10,000 words of dry goods, an analysis of the considerations for setting up games at the user selection level

PART1

I will never forget Boyd. May he rest in peace.

Boyd was my assistant, my friend, and my confidant. We trusted each other. But as we got into trouble on the battlefield of Flame Awakening, I realized that Boyd would not succeed. He was cornered by the knight and had nowhere to retreat. After a few rounds, the damage was done. The character I controlled at the beginning was killed.

I feel terrible. He didn't need to die, the game didn't require it to finish the fight. It's my fault, I caused the unnecessary killing. He was a powerful character with powerful weapons and armor, but now it's all gone.

For the rest of the game, I was constantly reminded of my mistake. His brother would say, "We can do this! I think this is what Boyd would want." His friend would chime in, "If only Boyd were here, you'd know what to do." I'd go into battle thinking about how useful he was, and now he's gone. Damn, this game is 10 years old and I still remember it even though I can't remember the name of another character in the game.

My gaming experience with Boyd, where virtual choices tortured virtual characters, taught me that as a game designer I should create a kind of "meaningful choice" in the game. Choices will pull at the player's heartstrings, allowing them to feel the game more deeply through their real-life characters, and be accompanied by strong emotional experiences. Only such design will turn games into art.

But how do you do that? How do you give meaning to the choices you make in your game?

Rather than take my word for it, let’s take a page from the experts’ book — 2012’s critically acclaimed The Walking Dead, a game I think represents the current state of the art.

What are meaningful choices?

This is similar to the question of "are games art?" There is room for choice.

For my design and this article, I will define meaningful choices more clearly.

Meaningful selection requires the following four components:

1. Awareness - Players must know they are making a choice (perceived choice)

2. Gameplay Consequences - Choices must have both gameplay-oriented and aesthetic-oriented consequences

3. Reminders – Players must be reminded after making a choice

4. Permanence - After exploring the results, the player cannot go back and undo the choice

If we can meet these four requirements, we can create meaningful choices, because in real life, these are the components of meaningful choices.

Think about the decisions you make in your life - where to go to school, whether to tell your friends, who to marry, whether to break up, etc. all have these four components. And these are the choices that make up our lives.

In games, choices based on these components will evoke powerful emotional responses in players, causing them to discuss, think and remember something. By creating meaningful choices, we can also make the game more meaningful.

Let’s analyze these four components in detail.

Component 1: Awareness

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If the player doesn't know they're choosing between more than two options, it won't make sense.

Imagine the player is in a game where the character Cindy is calling for help. The player runs to help Cindy. At that point, the game will say, "You chose to save Cindy instead of Bernard."

But the player never saw Bernard. They didn't even know Bernard was in trouble, or that he existed. At this point, the player may feel frustrated. This undermines the choice and makes it meaningless. Instead of taking responsibility for the outcome of the choice between Bernard vs. Cindy, the player will start to blame the game. "What? I didn't know I needed to save Bernard! I didn't want to save Cindy!" It no longer seems like a choice, and any outcome that occurs will be seen as inevitable.

Second, the player completely misses out on the experience of thinking, struggling, and deciding what they want to do.

The Walking Dead uses choice interfaces (which David Cage pioneered in his games Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit) to communicate choice awareness. Most of the time when the player is presented with a choice, they can clearly see the other options.

It's all up to you as to how much awareness you present to the player.

In The Walking Dead, some choices and their consequences are obvious. This scenario is very similar to the above example, where the player is hiding from zombies in a convenience store. A group of zombies rush into the store, two characters are captured, and the player must choose which one to save.

The player is given enough time to make a choice, and the captured characters are within the player's sight. This makes the choice more obvious, so when the player makes any choice, they will feel responsible.

The level of awareness of meaningful choices is so wide that the player even knows they are making a clear choice.

For example, in the conversation with Hershel at the beginning of the game, the player is asked a number of questions, "Where are you from?" "Are you her father?" "Who did you come here with?" It's not clear which questions are truly important and which are just small talk. However, the player still knows that they are making choices, even if they are not sure what the final outcome will be. The conversation interface makes this clear.

So when Hershel catches you in a conversation or a lie, the player feels like it's their fault. They could have said "I came alone" instead of "I came with a police officer", so when Hershel reprimands them, they know it was their decision.

Component 2: Gameplay Outcomes

Imagine you are playing a game and you get a treasure chest. There are two things in the treasure chest:

1. A new, more powerful sword that can kill enemies with one strike that other weapons would take two strikes to defeat

2. A sword that has the same function as your current sword, but is a different color.

Which would you want? Obviously you would choose the first sword because of the gameplay consequences it comes with.

Gameplay Consequences don't just change the look and feel of the game, they change the behavior and actions of the player. They don't just change the look of the game, they change the action of the game.

The most meaningful choices are those that have both aesthetic and gameplay consequences. Changing the game experience and the player's behavior is much more meaningful than playing the same game over and over again with different settings.

In The Walking Dead there are many gameplay consequences that come from player choices. Deciding to side with Kenny during his fight with Larry affects his opinion of you. Side with Kenny during the fight means that later when you get into a scuffle with Larry, Kenny will come to your aid. It also affects whether he is willing to carry out your plan.

True to the game's premise, the choices you make will have ripple effects all the way to the finale.

A recent example of a narrative game with meaningful choices, David Cage's Beyond Two Souls, is a negative example of gameplay consequences. Unlike the well-received Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls was met with disdain and derision from players and critics alike. Despite having remarkable graphics, its gameplay seemed to be very flawed.

Kyle Orland from Ars Technica writes:

I barely paused to consider a choice in Beyond: Two Souls. Instead, I was pushed along by predetermined story beats and made my way through a cliched plot without feeling any meaningful agency.

Making the decision whether or not to tell Ellen Page that his attire doesn't match the guests has no consequences other than changing the conversation. The rest of the game will remain the same.

By using a framework for meaningful choices, we can assume that there is something wrong with many of the choices in Beyond Two Souls: they don't have strong enough gameplay consequences. It turns out that this is all assumption, and perhaps the team at Quantic Dream has proven this, and perhaps the decisions players make will feel like they have more emotional weight.

Component 3: Reminder

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Regret is a very complex human emotion. Whether it's regret for lost friendships, regret for devoting too much energy to your studio and not enough time to your family, or regret for never pursuing your dreams when you had the chance. Regret is a combination of disappointment and responsibility, and being sad now will no longer bring you the results you wanted because the opportunity has passed.

Pride is the opposite of regret. Pride is the feeling of excitement when you get the results you want because of the choices you made. You will be proud of marrying the person you love, you will be proud of choosing the right job, and you will be proud of making the right decision.

It is these stories of regret and pride that make up our lives.

However, if you don't remember your past choices, you will never feel pride or regret. If your past choices have no impact on your life now, you will also not feel these emotions.

In The Walking Dead, players are constantly reminded of the choices they made. Kenny yells, "You never had my back!" Another character who appears in the game later says, "You failed to protect her at the Motor Inn." The choices you make not only have an impact in the present, but also affect your long-term relationships with other characters. If Telltale didn't add these reminders, many of the choices would be meaningless to the player.

By properly reflecting on what choices the player has made previously, the weight of the choices becomes greater. As the player progresses over time, the same choices will have more impact on their experience and carry more meaning. If you make a choice, then forget about it and move on, you won't feel regret or pride later on.

Component 4: Permanence

At the end of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the final boss asks Mario if he wants to join his side, and the player can choose yes or no.

If you choose No, the final battle will begin, and if you choose Yes, the player will see the "Game Over" screen and rewind 10 seconds.

No one has it as a finale that reveals their character. In fact, even the most interesting gameplay would become boring if you could go back in time and change your choices.

The reason choices in real life are filled with emotion, sadness, and purpose is that they are permanent. We can’t do it all over again. You only get one chance, which is the main reason why you need to choose your words and actions carefully.

In games where you can reset, you have no qualms about destroying buildings or attacking innocent people.

The Walking Dead handles this by using an autosave feature. Once the player has made an important choice, the game locks it so they can't go back. So, for every choice you make, you have to make sure it's what you really want to do.

Of course, players can also restart or reset a chapter, but the inconvenience is enough to prevent them from doing so.

in conclusion

I hope you find this framework helpful. If you can ensure that the choices in your game have these four components, then I believe you will be able to provide tremendous value to your players.

As I mentioned before, there are probably thousands of ways to create meaningful choices, the ones I listed are the ones that have been repeatedly practiced by many successful games and are very helpful to me.

I believe games are an art form, and that truly thoughtful games can take the emotions presented in movies and literature one step further, or even better. By creating games that allow players to evaluate their characters as humans through the choices they make, and to learn lessons that can be applied to real life, we as game developers can create something truly special.

#p#

PART2

It is said that real games are about giving emotional control to the player, not the designer. I disagree. In fact, how much choice we give the player, what the impact of the choice is, and how the player makes the choice is the real control we (as designers) have over the player. How we present each choice will determine the player's emotional response.

interactive

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First, let's talk about player-system interaction. Just like a racing game is mainly about the interaction between the player and the interface. Here, choice is about mastering the system to get the desired result. The choice is not about the player deciding what to do, but how to do it. The emotional power of this design mainly comes from the player's mastery of the system, knowing what the best choice is, and being able to make the most effective choice.

Designers must choose how to challenge this system mastery, and Call of Duty applies this principle of emotional design. Mastering the system and understanding how to create specific player responses through effective interaction will make players feel proud and happy when faced with these choices, and angry when they fail to master the skills. Is there more emotional response that designers can create?

Games like Starcraft highlight this kind of system mastery, where all good players will master the use of hotkeys, know what they need to build first, and what skills are required to gain more options, etc. Starcraft also limits the options available to players through victory conditions.

Breadth of Choice

It's about how the choices we make make sense in the context of the game system. Games have narrative systems and goal interaction systems, two functional game elements that can be very useful if the designers make the right choices. Narrative systems are about the environment and appearance, while goal interaction systems are about the functionality of the game. It's all about how many choices we give the player and what kind of choices they are.

Objective level interaction choices are all about how the player changes their game world. Lucasarts adventure games are all about digging for the deeper meaning of the game's puns, finding the various objectives and what they do. Reviewing, opening, and talking are the equivalent of shooting, regenerating, and strafing in a shooter. Both Schafer and Gilbert are committed to creating objective levels of interaction (the goal is to create emotion and laughter). Just as reading a line of dialogue in Monkey Island not only allows the player to experience humor, but also gives them the choice to progress further and allows them to dig deeper into the meaning of the dialogue in the system, whether or not to allow the player to read the dialogue is a privilege held by the adventure game storyteller.

Therein lies the power of the designer. In an adventure game, how often will the player be given a choice that moves the character forward? Does a function in the system make sense? The choice of not letting the player do anything, just walking and talking, and using trivial content to move the story forward has become a specific choice in adventure games because of its widespread use.

Around these stable and clear systems, the genre will continue to grow. To some players I compare the game world structure of Mars Walk to that of Metroid, and for them this is how they understand the game world, but in some ways this is an unfair comparison.

Shooters today all have cover systems because that's what everyone agrees on. I've mentioned many times that I'd like to see more different physical interaction systems. Has anyone ever made a game where you have to struggle to load ammunition and operate a weapon as complicated and laborious as shooting it? Far Cry 2 has a mechanic that lets you customize your guns, and while that's kind of fun, does it really add depth to the game? If the game forces the player to constantly reset their bullets, it's going to give them a completely different emotional response.

What about SimCity - the creation and destruction of cities, the breadth of player choice, etc. The creation, destruction and maintenance of cities, and the choices made by the player have nothing to do with the goal of advancing a linear story, but rather are choices made by Wright based on what the player wants to see and what actions the player might take.

