Survey on Preferences for Interaction

[tigerkidde]

Hello,

I'm going by the alias TigerKidde and I'm mostly new to Ren'Py. I had some design / preference questions that I was hoping that anyone coming across this topic could give their input on in hopes of shaping my project or any other projects that I may work on. Holding onto some other topics as input is received... Also if there is/was a Best Practices for Ren'Py projects, that would also be greatly appreciated. I apologize if this has been talked about to death before.

So without further adieu...

Interaction

What level of interaction are you looking forward to when you are going through someone's project/game? Are you looking for mini-games, managing a character's lifestyle, or having multiple responses in a dialogue? Maybe all of the above? I've listed some vague descriptions of the levels of interaction in a game in hopes to put things in perspective and are as follows:

None. Seldom. Moderate. Frequent.

None. You're along for the ride, so it's like reading a book or comic; or like watching a video. In this case, you may not have name or have a player character of your own, you are progressing the story, witnessing other characters interact with each other. My understanding is that these are called kinetic novels?

Seldom. You may be presented with a choice, perhaps with only two options, on a chapterly basis that could determine the course of the story. The choices may be more meaningful. An "extreme" example would be "I'll take my vacation in Hawaii" vs "I'll take my vacation in Okinawa." In this case, the player may have significantly different encounters depending on the location they choose.

Moderate. You are presented with several choices, sometimes three or four at a time. Choices that may be decided on some regular intervals. For the most part, once a choice has been made, you will be following along that path for some ways until the next regular choice is required. An example, "Go on a date with which person?", answers: "Girl #1", "Girl #2", "Boy", "Half-Animal Person". And then during said date, where your date asks if you like her/him/it, you have the response of "Yes/No". These choices come more often and let players decide a little better what their character is going to do.

Frequent. You are an active part of a conversation or the events that are presented to you. Most decisions are less meaningful, pushing your experience toward one story arc or another, where the character still has a chance to do moderate decisions. Using the moderate interaction level of going on a date, let's say you decide which character you want to date. When you go out, you have an opinion on where you think the date should take place, on what you're going to wear (the impression it may make), what activity you may be doing during this date, if a restaurant - what food you're going to eat, if a karaoke - what song you're going to sing (what song does the date like?), a chance to make a comment on the character you're dating ("you have nostrils on your face"), with a chance to ask the date out for a future or possibly waiting for the date to ask you out for future dates. Although this method may require the most programming and testing, is this a level of interaction that players would like to have or would it be more an inconvenience to have to respond to all these questions?

In advance, thank you for your constructive input.

[gekiganwing]

Hello tigerkidde, welcome to the forums.

I've been in relatively mainstream gaming fandom for years (and years...), so I tend to like simulations and complex games. If a game presents me with a puzzle or a challenge, I'll do my best to take it on.

At the same time, I was influenced a few years ago by the reviews on densetsu.com (which still exists, but is inactive) and the Megatokyo forums. They helped me to appreciate visual novels and even kinetic novels. So when an interesting story with or without choices shows up on Lemma's forums, I'll read it.

That's a non-answer, I know... but I guess I'm okay with both.

[Samu-kun]

I tend to favor less choices, although I don't really care too much about it. I just get worried that the more choices there are, the more likely it is for me to get slapped with a bad end and then have to figure out which ones of the 40 choices I made were the wrong ones. But if you have good game design sense, you should be able to avoid that even with a large number of choices.

[Hime]

Seldom. Too frequent choices bother me because I want to be able to enjoy everything of the game - to get every CG, to read every line, and so on, which can get annoyingly hard if there are too many choices. KNs are nice, too, and some stories are better without choices... But in many cases, choices would work. Also, knowing that there are choices kind of makes me excited... Ahahaha. ^^; Because choices are new possibilities, too. :3

[musical74]

Seldom, moderate rarely...

I'll take both Hime's comments and Samu's comments and pool them together...

I like having choices, but at the same time don't want having a bad ending because some choice I made 45 minutes ago caused it and there was 75 choices between then and the bad ending...

I think, for the most part, I will take Seldom, for the very same reasons HIme did.

[Wintermoon]

It's not a question of how many choices. It's a question of what kind of choices, and what effect they have.

I like choices that affect the story, short term or long term, without leading to a bad end. Anything from ending up with girl #1 or girl #2 to wearing a read hat or a black hat.

I like puzzle sections, where one choice or several choices in rapid succession quickly and clearly leads to a "pass' or "fail" state. All puzzle sections should have a clear logical correct path that can be found by thinking about the options. If passing the section is necessary for getting the good end, then failing should either lead to an immediate bad end or it should allow you to restart the puzzle section from the beginning.

I hate dead ends. Deads ends are situations where the story continues as normal, but you can't reach the good end due to a decision made earlier.

I'm also not fond of choices having non-obvious or counter-intuitive results. If I have to go to the park to meet girl #1, then tell me. Don't make me guess.

[JQuartz]

What level of interaction are you looking forward to when you are going through someone's project/game?

For me, it depends. When I play a game, I want to have fun so if the interactivity increases the fun, then I would want it. If the interactivity just makes the game more tedious, then I would rather not have it. This includes boring minigames and useless interaction (eg. choose A and you'll go path A. Choose B and you'll still go path A with maybe an extra dialogue)

[Verity]

I think I tend to like games with frequent decision-making the most. I like it when I get the opportunity to make choices that influence the storyline in small ways—I mean, I don't like it when one choice is the difference between a good end or a bad end, but more like where your interaction with the game changes the path you take to get to the endings, or where you can see your choices' influence as the story goes along. If that makes sense?

