Scene based narrative

[Thomas]

I suppose the better path for a scene-based game would be to make clear the means and nature of interaction

This is the major problem for me. Because when you clearly mark all the interaction options (as in a branching dialog system), it is easy for the player to go compulsive and feel a need to go over evey option. At least this happens to me in adventure game where I fear to miss vital clues to puzzles or storyline and goes through all options even though I would not really want to. But as you say, if the interaction possibilities are hidden, then it is easy to miss out on things or (as you say) give the feeling that they have missed something.

Is way out of this to explicitly show the importance of all interaction, and thus telling the player "you really need to check these things out, but these other things are just minor and can be skipped"? Another problem arise though with having everything visible and "in your face" interaction areas; the player does not feel that they are exploring themselves, but just browsing through a designer's script. Perhaps I have no need to worry though and that a player simply ignores the visibility of the action points?

[Jeroen D. Stout]

I have a suspicion that any comment passed on what the player has done may become an evaluation: the player will search for a 100% or at least a 'pass' at 40%... In The Path there were 144 flowers and I never found them all, even if I did spend 5 hours on attempting that. The question is whether or not that could have been accomplished without setting me up for an ultimately impossible goal (I do not dispute 144 is possible, but it is highly unlikely to stumble upon that final flower).
Yes, the developer is sort-of imposing his 'script' again. Which can be OK at times, I suppose, but for the player it must be tempting to ignore his own satisfaction and validate himself by the opinion of the developer.

Some games work well without explicit validation; the original Zen Bondage measured how completely you covered an object with rope up to 100%, but never acknowledging that was the goal. So an implicit measurement of completion may be good. But perhaps this is just window-dressing the same thing to make it less obvious?

I wonder where the point is when we go from 'toy train', which has almost no complex afforandces but provides a long-winded enjoyment to a child to the point where make a choice between saying A and B and feel unnerved we cannot do it both.

Perhaps it actually just is neurotic on the side of the player as well, because lately I have noticed that if a game is not explicitly about finding all the different endings (but still provides them) I just play it once and suppress the impulse of playing it to 'find everything'. Perhaps the enjoyment must be in the actions themselves, not in the result of the choices? I say it may be neurotic on the side of the player as so often with playtesting games the player looks at you as asks if he is doing things well - to which the only real valid response is: "I don't know - are you entertained*?"

* Entertainment in the old sense of the word

[Michaël Samyn]

This is the major problem for me. Because when you clearly mark all the interaction options (as in a branching dialog system), it is easy for the player to go compulsive and feel a need to go over evey option. At least this happens to me in adventure game where I fear to miss vital clues to puzzles or storyline and goes through all options even though I would not really want to.

Duchamp once said "Il n'y pas de solution parce qu'il n'y pas de problème." I believe you can turn this around as well: if you stumble into a problem, remove its cause and you don't need a solution. In this case: if you remove puzzles and storyline, the problem dissolves.

I also think that everything in the game should be worth doing or it shouldn't be in the game. So you should be happy if players try to find everything. It's their choice. Just make sure that you never require it. So they know it's their choice. They are smart enough to know that if they play like that, they are giving up some of the visceral immersive enjoyment of the game in favour of another type of enjoyment.