Finding True Freedom In Videogames 

SMALL CORRECTION: Yu Gi Oh has a three card limit, not four! I added that section last second and now I feel a bit dumb! You are choosing to give me money on the internet of your own free will, it's such an empowering choice, wow! look at you go!: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames ... On the other hand, maybe freedom wasn't such a good idea after all: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot

Worth noting that the meaningless of grading in Art Sqool seems to be an intentional, scathing critique of actual art school. Doesn't make the game more fun, but I feel like the dev deserves some credit there.

As a player, I have always wanted more endings, not just more options. Give me the same options I have always had, just make them matter.

I'm in Dragon Quest Builders 2's postgame and my god does it feel like I can be or do or make anything. It's to a degree almost no builder has ever inspired in me, so I feel this video on a deep level. And I had to do it by finding a spark the game nudged me to find on my own, to self-start.

The hypothesis of "freedom via a perceived limitation" reminds me of that Yoko Taro quote that for a player to feel any sense of freedom, they need a frame of reference and to then shatter that. That the game needs to communicate an in-world limitation, then the game actually lets the player subvert it making them feel like a rule breaker and thus more freely. Following up on that, I do wonder what the opinion on "subversion" and game twists does for game design, like before Undertale was the big indie darling, I have fond memories of 2008 freeware game Iji that was effectively a 2d platforming immersive sim but was known for having tons of player acknowledged actions from as early as just jumping head first into ceiling lamps to later having Iji herself change voicelines depending on how passive or violent the playstyle of a run is. I'd also say the biggest form of "subvert what the player thinks is a game limitation" is *spoiler* how the original pacifist run had no mechanics tied to it like Undertale so the player's entire first run of grief and strife would also push many to actually try to be pacifist (rather than being handed a Mercy option and being lectured about not using it all the time).

I love the Outer Wilds Echo of the Eye music in the background

Someone's been enjoying Echoes of the Eye lol. Understandable, an absolutely brilliant expansion to my favourite game of all time

Once art games got brought up this essay, and especially once artistic feedback was mentioned in the context of those, I was really hoping Chicory: A Colorful Tale would become an example, particularly the art lessons. Of course, perhaps the game doesn't particularly fit the overarching theme of the video as well as it does for that specific segment. If anyone is reading this, I highly recommend checking that game out. Made by many of the same people who worked on Wandersong!

I design tabletop RPGs and I continuously emphasize in them that the most important thing you can do for Players is to give them a feeling of agency. A lot of GMs are worried that they'll "Railroad" their group when what they should know is that what matters is respecting their self-expression and preserving the illusion of choice.

the thing is "do anything with zero constraints" just isn't compelling because then theres nothing to do and no motivation to do it other than "i want to build this cool thing"; the best "finding your own fun" is when you have this deep and interesting story that you're ignoring to see how many bees you can eat before your character dies

I really like games that have many layers of simulation going on, where you interact with the world, and you can end up affecting it in a way you wouldn't even expect. Though it's not as direct as a game that is programmed to have a response to every choice you take

Freedom is nothing without a struggle as you can not see the value of something if you do not know what it is like to be without it.

No Man's Sky is the perfect example of giving players a literal universe to explore, but in the end they'll want a direction to head towards, a goal to achieve, or a system to abide by. I like the game not for solid gameplay loops or well-crafted stories or any of the usual things a game is praised for. I like it because it captures what true freedom is. You can go anywhere and do anything but what are you really doing any of that for?

“Creativity comes from limitation”

You put these these concepts I’ve been mulling over for a long time into words so eloquently. It’s why I “feel like I can do anything” in super Metroid, but I find myself doing nothing in Minecraft. (Not saying Minecraft is bad btw) What fun would flying be if there was no gravity? What fun would lifting something be if it wasn’t heavy?

Kind of an old one, but I remember really enjoying the freedom in MySims Kingdom (wii version). You are basically able to build whatever you want with the blueprints you have, but each zone you can build in also has some kind of puzzle that gives you a goal with whatever you are creating. You can make things as barebones utilitarian or highly decorative as you want, so long as you remain within the bounds of the puzzle. Sadly, once the game’s story is over there really isn’t anything interesting left to do. But starting a new playthrough was always fun.

