Linearity In Gaming

There are a ton of arguments that gamers get into. One of the more interesting, though, is the issue of linearity. Should games be linear, or should they be non-linear? What exactly constitutes a linear game? I am here to tell you that linearity can mean multiple things. Mainly, there is a difference between a linear story and linear gameplay. Today I’ll try to explain this difference and what it means for gamers and designers. So let’s get started.

 

TYPES OF LINEARITY

 

LINEAR STORIES

 

Linear stories are stories that progress in a straight line. Regardless of medium, a linear story will have a distinct starting point, will progress in a straight line from that starting point, and eventually reach a singular conclusion. In linear stories, how you get from point A to point B doesn’t matter. You could walk across a giant continent, fly a ship, or simply load from one level to the next. We’ll look at some examples a bit later, but for now, just think of a linear story as any story that you can’t change the outcome or direction of. It has nothing to do with gameplay or exploration.

 

NON-LINEAR STORIES

 

Non-linear stories have multiple starting, middle and ending points. Players (or readers/viewers/listeners) choose the starting point, and choose which point to go to next, reaching a conclusion that is unique to their experience. Again it is important to note that it doesn’t matter how each point in the story is reached, it just matters that you, the user, can alter the fate of the story by your own actions.

 

LINEAR GAMEPLAY

 

In linear gameplay players have only one path to take. Gameplay has to do with what you do in between the story segments. Do you go through each level on a straight path from beginning to end, or can you take multiple routes to success? When you reach the end of a level are you greeted with a loading screen or are you free to travel the world before you reach your next mission? In linear gameplay, the answer is the former. You walk down a very straight path and when you reach the end of that path a cutscene or some other story element is shown, and then you are whisked away to a new level. There is little deviation. You’ll find that there are almost no games in existence that are entirely linear. Almost every game offers some amount of choice. Because of that, there are many fuzzy lines determining what makes a linear game and what doesn’t.

 

NON-LINEAR GAMEPLAY

 

The exact opposite of linear gameplay. You can choose to solve a problem from multiple angles, you can choose where to go and what to do. Again, a distinction has to be made between non-linear gameplay and non-linear stories. You can have an open world that lets you go anywhere you want and still have a linear story. It’s just in that case there are multiple linear stories being told at any one time. Confusing? Let’s look at some examples.

 

 

EXAMPLES

 

LINEAR GAMEPLAY/LINEAR STORY

 

Probably the most archetypal linear game is Call of Duty, especially entries post Modern Warfare.

 

 

In CoD there is a distinct starting and ending point to the story. In Modern Warfare a terrorist sets of a series of events that could lead to the nuclear annihilation of the US. Players play through this story in a linear fashion. That is, they play a mission, and then their only option is to play the next mission. They can’t alter the fate of the world. They are forced to play the story Infinity Ward or Treyarch wrote for them. Likewise, the gameplay is linear. There are no side missions, no world to explore, and in each mission there is generally only one path to take. You can’t, for example, approach a scene and complete it from multiple angles, like you can in Crysis.

 

Let’s look at Crysis quickly. In either the first or second game, you have a linear story. Aliens are invading and you have to stop them. Gameplay is one of those fuzzy moments I was talking about. Level progression, that is, the movement from level to level, is linear. You can’t go off and do a side quest and then come back later. But in mission, you’ll find a lot of non-linearity, especially in the first game. You can choose to approach a battlefield from multiple directions, and then destroy the enemies there in any way you want. You can’t change the story, or the progression from level to level, but you can change how you go about beating each level. Regardless, Crysis, Call of Duty, and almost all other shooters feature linear gameplay and a linear story.

 

NONLINEAR GAMEPLAY/LINEAR STORY

 

Here is where we get a bit confusing. The two best examples of this are Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls.

 

 

Let’s look at each of them. In The Elder Scrolls players start in some sort of prison. They usually go through a quick tutorial before being set loose on the world. At this point players can go wherever they want. But to continue the story the player must complete a certain set of missions in a certain order. The story isn’t entirely linear, and several side quests are indeed somewhat non-linear. But there is only one ending to an Elder Scrolls game. There are multiple stories going on at one point, but generally, there is little player choice on how those stories progress. Again, it isn’t a perfect example, but the stories of The Elder Scrolls are generally more linear than non-linear, but like all of these explanations, there is a gray area. I don’t think anyone can argue that the gameplay of an Elder Scrolls game is non-linear, though. Players can go anywhere in the world they want at any time and individual missions can often be completed in multiple ways.

 

Grand Theft Auto is a more clear cut example, at least up to the fourth entry, which features a somewhat nonlinear story. But from GTA1-San Andreas, players could travel an open world (either from a top down perspective or behind the shoulder, depending on the game), and do whatever they pleased. The story, though, is completely linear. You can’t choose how the story progresses (again not including 4), it happens on rails. Also more linear than non-linear are the actual levels in GTA. Generally once you start a mission, there is only one way to complete it. You may have an illusion of choice, but there is one best way to complete any mission in any GTA game. In a sense, except for the open world, GTA is one of the more linear games on the market. Think about that for a moment.

 

LINEAR GAMEPLAY/NONLINEAR STORY

 

You’ll find this is a rather rare form of game, with only a couple major games sort of using this format. Almost all nonlinear stories also feature some amount of side quests. Probably the closest any game comes to this is Mass Effect 2. While there are multiple quests to complete at any one time, the levels themselves are very linear and there is no open world. The nonlinearity comes from the story. You can choose how the story progresses, leading to wildly different scenarios. But the gameplay is very linear. It is essentially a corridor shooter. Again, you can complete side missions, but you generally go from mission to mission, and any missions you skip or complete are more related to the story than a change in gameplay. Again, not a perfect example, but there really aren’t that many good examples.

