Internal Conflicts

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

Most games have many different types of goals, and on many different levels of abstraction.

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.

Using Internal Conflict on group structures (e.g. Factions and Guilds) can be done in two ways. The first is that the group as a whole has to decide on a goal from a Selectable Set of Goals. In groups under player influence this typically requires Negotiation and quite likely Team Strategy Identification to be able to complete any of the goals, while in pure NPCs groups persuading these NPCs to decide on one goal can be a Reward that opens up for Alliances and progress Narration Structures. The second way is to provide different members with Incompatible Goals in relation to each other. This causes Internal Rivalry which may lead to Negotiation or Intrigue depending on if the goals are Secret Goals or not, and may justify members to become Traitors if the group as a whole prevents the completion of their individual goals.

Social Dilemmas are a classical form of Internal Conflict that combine focus on individuals and groups.

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.

Consequences

Incompatible Goals

Risk/Reward

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.