Thank you for the shout out Adam! 🙏

7:40 Well actually, modern Yugioh has a greater focus on playing specific archetypes, where the player choice revolves around which cards from the archetype to play and which archetypes to combine it with (synergies in play style/generic text). A lot of the banned cards belong to specific strategies, rather than just being generically powerful.

Hollow Knight has a great sense of this with the huge amount of sequence breaks they are

This video had summaries my entire existential dread in video game. No matter how much choices you have in building deck, choosing weapon, equipment, etc, you will always ended up choosing the most optimal one. This is especially true in PVP, which is basically means that PVP is pointless, because you (and everybody else) will always ended up doing (or trying to do) the single most optimal way to play instead of just having fun and expressing yourself by using your own strategy.

"Kill the strategy itself" Bristleback Yes Absolutely My dude just turns his back and stands there after farming 3 items Why, doto, why

While I agree, for the examples that you went through, it isn't quite the same for games like Minecraft or D&D. With these truly more open experiences the fun largely comes from testing, playing around, and finally growing beyond the rules. Those other games are fun, some of my favorite, but there is no joy in exploration to them. When you explore in dishonored, all you find are easter eggs that just remind you that getting to this out of the way spot was never you being cleaver it was part of the developer's plan all along. Any genuine originality is generally met with broken sequences, or intentional bottlenecks that make everything screech to a halt. When you play Minecraft on the other hand you can do things that the developers clearly never planned for, and this does not make the game go horribly wrong. What makes these games so good is a set of rules that is both comprehensive enough, and open ended enough, that it will fit its best to keep going when you do outlandish things.

When I had "finished" Elite Dangerous, by that meaning I did what I set out to do (get the biggest meanest combat vessel in the game), I realised it hadn't really been all that fun. I had just grinded out the optimal route to my goal, and now I was at it, I didn't know what to do with it. So I bought a smaller ship I thought looked cool and had a blast bounty hunting. Too bad I didn't realise this before.

Ooof, great work as always, but I wish you didn't show the Echoes of the Eye setting. Going in, I had no idea where the expansion would take place, I had only watched the reveal trailer. Once I entered the (setting), my draw absolutely dropped. I was completely blown away. One of my favorite experiences in gaming.

Something that I've found is that fewer mechanics with freedom in how you engage with them is usually more meaningful than freedom to engage with more, less developed mechanics. Minecraft, for example, has rather few types of things you can do. It just so happens that the sandbox aspects of removing and adding blocks alone has massive potential. Compare to [open world game #XYZ], in which you can engage with the game is so many ways, but each means of engagement is likely quite minimal.

In divinity original sin 2, The 1st big quest of the game, to escape Fort Joy, is a masterclass in how to provide player agency. Theres a great balance in providing enough direction for players to not get lost, while providing an IMMENSE amount of opportunity for discovery and creativity. Every time I start a new game I discover something new

Fundamentally, limitations allow us to experience pleasure. Take away our limits and we get sooooo bored soooo fast

I'm waiting for the epic encounter between The Architect of Games and the Real Civil Engineer. This battle will be legendary. You guys both are from the UK, make it happen :)

The timer in Xcom 2 made it unplayable. Like seriously, I can barely even get my guys into a position that won't get them all killed before I'm like out of turns.

you should play Alpha Protocol... I love how your allies from one play through can be your enemies in another

Awesome video. 100% agree that Agency is much more important than actual freedom. For one thing choice paralysis is a very real thing, but for another being in a constrained situation kind of inherently makes most people want to push the boundaries of that system. Having limitations makes you want to test those limitations, which causes you to get creative and see just how far you can push your own limits. 100% freedom is often kind of boring, because you don’t have any real impetus to do anything, but when you’ve got fun constraints to give you a push in the start that can go a long way towards giving you some inspiration on where to go from there. Also god I hope that Chao never stops supporting on patreon, the outros wouldn’t be the same without them. We should set up a trust on patreon in their name in case something happens to them financially

2:49 - Games can go beyond content created solely by devs, by making player creations themselves the content for other players, within a simulation that permits emergent gameplay. Various games kind of start to do this. Like TerraTech spawning player built enemy "techs", and "invaders", in its sandbox campaign. Like challenge maps (and of course mods) in Terraria (or Minecraft). And like the evolving meta of tactic in any competitive PvP games, like e.g. Overwatch. But I feel there's a huge unexplored design space that goes massively beyond any of these.

