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Dev Perspective: Conditional and Unconditional
🕑 Added 2023-10-07 23:00:02 +0000 UTCThis topic is tied to my recent(ish) thoughts about routes verses paths. and also my general thoughts on game structure (which I haven't delved deeply into yet) - thoughts that are ever-evolving.
One of the things I've thought a lot about regarding game structure and the types of story content in visual novels is basically the concept of "content the player encounters on every single play through no matter what" and "content the player only encounters sometimes."
When you are playing a visual novel, you can think of the story content you see as existing in a bunch of individual containers.
We can separate different parts of the game and show them to you in different ways so you may not see all the content or all the content in the same order. Even if the start point is Scene A and the end point is Scene D...
There are several paths you can take.
We don't have to just divide up scenes this way, of course. We can divide up routes, chapters, and even smaller parts of scenes - like a few special lines of dialogue that are squirreled away in their own "container."
There are different ways we can determine how the player views these containers of content.
When we talk about "unlocking" content, essentially it's about whether you got to open up that container to experience what was inside.
Any content that requires you to meet a condition in order to see it, is "conditional content" in the sense that you only encounter it under certain conditions.
So when I talk about conditional and unconditional - this is what I'm referring to. Stuff that you will see no matter what you choose or what you do (unconditional). And stuff that you only see if you do and choose specific things (IE you meet specific conditions).
All VNs are made of a combination of these two things.
On the left, we have two choices that lead to "conditional" content that differs from each other. But on the right both choices lead to an unconditional (or "shared") scenario. There are two paths to this content, but they both lead to the same place.
Unconditional (Shared) Content
Often, I refer to unconditional content as *shared* content because it's easier to say and in some contexts, 'shared' fits a bit better than 'unconditional'. It's content that is "shared" by all the routes or all the characters or "shared" across every play through.
But from a purely mechanical standpoint, "unconditional" is probably a more accurate way to say it. And "shared" can get a little confusing due to something I'll talk about later.
As I said before unconditional story content is content the player will encounter no matter what. You don't have to meet any additional conditions to see this content.
When you start a new game in Gilded Shadows, you are presented with a scene of Morgan having a hard time. You don't "unlock" this scene; it's just there. You always encounter it. This is unconditional. There are other scenes that will always happen, no matter what choices you make.
Morgan always walk home while talking to her mum.
She always gets the card from Trent. But then you can choose how to respond to that and unlock *conditional* scenarios based on your choice. They are conditional because the condition is:
- making that specific choice to see that specific variation of the scene.
So in this example, the conditional scenes are circled in blue and the unconditional scenes are boxed in red. The condition for getting blue scenes is making specific choices. But the red box scenes require no specific actions on your part and you're going to see them every time.
All VNs utilised some kind of shared or unconditional content in conjunction with conditional scenarios.
Conditional Content
Conditional content can be shown or hidden from the player in a lot of different ways.
One of the simplest ways is at a choice menu. When you make a choice, you are shown something specific and you're not shown the other choice content because the content you see is conditional on the choice you make in that moment.
The choice functions as the "container" that holds the content.
But conditional content doesn't only reside *at* choices.
Choices can also come back to haunt you later because we can remember what choices you make. This means that there can be a "container" of content way later in the game that is related to a choice you made much earlier.
Endings are conditional as well - often the condition is based on monitoring the accumulation of some kind of point. Those points are acquired...at the choice menus though.
Many other things can be used as conditions - personality traits, appearance traits.
Ultimately though this is another type of choice. It's just a choice you make on the character creator page before the game starts.
So with any choice you're presented in a visual novel, one function of that choice is setting up the conditions used to unlock conditional content - either right away or further down the line in the story.
When I was first starting to make games, I thought of "conditional" content as being small and immediate.
But of course, it's not. Entire routes are conditional - and often require multiple conditions.
To unlock Ari's route in Gilded Shadows, you have to meet three specific conditions/requirements:
- you have to make a specific choice to not hide when being chased in the rain. (If you hide, you are booped into another route and will not be able to meet the conditions for any other route)
- you have to make a specific choice to wait for Endgame at the café. Again, if you don't wait, you won't meet the conditions for the Endgame routes but will be sent to other areas of the game.
- And finally you have to choose Ari at the hospital.
Each of these conditions is like a gate that allows you continue down a fork in the road which may continue on down to Ari's route.
