girls it's your first time even if you boned the others already)

 

[Icarus Media]

Best use of a fake choice I have encountered was a picture from a book with the accompanying text:

'You meet an old man who asserts the world is pre-determined and all actions are destined to happen irregardless, thus no free will exists'

If you agree with his hypothesis turn to page 82.

if you disagree with his hypothesis turn to page 82.

It's subtle but made me smile.

 

[Cryswar]

I think the only truly wrong kind of choices are those with serious consequences that are never made clear to the player. If picking one wrong option means I miss getting the last Love Point to unlock the best ending for a girl, and it's never even mentioned ingame, fuck you. My general rule of thumb is that if I need a guide to play VN, it's a bad VN, or at best a bad system tacked on to a good VN.

'Meaningless' or 'fake' choices can at least still offer players agency in how they react to a scene and a bit of flavor, so I don't think it's always a bad thing. I absolutely agree that it's a bad thing if you get the "...but you didn't have enough courage to say that!" line though, or if you just have to weed out the wrong choices to get to the right choice, like in your example.

Blind choices... really depend on the consequences. If one option kills you and the other works, with no indication, yeah it's garbage. But if they both have clear consequences and neither is better or worse than the other, well. Sometimes you just genuinely don't know what chance will bring you. I think the important thing here is not to punish the player or be a dick to them, though.

 

[RandyTyr]

I agree that role choices are usually the best kind. It would be great if more dev's would include "small scope" role choices that just flavour a particular conversation. This "just" needs extra text, no extra renders (unless the game offers a lot of facial expression stuff), and makes it easier for players with a variety of values to actually sympathize with the MC. For example, I've often seen other posters here express their anger about the fact that an MC didn't get angry in a situation, and conversely, I've felt disgust about MCs that did.

As long as they are used sparely, even completely empty choices can add to a feeling of agency.

Point system are difficult to get right. If you get locked out of the top ending because that one time you selected a rude reply; or if you have start an Excel spreadsheet to calculate what choices you need to do to get both gorgeous girls, you'll either delete the game or download a walkthrough mod (which then makes the choices empty). But so far the only point system I saw that I felt worked well enough is the one in "A Family Venture".

Blind choices where it is clear straight after what happens can be ok, but also break immersion a bit through rollback/reloading. But in general they are likely to make me tab out of the game and look for a walkthrough.

Another type of choices I dislike are "Do you want LI 1 or LI2 - Pick one (and do another playthrough)", unless the paths are genuinely incompatible. If the Dev has done a great job with the LIs, I will want both. An offender here would be "Oath of Loyalty", where Mom and Sis are mutually exclusive for no good reason (as far as I can tell).

 

[DawnCry]

I feel that in this thread it is being confused "player agency" and "flow", I say it based on the OP mostly.

Let's take for example a game I like "A spell for all", it may be confusing sometimes what to do but something I truly appreciated is how you can actually mess up without noticing, be it because you weren't prepared to face some enemies mindcontrol, you didn't prepare countermeasures or you believed too much on an evil dead wizard.

Of course this isn't a visual novel and it's a sandbox but seriously, that's part of the fun of the game. When you know 100% the effect of your actions and just choose between determined options is when you have messed up the flow, a good visual novel is one in which a misunderstanding or a conflict later on can have positive or additional negative elements.

Let's give an example:

-You are talking with an amazon and she tells you that all males should be slaves, here in a basic game with rolplay options we would have:

*I agree with you (+1 relationship)
*I disagree with you (-1 relationship)

However a decent visual novel should actually go over that stuff, be it that you agreed or disagreed it should be taken into account and then future actions have extra effect, she starting to think that you were right for disagreing or having her own views be reinforced in the future, or having contradictions between your words and future actions and talking about it.

What's the use of those role playing options? it is actually what goes against the flow, even to the point that it's a spoiler sometimes.

It is kind of the same with relationships, the flow is actually broken by the "player agency" most of the time, let's say that a girl is a tease and a bit of a exhibitionism, to the point that when you are having dinner with her she decides to tease you with her feet under the table while having dinner. Most games rather than accepting her personality and just having the player choose how to deal with the situation would ask you if it happens or it doesn't happen that she teases you, the same goes with sex and most sexual acts, breaking the flow into pieces to give full agency, seriously, how many times do we have to break the personality of the characters just to give the player more agency?

That's why I prefer games that actually let's you lock fetishes at minute one and then it goes more into the flow, "real choices" aren't what makes a game, in fact karma options are bullshit most of the time, just because I'm a racist against elves or orcs doesn't mean I'm a bad one for humans, but in those type of games I tend to have mixed karma, seriously I would be a hero for humans and the demon for the rest, not a mixed karma guy.

