players have no choice but to take them on in order, one by one, the fun they provide
will be greatly diminished.
Non-linearity is great for providing players with a reason to replay the game.
Replaying a game where players have already overcome all of the challenges is not that
much fun. In replaying a more non-linear game, however, players will be able to steer
away from the challenges they succeeded at the last time they played and instead take
on the game’s other branches. However, it is important to note that replayability is not
the main motivation for including non-linearity in your game designs. I have heard
some game designers complain that replayability is unnecessary since so many players
never manage to finish the games they start playing. So if they never finish, why add
replayability? These designers do not realize that the true point of non-linearity is to
grant players a sense of freedom in the game-world, to let players have a unique playing
experience, to tell their own story. If players want to replay the game again, that is fine,
but the primary goal of non-linearity is to surrender some degree of authorship to the
players.
Furthermore, the contention that players seldom finish games and hence the
games do not need to be non-linear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The reason players fail
to finish games is often because they become stuck at one particular juncture in the
game. This may be a boss-monster that is too difficult, a puzzle that is too confounding,
or merely failing to find the exit from a given area. If the game were more non-linear,
however, players would have much less chance of getting stuck at any point in the
game, since the variety of paths available would increase the likelihood that players’
unique talents would be sufficient for them to make it successfully through one of the
paths.
At a Game Developers Conference talk entitled “A Grand Unified Game Theory,”
Noah Falstein suggested that when non-linearity allows players to tackle a series of
required challenges in whatever order they desire, completing one challenge should
make the others easier for players to accomplish. In the case of a collection of puzzles,
this can be done by providing players with a hint about the other puzzles once one is
completed. In the case of a collection of battles of some sort, this can be done by provid-
ing players with additional weaponry with which to survive the other battles. Whatever
the case may be, using this technique increases the chance that players will be able to
overcome the challenges at hand and get on with the game.
A note of caution: all designers should understand that non-linearity is not about
having players wander around the game-world aimlessly. If the game is non-linear to
the point where players have no idea what they are supposed to try to accomplish or
how they might go about it, the non-linearity may have gone too far. Often game design-
ers talk up their in-development games by making statements like “In our game-world,
players can do anything they want; there are no restrictions. The game is completely
non-linear!” Such a game would likely be completely annoying as well. Of course, by
the time these “completely non-linear” games have shipped, most of the non-linearity
has been stripped out and players are left solving puzzles on a rail. Somewhere between
“on a rail” games and total freedom lays an ideal middle ground, where players are left
with a sense of freedom accompanied by a sense of guidance.
124 Chapter 7: The Elements of Gameplay