I recently came upon an article of why gamers game, or part of the reason why gamers game. Named CAR [Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness].

In short Competency is our need to complete challenges, to feel that we have grown, and feel that we have learned. It is what compels us to complete things and get every last achievement to complete said game, to feel as if we had fully completed the game.

Relatedness greatly affects a multiplayer type of gaming. Where as you the player relate to the community. Where as you the player are accepted and play with others to relate your love of games with others and share your interest with others.

Autonomy is the player's ability to make decisions to feel as if they have free will and if their choices matter in the virtual world. Autonomy is the player's ability to freely do as they want into an environment.

I feel if this is the case and if this is the main reason why gamers game, autonomy mostly fits me and why I play the games I play. The Elder Scroll series have always been based on I believe Competency and Autonomy.

Now I wouldn't say Skyrim completely lacks Autonomy. The ability to design any character you want, the ability to run around and free roam. The ability to do quest in any order you like. But where I feel Autonomy fails in Skyrim, and maybe why I am so on the fence about it recently playing it is because of this, is your choices do not impact the world.

Now I understand, and that is why I won't say Skyrim is a bad game. It is a good good game, and is leagues better than any other RPG out there in the market. However, there are just small things that I think don't satisfy the autonomous player in me. That is your choices impact the world.

With my play through with my main character Daeo, my assassin dark brotherhood character. As everyone knows, but not everyone so

, more importantly it was noted before when you what significant and important political roles these murders would play. Though you never really see that in the game. How it affects the war, how you affected the war, etc.

Now I know how impossible it would make to make a one hundred percent perfect game. However, I have always been an Autonomous player and I have always played for story and how my choices affect the world. One of my all favorite time games is DAO [dragon age origins] and I know that all of that is mostly the illusion of choice, but I think that completes a sense of who I am as a character.

Either way I still think Skyrim is a great game for what it does have and I appreciate for what it does. But it does leave me open and left confused at times.

...And speak to Eorlund if you want a better weapon than.. whatever that is...

*holds legendary dragonbone war axe*

I came into skyrim with that mind set too.

However, I quickly realized what kind of game skyrim is.

It's like a Tabletop RPG where Role-playing is key.

This post that I found way back made me think about it.

find, time and time again, a clear difference between those who seem to rabidly enjoy Skyrim, and those who really WANT to enjoy it, but always seem to come away short of some portion of the experience. At first that disparity puzzled me, but after going through a half dozen articles written in this vein, something becomes very clear. There are some, who load up Skyrim with the intention of participating a riveting story wherein they hope their presence will somehow impact the larger narrative, wherein they'll be presented with a dazzling tale that sweeps them away and offers them some memorable, remarkable experience, a treasure wrought by a craftsmen and delivered to you, the the consumer. More often than not, those people walk away from the game at least somewhat disappointed or underwhelmed. There are many novels, films, and even games, that provide such enthralling experiences, but Skyrim is not one of them.

Skyrim is for the roleplayers, the writers, the tabletop rpgers, the ones looking for a canvas and the opportunity to create something... glorious. In many ways, Skyrim becomes more a toolset than traditional game experience, giving you the means to shape something that's truly YOURS, your vision, your story. Not a story wherein you're inherently important, but a story you actually made. Skyrim strikes the sweet spot, for those people who know WHY their prisoner is on a wagon bound for execution before they've pressed the start button. It captivates the ones who know WHY this Prisoner would sooner side with the Imperials who nearly beheaded him, over the Nords who offered kinship at the chopping block. Skyrim offers skeletons of stories, bare bones affairs, to which you must add the flesh. It's why the world is so vast, it's why the character creation caters to the minutiae, even when you'll spend most of the game looking at the back of your characters head. Some of us know about the childhood hunting accident that caused the scar beneath our character's eye, some of us know why our character would lay down beneath the headsmen's act without a fight.

I'm honestly surprised by Skyrim's success. Most consumers are ill equipped to handle a world where they must provide the lion share of the creative input for their experience. Some balk at the prospect, others, myself included, revel in it. I think we bandy about the term sandbox too often today, in reference to games. Some have forgotten just what the sandbox was all about. You weren't given set pieces, or beautifully scripted lines spouted by perfectly dynamic miniatures. YOU gave that lumpy mound of clumped together sand value, YOU made it a castle, YOU made it the last freehold in the land not destroyed by the mighty sandworms (otherwise known as you left hand), YOU made its defense vital, and meaningful, and necessary. YOU gave it a soul.

Can you recapture that spark, the feverish creativity of simple days and simple joys, Dragonborn?

See and this is where I disagree with you. I am a writer. And I have also been playing Pathfinder for 10 years of my life.

I'm sorry you cannot defend some of the choices.

You cannot RP what happens to Skyrim after the

. That isn't a decision you can so easily RP. I was never really interested in the War of Skyrim. But this is something that cannot easily be canvased without being given any details.

For example in Oblivion, you become the Hero of Cyrodil or Hero of Kvatch. That wasn't a lengthy narrative. That was you did something in the game.

If you play Pathfinder, you'd understand. For the most part you create the things and you have a canvas, HOWEVER, there are still RP Elements the DM must tell and the DM must reveal to help forward the RP experience.

I just play games to have fun, If I am not having fun with a game I play a different one.

I think there are a lot of gaps missing in between these three categories. For me exploration, experiencing a new world and story are why I play video games. Exploration is somewhat covered under Autonomy, but you seem to be defining that as being solely branching narrative. That isn't the most important factor for me. In fact branching narrative, choices being cut off from me, is the opposite of autonomy.

I don't think the choices are. But what happens after the choices are made, however, is.

To answer this, let me take you back in time. About 20 years ago, there was another critically acclaimed and commercially successful computer role-playing game released with a black box. Arguably in some aspects TES still aren't as detailed as that old one (but Skyrim with so much immersion mods, who knows). You could walk everywhere, and try doing anything. But it's questline was quite linear http://bootstrike.com/Ultima7bg/Online/u7plot.png and you never really saw how it affected the world in some grand scale, because the game ended when you did it. For consequeces, you had to wait for a sequel.

Two decades later, we have a game which is very similar in its nature. Only it features a multitude of mostly independent smaller questlines! And some of them are quite evil according to fantasy rpg standards. So if I prefer so, I can make two characters, one would do all the good quests, and the other one gets the rest. Or in any other combination and number of characters. So the scarcity of change in the game world after each questline climix is quite conventional. There are some issues with this plotlines which turned out to be not so independent, and when you do them in particular choice / order, they will playout silly. Give it good artwork and execution, and you have a successful game. For the abundance of Autonomy, I think.

Yes, I did already mention it has a lot of autonomy. But I have always been a writer, always been a creator. I write and draw and I like stories to finish themselves. I know the idea is for the characters to finish them, but my argument above says that sometimes the DM has to take charge of the story again.