This is really straight forward, of course.
But as I said, I always thought about it in very small terms until pretty recently.
Types of Conditional Content
As I was thinking about conditional content - what it is, how we use it, why we use, the impact that small or large amounts of conditional content has on players and replayability of games - I came to the conclusion I see three main types of conditional content.
- Unique
- Similar
- Repeated
Players, in my experience, engage with and perceive these types very differently. And how we utilise them as developers, can really impact the way parts of the game are received.
Because conditional content is tied to choices of all types, it's impossible to talk about it without delving a little bit into choices. But one day I do want to do a write up with some of my thoughts on choices. So this isn't going to get too deep into it.
Unique Content
Typically, when a player makes a choice, they expect it to result in something that is unique or distinct from other content in the game. This can vary wildly player to player. But at the minimum players tend to expect some amount of unique content to unlock right away.
In fact, unlocking unique content (whether it is a specific ending or any specific scenario) is one of the goals most players have when they make choices.
If a player chooses A instead of B, it's generally because they expect A to do something different from B.
If I choose eggs for breakfast after being given the option, I expect to get some kind of egg-related dialogue or narration. And if I choose bacon, then I expect some bacon-related content.
If I unlock one ending in the game, I expect it to be appropriately different from the other endings.
Any time I am applying a condition to the story (making a specific choice or making a specific set of choices) then I expect something to be *different* than it would be with other conditions.
Otherwise, I might wonder - what's the point of applying those conditions? What is the point of the choices??
Now, this doesn't mean that *all* the content after that choice is unique. It just means that the choice (or condition) opens up *some amount* of unique content that will hopefully be satisfying to the player experience.
100 words, 500 words, 5000 words...*something* unique should happen.
Similar Content
Sometimes conditional content is similar to other content that's available under different conditions.
For instance if you are given the option to go to a party with A or go to the party with B - the overall experience of going to the party might be similar with some differences depending on whether you are with A or with B.
Similarity is tricky to quantify because in a lot of cases, the story may need the content to be somewhat similar in the flow of events in order to maintain a cohesive plot thread. So typically there will be similarity across conditional content - for instance across the choice options within a specific menu.
Even across routes that are otherwise self-contained and are given a unique plot , there may be some moments that are similar.
Similarity is like a grey area between "unique" and "identical" because it's a little difficult to quantify how different do scenarios need to be in order for each one to be "unique", how much similarity is "similar but still different enough" and how much is "too similar"?
How much is so similar...they're practically the same
And that brngs me to the next type of content...
Repeated Content
In the past I've talked about how each aspect of game creation has a mechanical (the actual code) functionality and a practical (what the player sees or perceives) function.
And this concept of types of conditional content is the same.
What happens when you have content that is mechanically unique but "practically" identical to other content? What does that look like and why does that matter?
When I started working on When Stars Collide, the "similarity" of content across character scenarios and the occasional need to repeat content was like a huge bear trap waiting for me.
The more I worked on this game, the more I tried to break down and analyse this idea of uniqueness of content and the need for similarity of content. And the temptation to repeat content.
And the difference in experience when there is content that is shared (unconditional) by the characters versus content that is individually repeated in multiple scenarios in the script.
Because it *is* a different experience. And this is, where (in my opinion) things get complicated.
Take the example below:
On the right, both choices lead to a shared scenario where you eat both bacon and eggs.
On the left each choice leads to its own conditional scenario. But those two scenarios are exactly the same.
If you were to look at the code for the left scenario, it might look something like this:
The scenario for the right, might look something like this.
You might think this seems like a fairly minor organisational difference.
But in a real story where I'm not just giving a silly example, all of this can impact the player's experience pretty significantly.
In the end
We end up with these types of content:
Mechanically, these things are treated in specific ways and from a practical standpoint, the player views these things in specific ways as well. Sometimes this aspect of game making and game design are difficult to discuss because it's all so interconnected with each other.
The reason this is important is because things like ratios of conditional to unconditional content or whether conditional content is unique or similar or repeated has a massive impact on how players perceive the game or whether they're satisfied with it.
How we use conditional and unconditional content determine how we might want to code sections of our game because coding it one way or the other can make for a smoother or rockier experience.
So that is why I often try to break things down and understand them better or define them better for myself.
And this concept of conditional/unconditional definitely comes up in other topics that I'll probably talk about at some point.
