open response about yesterday's email
Tags: gamedev, writing
Published: 2023-12-24 16:20:44

---
title: open response about yesterday's email
published: true
date: 2023-11-22 00:00:00 UTC
tags: [ 'gamedev', 'writing' ]
canonical_url: https://onwriting.games/daily/20231122-1022-open-response-about-yesterdays-email/
---

A fellow gamedev friend from the list, [Andreas Lopez](http://www.scelestusgame.com/) (creative director and studio owner for Vaelynn) replied to [yesterday's email](https://dev.to/onwritinggames/the-binary-branch-frustration-2ib-temp-slug-3240820) commenting about binary branching (shared with permission):

> As a studio owner and fellow narrative focused individual, the biggest problem I see with your design choice of putting chance in these sort of outcomes is that it depends how you use them.
> 
> Some random, uneventful conversation? Sure, cool! But if it affects and gate keeps special items, quest lines, whether or not an NPC will join your party/base, etc. then all you will cause is people to do save scumming in order to get the outcome they want.

Regarding your comment on **save scumming** (saving all the time), perhaps you are heavily influenced by RPG game design, and maybe what I propose is not yet mature enough to use in RPGs, which is a fairly rigid genre. But we already have other genres like rogue-likes where the player expects randomness as part of the system, and doesn't resort to save scumming when they get a bad result. I believe this is more about managing player expectations than something innate in the players themselves. If they always expect to get a "good" result, yes, they will be saving all the time.

On the other hand, the game design can simply accept this, and allow the player to rewind to any point in the game. I added this functionality in cuentitos because I think it's important to have it in case the game designer wants it.

> Players don't want realism, they want to escape into the world. Like in baldurs gate 3 they want perceived control and clearly understand of when they don't.
> 
> For example they might need to make a persuasion check. They see the die roll and they see the outcome.
> 
> Many still do save scumming for these instances, but many are okay with moving on and letting it go. Why? Because they saw how they got there and lady luck wasn't on their side.
> 
> If you hide the logic, then you'll just frustrate people once they find out because they realize they could've save scummed.

Here, you make a point about how game design solves this problem in RPGs and how it manages player expectations.

Saving throws are a game device to incorporate randomness and for the player to expect that what they are doing **is a gamble**. I completely agree.

[Roadwarden](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/), for example, places a die to the left of the options that have random outcomes.

It's part of the game design to ensure that the player understands that there is a bet or that they have the possibility to rewind. Frustration arises when things happen that the player does not expect.

> I definitely believe in branching and I appreciate randomness. But the player always needs to understand how or why the outcomes happen as they are - especially if they have further consequences beyond a greeting.

Yes! The problem here is not probabilistic branching, but rather the player's mental model and their expectations when encountering it. If a player encounters binary branching when they do not expect it, they will also feel frustrated. This is a problem of game design and feedback, not so much of probabilistic narrative.

> And if they only affect the greeting then you have to save the result so that as you talk to the same NPC 10 times over that you don't get 7 positive, 2 neutral and 1 'i hate you' type of greetings. Just something to keep in mind.

This is so true, even with binary branchings: one has to have a **consistent reaction to the state**. We agree.

In my opinion, **not being consistent is a bug**.

> I enjoy the overall concept you are designing here though.

❤️ I am very glad that this is the case!

Thank you very much, Andreas, for writing and helping me clarify these things.