The Value of Replayability

[CritialGaming]

I first played Rise of the Tomb Raider back when it first came out in November of last year. I was such a fan of the Tomb Raider reboot, that I bought an Xbox One simply to play Rise. The 2012 Tomb Raider reboot was one of the best action game I had ever played, and I honestly thought that the game was fantastic from start to finish. So obviously I was excited for the sequel.

Sadly I found myself disappointed in Rise, though at the time I couldn?t tell you why. On the surface the game was more of everything I love about the reboot, with even more on top of that. Yet for some reason I didn?t feel the magic of Rise that I felt for the first game. I guess it was so much more of the same thing that I had been hoping for something different, something even better. To me Rise just didn?t have the spark and though I beat the game, I was left feeling a little bummed out.

Fast forward one year later. Now I have an ultra powerful gaming PC, and the 20th Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Tomb Raider was 50% this past weekend. On a whim I bought it, wanting both a game to test my new hardware on and to check out the improvements that supposedly came with the Anniversary Edition. I am not 12 hours into Rise on PC and it is like a completely different experience. Don?t get me wrong, the gameplay is the same, the story, the scenarios within, all the same. Yet for some reason there is that magic that I felt with the original reboot that I didn?t get when I played Rise on Xbone.

Perhaps it is being able to play the game on Ultra settings with 100fps. Or that I no longer have a bitter taste and unreasonable expectations from basically paying 400 bucks to play Rise the first time. Either way it got me thinking to the surprising importance that replayability presents to a title. Most games right now are ignoring this important aspect of game design. Many games either focus on extensive endless play multiplayer like most Military fps games, or they focus on making a world so huge that it would take the play 100?s of hours of collect-a-thoning to get through it much like your Mafia 3?s and GTA?s.

It feels like Rise is in a happy middle. Sure it has a fair share of collect-a-thon pieces, but the game is small enough to not make those things feel overwhelming to players. On top of that, the game is still big enough that on a second playthrough (1 year later) I am discovering tons of things that I never saw the first time through. From stumbling across relics that I could not freaking find last play through, to doing tombs that I couldn?t originally find the entrance to the first time.

These things are coming together to create a completely new experience for me with this game. While I may know the story, the game has still felt new throughout. Discovering new items that I missed the first time has encouraged me to explore every nook and cranny, going back to previous areas after I got a new piece of equipment to explore previously unreachable points.

Much like the 2012 Tomb Raider, Rise is suddenly a game that I feel I can not only replay this time, but several more times in the future. Which got me thinking. Is replay value something that developers are no longer focusing on in light of instead making a game that is perpetual? As a kid I remember having to play through a game over and over again because I knew I wasn?t getting a new game any time soon, so I had to make the experience last. Yet as I got older there were many games that I played multiple times despite having choices simply because they were so good. And now as an adult I very rarely have the urge to replay something. Mostly because I don?t see the value in it anymore. A game very rarely blows my mind like they did as a kid, and lately many of the experiences have been rather shallow.

I don?t believe game length has anything to do with that. Nor do I count games that use replay-value as a mechanic, Diablo for example. I recently replayed The Witcher 3, for example. Despite the length of that game being incredibly daunting, I never found myself bored with it. Much like with Rise, I found myself discovering things that I didn?t come across the first time through. Perhaps because I am familiar with the lay of the land in both games, it has allowed me to navigate easier and thus discover areas I never noticed before. Or perhaps by their very design, they are not intended for the player to discover it all in a single go through.

One could argue that everything I?ve discovered on my second pass through these games have been small unimportant things, and you?d be right. But it is these small things that make the game feel different with another pass, these little things you could miss that give the same game a different flavor with a second play.

I encourage you all to play your games over. Not all of them mind you, but look at your library for a moment. See any games there that you play for only a few hours, but couldn?t get through? Maybe try it again, see if an extended break changes the experience for you. How about a game you finished, but didn?t find it as good as you hoped? Try it again, if there are choices in the game, fight yourself to make choices that you normally wouldn?t make, and see if that change in experience leaves a different taste in your mouth.

The replay ability of video games is something that most people and even critics over look. I would bet that there are a lot of games out there that would be even better when played a 2nd or even third time, even if the game isn?t designed to be completely replayed. I want to encourage people to not overlook a game they?ve completed, play again, there is value in it, personal value that I can really change the way you look at games in the future.

 

[tippy2k2]

I know replayability is something a lot of people care about and want in their games.

I could not care less to be perfectly honest and blunt about it.

I think I could count on one hand how many games (not including NES games I had as a child since my limited income and choices prevented me from doing my own thing) I have actually replayed and the reason behind it is pretty simple: I don't have time.

