The Replayability Dilemma

Before we kick off, please note that I am using footnotes to augment this article. Also, I have included screenshots of games I find particularly replayable (or not) for the sake of a bit of colour.

The Replayability Dilemma

This article was inspired by the Co-Optional Podcast, and as such I do heartily recommend readers also have a watch of that.

Hearing a commentator who I greatly respect talk about what he considered to be replayable games got me thinking. Replayability is something that I factor into my reviews and discussion on video games, in part because a lot of developers these days make a big deal about how replayable their games are. So this begs the question, is replayability quantifiable, and if so, how do we evaluate it? I thought I would have a bit of a discussion on the matter, and tie things up with a case study of sorts.

What is replayability?

Quite obviously, replayability concerns how likely a game is going to be replayed after the initial play-through. Developers *cough*BioWare*cough* often make a big song and dance about how replayable their latest game is, and how players will immerse themselves in the game over and over again. It seems that the industry wants players to believe that games that are replayable are better value for money.

SM Railroads! Dozens of hours.

Value for money in any form of entertainment is very tricky to define. You are paying for an experience, and as such it isn’t like buying bread, or underwear. For example, very few movies are the same length, or cost the same to produce, yet you pay the same amount at the box office for tickets, no matter the film.[1] Video games are much the same, and the equation is made trickier due to the gradual drop in price of games as time passes. After all, is a two year old AAA game that is $30 necessarily going to be worth $50 less that the new AAA game that has come out today for $80? I would argue that no, it isn’t necessarily worth even 5 cents less, the issue is that the economies of scale and time influence price but not necessarily value.

So, when a new game comes out developers (and publishers) want people to buy it then for the $80, rather than wait for a sale, or for time to pass and drop the price. This is because they are businesses and need to make a profit. The more you pay for a game, the more they make. Quid pro quo.

Therefore the blanket question of What is replayability? needs to be broken down a bit more and examined. There are various forms of replayability, and they all get played for marketing.

Types of Replayability

I will attempt to lay out some broad themes of replayability as follows:

Choices – One way which a number of developers try to create replayability is to create a large number of diverse choices which the player can make as they play. The idea behind this is fairly logical, players will want to play the game again to see what happens when they make different choices. Ultimately it seems to work fairly well as a way of getting people to replay game.[2]

Just Cause 2: Tonnes of content done right.

Content, Content, Content! – Some developers think that packing the game world with huge amounts of quests, items, events, and such like will improve replayability. This only really works if your player-base is either anal-retentive, or is a firm believer in Pokemon taglines. The Borderlands franchise is a chief offender in this regard and I have this to say: You know what, I don’t care about the 50 bazillion guns I didn’t use, find, or earn. I don’t give a flying f*** about them – quality over quantity, please!
Ahem…as I was saying, content dumping can work very well, or very badly. The Elder Scrolls, for example, often does it extremely well. The game worlds of that franchise are jam-packed with stuff to do, sights to see, things to make, but never do they seem cluttered – the world breathes; it feels natural rather than contrived.[3] On the flipside are behemoths like Dragon Age: Inquisition (it is gonna get a big chat later on in this article). Yes, lovely world building, but too much dross. So much dross in fact that it invalidated one of the lauded new game mechanics – the horse riding.[4] Further, it had all the grind factor of an MMO, without the social element that makes grinding in an MMO almost bearable.[5]

Bethesda gets it right.

Immersion & Story – This is, in my opinion, the best type. The game might contain other elements
like choices or endless f***ing content, but what keeps pulling you back under is the way the story is told. The story might be hilarious, or it might tug your heartstrings over and over again, or maybe the world is just amazing to wander around in (Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or anywhere in The Witcher). Whatever it is, I think this works excellently for the same reason that people re-watch films or TV shows until their HDD cracks the sh*ts purely for some originality, or they re-read a book until the words have been worn off the page.[6] People love a good story, so games that deliver one do well, and deservedly so.

Those are my top three, and the ones that stand out.

So, that is something of a rough idea of some ways that replayability can be created, with varying levels of effectiveness. Now, let us get our hands dirty with some investigation…

Case Study – Dragon Age: Inquisition

This is not a review of the game, although I will express my opinions on it. I will primarily be looking at elements of the game that contribute to its replayability.

One of the things that puzzled me about Inquisition was the way they simultaneously pushed the ideas that it was reeeeeallllyyyyyy looooooong and also very replayable. Why did that puzzle me? Because I didn’t really think that a Dragon Age story would be both amazing enough to get me to play it for 90+ hours and also play it through again.

I was right.

Immersion killing hair and animations.

My first (and only complete) playthrough of Inquisition came in at around 100 hours. In that, I certainly missed some side quests and probably some special gear as well. However, I felt that I had immersed myself pretty well, and got a good feeling for the game. So, 100 hours of my life used, I sat back and wondered about replaying it. Sure, trying a different race would be interesting (although the changes, even in the dialogue, are rather cosmetic in nature), but beyond a few things in the early game, there were no choices that I could make in the mid to late game that would justify me playing through another 100 or so hours. What about the different classes? Well, my enquiring subconscious, they are basically the same as they have always been in Dragon Age, and they were simply cherry picked amalgamations of Dungeons & Dragons classes anyway.