Environmental choices are at the forefront of emotional design in games

Environmental choices are the meaningful or meaningless choices we make in the game. There are both positive/creative choices and negative/destructive choices. There may be a lack of choices when we want them, and there may be too many choices when we are restricted to a narrow environment. Some scenes in "SimCity" present players with environmental choices, but in most cases players are here to build their own city.

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Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy is a great game that I love because the designers limit the choices the player has within the story environment. The player can experience the different environments in any order, but like life, when the player really adapts to the environment, they become curious. We are even surprised at the power and control we have. Just like the "choice" of taking medicine is conflicting, I wonder how much choice we really have?

I don't like Grand Theft Auto IV because the environment makes it clear that I don't have any choices, but the game presents an open system. I was only punished when I drove and ignored Lil Jacob's calls. It made me feel like I was being punished for engaging with the various systems that the game encouraged. There are various stories interspersed in the game, and the designers don't want you to freely travel through the city. But the stories are not diverse enough to effectively present a beautiful, large and healthy "Free City". I was frustrated by the environment choices of this game and eventually left the game. After playing for 10 hours, I gave up because the game presented too much realistic responsibility and pressure.

On the contrary, I keep coming back to Minecraft because it is a great game no matter how you look at it. Every choice in the game has its own meaning. It also has built-in environments, and the environment of every action becomes part of the player's open-ended narrative. Your world may not have much impact on other players, but you can always face your own story. The environment of choice is deeply embedded in the player's game experience, and the player's choices are rewarded by the environment. No matter what actions the player makes, there are rewards. Sacrifice is rewarded, mistakes are rewarded, and even wandering off the beaten path can show the player more different environments.

So what is the result?

We have the same choices in almost any game: run, crawl, jump, shoot, build, collect items, and that's just part of it. Minecraft's control over me is mainly to provide me with both negative and positive choices at the same time, just as building is part of collecting items. The emotional control presented by Markus Persson is always very limited, but he always manages to reimagine the meaning of each choice.

Only when we realize that there is emotional space in the choices we offer can we truly break free of more emotional constraints.

#p#

PART3

Knowledge is power. But game designers often ignore this old saying at their peril. As developers we always want games to allow players to fulfill their fantasies, but often it is the games themselves that get in the way.

Whether in games or in life, we are often uneasy because we don't know what to do. Most games require players to make various choices, but if the game does not provide enough information to help them make choices confidently, it will only frustrate the players in the end.

In this article we'll look at the role of information in games, why meaningful choices require context but are often overlooked, and how we can use it to help make sense of it. I'll give some examples of why this is so, and we'll also look at some special cases where hiding information can make for a better game.

Interesting decision

The goal of a designer is to create interesting decisions for the player. An "interesting decision" is one where the player has two or more choices that are of equal value in the long run. Conversely, there are two main reasons why a game can become uninteresting: when one choice is more beneficial than the others, and when the consequences of a choice are unclear.

If players are confused by the decision, their feelings about the choices will slowly turn from ambivalence to annoyance. If the game lacks context, players will only choose the choice that looks easiest, sounds coolest, or is at the top of the list. This makes it impossible for players to invest too much energy in these abstract choices, and if they later find that their choice is not reasonable, they will only blame the game instead of themselves.

When players fail they think, "I should have chosen X instead of Y. Let me try again and see if I can do better." But this only happens if the player feels the game is fair and is looking forward to seeing the final outcome of the game.

If you want players to be able to make strategic decisions, then you need to make the game mechanics explicit. For example, if a game has upgradeable equipment, then the designer needs to explain what happens when you equip a weapon.

Telling the player how much damage their actions will do is much more useful than telling them that there is a mysterious and abstract attack bonus of 5. What does the 5 represent? This wouldn't be a big deal if all the weapons the player uses have a single attack value, but what if the player has to choose between a +5 attack weapon and a +7 shield? How can the player compare the values ​​represented by weapons without fully understanding what these values ​​mean?

The main problem with creating some ignorant choices is that it is difficult for players to be interested in them. You may have been familiar with the previous weapon that can cause 10 damage per shot and needs 4 combos to kill the monster, but when you buy a new weapon that can cause 16 damage per shot and can kill the monster with only 2 combos, you may lose interest in the game because you don’t feel the same excitement as before.

The game doesn't really start until the player knows what's going on. So the player can start making plans and trying to weigh short-term and long-term benefits. If the game can give the player this level of comfort, the player will be willing to stick with the game for longer.

Complete information

Giving the player as much information as possible is always helpful, but sometimes it can ruin a game, especially when the player has complete information, meaning they know everything about the game.

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Chess is a classic example of a game where the entire board and all the pieces are completely exposed to the player. There is no hidden gameplay element.

Almost every game needs some element of unpredictability, and "pure" strategy games are a great example. Usually, this element of unpredictability comes from the other players, whether they are real people or AI. If the player always knows what the enemy will do next, the tension of the game will be greatly reduced!

Card games that lack an element of unpredictability need to find other ways to create novelty, and randomness is a great way to do that. Familiar card games all use a random deck. If the order of cards you see is the same every time, the replay value of the game is minimal.

However, it’s not just games that don’t involve human players that are affected by information integrity. The aforementioned game of chess recently “solved” the problem — if both players make the right move, the game ends in a draw.

Adding some hidden information to the game can effectively prevent a single strategy from dominating the game. In many strategy games, the map is always covered with a layer of "fog of war", and players must continue to explore to uncover the secrets hidden in the darkness.

Sometimes even the map itself changes over time. For example, in the recent Civilization, technological research can reveal new resources. Their sudden appearance can greatly change the "perfect" strategy for a particular situation. The need for players to constantly adapt to the unknown environment is a great pleasure in the game.

Hiding information is especially important in single-player games. In most games it is difficult to create an AI that can compete with the best players in the game. If the human player has a clear view of the game situation, he will eventually understand the AI's game pattern and ruthlessly beat it. So the game that adopts this pattern will quickly lose its temporary fun and charm.

How much information a game needs to hide depends largely on the designer's choice and goals. The card game Dominion provides players with 10 random action cards at the beginning of each session. The difficulty for players to predict what order of cards they will receive increases the replay value of the game.

But those who play the game several times will gradually see the card setting of the game, so they will feel that Dominion is a stereotyped game. Although adding more random elements or hidden information can improve the gaming experience for these players, it may deprive other players of the fun of the game at the same time. It can be said that game design is more like art than science.

Incomplete information and risks

The goal of the game is to make sure you weigh each decision effectively. Either choose the smaller but safer option, or the riskier but more powerful option.

Generally speaking, this approach is always effective because safe and simple choices can give players rewards in the short term, while choices with long-term effects are more risky because they will bring other elements into play.

If a choice only has a "25% chance of success" and a "75% general probability", then players will definitely not be willing to make strategic choices speculatively.

While this can be effective at times, it's hard to make interesting decisions with a weapon that has a 50% chance of hitting and 50% of the damage, or a weapon that has a 90% chance of hitting and only 25% of the damage.

Usually the player will make the safe choice (especially if they made the big choice and failed three times in a row). We rarely see this mechanic in modern games, but we can still see it occasionally in some Japanese role-playing games.

We can find interacting short-term safe options and persistent risky options in some sports team management simulation games (i.e. with long-term player development elements or risks such as injury/new stock weakness).

For the past six months or so I have been playing the text-based simulation game, Baseball America, and have been grappling with all sorts of agonizing decisions - should I sell a guy while he's still young and has little room for improvement? Should I trade two packages with little prospects for one safer package? It's the combination of not being able to predict the future, understanding the game's mechanics, the proven probabilities of certain prospects, the injury history of the players, the value of certain positions, etc. that combine to provide players with very interesting and complex decisions.

