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This article almost entirely focuses on content variation, but I think far more important is game system complexity and inter-complexity. The ultimate problem s

by setr 4y ago

This article almost entirely focuses on content variation, but I think far more important is game system complexity and inter-complexity. The ultimate problem stopping replay (assuming you like the game systems in the first place) is the realization that you’ve “solved it” — you understand the various inputs and outputs of any action or mechanism and can trivially predict the results. This usually occurs because the game systems themselves are trivial (often a set of independent features stuffed behind the same UI, but A has no influence on B), because one or a few of the systems are overwhelmingly influential (e.g. melee mechanics don’t matter if guns are trivially superior for all scenarios), or because the game itself doesn’t incentivize the player to actually exploit those systems to any real degree (e.g. the game is too easy or the levels don’t introduce enough new constraints, so the first solution found applies globally; often fixed by player-induced artificial challenges like no X runs). Multiplayer however cheats this because even trivial systems can become a huge exploration space when incentivized by direct competition (analysis and understanding is pushed to the limit; e.g. sm64 requires a certain level of understanding to play effectively, but speed runners and TAS take that understanding to the nth degree) and the players themselves bring metagaming as an additional system worth exploring (eg any competitive multiplayer) It’s also confounded by multiplayer games that are less “played” and more used as a social space — replacing the shopping mall — like many mmo’s, Minecraft, etc. You’re not replaying so much as visiting and killing time between social interactions (so even highly repetitive actions often suffice). The content variation is largely necessary to give reason and space to explore the game systems under novel constraints.