I want a nickel every time a game design youtuber mentions Soren Johnson's quote lmao

Flipping the bird to a bird is the greatest thing I've seen today

I spent summer and early autumn in a slump working over some bad experiences, and channeled that into cyclical replays of Disco Elysium. It's kind of beautiful in when, where, how and most importantly *why* it affords player agency. Every version of det. Costeau must walk the path from his moment of derealization to a reconstructed human being, and will make most of the same major decisions towards solving the murder along the way. He and the player have agency mostly in the moment, in the impact they leave on Kim and other characters they interact with, as well as on his ongoing internal conversation. Most of the antisocial behavior is there to reinforce the point that it's free to stop being like this at any moment. Weirdest self help book I ever read but it worked

Lets go! Each upload is a blessing

In Payday 2, the way you build your heister can get quite odd. You get: -a perk deck, which is a set of immutable buffs which can be really simple (armorer gives bonus armor) or quite complex and game changing (Stoic changes your grenade to a flask, turns your armor into hp, and gives you 75% of damage taken to DoT, allowing you to cancel pending damage with your flask). -a skill tree, 5 sets of 3 trees with each a specialization (tank focuses on armor ammo, and shotgunning; engineer is about turrets and drilling; ghost is about dodge and stealth, etc.) -weapons, 2 firearms which can be customized, a melee weapon, and a throwable (which can go from a ninja star to incindiary grenades) -a deployable, which is usually a case for supplies but can also be a turret or a jamming signal You can mix and match your skill points. Just because Shotgunner is a skill tree of the tank, doesn't mean you can't make a dodge build with it. This is because gun customization can get wild (some rifles can be modified into low damage snipers, many guns can be customized to up their concealability), and the only limit to the skill tree is your skill points (in a single tree, perks have requirements of points invested to unlock them). You're free to match and mix your perk deck, skill points, and weaponry in whatever form you want. My current build combines a sniper rifle, a shotgun with dragon's breath, and the Anarchist perk deck (-50% hp, +120% armour, armour will recover continuously in bursts, armour recovers when you damage someone) into a lightning fast tank build. The sniper can instakill anything except a dozer, the dragon's breath staggers non-specials and deals damage over time (so long as I have an enemy on fire, I'll recover armor every 2 seconds), and I can forgo heavier armour, meaning I have the highest possible speed while still taking a solid beating. It's counter-intuitive, but with experimentation and creativity, you can make a ton of varied builds, with meaningful differences (my friend runs a kingpin deck, and his survival strategy is vastly different from mine)

This is another excellent essay. Thank you for your effort.

i think it’s great that the ideas of freedom that you’re exploring in relation to gaming transfer over to how we view our freedoms in relations to a lot of other things in life. i’d like to read/see more research and thoughts on the different degrees and kinds of freedom in this way

Can't wait to play Garruk Primal Hunter in Standard Since y'know, MTG doesn't have a banlist it just literally has to restrict which Pokemon are in this proverbial title each year so the game doesn't break violently :P

7:32 This slightly tilted Color Pie gives me a whole nother perspective on the game.

Ad: it's time to remind the world- _skipped_ Video: there is no greater feeling in video games than the sense to be able to find your own fun

Adam does it again, another amazing topic I never really thought about and now I am more knowledgeable as a game dev. What would I do without you

This gave me an Eureka moment that will shape my team's upcoming game. Thank you!

0:14 - The time when I realize that it's "The River" from Echoes, and I start involuntarily tearing up, screaming, "Let's GOOOOOO!!!"

Sable reminds me of an old indie game called Zineth, I had so much fun skating at absurd speeds through it's desert.

Haven't seen your videos in a while. Was nice.

Definitely saving this one. Serious guru meditation needed to absorb the wisdom. If you are looking for ideas, a deep dive on breaking this up even more would be very interesting!

A video with Sable in the thumbnail and Outer Wilds right at the start? Sign me up

when you mentioned arkane studio you could mention the genre of immersive sim which is basically everything arkane and looking glass studios are doing

This might well be my favourite video by you, Adam. Thank you for the fresh thoughts intravenously administered straight to my noggin. "pog"

Thanks Adam!

