Internal Conflicts

The situation of having a set of desirable goals where the progress in one makes the others more difficult or impossible.

Internal Conflict arises when a player character has multiple conflict goals from which a player needs to choose goals to pursue or prioritize.

Examples

——Example: In Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent (Ubisoft Shanghai Studios, 2007) the PC is set to infiltrate a terrorist organization. At one point of the game, the player needs to make a choice of whether to kill a captive to please the terrorists and displease the NSA (his employer) or not to kill the captive to please the NSA and loose the trust of the terrorists.

Using the pattern

The pattern of Internal Conflict can be applied in many different ways: on individual players, on groups of players involved in Guilds or Team Play, on the Characters of players or NPCs, or Factions of Characters. A basic choice for using the pattern therefore lies in which of these categories one is interested of.

The Internal Conflict requires two or more Predefined Goals that are incompatible. Reaching one makes reaching the others impossible or harder. Moreover, the Predefined Goals can be linked to Actions Have Social Consequences.

Traitor

Consequences

Incompatible Goals

The player needs to choose which goal to pursue and this choice has an impact on the game flow. When the Predefined Goal is linked to the Actions Have Social Consequences, the impact of the choice can be increased and the choice of which goal to pursue becomes more meaningful in term of the gameplay.

Predefined Goals (Björk, Holopainen, 2005), Varied Gameplay (Björk, Holopainen, 2005)

History

An updated version of the pattern Internal Conflict, first introduced in Lankoski 2010.