Choice Architecture: Manipulation for Fun and Profit!
Added 2024-10-08 17:30:02 +0000 UTCEver wondered why you gravitate toward certain choices, whether at a restaurant or in your favorite game? Thatโs the power of Choice Architecture! From sneaky menu prices to cleverly framed in-game decisions, designers have learned how to influence your choices without you even realizing it. So get ready to dive into how choice architecture works in both the real world and video games! ๐ฎ๐ก
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If you don't mind, I have a suggestion for a future topic (assuming you haven't already done a video on it that I've simply forgotten): Edit: Blah. Didn't realize the "enter" key submitted the comment. Anyway... I've recently pondered a bit of a question with regards to player characters in gaming, be it dating sims, visual novels, RPGs (be they video or tabletop), or what have you: how much does--or should--the game allow you to "be yourself?" Of course, some games aren't meant to be the player's story to begin with. I might get to choose whom Tomoya dates in CLANNAD, but Tomoya is not me, nor is he supposed to be me--and that's fine. This isn't really about those games, but rather the ones in which the line between the player and their character is less apparent. Some games might let you give your character a name, maybe even let you choose whom they get together with, but otherwise largely leave who they are--their appearance, their personality, their background, etc.--out of the player's control. It can lead to me feeling a disconnect between myself and my character, and I doubt I'm the only person who feels this way. As much as I love Three Houses and as much as I ship my character with Marianne, the game frequently forces my character to do things I would never do (also, if I'm being honest with myself, as huggable as Marianne is, and as much as I ship her with my character, I don't think she and *I* would be a good match). Dialogue trees can help with that, but there's still always the risk of none of the options appealing to me, not to mention they only make railroading more obvious since there will inevitably be times that the game gives me no choice even when I think there should be one (I'm sure we can all think of times when a game required us to walk into an obvious trap and gave us no option to point out and/or outmaneuver said obvious trap). I think there's an extent to which this disconnect is unavoidable, as I doubt any game can truly be programmed to account for every possible decision the player might want to make--at least not without costing more than Bondarchuk's movie adaptation of War and Peace and possibly taking up more data space than most consoles and computers can handle. However, the mere existence of things like dialogue trees, character creation, and branching storylines prove to me that there is a demand for the freedom for players to choose for themselves whom they're playing as--one developers are willing to at least try to meet to some extent. I suppose there's also an extent to this question doesn't just extend to "being yourself," though. After all, if I have a specific idea in mind for how I want to roleplay my character, I'm going to want the game to give me the freedom to do that. I was recently a bit annoyed to discover during a recent playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, for example, that Wyll's romance had to be started in Act I even though I felt that my character and Wyll hadn't gotten to know each other well enough by then. I ship my character with Wyll, but I don't see why they couldn't fall in love more gradually--other than that the developers didn't think to make that an option. Perhaps this isn't so much a matter of "be yourself" as "be who you want to be." Anyway, I thought a video on the topic could be interesting.
General Luigi
2024-10-08 23:08:10 +0000 UTCThat one totally cracked me up too!
Extra History
2024-10-08 20:34:53 +0000 UTCThat picture of animal crossing is sending me.
Jane Heyer
2024-10-08 19:08:53 +0000 UTCHelll yeahhhhh
EL3VATED
2024-10-08 17:31:21 +0000 UTC