I suppose I could make time if I really wanted to but right now, my backlog includes Fallout 4 (playing currently), Witcher 3, Deus Ex Mankind Dvidied, FarCry Primal, Alien Isolation, Telltale's Batman, Devil May Cry, and Dark Souls 3 (and this is just what I own so it doesn't include all those games I want to play). Frankly, I see no real reason to play a game I've already played when I'm so spoiled for new experiences now.

I'm sure I'm losing out a little bit with this setup (and I sure as hell don't look down upon people who do replay games because that would be silly) but I don't see the appeal in replaying a game to see what I missed when I can just play a brand new game now and have EVERYTHING be brand new to me.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm not a big fan of the finish-and-forget philosophy. Some games just stuck with me so much that even after completing them, I want to keep playing them. Others have gameplay that I find strangely addictive (do you think I should have a brain-scan if I want to finish The Witness for the third time?). Improving the game experience with better hardware or mods? Not a bad excuse. Games with replay features? Err... only a plus if the game clicks on me.

 

[loa]

To create replayability, you have to include the ability for the player to experiment, to have different approaches and options and I think that is vital for a game to be engaging.
Dark souls wouldn't have been half the game it was without all the "that's how I get that" moments that open up whole new ways of playing the game, undertale wouldn't have been the phenomenon if it was just rattling down a linear script rather than doing what it did, starcraft 2 wouldn't even function if all 3 races were the same.

If you remove that, you get throwaway games of little substance.
Pretty looking setpieces that narrowly follow the scrip.
You get hallways.
You get final fantasy 13.

 

[wings012]

When I was younger I would care since I had more time than I had money.

Now it's reversed. I rather just move on.

Even if a game has replayability, you inevitably do sit through a repeat of a bunch of the same stuff.

 

[happyninja42]

It varies from game to game on if I think it's something worth replaying. Honestly, I don't think I expect replayability from most games, I just want a fun experience that's worth the money I pay for it. If it happens to be good enough for me to want to play it again, great. If not...eh *shrugs*, no biggy.

Usually the games that I replay, are the games that occupy my "favorites of all time" category for the most part, with a few that are just fun ones. Like Shadow of Mordor. It's not one of my "greatest of all time, most beloved" games, not by far, but damn if it isn't a fun game that I like dusting off now and then. But it's no Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm. It's no inFamous 1, etc.

So...yeah I don't really know where I'm going with this. Replayability is great, and if a game is good enough to make me want to play it more than once, that's awesome. But most games don't reach that level of quality sadly, just like most movies don't either for me.

 

[Seishisha]

Im not realy sure where i fall on this, probably along the lines of, if the game is enjoyable i'll replay it at some point. The only thing im not keen on is when a game is designed to be played and beaten more than once to get the full experiance/true ending, that kind of crap can piss off.

I don't mind making a choice in a game that locks out other choices later on such as in the witcher 2, largly because those choices feel important, the narrative supports your descions and never feels incomplete. Replaying to make a different choice next time round is fine because it provides you with a different narrative to follow.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I have learned that if I can't get through a game the first time, there is a good reason that doesn't expire. For example, I want to get into Golden Sun Dark Dawn, it's too wordy and just bores me. I hear the first is better, I didn't think it was. I recently tried to get through Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World again, no luck. The bumps you hit that make you quit don't go away.

As for replayability, I only have luck going back to a completed game once I have forgotten most of the game. For games that have New game+, with the exception of Chrono Trigger, I have never made it through a second playthrough and I burned myself out on Chrono Trigger on the DS years ago and can barely look at it now.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Replayability didn't use to be overlooked; I remember, distinctly, during the PS2 era most reviews did bring it as a factor in the critique. But it has become a tricky concept for both the developer and the consumer, largely because the games industry is bigger and offers a lot more options that don't leave much time for revisiting all your games and because the average age of a gamer has increased and, well, we have shit to do in real life. Another thing that I find counts quite a bit when it comes to replayability is the insistence on making every AAA title part of a 'series' or franchise. Even if you want to play a game you love again, you're more than likely going to play through all games in that series if you can make the time for it. For a lot of us, replayability becomes a moot point, because it requires an investment we can't make a lot of the time.

That aside, the availability of easily accessible online games also has an impact on the concept of replaybility. A decade and a half ago, if I wanted to shoot things, I'd have to pop in Half-Life or Unreal or whatever, even if I had finished them. Now all I have to do is boot up Overwatch or Counter-Strike or even one of the f2p shooters and play for half an hour before I'm sated.

Honestly, at this point, I replay games that I really like as an overall experience and gives me things to miss about them once they're done and most of the time that requires some form of emotional connection, be it mere nostalgia or very absorbing story or mechanics. Which is probably why RPGs get the most replays from me; though it always helps if the games themselves offer mechanical depth that helps differentiate each replay.

 

[sXeth]

I know replayability is something a lot of people care about and want in their games.

I could not care less to be perfectly honest and blunt about it.

