Almost all of the “Top 10 most replayable games” I have are Indie games, especially in the last 10 years.
They’re games like Factorio or Project Zomboid which I keep getting back to a year or two after I last played so much of it that I got fed up.
Glitzy AAA open-world-ish games have beautiful visuals but their replayability is near zero, worse so for games which seem open-world but are in fact linear.
Mind you, some older AAA jewels in that style (such as Oblivion) do get me to come back eventually, but it takes something like 5+ or more as I basically have to forget most of the story before it’s interesting to play such a game again.
If Price matched “Hours of Fun”, almost all of the AAA stuff would be way cheaper whilst many Indie games would be far more expensive.
Glitzy AAA open-world-ish games have beautiful visuals but their replayability is near zero
I mean, I gotta disagree, at least in part. Some of these games don’t age well. But I still know folks who line up for the “WoW Classic” experience. Hell, I know people who have been playing since the game came out in '02/'03(?) and now they’re out playing with their kids. I know one family who plays with their grandmother, ffs.
I think one thing that really gave Blizzard and Nintendo titles staying power was the choice to deliberately tack towards the cartoon-y style of art. When you’re not going for that hyper-real experience, the games age better. Hard to pick up a vintage Laura Croft or Devil May Cry without feeling its age. But Wind Waker? Mario 64? They do just fine.
For me it really depends on the game and whilst the “glitzy” is often an indirect indicator of a game which is limited in its replayabiliy - I suppose because often they’re games were there was much more investment in looks than gameplay - I should have added “highly curated” to that sentence since for me games with a story meant to be experienced in a certain way are pretty much “play once”.
Most of the games which I keep coming back to again and again in quite short cycles have emergent gameplay elements and even the entire game area is different from play to play - not just Indie Games like Factorio, Don’t Starve, The Lone Dark in Survival mode and Project Zomboid but also something like The Sims - whilst of “story” games, there are very few I go back to (as I mentioned Oblivion but also Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3) and when I do it’s after much more time, I suppose because I have to forget most of the story for it to be fun again.
My impression that in the last decade AAA has focused mostly on just two kinds of games - “Glitzy AAA open-world-ish” RPGs and multiplayer battle games - and for me the first have limited replayability unless they’re a world with A LOT of depth were the story is but a small part of the game, whilst I can’t be arsed to play the latter ever since online battlefields were swamped by kids in consoles as I really don’t have the patience to babysit somebody else’s ill behaved kids (still waiting for game makers to figure out that Adult Only servers would be immensely popular).
It’s not that AAA can’t do games with massive replayability, it’s that the AAA part of the industry seems to have gone down the route of games being either “curated experiences” or massive multiplayer were the emergent gameplay comes the actions of other players, whilst many Indies - having way smaller budgets - have gone down routes were the gameplay is “self-assembling” emergent, often with the game area being procedurally generated, which adds up to something less predictable were two runs of the game whilst sharing some similarities are in practice sufficiently different not to feel repetitive.
Similar to “we absolutely swear this will be the last major update!! For reals this time!” ReLogic. I still wonder how in the hell they are still making enough/any money to keep their studio working on games after all this time?
Capitalism isn’t fixing anything here. In fact, it’s showing that the companies mindlessly following market inflation to keep profits up are doing worse.
My rule is I’m only willing to pay a dollar for every expected hour of play, so you can imagine I buy few things at full price.
The last two games I paid full price for were Elden Ring and Mandragora. I am far more likely to pay full price for an indie title that I’m excited about than anything else, because as an artist myself, I fully understand the impact of a pre-purchase on an indie studio.
I like some of the early access development styles used in things like Enshrouded and Satisfactory, so mostly ive been spending on games like that. I like the idea of collaborating with a player base to create a game together I think.
If you only look at $/hr, there are some 70 hr games which milk your time and should have been shorter, like Assassin’s Creed, and then there are short, story rich games, like Outer Wilds, which are absolutely worth it even at more than a dollar an hour.
To you perhaps. Cinema is less than half that cost here and even then I go less than once a year because I don’t really feel like most films that come out are worth bothering to see given the combined effort and cost.
2 hour movies are also competing with streaming services like Netflix where people can see many more hours of TV shows and movies for less. Some just stick to youtube which requires no money and has some free movies there too.
Its like how people can drop hundreds and thousands of hours on f2p games without spending any money. $/hr valuation is outdated.
To be convinced to spend, consumer has to be convinced what a game is offering is unique to other cheaper and sometimes free alternatives. $/hr is something they will have a hard time competing with.
I don’t strictly adhere to it or anything, but I think it’s a good reminder sometimes when I balk at the price of a new game that I’m liable to spend hundreds of hours playing.