This trade-off can be applied to almost any game. Should I declare war on my neighbor? I wonder if I will spend more resources than I can afford to spend to take over their territory? Should we attack any boss in the game and try to open up a new area to explore? Although the player must know a lot of information in order to make a decision, we cannot underestimate the positive impact of incomplete information.

exception

I know some people disagree with me and claim that games need to be "more than just numbers". I have never argued against the fun of game values. There are many effective design methods that mix numbers and bring various fun to players. The key point we really need to grasp is actually very simple, that is, we can feel both strategy and emotion when it comes to game mechanics.

Dwarf Fortress is a classic example of a game that doesn't overshare its content with the player. The game is mostly about exploring the space and having a good laugh at whatever crazy things happen. Even though most players don't want to risk drinking a potion and ending the game, many do, and the developers can't undo that. This is a hallmark of roguelikes in general - one small problem can ruin everything.

Every development team needs to figure out where they want to land on the strategy vs. emotion spectrum. What is the goal of the game? Who is our target user? How do we want players to feel when faced with certain events? All players are different, and so are all games.

in conclusion

What designers really need to care about during the game design process is the players' thoughts. You can create the coolest, most complex system model, but if the player has no idea what is happening in the game and what is fun in the game situation, then all these settings are in vain. When the player understands the game mechanics and how it affects his own decisions, he can turn it into his most unique experience in the game - that's when the game is truly on the road to success.

#p#

PART4

Games always like to provide players with a lot of choices. Unfortunately, most of the time, the final choice faced by players is either to save the helpless lamb from the hungry wolf, or to let the game decide, and there is no middle choice.

Since decisions often have to be made from such crudely crafted 'choices', astute players can always easily guess what the plot will look like and make choices based on their own experience.

How can this really be called a choice? Especially since most games offer something like a metastrategy, or what game designers call "follow your own path." Whether that path is good or bad, it's your path through the game. If you want to change your path? Go ahead, but in most D&D fantasy worlds, it's difficult for players to do so.

You've already defined how you want to play, and while you can change those preconceived ideas, your choices are only about changes within the game, not real decisions with subtle consequences.

This sounds like a crude imitation of real-life choices. But that's the fun of it. Suppose: It's early morning and you're getting ready for work. Would you open the door and walk out, or kick it down and stick your head out first? Or break the window and slide down using the sheets that tie you up? Unless you're a stuntman or a psychopath, you should choose to open the door and walk out like a normal person, because this is the minimum necessary action.

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(Lionhead's Fable 3 strives to present meaningful choices to players)

In fact, all the decisions, or 'choices' we make in a given day are merely the minimum necessary actions to accomplish something.

Note that your definition of the minimum necessary action will change depending on a number of variables: your personality and character, your current state of mind, and the information available at the time. If you were getting ready for work that morning and your house was on fire, you would jump out the window and get out of there. But what if you didn't smell anything burning? You might just walk out the door calmly, as usual.

(In short, if something is holding you back, you enforce the minimum necessary action -- this is the kind of thrilling climax that forms the core of a great story in any medium.)

What I am trying to make clear here is that every 'choice' you make in life is based on these variables, which ultimately lead you to make the best choice in the moment.

So the choices you make in real life are not technical choices, but rather reflect your current character, mentality, and the information you have obtained - so how do we make meaningful choices in the game?

One way is to break free from the limitations of excellent/bad/neutral sub-countermeasures and get rid of the completely boring logic. Molleindustria's Unmanned is an example of this. In this game, you will play a controller who remotely controls the Afghan drone patrol campaign in the United States. The core gameplay includes various choices, from the most secular issues to the choice between life and death, and so on.

We don't need to always clearly present the results of each choice, and the occasional sense of ambiguity is closer to real life. In short, the choices we see in Unmanned are almost contrary to the traditional concepts of the industry.

If more exquisite but detailed pictures and increasingly complex mechanisms are the main elements used to measure technological development, then more vague options can help the game convey more complex emotions.

PART5

If there is anything that appears in every discussion about the game's narrative, it is the player's choice.

Sometimes, if the game is based on a branch story structure, the choice may depend on the game system or mechanics (as the approach taken by companies like Telltale and Quantic Dream).