I'm surprised I havent see anyone said it: Limitation is the mother of creativity. The more limited, the more fun you will juice out of the game, pushing the limit

0:19 "Figuring out your own strategies" *Shows cannon rush*

It's like freedom is not about where you go but more about how you get there

That bristleback clip made me smile. OY, YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?

I KNEW Arkane sounded familiar! One of my fav games, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, is by them. ^_^

For sure and roguelikes are really good at the formula in my opinion so seeing games outside that genres like sable makes me really excited

In fighting games one of the best feelings is to find a combo that you like, and when decelopers allow player expresion in combos, feels so good, it becomes your combo, maybe others use it, but its still special for yourself.

Hello, when watching your video it greatly reminded me of gamebooks (like Choose Your Own Adventure) that I used to play when I was a child. Video games and computers already existed, but I found a lot of fun in these games... books... I guess there's a reason they're called gamebooks. This "lemon shape" you spoke of, as well as many other video game concepts, can already be found in these books that are about 40 or maybe 50 years old. They are constructed exactly like any video game would be, with multiple choices, sometimes limited by the character you built up to this point, and often allow you to go through an adventure with the tools you have at hand. I would find it highly interesting if you tried out any (if you haven't already), and maybe talked about it, or incorporated them in your videos... Or you might just as well not do it, who am I to suggest that after all ^^ However, I still strongly recommend playing these gamebooks, which still have an active community up to this date. If you decide to do so, or any other person reading this comment, please start out with the easy ones. The hard ones usually only allow for one path, and will lead you to a dead end for a long time (you can keep on playing for an hour only to find out that any choice you made during that time would have lead you to death).

I who just started playing DIsco Elysium on switch, so th emoment I heard you say it's name I skipped that part. Had to do it. I'm so hooked. Just woke up on day 2 and I have no clue where this will go and i'm loving every moment of it.

you know what, i hink the concept of "Freedom" i like the most in videogames is the "Freedom of enjoyment" sorta thing. like in skate 3. Its fun just tu jump around stuff. and you cand jump around stuff in so many ways, and you can go to a lot of places to keep jumping around stuff. the game design philosophy its a no brainer, just make cool places to skate to so people can have fun moving and jumping around stuff. and doing the same thing with their friends online. let people be free of enjoying themselves in your game

The reason roller coaster tycoon2 was so much more fun than rct3 was that the restrictions in rct2 made all the freedom fun. In rxt3, you could tweak roller coasters to your hearts content, but in rct2, you had basically wide turns, normal, and narrow turns, you could only put loops after an up slope, etc, and when you had exceptions, you appreciated them a lot and it made them more run.

Never heard of Sable. Thanks for giving it a shout out.

Hello Mr. Millard, you absolute LEGEND!

IMO, Hitman is one of the best examples of player expression and freedom in a game. Surprised it wasn't talked about more.

15:03 Whoever made this mod, you have my attention

Puzzle games like the Bridge Constructor series are great at this. It doesn't matter how you complete the objective, just THAT you complete the objective.

Good to see some love for Marauder Shields

It's a hard thing to do and i still occasionally do it, but I've been working hard on not optimizing the fun out of my game. I highly recommend others to do so too, it's a challenge on itself that's rewarding in the end

Thanks for the vid

Thanks for the video and for recommending Hot Cyder, gotta go to their channel right away :3

That Echoes of the Eye background music hits right in the feels

A marauder shields reference in 2021 brings a smile to my face

Finally, I've been saying this for years, freedom in and of itself is pretty meaningless if there is nothing else which makes the game engaging. "Nobody cares about being railroaded as long as they don't notice it". I heard that a long time ago and it's absolutely true.

There’s a term for this, it’s called player agency.

Wow man. This channel is hecka rocking. Psi rocking, even.

I'm glad that you regularly mention Sable. It's a beautiful and original game which deserves more praise - despite its many gameplay problems, let's face it. I wish it were more polished.

