2. Choose Your Own Goals
Different than sandbox games or linear paths, the idea is that developers should allow us to choose and customize our own objectives from the start of the game, which would then dictate the scope of that particular playthrough. Imagine playing a classic RPG, but instead of 20 minutes of dialogue and exposition designed to make you care and burden you with instructions, you are sitting with your best friend on a bench outside. The friend asks you what you want to do with your life, and you can choose from a list of goals, including everything from becoming the ruler of the kingdom, to exploring the mysteries of the Far East. You check the boxes that interest you, and just like that, the game knows what you want to do, and can start guiding you along those paths. For the sake of feasability there needs to be limits, but you can opt in or out of what matters to YOU. Once you've completed all the things on your list, the game congratulates you, and the credits roll. You didn't want to save the princess this time, so it didn't pretend it was important. This would fix many problems that sandbox games have; particularly that of internal contradictions. Sandbox games feel obligated to create an "ending", but they never seem to know how to get there, or why we should bother. They encourage us to get distracted with everything available, but they need us to stay interested in a plot that is never allowed to pose a real threat. This results in a game about a crazy person with a tremendous ego, because any attempt at emotional depth and impending doom would feel like a joke as we spend three in-game weeks bullying strangers we meet and collecting trinkets for our collection. The Player Dictated Narrative idea finds a perfect balance, letting players consider what they want to do, and then commit to it earnestly. It's time to stop spending so much time, effort, and money on distracting us from the limitations linear games create, and start handing us the keys. If there's one thing we've learned from the massive success of "Achievements" or "Trophies" in gaming, it's that people don't need fancy cutscenes and exposition to get motivated, they just need a goal and a pat on the head when they reach it. So why not create worlds and game structures that work hand-in-hand to harness such natural impulses? Minecraft is the biggest grassroots phenomenon in gaming, and it simply plops the player down in a random spot and let's them explore, or not. Minecraft technically has an ending, but it only highlights the awkwardness of the Creator Dictated Narrative. Who cares about killing the dragon? Nobody. Why put all the effort into making one? Because we have to roll credits somewhere, and we want to end on a high note. But it's not a high note, because we didn't really care about that. If we could custom design our own "Final Achievement" in Minecraft, we would celebrate every step closer to it, and have an ending that means something to every individual player, in each playthrough.