Sometimes, in a game with a more open structure, choices may be communicated through the interaction between players and imitation elements, systems and mechanics (as the approach taken by companies such as Bethesda and Bioware).

Fortunately, in the end everyone can be immersed in the game – especially the narrative game.

Almost everyone agrees on the importance of choosing as a definition of gameplay characteristics, but there is also a trap that lures us:

Simply put, the game is not, rather it shouldn't be about choice.

More specifically, we should grasp two major concepts:

First, the choice of concept is the most important, whether in itself or based on the essence of the medium.

The second is the concepts contained in choice, which even requires us to think based on the perspectives of rewards and punishments, better and worse, right and wrong, bright and dark, good and bad.

I don't have the only idea. I'm not just focused on choice. I'm not addicted to games that are driven by choice and have relative relationships.

Choice. Not. Important.

Relative relationships are boring.

Choices without results are meaningless. If they don't create different results (i.e., completely different results fundamentally), what's the point?

Games that encourage players to think based on right and wrong are actually encouraging players to "play by standard" - like "Oh, I'm a bad guy, now I have some demonic logos!" or "Oh, see? I have angel wings and halos!" And all of this is ridiculous.

You might be thinking, “Wait, are you the one who has complained about players choosing for decades?”

No, I'm not like that. If you think about what I'm saying, you'll see that choice is not everything. It's not the key to what some of us call "shared resources."

So what am I complaining about?

The interesting aspect of player choice is not about the choice itself. What is really interesting (and the only interesting point) is what the result reveals. So choosing without result is a waste of time, effort and money.

But wait, doesn't the word "result" mean punishment? It will bring us back to a better/worse, good/bad, right/wrong choice? Will the result not require designers to use value judgments or provide good/bad indicators to make players clear about their position?

Not so.

One fixed rule I have listed for our team is "Never judge the player." Players will never know how you think about a question or the answer to the question. You are not there to answer the questions you ask the player to consider. I let my designers clearly tell the player "what is right and what is wrong". The existence of a designer is to give players the opportunity to test their behavior and then observe the results of those behaviors. Based on the opportunity, players will judge for themselves whether the benefits of making a specific choice are valuable.

In my experience, there are questions or situations that are usually defined based on correct or wrong answers or solutions. Even if you don't agree, I would say the most interesting situation is when the difference between right and wrong is not obvious. I don't understand why more and more game developers don't acknowledge this and are addicted to the ability of our media to react to the wonderful and lack of transparency in the world we live in.

Complete loop

Let's try to bring these two parts into a full narrative loop. Let's assume that this is about the nature of the problem, choice, and game narrative:

The narrative of a successful game is not about telling an appealing story (although it is obviously desirable!).

The narrative of a successful game will ask questions.

A successful game narrative will provide players with tools to answer local (current) and global (the development of the overall story).

The narrative of a successful game will present the results of their local and global decisions and will not judge why the player makes such a decision.

All decisions have their own costs and benefits. There is no absolute right or wrong here. Even if you don’t agree, games that can reflect people’s wishes can make players think based on ways other media can’t do.

A successful game narrative creates conversations not just about how each player solves a game problem, but about why it is done. Most of the conversations we hear in the game are about the best strategy or how to move a cutscene. It's boring to think about it.

I hope (and you also hope) hear players discussing the right and wrong of their decisions. I hope to hear one player say, “How can you steal?” and another player describe his mental process. I hope to hear one player ask, “Why do you leave a way out for that person after he does that?” and another player lists examples of Gandhi pacifism for illustration. I hope to hear the player who arrives at the final game because of his choices can ask another player, “How can you think the solution is appropriate, correct, or ethical?”

"Proper", "correct" and "ethical" are all magical words. Other media can claim that they can handle these concepts, but in those media, these words belong to the author, and in the game, these words belong to the player.

Taking all of the above into consideration, we will gradually realize the potential of games as a unique form of narrative. Obviously we are indebted to the previous narrative mode, but now we can and must create content that is more coordinated, touching and more attractive than other media based on what we have learned.