10/10 video as always

Kenshi is a good example of a game without a clear endgame that lets you do whatever you want but the freedom it gives never feels empty. Even the simple goal of surviving while exploring is rewarding in itself. Choices can affect the factions around you but even without grand ambitions like base building or overthrowing leaders, the player gets meaningful stories out of simply interacting with the world however they see fit

I wasn't expecting you giving the middle finger to that pigeon. This made me laugh.

the outer wilds music in the background is great

That’s so funny you bring up the “pinched balloon” theory of game paths I first saw that idea in a guide for dungeon masters written by the Angry GM

I love how you put tomas the train

this is why i like star citizen so much when playing with friends. sometimes it doesn't work and we sit there bashing our heads against gameplay preventing issues or dying to stuff we just should not die to, but when it works, it's something in it's own category, with the closest other games have ever gotten being stalker with the right mods on. love it so much, just wish they could be faster with pushing new content, though i'm pretty sure the biggest reason right now for slowness is backend tech and server infrastructures being changed and R&D'd

Sable is an interesting thing. It's a bit like a boiled down Breath of the Wild. It's minimalist in a way of doing things not to accomplish something, but just for their own sake. In Breath of the Wild I soon saw obstacles in the light of "what can I get from climbing this?", where Sable makes me climb things just because they're there. The world is smaller, often sparsely populated with points of interest and there are very few functional connections between these points. If you miss some cave somewhere, you're not missing a huge questline. You're missing one cave. But the things that ARE there, are often wildly unique. Sure there is a baseline of common NPC clusters, but as far as landmarks go, these things can vary BIG time. On top of that, the narrative is all about finding out what you like. All of this put me in a mindset of just going for what felt right, of outright ignoring things that annoyed me. I didn't care about bike parts, or bugs or quests or samey ships. I did all of that once and never again. Instead I climbed and climbed. I saw a thing, I had to see it from above. No purpose to anything. And the game outright telling me that this is what's expected from me, the game not holding out hidden incentives to do EVERYTHING anyway, you know that really mattered. It gave me the permission to be single minded. I have always been a type of player that not just optimizes fun out of the game, but also grinds the fun out of it. An open world like Skyrim grinds me away until all excitement vanishes and I stop playing, never having experienced the parts of the game that truly were fun to me. Sable kinda showed me with it's minimalist nature, that I can experience games another way. I might have to train myself a bit though.

2:06 Ah yes the best transition

Little Big Planet 2 was great too, in a parallel line of the indicators, displayed throughout your video, hoping it comes to PC

i just managd to clip into the walls in genshin impact when this video came out

ijust remembered, the weird ending to the original anime for evangelion pretty much was about about something similar, though more or less nonsensical and not related to the rest so a movie was made to replace it, but the main idea was that your in an endless void and can do anything but the lack of limits in of itself is a limit so making a boundary somewhere and you can finally do actually something soo anyways the best games to exercise freedom tend to be ones that have actual stuff to do and the freedom is simply how to go about them and whether or not you even want to do them, along with using whatever you want, but the most important thing is that there's actually something to do rather than just do whatever. mmorpgs have a heavy focus on end game content and continuous release of story expansions to make sure there's always something to do, clever ones might even have semi randomized dungeons to explore with short burst missions and raids that make their content seem like a competitive arcade game. also heavy focus on pvp. borderlands is a funny mention, ofcourse we're only going to use the one gun inspite of millions of other available, that's the point, pick from endless possibilities and you find THE ONE that defines yourself and your preferred playstyle. this also goes for classes which i prefer a classless system, or as close to a classless system as possible. i have been having a preference for colony/city/settlement building and management type games as i have both absolute freedom to build and do and be whatever i want and it's not boring do whatever empty sandbox with meaningless choices, because the main objective is to essentially maintain a group of virtual pets while doing the things i want to do at the same time. also it's why a lot of sandbox games are also usually "survival" games, since it essentially makes yourself the virtual pet, although i think pvp ruins survival genre since everyone that likes multiplayer is usually hyper-competitive and wants everything revolve around pvp, which in turn leads to every multiplayer sandbox game revolving entirely around how to deal with griefers, and how to be a griefer yourself

I’m just here to see what the thumbnail game was because my god I am in love with the art style

