Definitely non-linear. Yes, it's far harder to make a good non-linear game, and between a bad non-linear one and a good linear one in a genre and with a setting I like I'll take the latter of course, and I'll also look more kindly on linear games if made by very small indie developers, but generally a linear game has nothing on a properly made one that offers great exploration and freedom, choices that really impact the world and steer the story in the player's chosen direction and the possibility to use your preferred methods to progress and achieve the desired end.

Adore true nonlinear like Disco Elysiun or Life and Suffering of Sir Brante or Ogre Battle.

It makes you feel like the world is real, immerses you in that role and let's you decide how you will act in that role.

Open world is less important to me than being able to truly influence the story. Few games really pull it off though.

But I do appreciate some quasi nonlinear where they make at least the effort.

Not a big fan of fake nonlinear, you choose different responses but it's mostly all the same.

It depends on the game that I'm playing.

All the best adventure games games are fairly linear - the old Lucas games, Thimbleweed Park, There is No Game. Some games give you the illusion of free roaming, but you still tend to be confined to specific activities and areas. Once you leave and move on, there's no going back.


With RPGs though, I prefer a more open world experience and wander where I want to go within reason. You load up Might and Magic 2, create a party and make a mad dash for the Plane of Fire. While I wouldn't advise you, the only thing that the game will do to impede such a plan is to throw large stacks of high level monsters at you.

However I also enjoy a good dungeon crawl, which is exactly what Mary Skelter and The Caligula Effect are. These types of games tend to be more linear. Even though you're able to backtrack to prior areas, you still need to complete the current area to move on to the next.

I've thought about this a lot over the years. I think that there are some great non-linear games, especially sandbox strategy games. I also think that games such as Oblivion and Skyrim giving you the ability to do what you want are fun. That being said, on balance, I prefer a linear game. With only limited time to play games (what with being in full time employment and everything), I don't want to feel that I've missed out on content and have to repeat play a game. I think that storytelling can suffer in a non-linear game (you've spent five weeks completing the side-quests - now what was going on in the main story?) - I think it's also easier to craft a believable world in a linear game (as you only have to make it look real).

Outer Worlds was a fairly good compromise to this - it was relatively open, but not with a massive single map.

There are many aspects in games which I find important. Strong storytelling is probably the most important one in general, though there are many exceptions to prove that rule. Player choices that matter comes right after.

Generalizing a lot, strong storytelling is "easiest" to achieve in linear games. The time and effort from the developer to fully flesh out all aspects of a story will swiftly balloon in non-linear games, and with that comes the risk of contradictions in the story, forgetful characters (for all its strengths, this is something which a game like Disco Elysium has not managed to completely avoid), and all too soon, some story branches which turn out to be shallow, hollow or not fully realized in some other way.
Given the choice between a linear game with a strong story, or that same game with non-linear options and a badly realized story, I'll always prefer the linear game.

On the "opposite" side, player choices that matter pretty much have to mean a non-linear story. I mostly dislike truly open world (roleplaying) games, since FOMO leads to completism leads to issues with pacing and being overleveled for the content, but one step down from there - and for many other types of games - lies gaming nirvana; at least where enjoyable gameplay is concerned. The ability to "forge my own destiny", to roam free from constraints, explore emergent behaviour, and feel like I really have an impact on the game I'm experiencing, means I'm a big fan of non-linear games. All too often, however, I'll find either a shallow main story, or choices that matter for everything except the main story.

What I love most is the potential of various recent attempts to try and bridge the divide. For example, Sunless Sea has many short non-linear stories which are told at a very slow pace, and invests heavily in atmosphere to retain the connection and make you care, imparting the stories with a whole lot more whomph then they'd have when told sequentially, one-by-one. Wildermyth has chosen to focus on building your connection with your characters, creating an emergent "story" - and Rimworld approaches this same concept from another angle, with the emergent storybuilding being the main concept of the game. Meanwhile - though still not fully completed, and thus potentially not being able to live up to expectations - Sacred Fire: A Role Playing Game comes with an actual strong non-linear story, with continuous meaningful player choices. This is realized at the cost of game length, graphics and and possibly even gameplay (it goes quite a bit into the direction of a visual novel) - yet all the same it's an audacious step into a very hopeful direction.

In the end, this is not a binary choice. Linear games done well are great. But the potential of the multitude of game-types which would not be described as "linear" is simply overwhelmingly vast. Many of them will - and have - failed to compare to good linear games. Yet the gems which can be found here are more diverse and amazing than I can comprehend, and developers have only barely begun to explore this vastness - each of them being inspired and learning from previous attempts. As such, the cream of non-linear games will always manage to steal my heart, and can be my only choice for an answer to this question.

I like both of them. The more options, the better.

I'm not sure what is being asked here.

Linear and non-linear can refer to different things.
For instance, the gameplay can be non-linear, even though the narrative of the story is linear. Or vice versa.

Anyway, because my preferred genre is classic adventure games, then most likely those would be linear in every sense, as they didn't usually offer more than one way to play the game from start to finish.

