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Okay, so video game stories are unique 
because you get to make decisions.

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Like, whether or not you 
should mock this preacher.

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GERALT: “How many people’s lives have 
you saved? From bruxae? From leshens?”

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PREACHER: “That has no bearing—“
GERALT: “Asked you a question. How many?”

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Those choices might cause an immediate reaction…

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GERALT: “There’s something to think about, folks”.

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Or, in some cases, the game might

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remember your decision and issue some 
kind of consequence later down the line.

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GUARD 1: “Geralt of Rivia. Witcher”.
GUARD 2: “You stand accused of offending

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religious sentiment. We’ve orders 
to take you in for interrogation”

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Now, these sorts of choices have 
historically been associated with RPGs,

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interactive fiction, and… whatever we’re 
calling these Telltale-style games.

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And I think that’s partly because 
of their lineage that stretches

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back to improvisational tabletop games, and 
branching Choose Your Own Adventure books.

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But I think it’s also just an interface thing. 
These are games where your primary mode of

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interaction is to pick options from a menu - 
like a dialogue tree or a list of next moves.

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So making choices about the 
narrative is a perfectly natural fit.

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But what if your game doesn’t have that? 
What if it’s a shooter, or survival horror,

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or an action game? How do you let players 
make choices in those sorts of games?

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Well, one way to do it can be seen in 
Bioshock. This is a first-person shooter,

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but it features an infamous moral choice: 
each time you meet a Little Sister,

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you need to decide whether to save her - or 
harvest her lifeblood for magic super-juice.

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And, in these moments, the game slows 
down, takes away your normal controls,

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and just slaps a big ol’ pair of button prompts 
on screen. Press X to harvest. Press Y to rescue.

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LITTLE SISTER: “No, no! No no!”

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So that’s one way to do it. Just kinda 
borrow the interaction systems of these

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more suitable genres - whether that’s 
button prompts. A list of options.

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Or a dialogue wheel. I’m going 
to call these “explicit choices”.

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But there’s actually another way to do it.

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Let’s look at another shooter - 
this time, Spec Ops: The Line.

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Here, we come across two men, 
strung up by their hands - with

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snipers aiming at their bodies. 
And you have to make a decision.

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WALKER: “I get it, we’re meant to choose”

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But this time, there are 
no button prompts and there's no menu.

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Instead, you decide which person Walker will 
shoot… by literally, just shooting them.

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*Gunfire*

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So that’s a very different way to do it. Instead 
of leaning on the systems of a different genre,

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Spec Ops lets players express their intent by 
using the basic tools they use elsewhere in

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the game. This is a game about shooting 
- and so you make choices by shooting.

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I call this, you guessed 
it, an, “invisible choice”.

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And I think these, rare beasts have some 
incredibly exciting advantages. And so, in this

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video I’m going to share four key reasons why you 
should think about making your choices… disappear.

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Okay. Advantage number one - invisible 
choices can make the options ambiguous.

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So in Bioshock Infinite, you’re told to 
throw a ball at an interracial couple. But

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did you know you can actually throw it at the 
racist announcer inste… oh, right, it says it

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right there on the screen. That kinda spoiled 
it, didn’t it? That’s what happens when your

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input system demands you list every 
possible action the player can take.

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Back to that choice in Spec Ops, though, and 
while the guy on the radio asks you to shoot

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one of the two men… you can also decide to 
shoot the ropes that they’re being hung with.

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Or refuse to make a choice at all. 
Or fire at the snipers instead.

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Because the choice is invisible, the game can 
hide additional options that are only found if

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enterprising players really think about the 
situation and the tools at their disposal.

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Spec Ops is actually full of these things. 
Later, an angry mob of civilians descends

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on Walker and you’re encouraged to shoot 
them - but you can also fire into the air,

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or just do a non-lethal melee 
attack to diffuse the situation.

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There’s also a memorable one in Far Cry 4 - 
Pagan Min asks you to wait for his return,

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giving you a chance to escape from his fortress.

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But if you actually just wait for his 
return, you’ll unlock a secret ending.

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These hidden options can make players 
feel smart. And it makes the game feel

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less like a rigid sequence of choices - and 
more like an organic and believable world.

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Advantage two. The choices don’t have to be equal.

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So back to Bioshock for a second - when it 
comes to rescuing or harvesting a Little Sister,

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the choice is equal. I mean, sure, 
the consequences are different.

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And one might make you feel bad. But the 
physical act of making the choice is identical:

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press one button on your controller, or the other.

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But then consider a game like Undertale. 
Here, you can choose whether to kill all the

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monsters and bosses in the game - or 
spare them. But it’s far from equal,

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and it’s - usually - a lot harder to save the 
creatures than it is to simply wipe them out.

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So that means you need to put in 
effort if you want the better outcome.

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And you might decide to make a certain choice… 
simply because it would be too difficult,

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or cost too many resources, to do the other thing.

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Like, there’s a bit in Deus Ex: Human Revolution 
where your pilot Faridah is pinned down by enemies

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and it’s possible to save her - as long as you are 
able to defeat a bunch of baddies in record time.

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It’s not a moral choice whether she lives 
or dies - it’s a test of your skill.

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Also, picking immoral and selfish choices 
from a menu can make you feel pretty

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icky - but it’s even worse when you have to 
physically carry out those actions yourself.

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When you slowly, manually, personally steal 
from this elderly couple in This War of Mine…

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it makes you, the player, feel even 
more complicit in these awful actions.

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Okay! That was a bummer. Uh, 
advantage three! Fine-grain choices.

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So, when we think about more explicit choices, 
we usually think about quite significant decision

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points. Picking between the lives of two 
characters. Or the fate of an entire town.

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Or, uh, what to have for breakfast.

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But when a game is tracking invisible choices, 
it can build up a massive, and highly detailed

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databank of everything the player is doing - and 
use all of that to shape the rest of the game.

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This can lead to a game feeling 
very personalised - like how the

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Orks in Shadow of War can recall the 
precise nature of your previous run-in.

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Or how the characters in Hades discuss 
the exact details of your most recent run.

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HYPNOS: “Daw, one of those Wretched Louts 
just killed you dead that last time,

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those mean old slappy guys? Maybe try 
killing them beforehand, I don’t know!”

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It means the game can comment on tiny 
things like where you’ve been - which

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is why JC Denton gets chewed out for 
entering the women’s bathroom in Deus Ex.

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Or how long you take to do something - waste 
too much time before rescuing your pals in

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Mass Effect 2, and you’ll find the Normandy 
crew has been reduced to a gooey grey paste.

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This makes you think about the effects of every 
action you perform - and not just the big,

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obvious choices. So, in Dishonored, for example, 
every time you kill an enemy you’re adding to the

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chaos meter - which can change the outcome of 
the narrative, shift how characters see you,

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and add more rats to the world. And so because 
every combat encounter has the opportunity

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to change the future, you end up playing 
in a more deliberate and thoughtful way.

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Same goes for Metal Gear Solid V, and 
how the enemies adapt to your play style

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by popping on helmets or 
installing more floodlights.

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And finally, advantage four. Surprising outcomes.

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One of the biggest problems with explicit choices 
is that they make it really obvious that you’re

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making a decision.
And just in case it wasn’t completely obvious,

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let’s put a notification on screen to back that up.

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So, it’s pretty hard to surprise players 
with the consequences of their decisions.

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But with invisible choices, the game 
can secretly and silently track your

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actions without you ever realising it - and then 
surprise you with an outcome later down the line.

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Like, in Metal Gear Solid, when you encounter 
the mind-reading weirdo, Psycho Mantis.

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PSYCHO-MANTIS: “You are a very methodical man. The 
type who always kicks his tyres before he leaves.

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And yet you’re rather ineffective in battle.”

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What’s actually happening here is that all along, 
the game has been secretly tracking things like

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how often you save, how many traps you’ve sprung, 
and even the contents of your PS1 memory card.