[Asceai]

I personally favour fewer choices over more, but really, it depends on the kind of game.

VNs with no choices at all (please call them single-path or something... 'kinetic novel' isn't _really_ a good term, because it's a term trademarked by Visual Art's. If you get what I mean, calling VNs without choices 'kinetic novels' is like calling tissue paper Kleenex or photocopiers Xerox machines) are fine for the kinds of stories they are - it's rare that a VN created normally could be adjusted with little effort to make it into a single-path novel (you could probably manage it with Sharin no Kuni and G-Senjou, but only by chopping out a number of character routes).

Basically, tl;dr - work out the kind of story you want to tell first, then determine the level of player interaction that is suitable for your story.

[PyTom]

The way I see it, choices have to be meaningful. This can either be by feeding back into a simulation mechanism, as in dating sims, or by being meanigful story-wise. Ideally, if a game has a lot of choices, it should be quickly obvious if a choice has had the desired results... This will help people (like myself) who try to get all the endings of game.

Basically, if a choice doesn't meaningfully affect the game state, don't bother.

calling VNs without choices 'kinetic novels' is like calling tissue paper Kleenex or photocopiers Xerox machines

I suspect that ship has already sailed down the generic river. (Like Asprin, Escalator, Netbook and Zipper.)

[tigerkidde]

Thank yous all for the input. It helps put somethings into perspective.

[monele]

From seldom to frequent is my comfort zone (large eh? :p). No choices would need a really good story/theme to pull me in (which thankfully happens from time to time).
I'd say that the more frequent the choices, the less impact they should have. I'm thinking that if you make it a regular Choice-based VN and you have to pick 90 "right" choices out of 100, then it's become a quiz ^^;... Instead, if you make it a simulation where you have to pick activities for each day or even parts of day, but a single choice won't immediately throw you on a specific path, then it works better (usually combined with stats and minimum requirements for this and that events).
It's just another way of making a choice and it's usually nice for people who like some gaming aspect to their reading stories.

[sake-bento]

I'm somewhere in the seldom/moderate camp as well.

As a player, I do enjoy having an effect on the story. It makes it feel more personal, and I care a lot more about the protagonist if I'm directing his or her (or its) moves. However, too many choices makes it feel like a choose your own adventure book, which I've always found more annoying than fun. Besides, the replay value declines sharply after a couple rounds, and if there are too many choices, I'll probably get very frustrated trying to find all the endings, CGs, etc.

That being said, I've only released one game that had any choices at all. >.>

[chronoluminaire]

Personally, I have a distinct preference against kinetic novels (or linear VNs or choiceless VNs, whatever you want to call them). I caaan like them, but I really do much prefer it if there's even just one or two choices in the story. The involvement is completely different if you're making choices, determining the character's fate rather than just reading about it.

I'm happy with your "seldom" or "moderate" categories. A game in the "frequent" category would... well, it would just be an awful lot of work to create.

But then, there are games like Season of the Sakura or Three Sisters' Story which involve making a "choice" every 3 lines of text or so. The difference is the plot is still fairly linear because most of the choices are selecting between "Look -> At Reiko, Look -> At Mio, Talk -> To the girls, Go -> Out of the door", where only "Go -> Out of the door" will advance the plot... but you might pick up a couple of romance points along the way if you do some of the others. That's one manageable way to achieve the "frequent" category. I'm not aware of any OELVNs that have taken that approach.

The question of style of gameplay is related but slightly different. Personally, I like hybrid games: I like it when a puzzle game or arcade game or JRPG has VN segments, or when a VN has minigame segments in whatever genre. But I also like "pure" VNs, whether that's in the "large amounts of text" Ren'Py style, or the "choose every action" Season of the Sakura style.

(Three Sisters' Story was very clever in the progression of what choices it offered. When one of the girls asks you what you're doing, and the single menu option it offers you is "Lie", it's effective. Then later on, you get the choice "Lie" or "Tell the truth"... but if you select "Tell the truth" the protagonist tries, briefly, but gives up and lies.

Then you get the same choice and either option really works; and then, finally, you get the single option "Tell the truth", and it's more meaningful having had those earlier experiences. It's a superb piece of character development.)

[Asceai]

Personally, I have a distinct preference against kinetic novels (or linear VNs or choiceless VNs, whatever you want to call them). I caaan like them, but I really do much prefer it if there's even just one or two choices in the story. The involvement is completely different if you're making choices, determining the character's fate rather than just reading about it.

The thing is that VNs are not a virtual reality experiment. The scenario writer has not gone and predicted every path of choices users would want to make, and written equally thrilling stories for all of them.

The reason I almost _always_ use a kouryaku (also known as a walkthrough or capture guide) when playing visual novels (the exceptions being when no kouryaku exists) is because there's only a finite number of stories that the scenario writer has written. I want to read those stories.

The choices are an illusion - you don't really have any choice, as you're picking out predetermined events anyway.

As it stands, I don't have a particular preference for either - I'm fine with choices; however, not for the reason you gave. It's just that it's a nice way of dividing up the possible sets of outcomes. That's why VNs with choices are an interesting media - the writer can explore a number of 'what-if' scenarios very elegantly, something similar forms of media (books and films) tend to lack (yeah, yeah, CYOA aside).

I do, on the other hand, really, really hate the '"Look -> At Reiko, Look -> At Mio, Talk -> To the girls, Go -> Out of the door"' system where you normally have to explore a bunch of the option combinations several times over before more things can be done - it's annoying because it's so repetitive, and you get into the habit of just exploring out every option until repetition systematically, which can be dangerous when you're trying to finish the game. Some games that used this system include 'for elise' and elf's famous YU-NO.