I’m a picky shopper. I like to get the most out of my money. I wait for sales. I buy used. I use coupons.
When it comes to games, I want more than a four hour experience for $50+.
So, I look for titles that have a nice, long playthrough, like a Star Ocean or a Final Fantasy; replayability like a Master of Orion, MOO2 or Master of Magic; or keeplayability like Animal Crossing, The Sims or most MMOs. As I age and my playing time is more and more constrained, though, I find that after a while, keeplayable games just feel like another job, while a nicely designed replayable game still manages to be fun.
Long playthrough games are fairly easy to diagnose. They typically have a strong story that runs on a slow burn, with story elements revealed between grinding game play sessions. These are almost always RPGs, or a variation like a Tactics game. (Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission, Disgaea, etc.) Once I’m done with the canned story, there’s little reason to replay the game.
To be fair, I replayed Star Ocean 2 back in high school, using a sneaky Disc One Nuke to get a superweapon early on to make combat faster the second time through. The “replay” draw of SO2 is the choice of characters for the party, and the interaction between them, including different “endings” for the game. For example, bringing along Precis means Bowman won’t join you, or choosing Claude or Rena as your main character means different supporting cast choices. In actual gameplay, it’s not really a big difference. There are no Duel Techs as in Chrono Trigger (one of the few replayable RPGs; New Game + is brilliant) that would make a different cast synergize in new and interesting ways. Each character plays a little differently, but they are equivalent enough in power to mean that the choice is going to be mostly rooted in the side stories you want to see, the character interrelationships you hope for, and the “endings” you want. Thing is, the side stories are short, the relationship vignettes are even shorter, and the “endings” are just little postscripts that show which characters paired off (or not) and what that meant to their personal narrative. Replaying a 70 hour game to see maybe fifteen minutes worth of new story and some marginally different combat isn’t really the best use of my time. Yes, I did play through the game twice way back when, but that was a mark of how much I enjoy the combat and crafting systems, and a fair dose of insomnia. These days, if I’m interested in the characters, I find a GameFAQ that covers the plot and its alternates.
Replayable games are a mixed bunch. This can be anything from the aforementioned MOO to Bejeweled. (Speaking of Bejeweled, Puzzle Quest is a strange hybrid of Bejeweled and a stock RPG, taking up a funny design space between “replayable” and “long playthrough”.) These games are designed to be replayed, and each replay can offer anything from minor variations to radically different experiences. The key to making this work for me, the time-strapped player, is to make the game session short, and the experience different enough each time to warrant playing.
Fighting games fall in this range. Playing as a different character can radically change my experience, and bouts are fairly short. Some arcade games might qualify, like the arcade 6-player X-Men, since the choice of character does alter the game somewhat, despite the canned story. What is really great is when the gameplay itself alters depending on the player choices. That’s why I like the MOO/Civilization lineage; the world is largely molded by your aggregate actions. Yes, these are largely “sandbox” games, but they aren’t the sprawling mess that is GTA, they are smaller, more malleable beasts. The sense of power, that my decisions matter, is key to making the experience fun, and the ability to make different choices with different outcomes is what makes replayability enjoyable.
This is also why a strong narrative, as that of the prototypical RPG, is not really well suited to replayability in this sense. I’ve worked for years on designs for a “finite state” RPG where the story itself is based on a “living world” that changes, sometimes dramatically, based on player actions. Fable attempts something similar, and notably is relatively short compared to a SquareEnix opus or D&D derivative.
Then there’s what I’m calling “keeplayability“. Yes, it’s a word I made up; yes, someone else probably also independently made it up; yes, it’s unwieldy and vaguely punny; yes, the smooshing together of words is almost German. I have German roots, blame my ancestors.
These are the games that are designed for players to just keep playing. There’s no reset, no sense of an end, and sometimes, not much of a point. These are often the ultimate sandboxes, requiring the player to bring their own fun. These games can be lots of fun, most certainly. They tend to offer a great deal of value for their cost, so long as players don’t mind a somewhat aimless experience. I have Animal Crossing for the DS, and I’ve certainly been able to get a great deal of playtime out of a modest box price. Even my company’s Kingdom for Keflings is designed along these lines, albeit on a somewhat more modest scale.