Yeah. Only reason I mention hours not being so important is because I’ve bought many games that are 5-10 hour experiences because I found the aspects like the atmosphere, story, or gameplay very compelling.
On a per hour basis The Finals has been the clear winner for me past 2 years its been out dropping over a hundred hours a year with no money spent. And enjoying more than paid multiplayer games.
It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve put hundreds of hours into games and gotten way less than $1/hr, and I’ve also had a great experience paying significantly more.
So I don’t see games in terms of $/hr, especially these days when I’m more limited by time than money. Instead, I look for unique experiences with cost being a much lower factor. Generally speaking, I spend much less than $1/hr since I buy a lot of older games, but I’ve spent far more ($5-10/hr) on particularly interesting games.
But yeah, generally speaking, I’m willing to pay more for indies than AAA titles because indie games are more likely to offer that unique experience.
That’s generally how I follow it also. Though I add the stipulation that they’re enjoyable hours, and it’s not hardline. I know not every game can be measured that way. If it’s a particular genre or series, l might take the dive anyway. For indies, it goes even further than that. Some I track for years before release, so I pre-order as soon as it becomes available, just to support as much as I can. So $/hr is a good baseline, but it’s deeper than that.
This, I think, is the big open secret about the push for consoles to move towards pure digital distribution.
It’s easier to not have to compete against your back catalog for gamer attention, if you cut off end-users ability to access it!
Rockstar already tried something like this, when they released the Definitive Defective Edition.
It failed successfully, in no small part to the remaster being absolute garbage, but for the AAA publishers, it’s merely a small setback that they will try again in the near future.
The game must be a GOTY contender or I’m not gonna pick it up at full price. I have no issues paying up for a new, unique experience that sounds exciting. Games I know I like, but rehash an old formula land on the wishlist until they are 30% off. Games that look cool, are recommended, but I’m not sure I will like them land on the wishlist and need to be below $20 when I buy.
With these simple rules I still have too many unplayed and unfinished games in my library, so… yeah… you gonna have to take some risks to win big.
I’ve got to be honest, the price of a game is probably the least important factor on whether I make a full price purchase.
I’m not going to rush out and buy something I’ve no real interest in. I can count on one hand the number I’ve made this generation. On PS2 I’d be grabbing something every week or two, but now I just can’t get excited for the latest and greatest updates on old formulas. Half the time I buy just to encourage them to make more games like that, like I did with Talos Principle 2, Astro Bot and Split Fiction.
I might pick it up later if I feel inclined, or see it on a decent discount. Like Clair Obscur, that I picked up for £29 in a sale just because I remembered it existed and fancied something to play over the winter holiday.
The difference is back then, I didn’t have to wait 2 years (give or take) for games to go on a proper sale to enjoy it. I’d just wait until a month or two has passed and ask around, go into Gamestop/EB Games, rent it at Blockbuster, find used games at yard sales, etc. and buy them for cheap (or potentially barter for them or be lent the copy).
We pay $70 to not play at release due to server issues and critical bugs. We do QA for most major gaming companies - while paying for the privilege to do so. We pay full-price for incomplete experiences that we are misled into believing are complete experiences, as well.
Most games I purchase at release (or pre-order) are just in limbo on my account while I wait for a playable product. By the time it’s playable, there is usually $70 worth of DLCs for me to buy.
I’m still holding to it, but I agree, it’s getting harder and harder to find stuff on sale for less than $5. Especially if you’ve been on Steam for a long time and have a large library already.
is there a way to tell what is indie and what is slop? i really think it’s getting like the ebay days of the 90’s. just … something feels off. repetitive. odd.
I am anxious about nothing and feel the whole range of human emotions, hope for the future, enjoyment of other things. I feel quite happy most of the time actually.
i’v heard some people say this sort of thing is likely that your subconscious or whatever just isnt being “fulfilled” by that level of activity, that you got to try something a little “higher” like creating your own game/telling your own story
Yeah, especially since I know I likely wouldn’t play it much.
On the other hand, if it was free (also as in money) and open-source, and I liked it, I could donate. Although I don’t have much money, so probably just smaller amounts, better than the 0 I do right now by not gaming instead.
For example, I absolutely wouldn’t pay $9.60 for Binary Eye (barcode/2D code scanner app) if it cost that much, but as a donation that was fine.
Well, I could make an exception for games on physical media. I like it, and it has resale value.
Yeah I’m a very patient gamer, I’m perfectly happy to just play games on my Steam Deck years after they come out. If there’s something I want, I’ll usually just wishlist it and let it sit there until it goes down to a price that seems reasonable. Much better to get it for $15-20 with all the DLC and bug fixes than paying $80+ for an unfinished buggy mess IMO.
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