A lot of modern games have put a lot of time into their gameplay loop, and in part, this is why a lot of modern games feel like work. Focusing on this too much really can crowd out spontaneous fun. A gameplay loop also does not guarantee that a game is fun. Your loop might be: deploy --> shoot bad guys --> loot things --> come home --> process loot. None of this guarantees that the game is actually fun. Maybe the enemy design sucks, or the weapons feel bad, or the game just feels grindy.
In this way, it feels a lot like modern movies: in a lot of cases, cinematography seems to be some sort of objective science which has mostly just improved. And nowadays even a fairly bad movie will have great cinematography. It's just that the writing / plot / acting / etc. are quite poor.
That is, a proven gameplay loop can still fall flat quite badly. Easy examples would be all the modern hero shooters / looter shooters.
It's also worth noting that the definition of what constitutes a "gameplay loop" is pretty loosely defined. 1993 Doom clearly has a gameplay loop in the strict sense of the word: start level --> get weapons / ammo --> get keys --> kill monsters --> exit level. But this feels much less mechanical and gameified than your average modern game which almost certainly incorporate things such as RPG mechanics / stats / level-ups / FOMO events, etc. The latter feels much more artificial and forced, whereas Doom feels like "just playing a game."
> For books, I track my reading habits and I finish around 85% of the books I start. For games (which I do not track diligently…) there is no way I am even hitting 33%. I do not finish games. But it doesn’t seem to be something about my media habits at large,
Here I spontaneously wondered how many of his meals Joey finishes, that feels like it would be about as relevant information as the two numbers he gives here: there's just not obvious how one helpfully compares the Lord of the Rings book with the video game Celeste.
Games fundamentally require loops because they require skill. You learn through failure and repetition.
Games have the trouble that users have very different appetites for the gameplay. Some want short games, some want 1000s of hours for their $50. Devs do their best to provide a reasonable amount of content. This means that the reality is that most will not 100% complete your game and so you need to tune accordingly.
Its not fundamentally wrong to play a game until you're satisfied. Ideally the game can be structured in a way that the core story thread can be finished by then but sometimes that just doesn't work out.
> For indies, the pressure to clear the 2 hour mark was hung ominously overhead when Valve updated their policy to allow refunds up to that threshold.
If the game is good, I doubt most people would return it. “The Dark Queen of Mortholme”¹ comes to mind. I didn’t really find it enjoyable (good idea, boring execution) but the reviews praise it and I do get why.
The game takes 30 minutes from beginning to end. Maybe you’ll do 90 minutes if you want to try multiple things, but you can do everything in under two hours. And yet it’s a success, not a return fest.
A bunch of folks on social media used to crow about refunding the indie games they beat in under 2 hours. No idea how widespread a phenomenon it really was, but it certainly got airtime in gamedev circles
That’s useful context, thank you. On the other hand, GOG allows refunds up to thirty days after purchase, which is much more ripe for abuse, and they seem to be doing fine (though I don’t know for sure, would appreciate some context there as well).
There's plenty of sociopaths and people with not a lot of disposable money, but my theory is that as we (gamers) get older, richer, and with less available time, we will prefer the short and sweet experience over the 100+ hour game loop.
I know that's the case for me, and one of my favourite pastimes is install the little games from itch.io, which average at 10 minutes long, and just enjoy the naivety and craft that never overstays its welcome no matter how uncooked it is. You can have too much of a good thing; once I really cared about getting enough enjoyment/dollar, these days I'd rather spend $20 dollars for a good 2 hour experience, than find myself bored after 15 hours of the same.
If we are bring reductive, the grand theft auto games were drive here, shoot that kind of deal. Call of duty was shoot till objective completes until 4 came around. Those never felt repetitive to me because there was a story going on, there was a deep lore to the characters and places in the map and those were changing with me.
I can still replay them to completion. Feel relieved when help arrives after securing the little hill after normandy beach in call of duty 2. It takes so long but it’s worth it.
I’ve only ever felt the core gameplay loop repetitive on strategy games where every new challenge is the same one as last but bigger with a more complex inventory if that makes sense.
Interesting read. Nowadays, for most games, I do a few game loops and intentionally don't finish them. As a dad with two kids, I simply don't have that much time.
So I don't like games that have replay value or "endgame". I don't mind game loops but I want a game that finishes in 2-12 hours. 2 games that came to mind are Inscryption and Chants of Sennaar, both took around 12 hours and gave me a mindblowing experience.
I really enjoyed this article, although I love games with gameplay loops and bounce hard off of games with narrative. I wonder what the author would think of Hades?
In this way, it feels a lot like modern movies: in a lot of cases, cinematography seems to be some sort of objective science which has mostly just improved. And nowadays even a fairly bad movie will have great cinematography. It's just that the writing / plot / acting / etc. are quite poor.
That is, a proven gameplay loop can still fall flat quite badly. Easy examples would be all the modern hero shooters / looter shooters.
It's also worth noting that the definition of what constitutes a "gameplay loop" is pretty loosely defined. 1993 Doom clearly has a gameplay loop in the strict sense of the word: start level --> get weapons / ammo --> get keys --> kill monsters --> exit level. But this feels much less mechanical and gameified than your average modern game which almost certainly incorporate things such as RPG mechanics / stats / level-ups / FOMO events, etc. The latter feels much more artificial and forced, whereas Doom feels like "just playing a game."
Here I spontaneously wondered how many of his meals Joey finishes, that feels like it would be about as relevant information as the two numbers he gives here: there's just not obvious how one helpfully compares the Lord of the Rings book with the video game Celeste.
Games have the trouble that users have very different appetites for the gameplay. Some want short games, some want 1000s of hours for their $50. Devs do their best to provide a reasonable amount of content. This means that the reality is that most will not 100% complete your game and so you need to tune accordingly.
Its not fundamentally wrong to play a game until you're satisfied. Ideally the game can be structured in a way that the core story thread can be finished by then but sometimes that just doesn't work out.
If the game is good, I doubt most people would return it. “The Dark Queen of Mortholme”¹ comes to mind. I didn’t really find it enjoyable (good idea, boring execution) but the reviews praise it and I do get why.
The game takes 30 minutes from beginning to end. Maybe you’ll do 90 minutes if you want to try multiple things, but you can do everything in under two hours. And yet it’s a success, not a return fest.
¹ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3587610/The_Dark_Queen_of...
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011314978-How-d...
I know that's the case for me, and one of my favourite pastimes is install the little games from itch.io, which average at 10 minutes long, and just enjoy the naivety and craft that never overstays its welcome no matter how uncooked it is. You can have too much of a good thing; once I really cared about getting enough enjoyment/dollar, these days I'd rather spend $20 dollars for a good 2 hour experience, than find myself bored after 15 hours of the same.
I can still replay them to completion. Feel relieved when help arrives after securing the little hill after normandy beach in call of duty 2. It takes so long but it’s worth it.
I’ve only ever felt the core gameplay loop repetitive on strategy games where every new challenge is the same one as last but bigger with a more complex inventory if that makes sense.
So I don't like games that have replay value or "endgame". I don't mind game loops but I want a game that finishes in 2-12 hours. 2 games that came to mind are Inscryption and Chants of Sennaar, both took around 12 hours and gave me a mindblowing experience.
Fun fact: Jeff Gardiner, who is quoted in the article, was hired by me for his first job in the video games as a junior level designer. Yay me!