forgotpwd16 4y ago
Note though that a game can have emerged complexity arising from simple rules. Classic examples will be chess and go.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Chess and Go are only popular for legacy reasons, they shouldn't be used as examples of good game design. People care about the complexity in those games only because of the legacy culture and competitions, people would never care about them as new games without all that history.
  - stcredzero 4y ago
    People care about the complexity in those games only because of the legacy culture and competitions I think this is less than half true. People wouldn't care about those games, if they didn't have the amount of emergent complexity that they do. It would be more accurate to say that they soak up so much attention because of legacy culture and competitions. But those wouldn't exist, if those games didn't have certain qualities which made them eminently interesting and replayable in the first place. Could they have been replaced through different accidents of history with other games entirely? Sure. But those games would have had many of the same qualities.
    - rcxdude 4y ago
      Indeed. Chess and go have survived a long time, and they would not have done so if they were not interesting in their own right. We just don't see the games lost to history.
      - hoseja 4y ago
        We do see some, check out "Royal Game of Ur" for example.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    They're only POPULAR for legacy reasons, but popularity is a very poor proxy for game design. Chess and Go are great games. Fixed start, no hidden information, turn based games are pretty rare anymore. They're not eyecatching, but they're still good concepts.
    - palmetieri2000 4y ago
      I love both of these games although I'm not particularly good or knowledgeable about either. Just out of curiosity, do you think there are any interesting resolutions to the issues around the balance of who gets to go first? (First-Move Advantage) WARNING: KINDA A RAMBLE, STOP READING HERE IF BORED EASILY. I've also played a lot of Magic the Gathering, which of course has hidden information and a hybrid fixed start. Both players have the same number of cards in their hand and on the field[1], but will almost certainly have different cards to each other even in Deck X vs Deck X mirror match ups. In competitive MtG with a best-of-3 system, there can be a sense felt by the players that the die roll for Game-1-Turn-1 has a disproportionate effect on the match. Despite the roll giving you the choice of first or second turns, it is decidedly unusual for players to win the roll and choose to go second (even though the player who goes first skips their first card draw). For the sake of the argument, if we assume going second definitively has lower chance of victory then the players perceptions can become frustrated and this can effect their desire to replay the game. Because the loser of Game 1 selects who goes first in Game 2, and will likely pick themselves, and the winner of Game 1 is more likely to have won the Game-1-Turn-1 dice roll. We get an outcome in which beating your opponent in Game 1 cascades, because your opponent will choose to go first in the 2nd game and either win returning the turn 1 advantage to you for the tiebreaker G3 or lose and the match concludes. Because Game 1 has disproportionate significance AND is the only game where luck decides who goes first AND is chronologically the the first to occur, I have observed (and felt) a kind of stewing frustration at 'playing out' the rest of some matches after losing the die roll and then having a poor early game 1. I believe a this is mostly concerns players emotions and perceptions about 'inherent' advantages, which is why I've talked about it as a factor of replayability rather than just strategy. [1]In a typical circumstance, some cards or deck types can alter the initial game state of the board or hand.
- setr 4y ago
  Right; when I said game systems being trivial, I meant trivial in that the player can completely predict the outcome with very little effort — not that the rules defining the system are trivial. Conway’s game of life (and Turing machines even) is the quintessential example of trivial system definitions producing very non-trivial systems. And in fact that should be the goal — maximizing system complexity, minimizing system definition (perhaps there are better terms for this…) Games that manage to do so successfully have the opportunity to be replayed through multiple lifetimes
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
> The ultimate problem stopping replay For me it's time. If I know in advance the game will take 10 hours to finish then no matter how much variety it has, I'm not gonna play it again.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Why did you play it the first time? Why would the second time be different? Your statement doesn't answer this fundamental question about replayability.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    The first time you play it, you will be encountering the game’s art, music, and design for the first time. Will it be good? Bad? Just okay? Will there be one surprise that takes your breath away? It’s full of novelty and possibility. The second time, you mostly know what you’re in for. There may be different paths to take, there may be new stuff unlocked by your first play through. But if you made it to the end then you’ve probably exhausted most of its unique content. There may be other things to come back for (DLC, competitive play, 100%, achievements, etc) but it’s easy to put it down for good. How many books, movies, or TV shows do you come back to? How many do you go through once and never again? Why should a game be any different?
    - boomlinde 4y ago
      > How many books, movies, or TV shows do you come back to? How many do you go through once and never again? Why should a game be any different? You can design a game such that it's a somewhat unique experience every time you play it. Even games with limited variation in setup allow different approaches from the player. That's not possible with traditional novels and film. At best, maybe you can review a film or a book and pay more attention to some detail you didn't notice that much in the first view, but in the end you are rather passively consuming a fixed narrative. Of course, how meaningful this is depends on whether the game mechanics stand out on their own, or if it's mostly a vessel for a fixed narrative. If the game is just a mechanically bland walk from one cutscene to another, with little agency, it might not seem worth it. A lot of AAA titles are like this IMO. If the game generates a unique set of challenges every time you play it, or rewards new approaches, there is much more fun to be had replaying it.

by setr 4y ago

forgotpwd16 4y ago

Note though that a game can have emerged complexity arising from simple rules. Classic examples will be chess and go.