 

 

Another game that does make partial use of this is Bioshock. Bioshock is a corridor shooter through and through. There is some token non-linearity, but you essentially go from one level to the next without any option for side-quests, and within each level, while there may be a couple different paths to take, there is usually one best path that will get you through the level the easiest. Most of the story is pretty linear as well, and without spoiling anything, the very idea of choice is torn from the player at the end of the game, making it seem that all choices along the way were not choices at all. The one real choice is whether or not to save the little sisters. Some would argue, though, that this is actually a gameplay choice, as you get Adam more quickly if you sacrifice the little sisters. But ignoring that gameplay conceit, the game is designed so that you make a story choice, but this choice doesn’t change the gameplay, again ignoring the different Adam costs.

 

NONLINEAR GAMEPLAY/NONLINEAR STORY

 

You don’t see that many of this type of game these days. It was a common occurrence in 80’s and 90’s American computer RPG’s. Today the only real example I can think of is Fallout New Vegas. In it you can go anywhere a la The Elder Scrolls, and you can also choose how the story progresses. Outside of that, I honestly can’t think of a single other example released in recent years. Going back, you could look at many of the Ultima games, the Might and Magic series, and many more RPG’s. Today this type of game is pretty much extinct. We’ll look at the reason in the next part of this article. Let’s look at the good and bad of each of these styles of game design.

 

 

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

 

 

LINEAR STORIES/LINEAR GAMEPLAY

 

The Good: In this form of game design you can tell a very clear story. You are assured that the player is in a certain spot at a certain time doing a certain thing. For players, this means it is harder to get lost, harder to become confused or to miss an important sequence. Because of this, the best selling games fall under this category. More casual gamers relate to this form of storytelling and gameplay because it is closest to more familiar mediums like film and literature. It is also easy for designers to create scripted events in linear games because they can be sure a player will kill a certain enemy or cross a certain location every time they play.

 

The Bad: Players have less immersion. When they can’t make choices that effect the outcome of either the story or the gameplay, they can feel that they are playing a movie. Many players find this type of game less compelling, and it certainly doesn’t make the most of gaming as a medium. On the development side, this form of design requires that the developer put a huge amount of effort into making compelling scenarios for the player to experience. That’s why you’ll find that most linear games attempt to ape action movies.

 

 

NONLINEAR GAMEPLAY/LINEAR STORY

 

The Good: Players have a greater involvement in how they experience the story, while designers can still tell the story they want. You’ll find that almost all games with linear stories have somewhat linear gameplay in missions. This is because designers need to be able to trigger a cutscene or some other story event. If not all players hit the trigger (say walking into a room or killing a boss) then the story couldn’t be told.

 

The Bad: It is hard to make nonlinear gameplay seem nonlinear when you have a linear story to tell. It also takes a lot of time and money to make an open world game as you have to model thousands of objects and prepare dozens, if not hundreds, of levels, scenarios, and events. On the player front, many players lose interest when they are free to explore as they wish and never see the end of the game.

 

 

 

LINEAR GAMEPLAY/NONLINEAR STORY

 

The Good: In my personal opinion, the reason we see so few of this type of game is because it is really a poor way to design a game. The examples I used only partially use this, and in both cases it is when they break away from this formula that they shine. Simply put, a non-linear story works best when players can also play the game how they want. I’m sure someone can make a strong argument about a game that does this well, but as a designer I would never choose to design a game like this.

 

The Bad: The player feels like he should be changing the direction of the story, but because he isn’t seeing multiple paths open up he will either not realize it, or become frustrated. Mass Effect 1 was one of the most sold back games at Gamestop because players wanted a corridor shooter like Halo and got a bunch of random choices that they didn’t feel mattered or were just too much for them to handle. It was when players got to the second game in the series and they saw how much their choices mattered that they realized how cool the series was. But from a game design standpoint, I would argue that the Mass Effect series is at its best when players can choose what to do, and at its worst when it is telling them what to do. The same is true with Bioshock, and the other few examples I can think of this type of game.

 

 

NONLINEAR GAMEPLAY/NONLINEAR STORY

 

The Good: Players have ultimate agency. That is, they feel that they have complete control over the world and character they are playing as and in. If done well, players can shape the world how they see fit creating the ultimate player made creation. For many ludologists this is the ultimate form of game design.

 

The Bad: It is almost impossible to make. The sheer amount of resources required to build and test a non-linear game is staggering, especially in this day and age. Looking at older games that used this format you can see the other major flaw – the lack of direction. Those old enough to remember playing RPG’s in the 80’s and 90’s probably can recall owning several hundred-page guidebooks explaining what to do. I remember playing games with a pen and notebook in hand. This is simply because the designers never can know exactly where a player will be, what items or abilities he will have, and what he has experienced up to that point. So players are forced to keep track of that stuff themselves. Look at the only recent example of a game that attempted this, Fallout New Vegas, and you can see the massive number of bugs in the game. People blame the engine, but that is only partially true. Really the problem is that there are just too many variables to take into account and the designers just can’t program enough fail-safes in to account for every situation. Likewise, you’ll see that most missions in New Vegas are simple, the world is made up of simple blocky items, and more. You have to make major concessions to create a non-linear game. And remember that all those options and variables have to fit on a single DVD. Players beg for more games like this, but plain and simple, they just cost too much to make and they can go wrong far too easily. Usually there aren’t average non-linear games. There are good ones and then there are awful ones. This is, for many designers, the Holy Grail of game design. Personally, I would never choose to work on something this massive.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Okay, so that does it. What do you guys think? What type of games do you like? Have I made you think about linearity in different ways? Does the amount of choice in a game influence whether or not you purchase it? Did you realize that linear games are far more popular than non-linear ones? Share your thoughts below. And sorry I’ve been away for so long.