Forza Horizon 5 was just released a few days ago and I have about 11 hours of playtime so far. While the game is a lot of fun, I feel like it's one of these games that give you TOO much freedom. There are a bunch of different race categories, like street racing, rally, cross country, etc. In Forza Horizon 4, you would gain exp for each category separately. Playing street races got you exp for street races, rally wins get rally exp, etc. And when you reach a level up in a category, more races for that specific category would unlock, until you reach max level by basically winning every race event in a category. That then unlocks the final race in that category, like a giant street race that goes around the entire map once. There is a final race for each one of the categories. There was a lot of freedom, but if you want to unlock that big race I mentioned, you'd have to play every other street race first. Rally races get their own giant endgame race and so on. Forza Horizon 5 basically throws all that out in the name of maximum freedom possible. Instead of exp for the different race categories, you now get so called accolades. These are universal and you get them for doing pretty much anything at all. Won a race? Accolades! Discovered a new part of the map? Accolades! Did a bit of drifting around in the open world? Accolades! Accumulate enough accolades and you can unlock a new chapter of Horizon Adventure, a campaign of sorts. You have the choice which chapter you want to unlock. Street races, rally, PR stunts, it's all up to you. I chose street races first and it starts a bit of a story section where you have to drive into the center of a storm, explore some Mayan ruins, pretty neat stuff. And when you're done with that, EVERY SINGLE STREET RACE EVENT IN THE ENTIRE GAME IS UNLOCKED IMMEDIATELY. What. I did some side missions that tied into the campaign chapter I just finished and when I was done with that, I already had enough accolades to unlock another chapter of the campagin. I hadn't even done a single one of the dozens of street races I just unlocked and I was already on my way to unlock all of the rally races at once. This cycle continued until I had unlocked all of the events on the map. The game gives you accolades for absolutely anything you do and the amount of accolades you need to unlock another chapter is tiny. I was about 9 hours into the game, I had done about 6 or 7 street races and I was given the option to unlock the Goliath, the final big race around the entire map. Something that took me about 40 hours in Forza Horizon 4, I did in 9 hours in Horizon 5. Yes, there is a lot of freedom but it feels like it doesn't matter what I do, the game just unlocks everything regardless. There is no sense of progression. At least they got the cars right. While it doesn't really matter what car you use, a slower D class car is just as viable as the hypercar in X class. You only race against other cars in the same class, so X isn't necessarily better than D. And X class cars are typically harder to drive and keep under control because they're so stupidly fast. Also, there are weekly challenges that have to be completed by a specific kind of car, like three specific races in an A class sedan for example. Those challenges force you to experiment with cars that you maybe wouldn't drive otherwise. They're what kept me coming back to FH4 and it's probably going to be the same for FH5. *tl;dr: Forza Horizon 5 is a lot of fun but it unlocks everything way too fast to give you too much freedom without a real sense of progression.*

I'll watch this tomorrow, but to the algorithm today!

Sable is a masterpiece. 100% the game in a couple of days.

I realise I'm late here, but Subnautica is an absolute master class in this form of 'limited and guided freedom'. You start of with baby steps of discovery; the world opens up with your increased mobility, allowing to explore far and wide, uncovering parts of the story in no particular order; then, as you progress deeper in the ocean, you are funnelled back into the story ending.

Echoes of the eye soundtrack in background not bad !

As someone who works me than full time and has always had both school and work at the same time I just like to play a game through once with a great one time experience and story. More than 100 hours in one game starts to get to be too long for me as that takes me about 6 months or longer to get through. I feel like games that are too open ended don't really appeal to me because I just don't feel like I have that kind of time. With that being said there is a prefect balance between freedom to make moment to moment decisions that matter and an on rails when needed roller coaster of a gaming experience

After playing Metroid Dread this seems especially relevant. Usually you are pretty railroaded into a certain direction, but since it is not blatant and it is up to you to scour the map and find the way to progress, it makes you feel genius. Pair this with the many ways that many items can be obtained, and you have a very "free" feeling game on your first playthrough, despite there being one start and end to the game.

Man, just total disconnect in 15 seconds. That's definitely not the greatest feeling for some of us at least. I don't understand why that stuff is so important to so many people. I get that it is, but I don't get it on a personal level. Just seems like a HUGE HUGE HUGE assumption to just say that that IS the greatest feeling.

Your videos arw always so funny man