Are choices with only one option bad design?

Note, some very mild chapter 7 spoilers in this one.

I get this one quite a few times, and it always surprises me. Maybe it surprises you too, so let me take a moment to lay it out.

The central premise of the gripe is:

A menu option with one option only is bad design. A single choice isn't a choice, and you should not bother the user with it.

On the surface, it's not far fetched. If there is no other choice, if there is only one way forward, why would you bother the user with that? They have to perform a superfluous action, and press a button, and the end state for the Application following it is exactly the same as if the entire button was never shown. It's redundant!

This isn't just an opinion either, it really is a best practice when designing User Interfaces. So why would anyone not agree with that statement?

Flawed

Well the premise has a glaring flaw, quite obvious if you take a second look.

A game doesn't have a user, it has a player.

Sometimes, that player is a user of some User Interface elements in the game. But most of the time, the player is engaging with a piece of interactive entertainment, the goal of which is to convey some feeling or experience. Provide the slickest path through the game is only a secondary consideration to providing that experience.

The end state of the application, or some part of it, is not in any way relevant. If the end state was a goal, the best design for a game would be for it to jump to the end credits and skip over all that nonsense in between.

But that's preaching to the choir really, and a bit of a straw man as I am the one that came up with the wording of the gripe, so not really fair.

It's also not giving us any useful answers, so lets not dwell on it too long, and get into why it is a good design, and what it brings to the table.

Basically, that's two things, and neither has anything to do with User Interfaces.

Throwing it back to you

One, it abruptly stops the flow of dialog, and throws "it" back to the player (for a given value of "it").

That is not inherently bad at all. Sometimes, as a creator, I want that, especially when there's some pressure on and people are talking left and right and things are moving. I want that moment, when all eyes turn to you, as a player, to give you a moment of pause, to let what's going on sink in. It's a great dramatic device.

You don't get that when you just let the game spit out the next line for the Main Character, with you, the player as an observer. That line just comes by and is gone with a click of a space bar, mouse button, or finger, even before you knew it was coming. The scene just rumbles on to its conclusion, and you saw it happen, more bystander than player.

You are the one doing it

So that brings us to the second part, agency.

Obviously, there's a limit to how much agency the game offers you at such a point. It's not sim-relationship or sim-conversation, trying to map out every possible response that a person might give at such a time, or even a semblance of a subset. But this time it's even worse, it's just giving you one choice.

But it is waiting for you, the player, to do something. You have to press the button, and set in motion whatever follows from that one single non-choice choice. No one else does that for you. At that moment, you are acting as the Main Character, rather than observing him or her. That is a real thing, and it is profoundly different from seeing the Main Character say a line you had no part in bringing about.

Point in case

Spoiler ahead. There's this one moment in the latest chapter, where Macy asks the Main Character if they have any reservations at all about everything that's going on with them.

Obviously at this point in the game, their relationship has reached a certain point and they've said and done things, and it is clear that as a player, you are not getting a chance to say you are having second thoughts and blowing the whole thing off. There's no way I'm going to create a story branch where that plays out, nor am I going to throw the blight known as a game-over screen at you. Everyone knows there's just one way this plays out.

Any reservations?

But, you still gotta say it, not the Main Character. You've got to click that button and say you have no reservations about what's going. You are affirming your feelings to Macy and setting her mind at ease, not the Main Character.

That's another very useful dramatic device.

In conclusion

I hope I was able to get the point across here, that presenting the user with single choice is not a superfluous interaction. The UI is always subservient to the experience of the storyline, and limiting the storytelling tools at hand in favor of a mechanical, knee-jerk adherence to design patterns is just a little bit silly from that perspective.

Hold on, but the mechanics of it!

Well, that might be well and true, but there's the mechanical side of things? You might be tapping through the dialog with the space bar, and now you have to reach over to grab the mouse and navigate the cursor over the button and click that and move back to the keyboard. Especially annoying if you gotta do it all with your off hand, if you know what I mean.

Well, y-yeah. Also, TMI much? But to that end, Light of my Life implemented numeric key bindings, so you can just press 1, 2, etc., to pick what choice you want without having to lift your hand from the keyboard.

It is very much the preferred way of navigating through Light of my Life in my opinion, even with both hands free. Make sure to try it if you haven't.

Close relative - inconsequential choices

Well, since we're on a roll, let's tack some variants on. First off: inconsequential choices.

Sometimes you get to say if you like the soup, or you don't like it. Sometimes you get to say you remember it was a rainy day, or a sunny one, or a cold one. None of those choices matter at all in the long run of the game.

But they're not meant to. They're meant to give you some voice in things. Most of the time in our lives when we voice something, it matters nothing to whomever is around at the time. You secretly liked the Backstreet Boys. You hate cilantro. It matters to no one. Doesn't stop you from saying them.

Why is it bad design to let you say something like that in a game? Again, this slavish adherence to some design principle that says "if it doesn't do anything of real consequence, get rid of it", has no bearing at all on this (and really what it boils down to is a difference of opinion about the meaning of "real consequence").

This is all about flavor, and inhabiting the Main Character a little bit, efficiency is a secondary consideration at best.

Close relative - ineffective choices or choices that backfire

Well, this is a peculiar cousin, really. And most of the times I encounter it, it's by someone who's really upset about it.

This might be a choice where you get to pick something to say and then you're interrupted, or no one listens. Or you say you don't want something, and then someone overrules you and it still happens.

Well, tough s**t, really. That happens to me in real life all the time, and while I'm not saying Light of my Life is sim-real-life either, if you do get upset by a story not allowing your Main Characters to rule over all of reality or at least his close associates with an iron fist, Light of my Life will be a tough game to enjoy.

Close relative - say nothing.

Probably the dullest experience you can have in Light of my Life is choosing the "say nothing" option at every opportunity, as some can attest ;). But what it is, is an escape. If you find yourself caught up in a conversation you don't want to have, or if you don't like what comes out of the Main Character's mouth in the alternative, you can pick that. In small doses, it's another way to have the type of experience you want, as long as you don't overdo it.