Types of Choices

Invisible Choices

• choices that the player is making but they don't know it's actually a choice. Useful to show them later the game was paying attention

Unfair Choice

• No indication of what the right choice is - three doors analogy

Fake Choice

• the design just gives the player the illusion that they're making a choice.

Weak Narrative Choice

• I'm going to give you a choice, but the consequences are not very interesting. Same ending

Expressive Choice

• Choosing an outfit, gender and sexual orientation, can be meaningful to players even if these choices don't have consequences in the narrative.

Moral Choices

• we are good or bad (or maybe neutral), providing us clear agency on how we are operating in the world.

Dilemmas

• Dilemmas are the kind of difficult choices that games should use more often. It's what "moral choices" pretend to be, but they're hard and they often make people feel bad.

Conclusion

• Takeaway 1: Narrative choices have a large range of expressive possibilitiesThis taxonomy is just a primer to some of the ways in which designers can provide different ways for players express themselves, to feel powerful, frustrated, or struggle.
• Takeaway 2: Branching doesn't always mean that the story needs to changeChoice-based narratives can also encourage players to explore a story and put it together like a puzzle. That is the concept of many hypertext novels of the 90s, for example.