In my introductory course on conceptual game design, there’s a block on dramatic structure, which includes a lecture on formal structures for beginnings, escalations, and endings. The lecture applies both to story-driven and mechanically driven games up to and including Pong and Tetris; but when games do have a story, I recommend endings wrapped around player choice. Such a choice is even better if it’s a moral choice, and even better if it’s what Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark call a “reflective choice” in A Game Design Vocabulary. The choice you’re offered after the showdown fight in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is such a choice, for example—not only is it a moral choice, it’s a reflective choice about who you want to be in that world.

Unsurprisingly, for the Voidpunk video game I have in mind, I also want to offer the player an ending that involves this kind of choice. But there’s more! Whatever the player decides to do, and that applies not merely to endings, the consequences of their decision should differ in a compelling formal/structural way too: one choice should drive the story development arc forward, and another choice should drive the character development arc forward.

It’s not something I teach in my introductory course, but I wrote about it in my book. Here’s an example. In Hamlet, Act III, Scene iii, the titular character is given the choice to kill or not to kill the King who murdered Hamlet’s father and married his mother, as Hamlet now knows for certain. Had Hamlet killed the King at this moment, this would have advanced the plot, or story development arc, and the play would have proceeded and ended differently from the play we know. Hamlet’s decision not to kill the King at this moment, in contrast, advances the character development arc. Hamlet’s knowledge is deepened about the nature and requirements of revenge in this world, and the audience’s knowledge is deepened with regard to Hamlet’s character and motivation.

For my Voidpunk game, I already sketched a few ideas, but I’m not in a particular hurry just yet.

Image courtesy of CD Project Red.