Choice and Consequence
Chris 'Inauro' Penning, 2005-12-27

Life, like Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, might be said to consist of choices. Whether to enter the passageway, whether to take the lift, whether to tell your girlfriend she looks fat in those jeans… We make these sorts of choices everyday. Some of them are of minor importance while others are potentially life-changing (or in the case of your girlfriend, life-threatening). When it comes to MMORPGs, however, do our choices make any difference? For that matter, are we able to make choices at all?

On the surface of it, those questions seem rhetorical, if not utterly insane. Of course there are choices to be made in MMORPGs. You can choose your race, gender, class and, if you're lucky, appearance. You can choose whether to complete quests, go hunting, talk with friends, or grind your way to the level cap in a frenzy of brain-dulling monster-smacking. The reality is, however, that a significant proportion of the gameplay in MMORPGs is scripted and our choices make little difference beyond which button we press to swing a sword or toss a fireball.

By way of example let's examine a simple quest from everyone's favourite MMORPG de jour, World of Warcraft. Thanks to Thottbot for the details.

Quest: The Forgotten Heirloom
Location: Westfall
Quest NPC: Farmer Furlbrow
Objective: Farmer Furlbrow wants you to retrieve his pocket watch from the wardrobe in his farmhouse at the pumpkin farm to the West.

In this scenario we're faced with a fairly standard retrieval quest. Farmer Furlbrow wants us to head back to his family farm and retrieve his beloved pocket watch. The first choice we're offered is the obvious one: whether to accept the quest or not. If we decide not to accept the quest we can seek employment elsewhere or, presumably, continue with the aforementioned monster-smacking. So, of course, we choose to take the quest. Unfortunately, this is the only choice offered throughout the entire scenario. In order to complete the quest we must locate the farm, find the watch, and then return it to Farmer Furlbrow for our reward. It doesn't matter whether our character is a Paladin, a Mage, or a Rogue: all the options from the moment we accept the quest until its completion are the same - there are no further choices to make.

In an ideal (game) world a range of choices would be available to us. If our character was a Paladin we might choose to offer the farmer our assistance free-of-charge, or a short sermon on the evils of being tied to material things, and how he should consider divesting himself of all such attachments. If a Mage, we might consider conjuring him a new watch, or sending a minion in to retrieve the item. On the other hand, if a Rogue, might we not agree to retrieve the watch and then, once we've claimed our reward, pick the farmer's pocket and head off to Ironforge to hawk the watch on the open market?

The obvious problem here is one of time and money. MMORPG developers simply cannot afford the time it would take to create a number of different outcomes for each quest, especially not with a hungry publisher breathing down their collective necks insisting on recompense for their hefty investment. So, instead, all players are offered the same range of options no matter what their class preference or ethical standpoint might lead them to otherwise select. There is a certain degree of equality in this approach; all players are offered the same choices and so cannot complain that one class or outlook is being favoured over another. However, might it be possible to at least offer the illusion of choice?

In the previous example the Rogue's choice might suffice as an alternative to the scripted outcome. The choice of returning the watch to Farmer Furlbrow could be offset with the option of either keeping it or selling it to some other player or NPC. This could satisfy the desires of those players with a darker side to their personalities, while at the same time offering the high moral ground to those who might prefer to role-play a "good" character.

Offering players a simple ethical choice in most scenarios could open up a rich vein of role-playing options and, potentially, a series of branching quests. Imagine if you will a Choice and Consequence model for questing. Something akin to the model more commonly found in single-player games; such as the light side/dark side choices in Knights of the Old Republic I and II, the faction-based questing of Planescape: Torment, or the more black and white choice (no pun intended) between good and evil in Fable.

By following a Choice and Consequence model the Forgotten Heirloom scenario could unfold in a number of different ways. For example, if you'd decided to return the watch to Farmer Furlbrow he might then recommend you to his neighbours as a trustworthy sort who could be relied on to take on their more rewarding tasks; quests that might be unavailable to those who'd taken the darker path. On the other hand, if you'd decided to keep the watch for yourself the denizens of Westfall might decide that you were dodgy and would only entrust you with quests that offered lesser rewards. Finally, if Farmer Furlbrow's family heirloom was now gracing the trinkets section of the Ironforge Auction House, the citizens of Westfall might call on the local militia to hound you out of town, forcing you to repair your reputation through good deeds, or take employment with the local bandits instead.

Clearly, this sort of quest model would need to be incorporated into the design of a game from the outset. Systems would need to be in place to track statistics like reputation and offer branching options on the basis of your standing in the community. However, I venture to say that such a system would require less work than scripting different quest options for every character class, but would still offer the all-important illusion of choice. More importantly, such a system would offer players an ethical choice that would allow them to project more of their own personality into the virtual world.

A common complaint from players who prefer role-playing to "gaming" is that it is often difficult to feel a part of the world their character inhabits. There are undoubtedly a number of reasons for a given player's inability to suspend disbelief, but high on this list is likely to be a feeling that there is largely no consequence to one's actions in the game world. I believe this sense of disconnectedness would be reduced if players were able to invest more of their personality in their characters. Offering players ethical choices would allow them to define their characters through their own value systems, and would give them a more concrete means of projecting their personality into the game world than that available through the more mundane choices of class, race, and gender.

A Choice and Consequence model of quest design would therefore offer more than just another way of constructing branching quests. It would also form the backbone of a more involving game world. A world in which a player's actions actually do make a difference. A world in which their choices have consequences beyond the immediate resolution and reward of their current quest. A more involving world in which a player's personality is the deciding factor in their successess, failures, and gameplay options.

The benefits of a more involving game world should be readily apparent to even the most cynical of observers. From a developer's perspective, an involved audience will devote more of their time and money to the game, and are more likely to purchase future titles that offer a similar degree of engagement. From a role-player's perspective, a game world that offers real choices and consequences is a more vibrant place for them to play out their fantasies. Even the casual player who is more interested in "gaming" than role-playing would benefit from a game world that offers more than one choice to all comers. The branching quests resulting from a Choice and Consequence model would give such players a greater number of gameplay options.

I am sure that a significant proportion of the readers of this article are asking the question: "If a Choice and Consequence model of game design would be so great, why isn't there an MMORPG that uses it already?" A fair question. The most obvious answer is that to implement such a system would be too technically difficult. However, a more honest answer would be that most developers consider MMORPGs to be nothing more than games, and games don't require ethical choices when explosions and eye-candy are so easy to come by. Until this perception shifts we are unlikely to see a change in the standard gameplay on offer in mainstream titles.

Does this mean there is no hope for a Choice and Consequence model of game design? I don't think so. I believe that players will eventually become jaded with the game hopping required to maintain their interest in today's MMORPG market, and will begin to look around for those games that offer them real choices, real consequences, and a real sense of involvement. Given enough time, developers will notice this trend, and the genre will change.