These games may or may not have in-game goals. In the XBox “Achievement” era, there are often little metagame goals to earn achievements with, but the gameplay itself is more or less a set of toys for players to tinker with. There may or may not be a sense of progression, but if there is, there is no well-defined “end” to the game, since that would undermine the goal to keep people playing. These are the ultimate treadmills.
MMOs typically fall into this category. Guild Wars is a notable exception, since the level cap is reached fairly quickly, and there are definite storylines with endings in each expansion. There is even limited replayability with different character classes (though most MMOs offer this, GW is more accessible thanks to the sense of an end). Importantly, GW charges for content, rather than access. These keeplayable games are tailor made for the subscription model, since they are designed to never end. They aren’t just designed without an ending, they are designed to keep going.
Once upon a time, I would have loved to fill my time with keeplayable games, but more and more, despite the great return per gaming dollar, I’ve seen them to be huge time sinks. (This is especially true with sub MMOs, where they are time and money sinks thanks to recurring costs.) My time is becoming more important than my gaming investment calculation, in other words. I suspect that to be true for many gamers as they grow up and get lives. Games will always be an important part of our recreation, but they won’t take up as much time as they once did.
Devs need to pack as much goodness per hour per dollar as they can to earn their keep. It’s a demanding equation, but not an impossible one.
*Games like Shift or Auditorium don’t quite fit in any of these. They are short, yes, but they don’t change significantly on replay. They are fun for a while, then the joy comes in giving them to other people. Most of these are free, though, so I’m usually happy to have spent the time I did playing them.
It looks like I’m seven years or so too late… as usual. Still, since I tend to write about MMOs, at least I’m doing a few unique things. Still, Ernest Adams’ article below is a good read:
Replayability Part 1
Replayability Part 2
Very cool article. I wonder where Mount & Blade would belong in the replayability category. Basically, it is a lot of medieval combat on horse or dismounted with castle sieges and field battles. And many people somehow like it, and I now belong to them, too.
Simple and fun things you can do over and over again, a fighting game most probably – like Counter-Strike.
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=q1X3s_oHs1I&NR=1
Cavalry heavy battle
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=3rPGzB0zmBI&feature=rec-HM-r2
This happens when you let people cross a river
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=n207EogEdZg&feature=related
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=9J7gO8Kxd3U&feature=channel
and two “300” mods… guess there is also a Riders of Rohan mod. And some medieval Britain mods.
This game has no end, you define the ending yourself. Mine is to crush all other Kingdoms and become King of the Vaegir myself.
Others could go on and exterminate the claimants and heirs of the fallen kingdoms. :>
This Gamasutra article was really good, btw. Hard to put it in better words. The mix of clearly defined end and optional vanity achievements made GW probably so appealing to me, as I ran low on time for years, right now I can play a bit more. But their achievement madness is setting a bad precedent for GW2, I hope they do not fall for the trap! 😦
Aye, PvP arena games, like Team Fortress 2 or Counterstrike are an interesting breed. I’d probably squirrel them away in the Replayable category, since they are kin to fighting games, more or less. I’ve never been all that good with FPS games, so I don’t play them much, but they certainly do offer much because they largely let players be the content. I loved Tron 2.0, but never got into multiplayer. It’s possible for games to have components that function in different “categories” as I’ve here defined them.
You keep plugging Mount and Blade. I knew another person who plugged it a lot back in the beta days. Maybe it’s time I check it out. 😉
Oh, and aye, the GW Achievement/Title Track nonsense just doesn’t do much for me. I play GW largely to get away from the MMO grindiness. They don’t really hurt me, either, but indeed, I hope that GW2 doesn’t cater to the grind.
Nice post.
I’ve always been on the fence when it comes to achievement systems. Usually they add an enormous amount of replayability to the game, but sometimes they destroy the way they game was designed to be played. They can also lead to grinding, which eventually leads to boredom. I guess the bottom line is, achievements need to be challenging, but carefully crafted so as not to destroy the fun of the game.
Look at you, creating new jargon. Me likey. I suppose a little typo could also work with “keyplayability” – the “key” to “keep playing”/”replayabilty”.
