The Freedom Fallacy: Understanding "Player Autonomy" in Game Design

Wow, what a great critique of Starfield!

I'm not a dev, but watching your conferences is my new favourite educational media. I always learn something I didn't expect to.

Summary: Volition and Self-determination theory: Self-determination theory says that people flourish when they have: 1-Competance: feeling effective and masterful to what is relevant and important to them. 2-Autonomy: whole-heatedly choosing. Not about the freedom of potential choices, but the volition of wilful actualization of your own desire and writing your own story that aligns with you (about finding the right words and not having multiple words). 3-Relatedness: inter-caring and connecting to others and the world; belonging to and valuing each other's presence in your lives and being able to help or affect each other. Players want autonomy and not freedom. A person that gets married loses part of their freedom but gains volition. And so, autonomy is about having greater restrictions that we desire. We don't exactly care about the freedom to do whatever we want, but for these actions to have meaning to us personally (and freedom is only a usual means to that). Some games tend struggle with this (like sandbox games); you give players freedom, but what are you doing to give them volition? Some games give you volition as if in an amusement park: they give you multiple meaningful choices that you jump between for a sense of autonomy (e.g. GTA). Others give you a sense of identity and growth to feel competent (e.g. RPGs like Skyrim). Others give you an impactful narrative for relatedness (e.g. Mass Effect). And some mix between them (e.g. The Witcher; deep quests and activities like Skyrim, deep story like Mass Effect). The real question is: how do we create procedural and dynamic volition to keep them growing and make them more personal? The world must react to your personal choices and your choices must have consequences. An example would be The Nemesis System in Shadow of Mordor where enemies structure themselves based upon your actions and time; it makes the narrative feel like your story. Or maybe if you kill foxes and that leads to increased rabbit population which will lead to a greater sense of responsibility and intentionality. [addition] In general, it is possible that creating volition comes from aligning the player's choices and intentionality with a narrative that allows them to conquer challenges, write their own story, grow, and feel related with the world with no dissonance between them. This is commonly done in story-games like Uncharted where you identify with the character and see your volition align with theirs. Or when you are given a side-character that you care about like Ellie in The Last of Us and that makes your intentionality align with the narrative.

Dude got blindsided by the worst questions that completely missed the point of the talk, and it was hilarious. The dude from spore being like "Actually spore was great, and awesome" instead of realizing the point that after you get to space the game is over, and you only get more out of it by restarting and now discovering more from that end point. You can keep playing but for what reason, so you stop, or restart.

A nice example of the Procedural Volition is Heat Signature, a game with kind of a rogue-lite mechanics generating motivation for your each next character out of the failure of your previous one. Stuck on a ship full of security and the timer ran out? You’re now a spouse of your previous character seeking to free them (you get all of your upgrades back) and also playing that revenge fantasy.

Procedurally generated narrative with meaningful impact on the game world? Why yes, Dwarf Fortress is built entirely on that idea.

Nice talk. Main takeaway: give volition in a game (i.e. give thing that players want to do). Ultimate goal? Procedural volition, through making player's choices matter and dynamically impact the game and the story.

I am so amazed about this psychological side of games thanks for amazing videos

Also it gives you a sense of Pride and Accomplishment.

1:01:30 Personally, I played Guild Wars for a long time and would act differently based partly on the character type I was playing as. Some of that was also skill and weapon setup, but my skill and weapon setup (and name choice and look) were direct results of my interpretation of the creature I had chosen.... so to me, some of my in game behavior (social towards other players - as well as pursuits and in game achievements) WAS a direct result of the character customization opportunity.... THAT is a study I'd like to hear about.

After seeing the Shadow of Mordor example and talking about procedural volition, it made me realize other games already do this. Namely games that let you make multiple characters. You can create your squads of soldiers in Xcom to take the aliens. Every victory and deaths makes it feel more personal because they're your guys. Colonists from Rimworld. Dwarves from Dwarf Fortress. Sims from The Sims. Your family members in Crusader Kings. They've done procedural volition for years and made it their selling point. No wonder they're called story generators. The first studio to successfully combine this with a massive procedural world will release the game of the decade.

