How to make non-linear games NOT suck

Some people just slap nonlinear, open world gameplay onto a game as if it will automatically make it better. Make a big world, they said, a huge epic world where you can do anything and everything and there are no restrictions. People want freedom. But these games tend to the boring (sometimes).
 
 

 
There have been great nonlinear games: the Fallout series, the Mass Effect series, the Fable series, the Elder Scrolls series, GTA, blah blah blah.
 
What makes them good? Is it just because they have a ton of side quests and subplots? I've seen RPG Maker games with sub quests and sub plots but they're really bad. What makes them good? An XP and gold reward? An interesting story?
 
Moreover, how do you structure a non-linear game? A common consequence of open-ended gameplay is emergent gameplay, but how does that become meaningful?
 
I mean, you can have branching storylines, but the problem a lot of RPG Maker horror games make is they slap a bunch of endings on the end to increase gameplay time as a sort of tacky way to hook players at the least expenditure of effort (usually). Visual novels and RPGs use stats to track relationships, but how do you create this kind of "toy" like GTA or Elder Scrolls where it's the right balance of non-linear and linear?
 
Discuss.

There's a big difference between non-linear and sandbox.

I tend to find that as long as there is a strong main questline or basic limitations anchoring you to a broad area of the entire map, I tend to do fine. But when I'm simply dropped, pants or not, into a big world where you can do anything, it's TOO MUCH for me.

I haven't played the other examples you gave, but Mass Effect was pretty linear. You had X quests you HAD to do before advancing to the next section and X optional content, but they were still keyed into different parts of the plot and unlocked at certain times. You could skip certain important quests and do them in different orders. It changed the storyline a bit, but I'm not sure I would call that branching a lot, considering the plot was more or less the same? I haven't really played any real "branching" story games outside visual novels.

As for what makes games good, it depends entirely on your focus and the overall quality. If you have a purely exploratory game it won't be the same as a very lore and plot focus. In open world games where there is such a huge reliance on sidequests, they tend to do better when they tie in and EXPAND your game world rather than being tacked on and unrelated "just to have a sidequest", which is what I think happens to a lot of the "meh" cases.

I suppose your appoach would be different depending on your plans, but I'd focus on havign a strong anchor line of action (the story, a character's conflict, finding mc guffins) and THEN attach broad series of optional content to that. It doesn't matter if the focus of the game is in the optional stuff as long as you have a solid reason to be doing it, and knowing what it is that's at stake and what you have to do next if you get tired or lost from questing.

It may not be original, but it definitely works: you know to advance you have to do Quest A, but there are sidequests 1 to 11 until you do that are optional. It does not leave you feeling stranded with a sudden 100 sidequests and not even knowing where the main quest is.

I guess my geenral advice would be to have some limits? Freedom is cool, but too much of it just makes you get lost. Progressive unlocking of areas and features has always worked very well.

Dear god it's 6 am and I don't even know what I'm saying anymore...

I tend to see non-linear being the fact that you can do anything in any order, whereas open-ended/sandbox means there's no "right way" to play the game. So I actually think that open-ended/sandbox is a subset of non-linear gaming by definition.

I'd like to explore why it's so much. I get that same feeling, but is it only the fact that you're so free that paralyzes you which choice to make? Or is it that none of the choices seem to provide benefit to you so you don't really feel like doing any of them?

I think even slight changes to the plot would be regarded as non-linear. People sometimes complain that these type of games have the same ending and thus the choices don't matter, but I don't think it's the destination that matters the most, it's the journey that counts. And if the journey was different because of the choices you made, then that qualifies as non-linearity.

I played a game called Oneshot (a contest entry) that did the whole non-linear thing pretty well, even if it was a little unexciting it was still innovative. I was wondering what made the non-linearity shine in that game.

I agree.

This... give the player too much freedom and the game becomes so boring easily for me... Without a guiding mechanism to continue on, players have a high tendency to detach from the game's main story.


I'd say non-linear is like a limited version of a sandbox. :)

I think making a sandbox game first of all requires LOADS AND LOADS of time and you won't be able to achieve that alone. A "non-linear" one, if done in reasonable length is already more doable. 

It really comes down to this:  In every RPG, from Final Fantasy IV to Skyrim, there is a game world and at least one story.

How strongly are the players "forced" to go through the story (or stories)?  

In a classic RPG there is 1 story and the player basically goes through that one plot line.  The pros of this approach are obvious (ease of development and player knows what to do next), the cons are the huge game world can end up being a mere stage, so the player never sees some portion of the game world. 

At the complete opposite extreme are sandbox games, where there is absolutely no defined plot.  Goat Simulator is one of these (the game is hilarious).  In these, the game mechanics and world exploration are what drive the player, since there really can't be a story in a sandbox game. 

A good non-linear game is between the two extremes.  It needs a much more fleshed out game world than a classic RPG, because ANY area can be significant.  But it's not as labor intensive as a true sandbox game.

What defines a good vs a bad one? 

I think Skyrim is a good example of a good non-linear game.  The player has skills, crafting, levels to increase, but the game itself has a loosely defined story which is told through a huge set of quests scattered around the game world.  Some quests lead to other quests, giving the player direction ("Oh, you got the lost book.  Good.  The Autarch wants to see you.").  But very few quests railroad the player.  And there is a ridiculous amount of backstory told through the hundreds of in-game books scattered around the countryside.

So a good non-linear game has a lot of quests, each one providing the player a specific focus.  And the quests together tell the overall story.  Some quests may require others to be finished first, which provides a loose gating mechanism to prevent the player from finding and finishing the Final Quest (the one which concludes the story) before finishing off the other required pieces.

