- Accompanist (role)
- Ad libitum
- Agenda
- Aleatoricism
- Aspect
- Balance
- Bartle types
- BCG
- (Cognitive) flow
- Conductor (role)
- Constellation
- Constructor (role)
- Co-optionality
- Cue cards
- Dice
- Dimension
- Downbeat
- Downtime
- Elegant Game
- Emergence
- End Condition
- Event (musical event)
- Extended technique
- Facilitator
- Fighting
- Flow
- Found sound
- Gameplay flow
- Genre
- Heteronomous Music
- Horizon of intent
- Improvisation rite
- Insert game
- Inspire cards
- Instrument Preparation
- Judge (role)
- Karaoke
- King-making
- Learning curve
- Ludomusical dissonance
- Meaningful Choice
- Mechanic
- Music game
- Non-idiomatic music
- Notation Cards
- Open work
- Parameter
- Pervasive Game
- Player (role)
- Prompter (role)
- Psychographics
- Quarterbacking
- Rhythm cards
- Rhythm game
- Roles
- RPG
- Rule Cards
- Speedrun
- Stacking
- Trading
- Transition
- Upgrade
- Victory condition
- Xenochrony
- XP
- Yes, and...
A set of alternatives that provides a good experience for the person making a choice, in terms of engagement and satisfaction.
Usage
Horizon of intent — A set of desirable moves at the given stage of the game.
If choices are an important part of the game, designers put a lot of effort into making them the best they can be. The term meaningful choice does not refer to what is chosen by the player (as in "making a good choice"), but to the given choice to the players (as in "having a broad selection" etc.).
There is no sure way of determining exactly what choices are well-designed, because that is subjective and also depends strongly on the context of the game in question. A few points of consideration will be provided below, but, similarly to gameplay flow, it seems easier to spot a lack of quality within a choice, when it seems "fake" (not "actually" a choice) or otherwise gives an sub-par experience. The key aspect of a meaningful choice is agency (both real and perceived).
Designer's task is vastly different for games based on a scenario, where you provide tightly controlled choices, and for emergence-based games where the range of possible choice situations is broader. In the second type of game, the necessary playtesting is more time-consuming. Here are some decisions you need to make as a designer to improve choices in your game.
Qualities of a meaningful choice
Recognizable options. First and foremost, if your players have no way of discerning between alternatives given to them, their action becomes more like taking part in a randomizing procedure than making a choice. It still may serve a function, for example, if a player "chooses" one of the cards from a shuffled deck, it adds some safety against forcing a specific card by a skillful dealer. But the "choice" of this card will not be "meaningful", and may be considered an administrative downtime.
If the options are very similar, it might be that your core mechanic isn't about choice at all, but about perception or other cognitive skill (and it still might be a good game of course).
Range. A somewhat related matter is the amount of given options. Not that games ripe with options are worse or better from those where every choice is binary. No easy tips here, just be conscious about:
- Is the range of choices in your game consistent? Is it diverse?
- If there are few choices, do players feel too limited?
- If there are many choices, can they be grouped for easier consideration?
One benchmark value worth remembering when is number 7, which is considered a limit of items stored by humans in their working memory. Staying within their limit allows players to mentally manipulate information without retrieving it from another type of memory. )
Character of the options. Investigate general playstyles present within your game, e.g. as for riskiness or levels of interaction with others. It's usually beneficial to have options supporting different possible such preferences within a single choice.
Balance — Game is balanced when it's mechanics don't lead to the dominance of a single scenario.
Balance. In analogy to this term's basic usage related to game as a whole, an imbalance within a choice is a situation when one option is so much better in the context of game's goals that virtually every player will take the only-sensible route, making their choice kind of forced. A rare defense of measured imbalance you may find is that giving players easy choices (from time to time) makes them feel good about themselves and speeds up the game. Your call!
Predictability. For another matter with no clear-cut solutions, consider to what extent players may predict the consequences of their choices. Assuming still, that you wish to provide quality choices, you'd rather avoid only the extremes of full certainty (which may often lead to imbalance) and no knowledge at all (randomization). This point translates to the targeted difficulty of the game, somewhere in-between stupid and stupidly hard there will be a sweet spot for you to find.
Consequences. The real effect on the game matters too. You should take care that player's decisions are indeed impactful, otherwise after a few moves, when it's clear that some previous choice actually didn't matter, you leave a player with a feeling of disappointment and wasted effort.
Music and time
Meaningful choices in the game let the players stay engaged and focused on their decisions, but an even more interesting result is making the gameplay expressive. Game players "assert their free will" over their path within the playthrough and negotiate a resulting pattern with each other (some improvising musicians do exactly the same in the context of their art).
For our field important aspects of a choice are found in real-time games. These usually add choices within a continuous range (as you may decide to make an action in any of the infinitely many moments) while also shifting all difficulty up by adding a psychological pressure. This is all important to consider in design, and real-time choices may be extremely satisfying for players, but it is also a matter that often might be more productively considered as a learning curve issue, not here.
The performance situation of an improviser can also be considered in terms of meaningful choice. For example, genre conventions will determine the balance of options, instrument is crucial for range, and a constellation of the ensemble will influence the consequences of the action (e.g. a frequent lack of consequences in large groups). A worthy topic of further exploration for the articles section.
Theoretical adventures
The term that appears in game studies is meaningful play and is naturally broader, although very much connected. Early, it was defined , 34) as:
Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game.
Choice being a specific type of action, we can see that all qualities of meaningful choice listed above fit well. The key aspect is the "integration", but into what? In the understanding presented in this wiki page (practically useful for game design), the game is the context for the choice. There is however a different reading , 94), where the social situation around the players needs to be involved as something that contextualizes the game itself. This is a quite thought-provoking (mis?)understanding, alas, an unquotable wiki is not the place to further this discussion…
References
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