There I go again confusing a very straightforward and simple thought.
I would suppose keeplayability has little to do with value and everything to do with fun, of course. How little or much I paid/pay for a game doesn’t impact that. Battlefield 2142 I played for.. gosh.. years – the same 10 maps. Rightly noted, the players make the fun in those games. The good thing is that I only paid once. I didn’t feel the urge to have to log in to get value, and I didn’t choose to play that game over others due to obligations (see:raiding guilds).
Which leads me to point 2, regardless of the fun factor mentioned above, friends are the other key component to keeplayability. I probably played WoW for a full extra 12 months to hang out with my friends.
Mass Effect (still playing it, despite beating it several times) threw out the bone that MAss Effect 2 will use your player’s save game file from ME1 – and the game will be shaped differently depending on your major choices. Just to be on the safe side I am working to unlocking all of the achievements to see if that garners anything special from ME2. That, and well, still having fun, with no friends to push or pull me to different games at the moment.
Well, keeplayability and cost intersect when I’m deciding what game to buy. A game’s design ability to be played indefinitely doesn’t hinge on its cost, no.
Indeed, friends are a huge component of keeplayability. They aren’t necessary, but they can make a big impact.
@Tesh: How do you know the keeplayability of a game before you play through it though?
I loved the story elements in Bioshock. Going through it a second time did nothing for me though (so I barely got through the second level).
I’m not an early adopter. I wait until a game has been out for a while, read some reviews, see if anyone blogs about it, that sort of thing. If I can’t get a good sense of how the game is going to play, I either wait until I can, or I pass. There have been very few occasions when I bought a game on a whim.
…so no, that doesn’t help the industry at large, at least until they stop marketing in sound bites and bullet points. It’s just the way I approach purchases. Being patient also allows me to see whether people actually do keep playing, especially in the MMO world.
It’s true that there are occasions when I have to play a game to see if it’s going to be keeplayable for me, or just another hype machine, so second hand research isn’t always sufficient. Still, the vast majority of the time, I just do my homework before I buy, and it’s worked so far. Maybe because I know what I’m looking for?
Edited to add: Chris, I’m not being sarcastic with that. Yours is a good question. My rhetorical finisher is me musing, not snarking. I think you’re right, sometimes you can’t tell until you play it.
I protologize these games in the smegmatics of keeplayability.
Titillate?
Oswald Bates (resident drunken idiot of Channel Massive)
There you go, posting while under the influence again. 😛
You’ve also strangely foreshadowed another article that I’m planning on writing. Hmm…
“…so no, that doesn’t help the industry at large, at least until they stop marketing in sound bites and bullet points. It’s just the way I approach purchases. Being patient also allows me to see whether people actually do keep playing, especially in the MMO world.”
Great paragraph. I must admit, I was a sucker in 2008. Instead of waiting around to gather feedback on the “epic” MMOS released in 08, I ran out and picked them up, only to find that both of the major titles -Age of Conan and Warhammer Online- suffered from bugs at launch as well as a bad endgame design. Shame on me….
Never again is the motto for 2009, and I plan to wait at least a few months before I jump into any new MMO. Console games are nice because if I am unsure about the quality of a game, I can saunter over to my local Blockbuster and test drive the game for a week rather than waste 50 bucks on a box and 15 bucks per month for 3 months on a game that shouldn’t have been released when it was.
Keeplayability -great word by the way- will influence my decisions more than any buzz word created inside the marketing department of any company. I refuse to be the sucker any longer than I already have.
I started Fallout 3 numerous times, but only completed it once. I started again after completing it the first time, and after hitting Megaton (& gearing up) I deliberately set off in a direction away from Rivet City, to explore and see what I’d missed the first time around.
I found the Best Town In American, Five Years Running, and one or two other areas I’d missed, but there really wasn’t that much to keep me occupied for another run through.
Meanwhile my wife can play Age of Empires III (and it’s various X-Pacs) over, and over, and over again.
Great example, Capn. As an old MOO/MOM/Civ fan, I keep thinking I should check out Age of Empires. Someday, perhaps.
Glad you liked my wordwrighting, Wolfgang! Finding that my work is appreciated makes all this pontificating and writing worthwhile. 😀
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