For many designers, the choices a player has available to them in a game are meant to give them options on how they want to overcome obstacles.

At least, that’s how The Stanley Parable developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh framed the nature of game design during a brief presentation at GDC 2014’s Game Narrative Summit. The player negotiates between choices in order to defeat a greater challenge, right? 

But what if you took away the challenge? What if there was nothing to defeat? What would negotiation between choices look like then? Perhaps even with no challenge it’s still possible to create choices that are meaningful, expressive and allow for a conversation between player and designer.

That’s exactly what Pugh and Wreden explore in their brief talk, which was absolutely worth watching. If you missed it in person, no worries — you can now watch the whole thing for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech