I think Dishonoured 2 has an interesting take on this beyond the "chaos system" which felt like a motivation I was kinda forced into. But its that a few times they go out of their way to humanize the guards. One in particular was a sleeping guard and right as I was about to murder him in his sleep I found a letter next to him addressed to his family telling them how much he loves them. That more than anything made me lean into the chaos system because it was an implicit motivation. As often as I could I would avoid violence and killing. But sometimes I had to in harder sections. So it created a lot of emergent choices for me
So it's a lot like life. Now, as I think about the concept, it seems like that's all I do all day long. Managing conflicting objectives. Hunger, thirst, entertainment, chores. Some optional, some required for survival. It's sure a concept I will keep in mind for the projects I'm working on. I guess it's something I neglected so far.
Great video as always! Shadows of Doubt is a brilliant game. Can’t wait to see what else they do with it and how they build further on the concepts you mention here!
I agree with the sentiment, but I don't agree with the terminology. Don't die isn't an objective, it's a requirement, if you die you can't reach the goal, not dying is the mean in which you obtain the goal. Basically those are property of the structure of games, which is progression, that is an agent pursuing a goal, in order for the agent to pursue the goal there need to be a distance between the agent or the goal, else there is no pursuing. The other terms I use is "stake", basically if there is a progression as the space the player need to traverse, there is also a distance in which she can no longer having the mean to do so, in which it's the dreaded game over. There is a tension along moving toward the goal, and not losing the mean of doing so, ie the stakes. That mean anything that modulate the stake space is gameplay and level design, power up aren't "goal" or "objective" they are resources to manage the tension along the stake space. The stake space is also known as the flow diagram, but imply more intentional tug of war movement along the axis, instead of the passive requirement it is generally interpreted. When you talk about the stealth in zelda (typically they are uses as tutorial test for basic movement), or last time when I was talking about dialog and conversation as lacking dynamism, it's because the stake space lack complexity, while combat or typical platformer have many way in which resources or requirement (for example the goal is floating, you must jump to reach it, but you need the boot item to jump) combine to move along the stake space. A power up is a way to navigate along the progression axis toward the goal, at the same time it moves you away from loss. Many game have explicit way to measure progression (level, checkpoint, boss gauge) or distance to failure (HP, fuel, time limit).
@@CraigPerko you meant to make the difference between intrinsic and extrasinc motivation too. Player driven objectives are not the same as game driven objective, but that's another can of worms, both emerge and rely from the rigidity of the stakes space. Like maze has bespoke path and thus are highly rigid. And options and objectives are also different even if superficially similar, ie mean vs goal. Some game like sim city loop side the goal-option continuum, but upon inspection they are similar to game like tetris, the goal of tetris is to make the most lines, which is always out of reach, those are maintenance games. In the end richness come from simply how many way there is to traverse the stake space, given a position relative to win-loss axis, how many options I have, how many levels can be designed, how many skills can be leverage, how many situations can emerge.