For me there was no good reason to replay the game even once, let alone several times. Even if I were to ignore the rather average combat, hours of grinding[7], and glitches, the story was not good enough to justify it, and the choices that I was actually interested in were few and far between. For me, this is an issue I have had with all the Dragon Age games. I can replay Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect until the proverbial cows come home, but when it comes to Dragon Age I just don’t care.

One of the big problems is the length. Given how many games are under 10 hours long but cost the same as Inquisition, surely the 90+ campaign was value for money enough as it is. I would like to point out that a long story isn’t by definition a good story – in this case a long story padded out heavily with grinding and mind-numbing Ubisoft-watchtower-esque activities certainly isn’t by definition a good story. BioWare were going for an epic. I’ve read epics. The Iliad is quite good but by all the gods I wouldn’t dive back in and re-read it. BioWare wanted you to love the epic-length

Charming, but not quite...

story, but also wanted you to replay it as much as the much, much, much shorter Mass Effect 2.[8] This was a problem. The story was good, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t that good.[9]

Next was the grinding. MMOs use grinding because achieving high levels is a big thing in those sorts of games, and they need to keep people playing for as long as possible because that is how MMOs make their money. Inquisition is a single player game, the money is made when the game is bought, not when random person #5471639 has been playing for 6 months, desperately trying to find more f***ing Elfroot. It wasn’t necessary, and just felt like excessive padding used to justify the at times tedious levelling system.

The combat in Dragon Age has never been stellar, and Inquisition was no exception. It is clunky, despite its flashy animations, and wears thin pretty fast. I replay Neverwinter Nights 2[10] because despite the clunkiness, it is honest. You can literally see the D&D game running as you play, see the dice-rolls, and the turn-based origins of the game. That is part of its charm. I replay Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (in part) because its combat is fun, fast, and frantic – what I look for if combat is going to determine my replays. Inquisition is neither particularly honest about its Origins[11], nor does it have the fun and panache of Kingdoms of Amalur. The combat is not going to get me coming back for seconds – it was the over-boiled cabbage of the meal the first time through.

Look, a label! And a glowing outline.

The world was pretty, and rather diverse. That said, that is true of Minecraft as well, with Minecraft worlds having the added advantage of being randomly generated. Having a pretty world with lovely skyboxes falls into the same basket as pretty graphics and animations for me. They are garnishes. If the meal is a steaming pile, then it doesn’t matter that you have garnished it with a beautiful lemon, dill, and yoghurt sauce, because I am still going to taste the steaming pile. Also, games with pretty worlds are a dime a dozen[12] these days, and so unless it really stands out, which Inquisition’s doesn’t, it isn’t worth much. The pretty graphics are also let down by the weirdness of BioWare facial animations, and BioWare hair. 
Inquisition's Thedas doesn’t feel like an open world, and I never felt the excitement of exploration – I mostly just was annoyed at how long it was going to take me to get to my next objective. If you want great worlds to explore look at anything from Bethesda – whatever other flaws their games may have, they know how to build a damn good world. BioWare, on the other hand, are better at set pieces, and that shows when they try to make these expansive maps. The palace in Orlais was far more interesting than, for example, the Western Approach.

Bethesda get's it right again.

Then, of course are the soul-crushingly long loading times. I accept that there is alot to load, but plenty of other 'big' games can manage without taking so long that I can play a level of Angry Birds on my phone while I wait. Worse still are the immersion breaking labels on everything. Other games also have labels, but do it in such a way that they don't intrude on the game world. Little niggles count against replayability, they really do.

I could go on and on for almost as long as a playthrough of Inquisition, but I feel my point is made. Inquisition was too long, too padded, too clunky, and had too average a story to be replayable. If # of hours played = value for money in your mind, then Inquisition is for you.[13]

As for me? Well, I am going to go and re-read some Terry Pratchett, and replay Mafia II for the 20^th time.

P.S. I will conceded, in a first for the Dragon Age series, the music is great. In fact, it outshines the rest of the game at times.

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[1] This, obviously, assumes that you are going to the same cinema every time, and ignores any special discounts for specific days of the week.

[2] I do have some caveats though, more on this later.

[3] Guild Wars 2 is another example of lots of content done well.

[4] Yahtzee covers the many irritating quirks of DA:I this in his ZeroPunctuation episode.

[5] I don’t like grinding, got a problem?

[6] This totally happens. Completely legit.

[7] Both types, this is a BioWare game after all.

[8] Which was a masterpiece.

[9] Also, don’t even get me started on the BS that is BioWare’s habit of putting massive plot points in the DLC of previous games, long after many have gotten sick of throwing money into the bin for DLC. Seriously, cut that shit out.

[10] Shameless self-promotion, watch my Neverwinter Nights 2 videos.

[11] Punning 101.

[12] I’ve stopped counting the clichés.

[13] I promise you though, Minecraft is cheaper and offers even more hours of play. It is the jackpot if that is how you measure value.