For me, first it was Civilization. The it was Doom. Now its Starcraft. What gives a game long life? What gives a game insane replay value, and keeps it on your hard drive for years? Furthermore, how do you DESIGN for this? I think the biggest single factor for long life is finding new ways to play. Here at work we''re __STILL__ discovering new strategies with Starcraft, and learning that units we thought were useless really have great power. Another factor, I think, is multiplayer. Humans bring something new to the game, each time you play. What makes you get tired of a game quickly? What keeps you playing? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

If I may play devil''s advocate for a moment, should keeping the game on the players'' hard drives forever always be the primary goal? Is there anything wrong w/ creating a game that is aimed for only one or two sessions? I tend to like replay value too, but I am just wondering if it should be the goal of every game out there.

I agree that multiplayer is a major strength when it comes to replay value. That is the only reason why I played Diablo as long as I did.

I guess it comes to that interaction thing again. If there''s only one way to interact w/ things, then it gets pretty boring fast. If there are more than one ways to interact w/ things then it adds a lot to the replay value whether it''s a story-based game or not.




"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

No, no, I''m not saying this should be the goal for every game. Just wondering, tho'' for the games you DO want to last a long time...




--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Replayability... Games which you get a new experience out of every time you play them, or games that CHALLENGE you when you are pitted against your mates (or enemies for that matter). Games that require you to be quick to act and to know the best methods for use in the game

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

I''d say the secret formula ()is:
eternal life= game balance + ~dominant strategy.

A dominant strategy edges the game ever closer to a puzzle, since once you know it, the actual gameplay becomes very mechanical. It may be fun to romp on the opponent for a few games, but after that, the thrill is gone. So the two are related, I suppose. The presence of a dominant strategy negates game balance, but you have to mention both, since not every imbalanced game has a clear dominant strategy.

Moreover, the closer your game is to a "pure" game, by the prevailing definition, (especially as expressed by Crawford) the longer your game will be enjoyable. Think about it. Every factor commonly mentioned as detracted from a game''s "gameness" () detracts from replay value. Definitions vary, and I don''t have them memorized, but for starters:

Puzzles: You''ve beat ''em once, you''ve beat ''em. ''nuff said.

Stories: How many times will you sit through the same stories?
Compare your favorite movie w. your favorite
game. Sure, you''ll see a really great movie
two, maybe three times, more for a real fanatic, but
a really excellent game? How many hours before that
gets old? Fifty to Eighty maybe? (for the real gems)

OK- so w.out further examples, (I''m sure you could come up w. your own) can we generalize a set from this? How about: Linearity kills replayability? I would like a positive way to express this, but the obvious: Interactivity promotes replayability is simply not true, and too wishy-washy/obvious. For one, if there were a random (therefore nonlinear) storymaker, I would sit in front of that box *all_damn_day*, even though I have no input. So it fits the former, but not the latter. A straight negation of the second statement would be that my spreadsheet program is very interactive, but has very little replay value. (near infinate utility, tho''. . .hmmm. . .)

Anyway, this is turning entirely into a brainstorm, so I''ll finish that on my own time, hopefully come up w. something more solid.



If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

Kernaghan,
good point. Daggerfall was very non-linear but very repeditive and it goes back to depth. The player''s actions didn''t affect the game that much.


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Also... With that replayability it comes down to a game which is long enough to keep a player content, yet not too long as to cause them annoyance when they can''t reach the end.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

****LONG POST!!!****

That''s a really good point, Kernaghan. I actually got off on a total sidetrack there. Teaches me to post at work while I''m getting called away every two minutes.

But I wouldn''t say that linearity has no direct correlation. It is worth noting that it is far from the only factor, but it is worth noting that no game mentioned so far has a classic, linear plotline, (except Ultima, but I''ll get to that) or a single dominant strategy.

And a single dominant strategy is really linearity in another guise. The "Story" of a game is also the sequence of actions taken by the player. The fewer choices of viable actions a player has at any moment is a definition of how linear a game is at that moment. So if a game at any given moment has very few viable choices, that game is by definition, more linear than a game w. more choices.

The more viable choices available in a game, the more varied each playing of the game is, as there are more pathways from start to finish. This is the kind of linearity I am talking about, and it absolutely has a direct correlation to a games general replay value. We like diversity in our entertainment, yes?

But we also like to return to good experiences. So I watch Pulp Fiction once or twice a year. I don''t appreciate it anew, every single time. Sure I notice new details every now and then, but this is nonlinearity as well.- my experience has branched at that moment from every other experience I''ve had of that movie- and it most certainly enriches the experience. Of course, this is stretching the point a bit, as this kind of reminiscing is very different from what we call replay value.

Replay value has alot to do w. diminishing marginal returns, or the added satisfaction of "just one more game", which invariably lessens over repeated usage. A game w. high replay value is almost as good the second time as the first, almost as good the third time as the second, and so on, even if all three games occur one after another. It has a low rate of diminishing marginal returns. A game which is maybe half as good if you play it again immediately has a much higher rate of diminishing returns, thus low replay value. BUT- marginal returns are measured along one axis measuring value, and another measuring quantity (in this case, time) so if you lengthen out the time axis from two weeks to two years, the marginal returns will appear to lower, as the function has become more elastic. This also explains why games which can be played from start to finish in a small amount of time (multiplayer Quake or Starcraft, Tetris, PacMan) tend to have higher replay value than games like Daggerfall.

Sorry for the long post, guys, but I''d really like to see this theory "cut to size". Flame at will.


If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal