so in far cry 2 I have finished a whole mission by sniping the guy I need to kill instead of killing all the guys I'm supposed to, that's kinda non-scripted

Nice rant Rev. I've been listening to Rebel.FM's Game Club podcast where they play an older, sort of over looked game and talk about it and right now they're playing Hitman: Blood Money which sounds pretty non-linear in a way. Out of the 4 of them playing, they rarely finish the levels the same way and the differences are usually pretty drastic.

For example: One of the missions required you to take out a few people that were rehearsing a play. In this scenario you had every option from hiding in the rafters and dropping the lights on them, to sneaking in to the dressing rooms and replacing a fake gun used to shoot one of the targets in the play with a real one, to just going in guns blazing (which has very negative effects thus discouraging it). One person who had killed everyone on stage was even able to pretend he was dead so that he'd be taken by the coroners and escaped that way.

The trade off was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of pre-scripted patterns for the NPCs but those things did allow a lot of the options.

I think you confuse non-linear with choice in the video. Non Linear generally refers to the overall structure of a product, does it not? Don't we use Non Linear to talk about the way the player progresses through the game, as we use Non Linear to refer to the way missions and objectives and content are linked. The situations you describe- detailing a decision to blow up a car instead of chasing a man down, or using your princess to take a blow in a trap...those aren't non linear decisions. Those are options, and gameplay options to boot.
In fact, I think some designers would argue that you've totally missed the point of trying to define yourself in a nonlinear series of situation. In games like Infamous and open world games, or even more linear games with greater options, the player defines themselves in the ways they choose to complete their various missions. In inFamous ( a game that I think is pretty good, but not totally stunning) the "non Linearity" (or, to be more accurate, the player's choices) are not whether the player dispatches enemies, but, rather, how they do it. Are you, the player, going to snipe enemies from a distance? Get in close and send a whole group of enemies flying with a Shockwave? Tag an enemy with a grenade?? Or how do you mix and match the various moves to change the battle? That's the real player choice; giving the player the necessary tools to make their own decisions about gameplay. They can be the character they want to be in the restrictions of the game by choosing how they use their various skills.
Your gameplay scenario in Spelunky is essentially the same thing as the encounters in inFamous. How are the two different? Both games have linear progressions(moving level to level vs moving from story mission to story mission) but it is what we choose to do in those scenarios, given our skills, that accounts for choice and real non-linearity(or real choice).
In fact, your account of the Dwarf Fortress battle goes against the whole idea of non-linear gameplay. Yeah, it's totally badass that the baby killed itself, but that wasn't a player choice, but instead a very specific result in the game that was generated by another person(whoever programed the game, I assume). That's the very definition of an awesome, rare, but undeniably scripted sequence. That wasn't player choice! It was a random roll of the dice that decided on an outcome, not an opportunity for the player to express themselves.
So, here's your other "non-linear" experience(or your game that thrives on player options): Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy.
One of the few truly great games to come out of Midway, and one of the treasures of the last generation of hardware. It also asks the player to complete a scenario, and it gives the player a number of different tools to solve the problem of, usually, defeating enemies.
The tools you get, however, are PSYCHIC POWERS.
How do you want to defeat an enemy? Do you want to throw him into a wall? Throw him into another enemy? Throw him into a breakable crate? Set him on fire? Set him on fire and throw him at another enemy to set that enemy on fire? Set the box on fire and knock him into an enemy? Take over the other enemies body and shoot the first enemy? Set the second enemy on fire, take over his body, and run him directly at the first enemy while on fire? It's a game that understood, a lot earlier than most games, that choice was letting the player define themselves through a series of interesting tools that could drastically change the way an encounter played out.

Most excellent , I can't tell you how many times my friend and I have talked about the perfect zombie game. Another great rant!

Yep.

Also, that car bomb story reminded me of Kirov Park Meeting in Hitman 2. The Hitman games do a decent job of non-linearity even though they are mission-based and not open-world.

Scribblenauts?

I agree as far as most 'non-linear' games actually being pretty linear and the fact that the most freedom a game usually grants you is limited to how you kill/maim someone; but as far as developers being coerced by the money men in the biz into not making truly non-linear games, PUH LEASE. *rolls eyes*

If it were only as simple as "Sorry, suh... boss-man won't let me make it dat way." :/

NEVER stop Ranting Rev!
I really enjoyed this one, being a huge fan of moral choices and non-linearity i realy like to see hear your thoughts about it.

PS: I've already said this once and i repeat it now: I want the Punisher Max game now!!

i love these videos! i agree with everything rev anthony says!

for true non-linearity, we need sandbox narratives. just like in sandbox physics, how you have different objects that act on physical rules to create unique situations, a sandbox narrative has characters that act according to moral and emotional rules, the combination of which creates a wholly unique story outcome.
this is the area i think gaming most needs to focus on, but i'm doubtful about its potential. its difficult to conceive of being able to program a sandbox narrative that goes beyond characters just forming alliances, enemies, betraying each other etc. it is hard to conceive of a compelling story coming out of such a game.

Platypus:
You know, you're right! It is easy to completely ignore what someone says but still unsuccessfully condescend to them by putting random words in quotation marks! Despite the fact that nothing I described in the video was random, from the car bomb to setting off a trap with a damsel, you've managed to successfully douche out through sheer punctuation!

I could, for example, say you're a "troll" who doesn't know what the "fuck" he's "talking about" who manages to "miss" the point of every anecdote of nonlinear gameplay I made as being related to chance and unexpectedness rather than complex systems playing themselves out due to player input, which is what they "are!" I could also hypothetically suggest that you're an "insecure" "toolbag" who has nothing relevant or original to "say!"

St1nkyP33t:
I have indeed made a game, so I know what you mean. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't try to expand in other areas, though.

Is nonlinear even a good thing? I find that "nonlinear" games tend to lack the focus I find in most great games. I'm one of those gamers that prefers games that lead me through a basic framework but allow me to choose the method of completion, such as shmups, fighters and puzzle games. This is why I avoid games described as sandbox or nonlinear.

"I kinda like inFAMOUS: 6.5"

I think that, largely, true nonlinearity comes from creating a world that's made of things that aren't there exclusively to provide interaction with the player by design. NPC's don't wait for situations A B or C, and stand there like a robot waiting for one to happen. I mean, they could wait specifically for A B or C, but they should also gauge environmental and personal actions D through M, and respond accordingly.

The Hitman series, particularly Blood Money, treads the line between being nonlinear in name only, and true nonlinearity. The relatively simple objectives never stray far from "Kill the target, don't get caught (unless you want to)" but you can go about them in a number of ways. Almost every target you can just wait until they're alone, or find a way to scare off their escorts, and then shoot them in the head and hide them in a bin. But, for example, if the character keeps drinking from a bottle, you can wait until he leaves, and then poison the bottle, or if he's standing under a piano, you can set explosives to drop the piano on him. You can grab him from behind and push him out a window, or stuff him into a garbage truck and turn it on, or shoot out the glass ceiling above his head- but at the end of the day, everything you can do was planned out by the designers. They put that piano there. You have the option of using it, which is technically nonlinear, but rarely does the gameplay ever touch on emergent. The player can stand in one place spinning in circles, and nobody in the game will even take notice, but the second you start climbing a ladder, the guards open fire. So an otherwise brilliant experience is kind of marred because the game just couldn't be made to react to everything the player does. Tim Schafer mentioned in his speech at GDC 2004 about how with Psychonauts he planned out how every NPC would react to every possible set action the character could make with them, hence the camp kid's vocal annoyance when you jump on their heads, etc. and he talks in length about how this helps with immersion, but even in a game as sound as Psychonauts it's impossible to account for everything, and when the characters don't react, it's... kind of a bummer. This is getting tangential...

Okay, in the rant you talk about SuitCoatAvenger's "Make This Game Now" article, and he mentions being able to drive a captured thug to a secluded area. That fits best with the theme of nonlinearity if it isn't something that happens because it's been specifically designated to happen that way by the developers. If the thug was specifically programmed to take note of its environment, and gauge, you know, where am I, is this place familiar, how far am I from help, and even simple things like can I see what's happening, do I recognize the guy that has me- that's ideal, because otherwise the game runs the risk of the player taking the thug to a secluded spot that the developers just didn't account for, and behaving erratically. I'm kind of reminded, ridiculously, of the prostitutes from Grand Theft Auto, and how they seem to be able to dynamically gauge whether or not you're hidden away enough to have sex. If you just pull over on the side of the road, they get timid, but as far as I can tell if you take them anywhere in the game with insufficient lighting and no line of sight with other people, they'll happily oblige you. I'm certain this kind of programming is to Hitman nonlinearity as Hitman nonlinearity is to buzzword nonlinearity, but when it's done properly it's absolutely stunning. One of my all-time favorite moments as a gamer was when I was playing Deus Ex with cheats enabled, and managed to trigger a fight between NSF forces and some dogs that I spawned with my magic developer console powers. When a game is so dynamic it knows how to react when I cheat a pack of animals into existence, that is ecstasy.

I wrote a lot of words just now.

Good Rant Rev.

Man, some of these comments should be Cblogs.

It sounds to me like you're mistaking linearity for mechanical complexity - the GTA example you talked about isn't non-linear gameplay at all, it's strategy. It's working with the game's ruleset to achieve a desired result. I'm not sure, but i think that's what you're doing in every game ever. you're still moving along the path laid out by the game designer - you're still following a path from beginning to middle to end.

I don't know about you, but i usually find much more enjoyment in games that are very specific and confident about what they expect out of you; games that are not bullshitting me about "freedom of choice" and "emergent gameplay," because at the very core, the word 'game' suggests 'rules' which are essentially limitations.

The only true non-linear gameplay possible is in VS. games.

A lot of the old ismotric RPGs had a fantastic amount of freedom(Fallout ,Torment , Baldur's Gate) , but as gaming got more mainstream , so did games , dumbing themselfes down to Hollywood level of mass appeal ...ALSO RUNNER WAS LINEAR YOU HIPOCRITICAL !

Wow. Some of the grammar in that was... unfortunate. Point still stands!

Brutal. He presents an argument for why mainstream games aren't linear(which I agreed with), but then proceeds to talk about Spelunky which, despite being a can-do-no-wrong indie game, is still a wholly linear experience. Different ways of doing things doesn't equal non-linear. How is getting lucky and having the damsel kill a snake any more of a non-linear experience than getting lucky and having an errant explosion send a 'nade towards a group of enemies that it wasn't intended for? It's not.

I get that you have a hard-on for indie games, but come on, they're no less linear than their mainstream cousins.

"I thought Crackdown had non-linear gameplay." It didn't. The game still starts the same for everyone and ends when the final baddy is killed. Did you not even watch the video? Having the ability to dick around while NOT completing story related tasks doesn't make the game non-linear.

"tortilla of nonlinearity"

Excuse me, can someone help me find my mind? I think it was blown.

man i'd love to play that punisher game

I can see the lady in red, in dwarf fortress!

Great Scott! Anthony is starting to sound like Peter Molyneux.

Games in the 90's and a few in the early 00's did try the big non-linear gameplay mechanics and guess what, they were boring as hell. You're talking about games that deal more in simulation than scripting (you're basically asking for "The Sims" but where you have direct control of your character and can kill stuff). Bethesda did this in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, and the problems with non-linear game design really begin to show when you look at this. It's similar to any dungeon that has a random dungeon/map generator, the maps eventually become dull and uninteresting (see Hellgate London) as opposed to a smaller, more handcrafted, and more interesting approach that game designers have been re-embracing today.

Non-linear game design has some serious limitations, which I think game developers have wisely avoided in this generation. Perhaps we'll go back to it but until someone can develop a way to overcome the problems associated with it I think it's best if it's left to indie games and people like Rev and Molyneux to talk about.

Scribblenauts, there have already been loads of stories about crazy things that have happened in it just from the demo, and the entire concept and hype train are based purely on what you talked about in this video. Massive excite.