Fatespinner and the Illusion of Choice

I’m a big Hearthstone fan, and I’m excited for the digital card game’s next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne. With every expansion comes the exhilarating and antagonizing slow drip of released and/or leaked cards. It’s difficult and even foolhardy to try and determine any given card’s full impact before every card in the set is revealed, but that doesn’t stop many people—including me—from trying. One recently released card generated quite a bit of discussion: Fatespinner.

Fatespinner features a brand new take on the common “Deathrattle” game mechanic, which means that something happens when the summoned minion dies. In Fatespinner’s case, the player secretly chooses from one of two effects: making all minions—both you and your opponent’s—stronger or dealing damage to all minions in play. At first glance, this seems to offer a fun choice for whoever plays the minion as well as an intriguing guessing game for the opposing player. Sadly, I doubt that Fatespinner will live up to its promise.

One oft-mentioned aspect of game design is the idea of “illusion of choice.” As renowned designer Sid Meier famously stated, a game is a series of interesting decisions. If a player starts to realize that their choices don’t actually matter that much, the game loses some of its sparkle. The illusion of choice might be hollow narrative decisions that don’t actually affect the story in any way. Illusion of choice can also refer to “cinematic” game moments that remove most of the control of the player, leaving only a shell of actual interactivity. But Fatespinner reminded me of one important example of illusion of choice: when one decision is always (or nearly always) the correct choice.

When the player chooses the secret Deathrattle effect for Fatespinner, the decision really only relies on the current “board state,” the number of minions each player has. If the opponent has more minions they’ll choose to damage all minions, but if the player has more minions they will choose to strengthen all minions. In turn, most opponents will realize what the “secret” is right away because the binary decision requires extremely clear information visible to both players. This card could certainly invoke attempts at bluffing, but in practice I think the downside to a lost bluff is far too great in comparison to the benefit from making the more obvious correct choice.

I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Regardless, I think it’s helpful as a designer to break down any intriguing decision in a game and examine if the choice offered is illusory in nature. If it is, I like to think about how the decision could be improved. I think that the idea of a secret Deathrattle is a wonderful game mechanic to add to Hearthstone, but I’d like to see future cards present choices that aren’t so symmetrically opposed (two decisions with completely opposite effects but in the same vein of gameplay). I believe those types of choices will make the game more interesting for both the player and the opponent. It’s also something I’ll make sure to keep in mind with any binary choices presented in our game, Alkanaur.