Dev Perspective: Paths and Routes (Patreon)

Hi all. It's been a while since I posted one of these (though I have multiple written up - I just stress over if they're too complicated or silly. This one seems safe. LoL!)

So I have mentioned before that a lot of my game contemplations comes from realising language that we frequently use is...maybe not as accurate or useful as I want it to be. And this is another example.

I have always had a really good understanding of a "route" in games like Changeling and Gilded Shadows - a route is really clear. It's fully separate, gives you a cohesive story on its own.

But when I started working on When Stars Collide, I began struggling to understand what a route is in this kind of game. When I asked people how they viewed "routes" in games where the routes overlap, many said that they view the routes as only including the character-specific scenes.

And this...didn't sit well with me at first.

The idea of a route being made up of disjointed scenes that don't tell a complete story on their own just felt wrong. How could that be a 'route'? At the same time. I could understand why people wouldn't want to included all that shared content as part of the character routes. 

You may wonder why it matters and it really comes to communication.

I can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about Ari's route in Gilded Shadows: 

 * Its overall length

 * the amount of words you'll see on one playthrough of the route

 * the amount of hours it will take you complete that "route"

 * the amount of hours the total available content comprises. 

But how can I communicate any of that accurately to players about When Stars Collide if I can't even define what a route is?

So I really wanted to come up with a way to define routes...that I was happy with.

The Light bulb Goes off

One day while poking around regarding this subject I saw an analogy that kind of made a light bulb go off and made me re-frame how I view routes and game structure.

The illustration uses bus routes as an analogy. The person posting pointed out that a "route" in the context of public transportation usually consists of the *stops*. It doesn't necessarily matter what streets the bus takes or what intersections it passes. 

If the stops are the same, it's the same route.

The streets are the *path* the bus takes. If a bus detours onto another street because of construction, it doesn't change the route because the bus stops are the same. It just changes the path the bus took along the *route.*

Thinking of it this way helped me separate the concept of "path" and "route" in the context of games and understand a possible distinction between the two. As well as the reason they get so muddled up in my mind.

Routes and Paths

In Gilded Shadows, both the character *path* and the *route* diverge at some point in the story. Ari's route is distinct from the other routes and the path you take through his route is also unique to his story.

There's no overlap between the path you follow in, say, Caleb's route. In this way, the concept of "path" and "route" overlap a lot in this type of game.

Route 1 and Route 2 are separate and it's impossible for the path through each one to overlap in any way.

But in the other type of game, the routes are separate but the path leading to those route stops...overlaps.

In this example, Route 1 and Route 2 are indeed distinct from each other, but the *path* between each "route stop" is shared.

One of the repercussions of having a shared path is that routes, are likely to be quite similar because the path between them has to work for either route.

Conclusion

Making the distinction between route and path is, perhaps, a little pedantic. 

But I always find that the clearer the mental image I have of how my games work, the more accurately I can communicate to players about them. And, in general, I just like thinking about this kind of thing.

But I doubt I'm going to be trying to force everyone else to use the same terminology I use to describe games (because that seems pointless. Ha ha.)

This is just one of my personal ruminations on the subject.

I have a lot more thoughts about this sort of thing too - some of which are more...technical...I guess? Things about how conditional and unconditional game content influences the structure of the paths and the routes.

As well as thoughts about how different types of content create important junctures that may shift you onto a specific path or route - and determine the overall shape of the game because they determine where the routes and paths diverge (if they diverge.)

But that's probably for another time.

Anyway - this was just something I was thinking about recently and wrote down to see if I could untangle it better for myself. 

See you next time!