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And then Psycho-Mantis can give the appropriate 
voice line. It’s a typical Kojima party trick,

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but a neat example of how invisible 
choices can surprise the player.

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Other examples might include 
saving Biorr from this cell,

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only for him to come to your aid in 
the fight against Penetrator. Or your

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actions at the start of Chrono Trigger 
getting brought up in the game’s trial.

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The other thing is - because explicit 
choices are given such prominence,

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I think players quite rightly expect for them 
to have equally significant consequences for the

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storyline. And to be disappointed when, typically, 
they don’t. But when choices are invisible,

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even tiny consequences are impressive 
and memorable by comparison.

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Now, if I’m going to be listing advantages… 
I should probably also touch on the

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challenges of implementing invisible choices.

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For one, it can be hard to honour every choice the 
player might make. There’s a scene in Firewatch

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where you have to deal with some skinny-dipping 
teenagers and the game will react to loads of

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different actions - including tossing their 
boombox into the water. But the programmers

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had to create a very complex and robust system 
to account for all of these different actions.

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Interested devs can find some resources to 
help with implementing invisible choices

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in the description for this video.

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Also, this system doesn’t really work for 
every type of choice. If your only way of

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communicating to the game is down the barrel 
of a gun, that’s not going to work for more

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nuanced decisions. But it doesn’t have to 
be either / or. Back to Firewatch, again,

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that game tracks actions like picking up 
objects - but it also has a full dialogue

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system through the walkie-talkie. That gives 
you two very different ways to express yourself.

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Another challenge is that when choices are 
made ambiguous, players might not know that

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they even had access to certain options 
- and feel cheated when they find out.

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I made a video about Fort Frolic in Bioshock, 
and mentioned how you can leave the area without

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killing Sander Cohen. But according to my comment 
section, plenty of people didn’t know that walking

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away was a valid choice. So, you may need to 
teach players that other actions are available.

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And, finally, players may not realise 
that they’re seeing the consequences

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of previous actions. The nice thing about explicit 
choices is that they are, well, explicit about

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the fact you’re having an impact on the game. But 
invisible choices can easily be missed altogether.

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In playtests of Dishonored, Arkane found 
that some players thought the game was

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incredibly linear - but only because those player 
didn’t even realise they were making choices.

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They were too subtle, too organic. Likewise, 
it’s easy to get to the end of Silent Hill 2

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and have no understanding that the cutscene 
you receive is actually the result of some

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obscure and obtuse actions 
you’ve made throughout the game.

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It’s important, then, when using invisible 
choices, to be quite heavy handed with dialogue,

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and make it crystal clear to players that 
this is an outcome of their earlier actions.

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GHÛRA THE SINGER: “Like a little chorus he comes 
back round. He usually dies is what I’ve found”.

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Too subtle, and all your hard work is wasted.

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So, there we have it.

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Action games don’t need to twist 
themselves into an RPG or a text adventure

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in order to react, remember, or 
reflect on the player’s choices.

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These games already have ways for the player 
to communicate - to express intent, and values,

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and decisions, and moral leanings. 
By implementing invisible choices,

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players can speak using the verbs they’ve 
already been using as part of normal gameplay.

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And in doing so, games can make 
the options more ambiguous.

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One choice can be harder to make than another. 
The game can track dozens of tiny actions that

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the player is making. And the consequences 
of your decisions can be more surprising.

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Ultimately, we say that actions 
speak louder than words - and I

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reckon more games should make that 
a reality. Thanks for watching.

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Hey! Happy new year! So people who 
back GMTK on Patreon get a monthly

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00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:47,280
“reading list” of 20 articles and videos that 
I recommend. Here’s one from this January's list:

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00:12:47,280 --> 00:12:51,200
why the superhero genre is 
not comparable to the western.

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00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:55,333
You can check out the full list over on 
Patreon, a link is in the description.

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00:12:55,333 --> 00:12:57,000
Thanks so much for your support.