HASVERS'S PROFILE

One question: how am I supposed to proceed if I want to find a good demo to play, then?

I am kind of glad that, say, A Blurred Line is brought to the general attention through its high rating, even though it isn't complete and never will be.

I think if this is ever implemented as a rule, it should be left as an option for the author of the game. But more generally, any rating system that is supposed to hold over very heterogeneous items (different genres, wildly different lengths and team sizes) is going to be unfair and there is very little we can do about it.

(I have to say though that your reasoning is especially original on one point: so far, most of the people I've seen ask not to get ratings on their demos did so because they expect the complete game would have a higher rating. Someone once gave this excuse to remove a game from this site entirely after their demo got reviewed.)

Thank you so much! Sorry about the crash, this has happened very randomly to people (and of course never to me) so I've never identified the source, but I will improve exception handling to prevent those freak happenings in the future.

As for the ending, I went through it again until I finally understood: there's very little randomness in this game but if the RNG really hates you, one more node is needed near the start, to the right. On the walkthrough page, you'll find an updated screenshot for Part 1and also a save file right before the ending.

All my apologies and with this, I am officially through wth any amount of randomness in my designs :P

author=sinnelius
So...it's a conversation game!

It is! Well it's mostly a monologue game, to be fair :P

Haha I hadn't thought of left and right in those terms, but I did try to put some meaning into the spatial organization of the conversation, limited by how little time I had to think this through!

In fact this path is on the periphery of the conversation because it requires doing something that the Vilain doesn't want to do, and that even the Hero usually doesn't let her do: admit that the Hero is right. (so for us it is to the left)
The path that goes far to the right is the one where we claim that the Hero is only wrong.

That is slightly silly but welp, a dev must have their fun.

argh> Thanks for the links. Contributing references, or an anecdote or a gut feeling, is still contributing, so much appreciated! I've had the Undertale demo on my computer for an eternity, I will give it a shot. As for kazerad's blog it definitely seems interesting, although this guy just writes so much :P so if you remember any specific post that seems to you like it could serve as an inspiration, please drop a link, else no worries.

CashmereCat> (still don't know if I should abbreviate that as Cash, Cat, CC, C to the C to the 'at, Ceezzle da Meezzle, or anything else)

Concerning Option 1:

That still falls prey to the save-scumming method of wanting to experience every single ending

I have to admit that I was thinking more about "local" victories (like winning a battle in a RPG, or a map in a strategy game) than game endings, but it's a great point. Were I to make a game in those genres, I would really be interested in a continuum of victory conditions, both at the local and the global scale. Like, in a battle, any combination of actions that somehow makes the enemy unable or unwilling to retaliate would be victory, whether it's by cutting their arms or scaring them out of their pants or reasoning them or any mixture thereof. That would be less about experiencing every single way and more about finding your optimum. But obviously, it's hard to do for a whole game, especially one with a narrative.

That's a weird way of seeing discussions, but as of this moment I can't think of anything that would contradict what you're saying.

Communication theory was one of the most surprising then retrospectively self-evident things I've ever learned in college - it really made me realize how little of conversation is really about what we are saying, and how much is about implicit signals of "look I am clever, but okay you're clever too" or "please please please like me" :P

These Wikipedia articles on Politeness theory and Face negotiation theory are a bit of a mess, but they illustrate the kind of things I have been trying to put in my rhetorics system. Alas I don't think it will ever give something like convincing interpersonal communication (I would love it too!), but it may approach something more ritualized, like debate, diplomacy, or perhaps theater.




Finally, concerning choice-based gameplay, although that may be a bit of a tangent. That may be just me, but I feel very frustrated when I am given choices and I don't know what they are going to do to the story - unless the tale is all about the feeling of powerlessness and "life is like a box of chocolates and zombies", as in the Walking Dead.
I'm also utterly unconvinced by mechanisms like "choose Faction A or Faction B, do the quests, cool you won".

Then again, different people have different needs. Gamists like being told when they're good, and they love arcade games and even the frustration of the game over screen. Simulationists like being able to explore mechanisms for their own sake, and they love sandboxes.

I am obviously a narrativist and there's no such well-established genre for me. In my eyes, the ideal choice is the choice that allows me to express something I care about, and that is recognized by the author of the story. Not in the sense of being the good option, but in the sense of being incorporated into some meaningful conclusion to the narrative. Which is something I have almost never experienced in sandboxy, open-ended RPGs - I search for all their endings compulsively but always feel empty at the end, like okay, I changed some details about how this story ended, but not the way it concluded. It didn't become more meaningful to me due to my actions than it would have been if I did nothing.

PS: In a way, stealth games that have a non-lethal route are closer to what I am interested in: instead of a single big decision with obscure consequences, it's a choice that I am making constantly, with a clear goal in mind, and the game recognizes what I am trying to achieve and adapts its story. It's rarely done very well, but it's a step in the right direction.

A great post for this kind of things: A Bestiary of Player Agency.
The part about negative agency is especially relevant (although other sections may help think about ways to play with the player's expectations)