I think I could count on one hand how many games (not including NES games I had as a child since my limited income and choices prevented me from doing my own thing) I have actually replayed and the reason behind it is pretty simple: I don't have time.

Yeah, when I was a 12 year old jamming on my N64 and beating Starfox or Perfect Dark for the 300th time was one thing. Even then, I didn't replay most longer stuff (I think I played FF3(6) twice through, and a couple of the Ultimas). I remember trying to go through with an evil 2nd playthrough on Baldurs Gate and abandoning it pretty quick out of boredom (since all it does is offer some ludicrously bad dialogue options).

Fast forward to present time, and I have trouble thinking of a campaign I've replayed. Destiny, technically. But that was less replaying and more bull-rushing through the story missions to send the other two charactes to max level so they could be used to get weekly activity rewards. I played through Doom (2016) twice, but only because Nightmare was straight up locked out until you beat it the first time (Doom is also like, 4 hours, when you already have the secrets). The other quasi-example was Dark Souls 3, but that was because we 3 man co-op played it, and less a replay then having to do everything 3 times.

 

[CritialGaming]

While I can understand the time restraints on people in adulthood seriously hampering desire to re-play a game that you have beaten. The idea behind what I was really trying to make was, maybe not so much replaying as "retrying". Giving games another shot where you might have only gotten 20-35% into the game before dropping it for one reason or another. Second chances based on either a new platform (Tomb Raider on PC for me, for example) or some new knowledge (perhaps learning about a game mechanic that you didn't quite understand properly) that brings you to giving a game a second try.

Sure there is merit to the time management aspect. As adults we often have more games than we have time to play, especially because so many good games are outright free-to-play now (an option I surely didn't have as a kid), not to mention we are more hyperaware of what's coming as well. New releases hit store shelves constantly, conventions and news sites make us aware and excited for games long before they come out, which can make going back to an old game harder.

I believe some part of that also comes from wanting to stay relevant. Look at the escapist forums for example. When a new game comes out, how long does it stay a topic? Two weeks maybe three? Then the forum is quickly onto the next release. While there are some exceptions to this, people aren't typically bringing up a game like the first Tomb Raider reboot in any context other than passing examples. This probably isn't much of the case with you guys, but maybe there is some truth to not wanting to waste additional time playing something that nobody else is talking about or even playing.

I don't know. It was just an idea I wanted to get off my chest.

 

[The Wykydtron]

If a game is good i'll continue playing it is pretty much all I can say. I'm a guy who often replays various Visual Novels now and again despite them being often brought up as examples of games with zero replay value. I've gone through the first 5 hours of Grisaia No Kaijitsu (available now on Steam, buy now beat the rush) god knows how many times and it never gets old.

Same deal with the first 2 hours of Persona 4 which is 100% story until eventually gameplay mechanics are introduced. You only unlock the pause menu 2 hours in too, it's great.

I can even replay mystery games, G-Senjo is one of my favourite VNs of all time and there is only one route in that game! Well, the other 3 routes are filthy non-canon, non-Haru lies at any rate.

Great thing about Steam re-releases is that I have another excuse to replay an old VN. Even if some of their re-releases make no sense. Umineko without voice acting included. Of course people added the superior PS3 port in as a mod later but like... Is it even possible to follow the dialogue without the voices? It'd be like reading a book but with all the "X said" or "Y explained" straight up removed right? Just a jumble of lines on a page.

 

[izark]

I really like replayable games like Diablo II, Undertale, Mass Effect 2..

 

[aozgolo]

Replayability and Length are huge considerations for me. I often baffle my gaming peers because I was really long games and I want a lot of them. I often use sites like howlongtobeat.com in helping me with purchasing choices between games, often going for the ones with long campaigns or significant amounts of side content. This all ties in largely to how I play games for the journey and not the destination, while there are quite a few games I have beaten, many times it was simply because I was there and I could, and from no real desire to be done with it. In many other cases I've not beaten a game even when I clearly could have at a certain stage or well within the amount of hours played, but chose not to.

For me, replayability is about interaction and always having something to do in a given world. I don't really care so much for multiple endings, as even seeing one ending is hit or miss with me, instead I prefer content and customization. I very much prefer gameplay over story, though there's always exceptions. My favorite Final Fantasy game is XII simply because it has such an excellent gameplay system with wide open fields to explore, excellent AI driven combat, lots of side missions, and an interesting story. I love the Dragon Quest series, not so much for their stories, but because they take simple game concepts and layer them into an excellent presentation that flows together very well. The Field->Town->Field->Dungeon route stays consistent through all the games but it further mixes in things like job classes, beast hunting, alchemy, and lots of other cool actions.