Jensson 4y ago
Chess and Go are only popular for legacy reasons, they shouldn't be used as examples of good game design. People care about the complexity in those games only because of the legacy culture and competitions, people would never care about them as new games without all that history.
- stcredzero 4y ago
  People care about the complexity in those games only because of the legacy culture and competitions I think this is less than half true. People wouldn't care about those games, if they didn't have the amount of emergent complexity that they do. It would be more accurate to say that they soak up so much attention because of legacy culture and competitions. But those wouldn't exist, if those games didn't have certain qualities which made them eminently interesting and replayable in the first place. Could they have been replaced through different accidents of history with other games entirely? Sure. But those games would have had many of the same qualities.
  - rcxdude 4y ago
    Indeed. Chess and go have survived a long time, and they would not have done so if they were not interesting in their own right. We just don't see the games lost to history.
    - hoseja 4y ago
      We do see some, check out "Royal Game of Ur" for example.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  They're only POPULAR for legacy reasons, but popularity is a very poor proxy for game design. Chess and Go are great games. Fixed start, no hidden information, turn based games are pretty rare anymore. They're not eyecatching, but they're still good concepts.
  - palmetieri2000 4y ago
    I love both of these games although I'm not particularly good or knowledgeable about either. Just out of curiosity, do you think there are any interesting resolutions to the issues around the balance of who gets to go first? (First-Move Advantage) WARNING: KINDA A RAMBLE, STOP READING HERE IF BORED EASILY. I've also played a lot of Magic the Gathering, which of course has hidden information and a hybrid fixed start. Both players have the same number of cards in their hand and on the field[1], but will almost certainly have different cards to each other even in Deck X vs Deck X mirror match ups. In competitive MtG with a best-of-3 system, there can be a sense felt by the players that the die roll for Game-1-Turn-1 has a disproportionate effect on the match. Despite the roll giving you the choice of first or second turns, it is decidedly unusual for players to win the roll and choose to go second (even though the player who goes first skips their first card draw). For the sake of the argument, if we assume going second definitively has lower chance of victory then the players perceptions can become frustrated and this can effect their desire to replay the game. Because the loser of Game 1 selects who goes first in Game 2, and will likely pick themselves, and the winner of Game 1 is more likely to have won the Game-1-Turn-1 dice roll. We get an outcome in which beating your opponent in Game 1 cascades, because your opponent will choose to go first in the 2nd game and either win returning the turn 1 advantage to you for the tiebreaker G3 or lose and the match concludes. Because Game 1 has disproportionate significance AND is the only game where luck decides who goes first AND is chronologically the the first to occur, I have observed (and felt) a kind of stewing frustration at 'playing out' the rest of some matches after losing the die roll and then having a poor early game 1. I believe a this is mostly concerns players emotions and perceptions about 'inherent' advantages, which is why I've talked about it as a factor of replayability rather than just strategy. [1]In a typical circumstance, some cards or deck types can alter the initial game state of the board or hand.
setr 4y ago
Right; when I said game systems being trivial, I meant trivial in that the player can completely predict the outcome with very little effort — not that the rules defining the system are trivial. Conway’s game of life (and Turing machines even) is the quintessential example of trivial system definitions producing very non-trivial systems. And in fact that should be the goal — maximizing system complexity, minimizing system definition (perhaps there are better terms for this…) Games that manage to do so successfully have the opportunity to be replayed through multiple lifetimes

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

> The ultimate problem stopping replay For me it's time. If I know in advance the game will take 10 hours to finish then no matter how much variety it has, I'm not gonna play it again.

Jensson 4y ago
Why did you play it the first time? Why would the second time be different? Your statement doesn't answer this fundamental question about replayability.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  The first time you play it, you will be encountering the game’s art, music, and design for the first time. Will it be good? Bad? Just okay? Will there be one surprise that takes your breath away? It’s full of novelty and possibility. The second time, you mostly know what you’re in for. There may be different paths to take, there may be new stuff unlocked by your first play through. But if you made it to the end then you’ve probably exhausted most of its unique content. There may be other things to come back for (DLC, competitive play, 100%, achievements, etc) but it’s easy to put it down for good. How many books, movies, or TV shows do you come back to? How many do you go through once and never again? Why should a game be any different?
  - boomlinde 4y ago
    > How many books, movies, or TV shows do you come back to? How many do you go through once and never again? Why should a game be any different? You can design a game such that it's a somewhat unique experience every time you play it. Even games with limited variation in setup allow different approaches from the player. That's not possible with traditional novels and film. At best, maybe you can review a film or a book and pay more attention to some detail you didn't notice that much in the first view, but in the end you are rather passively consuming a fixed narrative. Of course, how meaningful this is depends on whether the game mechanics stand out on their own, or if it's mostly a vessel for a fixed narrative. If the game is just a mechanically bland walk from one cutscene to another, with little agency, it might not seem worth it. A lot of AAA titles are like this IMO. If the game generates a unique set of challenges every time you play it, or rewards new approaches, there is much more fun to be had replaying it.