Overall, it's a lot harder to write a really good non-linear game than it is to write a good linear game (and the latter is much harder than it appears, as we all know).

Hmm I seem to recall that someone wrote an article series touching about this topic. Oh right here it is: Progression and Emergence: Two Modes of Play

Have you ever heard of the Paradox of Choice? There's a great TED talk about it here by psychologist Barry Schwartz. It's not about game design but the theory applies.

The crux of it is that too much choice leads to paralysis and regret. We think that the more choice you have, the more freedom you have. But with that you have an additional cost. When you're first presented with all the decisions in a open world game it can be overwhelming. Since game players are fairly impatient we usually make a decision but then come to regret that decision EVEN IF it seems like a good one. That's because we can easily imagine all the other decisions we could have made instead once the one we did make has anything disappointing about it.

Just writing this blog post I am feeling some paralysis because this topic is so broad. And once I post it I'll probably regret that I didn't touch upon other elements of the discussion or that I didn't convey my post in the best way possible. But that's life and especially so in industrialized western culture where we are bombarded with choices every day. When I play a game I like to be presented with just a handful of choices that are meaningful because the more open the game the less satisfying I find the experience.

The person who wrote this is a genius. An absolute genius. He should get the Nobel Prize for geniusness.

You made me close all my other tabs and want to live in a cabin in the woods after watching that. Maybe I should be a hermit. The life is simple, the choices are few. Hunt and gather or die.


I'm kidding though, but it's ironic because "quaint life" simulators (Farming Simulator, The Sims) are some of the most emergent games out there.

One way to deal with the paralysis of choice is by reassuring the player that they can always come back and do other quests later. Skyrim has hundreds of quests and dungeons to choose from but in the end you still get to experience most of them no matter what order you do them in. This removes a lot of the pressure.

Of course, maybe you want the player's choices to matter and have serious consequences. In that case the stress of the “Paradox of Choice” is a feature, not a bug. It's still going to drive some players crazy, but you can't make a game that pleases everyone.

Also, when it comes to branching plot lines you have to accept that many players are still going to only play your game once, meaning all that time you put into alternate cut scenes and quests will go to waste. Very few games are good enough to make the average player want to repeat the first half of the game just to experience a slightly different second-half.

One way around this is to add multiple classes. Mass Effect plays very differently when you're a psychic wizard instead of a super-soldier, and that can be enough to keep the game interesting while working through a second play through for a different ending.

I've also often thought a good way to do a branching storyline would be to have a chapter select feature along with a map of when the major decisions take place. Then a player who has already beaten the game once can jump back to the decision points and explore alternate paths without having to replay the 50-80% of the game that never changes. Players tend to to do this anyways by making savepoints before every major decision, so why not build that behavior directly into your game?

I'd say the big difference between a linear and nonlinear game is if you want the player to experience a story you're telling, or you want the player to create their own story.

When you have a big story to be told, sometimes given too many options may detract from it. An immersive story can be an amazing experience. Whereas if you have amazing gameplay mechanics that can hold up the game on its own, it might be best to allow the player to explore them on their own, like a kid in a toy store, and they'll build their experience on their own.

There are nonlinear games like Skyrim where plot is something you're not forced to explore at a regular pace, and games like DayZ, where people have fun not in anything the game can provide, but what they can make of it. They've met differing amounts of success amongst different kinds of players, and it's difficult to find a surefire success way for a type of game that is supposed to be as unlimited as possible.

If I had to say one thing that would make or break the success of a nonlinear game, it would be... making players choices matter.

If you want to create a good nonlinear RPG, I'd strongly recommend playing several different pen-and-paper RPGs with a good DM, and running at least one yourself.

Pen-and-paper RPGs are good practice because they have all the elements that I believe appeal to people in Western-style ("non-linear") RPGs: exploration, character-building (in a narrative sense, not a "choose your stats" sense, though that's also nice), and agency (a strong link between choice and consequence), and these elements are somewhat harder to get right in videogames because there's no room for the creator to improvise on the spot.

Without a sufficient amount of exploration, character-building, and agency, a non-linear is likely going to be either unconvincing or utterly pointless, no matter how many "sidequests" or item/XP rewards they contain.

The "why" of it really boils down to target audience. It's the same reason why some people prefer racing games over shooters, adventure games over survival horror, and action rpg's over turn-based.

Without having much experience with online gaming, I'd speculate that the people who are most into MMO's are going to appreciate non-linear games more so than those who are not.

With MMO's, you're really only limited to what you can program and the membership-base. As long as you have a strong following, you can continue to add to the story and gameplay by including more content.

With single player games, this is much more limited, outside of expecting your audience to keep downloading content whenever it's provided. Therefore, most single-based games (at least the rpg's) generally have an end-goal, where the game is finished. That end goal can change based upon actions are taken, but there generally has to be an end somewhere.

As for why non-linear would be too much, it really has to do with time, I think. If the game is only going to be about 5 hours long, I won't be bothered about non-linearity, and I'll probably enjoy it. If it's about 50 hours long, I just don't have the time. Then again, I barely have the time for a 50 hour linear rpg. But being that time is of essence, a more linear game is favorable, because at least I always know where to go and what to do.

Not to mention I grew up with j-rpg's that were story driven, and so I tend to favor these types more.

However, for me, the best ones incorporate a mix of linear and non-linear. For those who want the main story, they can stick to the path, and those who want additional content can deviate from that path by finding sub quests, special monsters, additional story segments, or even sub-plots.