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> 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

> 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.
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    Depending of the definition of "to finish", this is completely not applicable to any open world RPGs. E.g. unless you consider game not finished until you completed all the side quests. Same for open-ended building games like Minecraft (technically completed when you kill the dragon), Cities: Skylines, or Factorio (when you send a rocket).
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    why should a book or movie be different from a game? well for one they're wildly different media. what you wrote only applies to linear narrative-focused games, and if those are the kinds of games you like, that's fine… but the medium has so much more to offer! I would rather try a janky, kind of bad, yet mechanically/systems-wise interesting game like Kenshi over another AAA movie-game any day of the week. I have no problem with linear/linearish narrative-focused games—I'm currently playing through a visual novel actually. but interactively conveying a pre-defined narrative (possibly with some "choices" sprinkled in here and there) is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of possibilities the medium affords! the problem here is, video games are still a very young medium, so many people have preconceptions about conventional storytelling/narrative structure that they carry over from film and literature. many people want a video game they're considering purchasing to be something with an Hour Count you can look up online, weigh against your interest in the plot/setting/characters/whatever, and decide if playing through the predefined arc of the game is something worth their time. few people look for games with mechanics and systems that converge in interesting, complex, emergent ways, and say to themselves, that looks like something fun to play (with) for as long as I keep enjoying it! Sea of Thieves is an interesting game because it attempts to bridge this gap. when my buddies and I play it every now and again, we enjoy planning some loosely-defined goals for a session, then just fucking around on the open seas as we see fit. for us, something like seeing how many powder kegs we can gather and fit into the crow's nest so as to test the viability of hucking them into the water and shooting them when fighting player ships, is infinitely more entertaining and interesting that playing through the scripted storyline quests. but on the other hand, my fiancée loves to play through these scripted storyline quests with the wife of one of my friends, just dutifully following the quest instructions, looking up how to do things online if needed, whatever is necessary to check that quest off their list. this same friend's wife has expressed in the past that she cannot for the life of her understand the appeal of the roguelike/lite genre—"why would you just want to play the same thing over and over?" many people like (and expect games to be) linear narrative experience video games, but more games should try to be more gamey, more systemsy, more emergent, because that's what makes the medium unique and different than others. the only issue with this is player expectations, which hopefully will shift somewhat with time.
  - setr 4y ago
    > 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. This is what I mean by the systems are what matter, not content variation. You can play sim city repeatedly, despite there never being new content, because learning the game systems (inputs, and predicted outputs, and then achieving goals based on that) is what’s valuable, and there’s a lot there to unpack. Assassin’s creed on the other hand should only be played once, because the game systems are trivial — you’ve probably understood everything it has to offer long before you’ve completed the major storyline. So the only driver is content, and really only the shallow surface novelty of that content (story, aesthetics, etc). So once you’ve seen it… why see it again?
antifa 4y ago
Another variant of the _time_ promblem. I do have a day or week to play Words with Friends. I don't have 30 minutes to an hour to play scrabble. Otherwise they are essentially the same game. I wish more good games were built with respect for this.

> 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.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  Depending of the definition of "to finish", this is completely not applicable to any open world RPGs. E.g. unless you consider game not finished until you completed all the side quests. Same for open-ended building games like Minecraft (technically completed when you kill the dragon), Cities: Skylines, or Factorio (when you send a rocket).
- adamrezich 4y ago
  why should a book or movie be different from a game? well for one they're wildly different media. what you wrote only applies to linear narrative-focused games, and if those are the kinds of games you like, that's fine… but the medium has so much more to offer! I would rather try a janky, kind of bad, yet mechanically/systems-wise interesting game like Kenshi over another AAA movie-game any day of the week. I have no problem with linear/linearish narrative-focused games—I'm currently playing through a visual novel actually. but interactively conveying a pre-defined narrative (possibly with some "choices" sprinkled in here and there) is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of possibilities the medium affords! the problem here is, video games are still a very young medium, so many people have preconceptions about conventional storytelling/narrative structure that they carry over from film and literature. many people want a video game they're considering purchasing to be something with an Hour Count you can look up online, weigh against your interest in the plot/setting/characters/whatever, and decide if playing through the predefined arc of the game is something worth their time. few people look for games with mechanics and systems that converge in interesting, complex, emergent ways, and say to themselves, that looks like something fun to play (with) for as long as I keep enjoying it! Sea of Thieves is an interesting game because it attempts to bridge this gap. when my buddies and I play it every now and again, we enjoy planning some loosely-defined goals for a session, then just fucking around on the open seas as we see fit. for us, something like seeing how many powder kegs we can gather and fit into the crow's nest so as to test the viability of hucking them into the water and shooting them when fighting player ships, is infinitely more entertaining and interesting that playing through the scripted storyline quests. but on the other hand, my fiancée loves to play through these scripted storyline quests with the wife of one of my friends, just dutifully following the quest instructions, looking up how to do things online if needed, whatever is necessary to check that quest off their list. this same friend's wife has expressed in the past that she cannot for the life of her understand the appeal of the roguelike/lite genre—"why would you just want to play the same thing over and over?" many people like (and expect games to be) linear narrative experience video games, but more games should try to be more gamey, more systemsy, more emergent, because that's what makes the medium unique and different than others. the only issue with this is player expectations, which hopefully will shift somewhat with time.
- setr 4y ago
  > 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. This is what I mean by the systems are what matter, not content variation. You can play sim city repeatedly, despite there never being new content, because learning the game systems (inputs, and predicted outputs, and then achieving goals based on that) is what’s valuable, and there’s a lot there to unpack. Assassin’s creed on the other hand should only be played once, because the game systems are trivial — you’ve probably understood everything it has to offer long before you’ve completed the major storyline. So the only driver is content, and really only the shallow surface novelty of that content (story, aesthetics, etc). So once you’ve seen it… why see it again?

antifa 4y ago

Another variant of the _time_ promblem. I do have a day or week to play Words with Friends. I don't have 30 minutes to an hour to play scrabble. Otherwise they are essentially the same game. I wish more good games were built with respect for this.