What makes choices feel satisfying?

[alyshkalia (Tabitha (ey/em or they/them))]

Back with more thoughts! Tying in with what I said here, sometimes just having a choice at all is enough to feel satisfying to me. In choice games with world models, for instance, I like getting to decide which of the given locations to go to first, or which NPC to talk to first, etc. Being able to prioritize the options based on my own whims/interest just always feels good to me, even if the order in which they’re visited has no impact on the overall plot.

@Faedrian

I think I notice it especially when playing Ren’Py VNs, where I can make a choice and then quickly scroll back to try the alternative if I didn’t like that one, only to find that the result is the same either way.

This kind of thing annoys me as well. If a game gives me two different dialogue options, say a “nice” one and a “mean” one, that primes me to expect that the choice matters—so if it turns out that the NPC will respond exactly the same way to both, it feels like the game is undermining itself. Being able to choose how I treat an NPC, but then not having it actually matter at all, feels incredibly pointless.

This contrasts with RaQ, to use that as an example again, where what happens based on each choice you make is different—while the overall story is always the same, and ultimately there’s no way to fail, there are multiple paths you can take through it, with different encounters, different interactions with Aubrey, and different consequences based on your different actions. And tying back to my first point, just being given those choices for how I handled the different situations was fun (same thing with the Lady Thalia games!).

Finally, connecting with Victor’s postmortem for Xanthippe’s Last Night With Socrates, and the ensuing discussion:

@VictorGijsbers

There are only a few choices in the early game that have consequences later on, and more or less all of them have to do with establishing the language of intimacy between Socrates and Xanthippe. Does she call him ‘honey’ or ‘big man’? Does he call her ‘Tahippy’ or ‘Xanita’ or ‘Xanthara’? What kind of food does she bring him? What’s her physical technique of seduction? These things don’t matter at all, and yet they matter the most.

Again, it’s the fact that the player has a choice in these moments—that they can pick the option that feels best to them, choosing to some extent how they RP Xanthippe even while she remains an established character. Bringing the player into the experience, letting them co-create it. Or, as JJ says now that I’ve finished rereading that thread haha:

@JJ McC

The consequences of the choices were to build a three-dimensional, fully functioning adult personality for X as a collaboration between author and player!