I've certainly played and enjoyed games with linear stories, with non-linear stories, and with non-existent stories. But while I'm not sure if I can rank them in terms of how I prefer them generally (enjoyment of a game being after all a product of many factors), the ones I find most impressive in terms of writing are ones that manage an illusion of non-linearity and choice.

Bioshock is an obvious standout because it makes such a striking metanarrative point. You go through it doing what the guy on the radio says to do because that's what you do in video games, right? You don't really question it, and while the story is pretty straightforward, you go through most of the game feeling like the world is pretty open as such games go, and then boom! it turns out that when you thought you were choosing to go along with the guy, you actually, diagetically, had no choice at all. That was a wonderful note.

Still, while I love Bioshock, its writing is most interesting as a satire of Randian libertarian bullshit and for that one really clever gimmick; it's still a shooter with…well, basically less amount of story than a big RPG.

Planescape: Torment is surely a candidate for best writing ever in games. When you think about it, it's extremely impressive to have that much freedom to choose how you want the Nameless One to develop and how to interact with everyone and still have it all come together as a cohesive story. This is after all a fundamental tension: give the player more freedom and, unlike a traditional RPG where the GM can continually adapt the story, a computer RPG inevitably loses narrative structure in proportion to how much the player can really affect the story -- since it's pre-written, it can only have one real narrative arc, or a few if the designers create several options -- but only as many as they write. So you end up either with an open world with freedom but no real story, or with story where you may have some choices amounting to cosmetic effects but ultimately railroaded to fit The Storyline (or one of a few) -- here the choice to save or harvest Little Sisters in Bioshock are an example of a rather shallow cosmetic effect.

Torment does an amazing job of making you feel like almost all your choices are your own, but still leading you down the path to the core storyline which, although it has a few different outcomes, fundamentally moves through a predetermined set of confrontations. It's a trick a bit like, say, building a maze or park where you think you freely decide where to go but inevitably end up where the landscape architect wants you due to consciously imperceptible features of slope, angles, and what have you that shepherd you do the destination without your notice. And of course this builds on a collection of smaller decisions where you have a lot of freedom but which don't materially affect the overall story. Of course, it also builds on an astonishing amount of writing to provide as many distinct paths, great or small, as it does. You can't do this in a fully voice acted game.

Among fully voiced games, the closest thing I've personally found was Dragon Age: Origins (one of my favourite games ever -- but I can't be arsed with the sequels). It's another game that does a very impressive job of making you feel like at least some of your decisions are very consequential even as it corrals all the little branchings down the central lane of the plot. And of course it does a lot of great work with character relationships that keeps you engaged (even if the, er, romance scenes can be rather cringy).

You might look at those two games and protest that actually, they're quite linear -- you go from slab to maze to Fortress of Regrets, or from one of a few origins to the battlefield to a few set locations where order, albeit free, is insignificant -- but that's the point. To tell a cohesive story, you have to have pre-established beats and set pieces. Story driven games are inherently linear (even if the line isn't entirely straight and may have a small number of branches). What makes these ones stand out is that they deliver the illusion of freedom — while you're playing them, you feel like you're doing what you want. The trick is to make you want to make the choices that drive the story in the direction it is invariably going anyway.

After all, isn't that what life is -- or at least may be? You can't tell if you have free will; doing whatever you want proves nothing if what you want is determined in advance. Truly impressive game writing reproduces the illusion of free will, on a computer.

I'm a bit different in not preferring one or the other. I've always preferred point and click games which are non-linear in a sense though the story tends to drive you in a linear direction. I think this is a perfect balance. Too often with 1st and 3rd person games developers tend to go with a shoot your enemy narrative that neglects the story and just pushes on in one rigid direction. There has been a few open exploration games but these are mostly lacking in real story.

I prefer non-linear games because I like the sense of "being in a world" and exploring it, spending time to get to know its sights and inhabitants according to my own interests and focus. In a non-linear open-world game I might spend a lot of time finding secrets and inaccessible areas, but also just finding beautiful vistas and memorable angles just like a tourist or nature photographer.

Non-linear play is also well-suited to games with deep lore, since I can find it, learn and absorb it at my own pace and in my own order, rather than having to take it all in along a linear path. The same goes for story: in a non-linear game I can choose my own pace to progress, and when the game throws a lot of plot twists and turns, I can take time to pause and think about them, their implications for the world, and how I feel about them.

In non-linear games I also like that if one place has a barrier of progress where I am stuck, like an enemy I cannot overcome yet or a puzzle I haven't figured out, I can still continue exploring other places. When I explore, I will hopefully gain experience for my character, maybe hints or clues for the enemy or puzzle. Moreover, during such non-linear exploration, I am also learning to play the game better along the way until I can overcome the place where I am stuck - I find that a more enjoyable way of spending time than in a linear game where I might need to repeat the same challenge over and over.

I do like linear games too, when they are well-paced and tell a good story, but my preference is for non-linear.