I just can't see the appeal of having a karma system, even less when you say the consequences of each choice I feel that you just destroyed the flow in the name of player agency and then you renamed it as flow. The best choices I got on RPG's are actually the ones that have future effects and unexpected things. Take the original the witcher 1 first choice, do you defeat the monster outside or rush to stop the intruders?, at first it may seem they have little to no difference, but if you focus on the monster outside the enemies would have stolen materials from the laboratory and you will find stronger enemies in some fights during the playthrough, that's something I truly appreciated.

 

[Affogado]

I have different attitudes towards choice when I'm working in Twine vs when I'm working in Ren'Py for one simple reason: Art assets. It takes me a long-ass time to make art vs a paragraph of text - or, if I'm commissioning art instead, it's way more expensive. If I'm working on an art driven game story branches with "unique" art are more expensive for me to include, so I have to limit how I use them.

(This is also true of all-text games to a degree; you cannot reasonably create a game that branches infinitely without getting into some kind of procedural generation.)

Even just a different facial expression is an entirely new render or sketch (unless you're doing the paper-doll VN thing which I don't really get into much) so conversational branching also has some limitations.

The result is that choices in my VN projects tend to be more subtle. Big major branches that lead to entirely different sequences are limited, leading to a more "linear" game until the end, when you reach different endings. But a pure text game, having only a word budget, can have vastly divergent storylines that branch off fairly early on - which means more and more drastic "real" choices.

Of course you can spend the time or money and effort either way! It's just that taking the same amount of effort with the same story, a text game has a higher choice budget in terms of story impact.

That said, "fake choices" - or even low impact choices - are a good way for players to feel they have more control over even linear stories, even if the only change is cosmetic. The illusion of choice is still choice for maybe 90% of players who don't look under the hood. And you can still track those "fake" choices to give them some kind of cumulative impact... or at least, you can throw something into the code to make players who peek think they matter.

 

[Doorknob22]

There's a sentiment which keeps getting repeated in this thread which I resent: that a "fake choice" is a choice which doesn't show different visuals, only different text. I resent this approach on two levels:

1. My original intention for "fake choice" was "a choice the developer knows in advance what the player will choose", not "additional choice leading to identical visuals".

2. It hints that only visuals are satisfying to the player and that text is just a cheap filler. Unfortunately I see disregard towards text all too often in games: from lazy typos (easily avoidable by the simplest automatic spell checking) to shallow characters and cliched dialogs and plots. Some developers forget that text can be its own reward. Text can be more rewarding than visuals. Text (not images) makes your characters believable, helping the player suspend their disbelief when your characters do unbelievable things. So two choices leading to similar visuals be different text is not a fake choice, but a completely legitimate one.

 

[Affogado]

My definition for "fake choice" is one which has no bearing on game play or story, immediately or in the future - meaning no change in game state. The events of the game are the same. There is no need for different things to happen, no new actions, no new scenes, and thus, no new visuals. So a "real" choice will more often require more visual elements than a "fake" choice, but it's not directly, and isn't what makes a fake choice a fake choice.

 

[SpoiledPrince]

I can't agree on blind choices: they add to the immersion and realism. When making choices IRL you are not informed about the outcomes, but through logic, experience, and common sense you can anticipate them to an extent, even if you could still be surprised by factors you failed to consider (or simple luck).

Many games are filled with foreshadowing an impatient player can overlook in their hunger for a specific kind of scenes/ending. You got plenty of warning but you were simply not perceptive enough ...or decided the writer wouldn't dare go that far.
The player's freedom is an illusion, but I guess some people want to be in control too badly, and they don't allow themselves to be surprised.
That's a gamer problem, not a game issue. Subverted expectations can be fun too.

Then again, what's the point of a game if you can't lose?

 

[Affogado]

This brings to mind the fact that players that want to roll back and pick something else, will. Either using rollback in a Ren'Py game, or the back button in a twine game, or just save-scumming. Players that want to decompile your game or install a walkthrough mod, will. And for many, this is because a choice was presented poorly - either the MCs actions weren't what the player thought they would be (a common problem with Bethesda dialog systems), or because they're after a certain sort of experience or a certain type of story.

My general attitude is that success vs failure is just another kind of choice as long as both outcomes are interesting. That's the only real failstate, I feel - a boring outcome.

 

[Doorknob22]

...
Many games are filled with foreshadowing an impatient player can overlook in their hunger for a specific kind of scenes/ending. You got plenty of warning but you were simply not perceptive enough ...or decided the writer wouldn't dare go that far.
...

I agree that if the developer provided hints to the outcome of each choice, this is not a blind choice but I've seen many menus where as a player I had no information to base my decision on, hence the choice felt completely blind.

Then again, what's the point of a game if you can't lose?

When I lose in a game I want to lose because I applied my skills inefficiently: I wasn't quick enough or my strategy was flawed or I failed to understand the puzzle. I don't want to lose because I randomly chose the red door and I should have picked the blue one.