For many designers, the choices a player has available to them in a game are meant to give them options on how they want to overcome obstacles.
At least, that's how The Stanley Parable developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh framed the nature of game design during a brief presentation at GDC 2014's Game Narrative Summit. The player negotiates between choices in order to defeat a greater challenge, right?
But what if you took away the challenge? What if there was nothing to defeat? What would negotiation between choices look like then? Perhaps even with no challenge it's still possible to create choices that are meaningful, expressive and allow for a conversation between player and designer.
That's exactly what Pugh and Wreden explore in their brief talk, which was absolutely worth watching. If you missed it in person, no worries -- you can now watch the whole thing for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel.
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