It seems to me that many games developers nowadays work hard to perfect one or or two levels of agency - most often the input level or the narrative level. And again the developers agency is often felt too strongly in this, too often the decisions that the player makes are next to meaningless. When confronted with an enemy your “choice” as a player is to shoot and kill or the be shot and die. At most you may select your weapon, and if you’re very lucky you may select an angle of attack.

When I examine my recent most played games, I see how levels of agency influences my enjoyment. The game I keep going back to like a bad habit at the moment is the least likely candidate - I’m an Australian with little to no experience with American Grid Iron besides various Hollywood movies but my current favourite game is Backbreaker. Hear me out.

‘Merkin Footbaw is itself already a sport with interesting and meaningful choices at various levels of play. Your roster can be tuned for various styles of offense or defense, you choose formation and plan of attack with each individual play, and once the play begins you make momentary choices as a player between different receivers for a passing play or different paths for a running play.

Add to that the fact that Backbreaker is built on the Euphoria engine and features physics enabled tackles, meaning that spectacular things sometimes just happen either incidentally or due to your choices in the best spirit of the sandbox. Add again the unique (for sports games) over-the-shoulder action gamer view that gives you tunnel vision when you’re lining up a pass which to me adds a great deal of realism.

All in all it’s incredibly satisfying.