I don't think a game like Minecraft falls on the spectrum of narrative versus freedom because it's not that there's a core through-line that the player can complete either in a predetermined way or a free-form way -- there is simply no overarching objective at all and the player's volition and sense of purpose comes from what they themselves want to do with the environment and the tools the game offers. So I think there is a actually a fourth need outside of autonomy, relatedness, or competence, and I would call this, "expression": aspects of a game that allow players to be creative -- almost to be game designers in their own right as they use the game to make their own experience. The reason it doesn't appear in this presentations is because I suspect it is far more elusive than the other three, both to define and produce.

My 30yr old definition of Autonomy is : In some capacity the ability to make informed decisions that provide a level of acceptance to the space and an organized consistent freedom that allows moral and personal independency. One that includes the foundationals of personification, narrative, mechanics on all sides of the design process. I agree that volition is a cap to the 3 tiers of recognition of self and the space one encompasses. I enjoyed the presentation, and am glad to see others utilizing the framework of mental balance to game design. I utilize it myself within my own system of design. Competency of a designer extends to the competency of a player to be sure and directly effects the play experience both isolated and repeated. Keep up the great work.

Great talk really helped in my design

CRPG in general, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 in particular, do improve volition through adding more player's verbs. System-driven games like Deus Ex and old Thief games do this as well.

Really nice talk. Focused on the information with some jokes sprinkled in. Keeps it fresh and makes it easier to stay focused. Good pacing.

I've always thought the same but I couldn't put it into words, this GDC talk is to me the most important of all, it even predicts what would later happen to The Last of Us 2 in both the strengths of it's gameplay giving the player a lot of agency and the weakness of the story taking it away. Amazing.

"Players project autonomy in size" is the perfect encapsulation of many problems we see in open-world games, especially Ubisoft games. If people saw what a game was instead of what it could be when they see a map with markers, they would be less disappointed, and more critical when buying it.

I feel that this is a very good place to start, but he seems to want to diminish the impact of being able to make choices that are outside of the intent of the game... vis a vis "players aren't really more engaged and satisfied whether they're playing the character they had complete freedom to create, or Geralt of Rivia, so long as they have volition in making choices" In my personal experience... I always engage more when I've got more freedom in creating or customizing a character. I always enjoy a game more when I feel like I have the option to do something other than what the core intent of the game is. Specifically he points out that Mass Effect is excellent at creating volitional need satisfaction and engagement...I went into it wanting a scifi game experience where I had agency over the game world... and I wasn't engaged. And also contrary to what he's stated is the core reason Skyrim is successful.... I never felt the RPG progression system was particularly worthwhile, yet I've played hundreds of hours.... not ever doing any part of the story or quests or anything really other than wandering around the wilderness, talking to people, reading books, etc. Literally the things he said in the first few minutes were not the reason people play these games. I certainly can accept that I may be an abberation in the numbers, but I do exist, and I suspect there are more people who really do just want a sandbox full of every possible activity under the sun in it. I also think he's ignoring the real reason skyrim was successful, and that's the modding community. If you want to do it, there's a mod somewhere that adds it to skyrim, and if there isn't, there could be, because you can do it. Right down to playing a completely different main quest in a completely different world that is entirely a tropical paradise instead of a winter blasted wasteland. I do agree though, that part of the problem isn't so much the kind of content that's in the game, but whether or not the player wants to do it. I get no more joy making leather strips than I get filing taxes, and I will more often look up the item id of material components, type in the developer command to get them, rather than actually making them with the raw materials I already have, even though its actually more effort, simply because I hate it slightly less. I enjoy the feeling of breaking the games rules more than I enjoy playing it correctly in that instance. But I think that's part of why I play games in general. I want to be put in a situation where certain things are expected of me, and I can readily ignore those expectations, with impunity. I like that Skyrim's main plot is so non-present that it feels like its not even there 99% of the time. I would still probably like it more if my choices did change the course of it though and that's another point in his favor... My only point is that... while he has a point, its only half of one.

This reminds me so much of what happens to people who win the lottery.. freedom goes up... and yet they feel lonely and unfulfilled :(