If I were to look purely at which games I replayed the most for any given system it would look like this:

NES: Ultima IV
SNES: Earthbound
PS1: Legend of Mana
PS2: Final Fantasy XII
PS3: Dragon's Crown
PSP: Sid Meier's Pirates!
DS: Dragon Quest IX

In many cases there's a lot to be said for games where you can try playing as different classes or class combos. Legend of Mana is great due to it's freeform nature of how you build the world and approach new quests, and it being plum full of layered content. Earthbound while not offering much in the way of different classes or approaches to gameplay, just has such a joyful and eclectic feeling to it that it's next to impossible for me to not enjoy it every time I play again and again, and I've never beaten it despite playing it probably close to 20 times (from new game up to wherever I stopped). I feel like Dragon Quest IX is the perfect hybrid for RPG lovers, featuring a pretty straight forward campaign you can beat in 30 - 40 hours, but with enough side content in quests, job skills, dungeon grottoes, alchemy, and the like to last you 500+ hours.

 

[peabuddie]

I have a weird kinda gaming behavior. I will play a new game once through. If I like it I go back and play it through again, almost immediately after (not always but a lot of times). This is because the second time around I know what's up. I have a handle on mechanics, etc and it gives me a chance to excel more or create a better build or basically just master the game. This does not apply to huge open worlds like Skyrim or DAI. Those games I may restart with different builds and screw around for a while but I don't play the main game all the way through. On another note, I actually like the the first TR better than ROTR. I think I may be one of the few who do. I want replayability I've hung on to games for years that I still go back and play. I can't but a new freaking game every 5 minutes and there are some games that are always good for another go. Saints Row 2 always good for a laugh. FO3, ME trilogy, DAO. The list could just go on. Also strangely I didn't get into ME1 the first time I tried it out. Put it aside, came back to it like 2 years later and that was it I was in love the rest is history.

 

[Elijin]

To create replayability, you have to include the ability for the player to experiment, to have different approaches and options and I think that is vital for a game to be engaging.
Dark souls wouldn't have been half the game it was without all the "that's how I get that" moments that open up whole new ways of playing the game, undertale wouldn't have been the phenomenon if it was just rattling down a linear script rather than doing what it did, starcraft 2 wouldn't even function if all 3 races were the same.

If you remove that, you get throwaway games of little substance.
Pretty looking setpieces that narrowly follow the scrip.
You get hallways.
You get final fantasy 13.

Actually you just have to create a satisfying experience. If I enjoy eating a burger once a week, I don't need it to be a different experimental burger each week. The experience is enjoyable, and enough time has passed that my tummy is a-grumblin' for some more of that taste.

 

[loa]

To create replayability, you have to include the ability for the player to experiment, to have different approaches and options and I think that is vital for a game to be engaging.
Dark souls wouldn't have been half the game it was without all the "that's how I get that" moments that open up whole new ways of playing the game, undertale wouldn't have been the phenomenon if it was just rattling down a linear script rather than doing what it did, starcraft 2 wouldn't even function if all 3 races were the same.

If you remove that, you get throwaway games of little substance.
Pretty looking setpieces that narrowly follow the scrip.
You get hallways.
You get final fantasy 13.

Actually you just have to create a satisfying experience. If I enjoy eating a burger once a week, I don't need it to be a different experimental burger each week. The experience is enjoyable, and enough time has passed that my tummy is a-grumblin' for some more of that taste.

Yeah well I don't think of games as burgers that I just throw away once I'm done with them.

 

[pookie101]

well it can be bad.. ill end up replaying something rather than playing something new on my steam list for instance

 

[Elijin]

To create replayability, you have to include the ability for the player to experiment, to have different approaches and options and I think that is vital for a game to be engaging.
Dark souls wouldn't have been half the game it was without all the "that's how I get that" moments that open up whole new ways of playing the game, undertale wouldn't have been the phenomenon if it was just rattling down a linear script rather than doing what it did, starcraft 2 wouldn't even function if all 3 races were the same.

If you remove that, you get throwaway games of little substance.
Pretty looking setpieces that narrowly follow the scrip.
You get hallways.
You get final fantasy 13.

Actually you just have to create a satisfying experience. If I enjoy eating a burger once a week, I don't need it to be a different experimental burger each week. The experience is enjoyable, and enough time has passed that my tummy is a-grumblin' for some more of that taste.

Yeah well I don't think of games as burgers that I just throw away once I'm done with them.

Okay then, Captain of the SS Missing the Point. The burger is the same game, not a brand new game with similar aspects. If the core experience is satisfying, I'm going to come back. It doesn't need to be some magical formula of various options, it just needs to be something which was satisfying to experience. Sure, the things you mentioned can be part of that satisfaction, but they are not defining factors.




Also, you throw away your burgers? You don't finish them? Maybe you should stop buying burgers.

 

[loa]

-

Well then maybe don't use analogies that blow up in your face then.
Maybe don't equate games with something you consume and are just done with.