Everlasting games & the replay index

Destiny 2 — The Dawning is finally over. What is “The Dawning”, some of you might ask, who are not familiar with the Destiny 2 (by developer Bungie) game. It is actually an example of a new trend in the game industry, that I noticed in the last couple of years, the “timed events”.

Destiny-2 the dawning

A timed event is introduced into an online game, that lasts for a few days or weeks. I wanted to dig into this new trend a bit more and ask my readers what they think of this new trend.

In my case, Destiny 2 has a game world which reflects the Earth in a fictive future. As a result, Bungie decided to play with the typical modern day events and create their timed events around those periods:

• Christmas and New Year (Destiny’s the Dawning)
• Halloween (Destiny’s Festival of the Lost)
• Valentine’s Day (Destiny’s Crimson Days)

Each year, around those times, Destiny servers get updated and gamers can participate in new activities, collect new gear and weapons, engage in snow fights, and enjoy a game world that gets dressed up in a new atmosphere. In the Dawning event, Bungie added snow fights, updated the music to a Christmassy tune, introduced fireworks going off in the sky and many more small details. I like it a lot and enjoy the niceties of the timed events and discovering the small changes that they made.

Overall, it is a nice way of keeping gamers active and interested in a game, where they already finished the main story line and getting bored of the existing activities. Hence, the title of “everlasting games“, because it allows companies to keep their gamers interested and hooked to their game. And that is of course the reason why they keep introducing these timed events.

The state-of-the-art game engines also provide game developers with the flexibility of replacing skins with introducing new artwork without having to develop and code every new layer again. Thus, it becomes cheaper for them to modify and update the game world and create varying themes more easily.

On the other hand, one must not forget that they do it to make money and to ensure that their gaming customers (us), spend more money on micro-transactions, to buy some new gear, or upgrade skins or other items. By keeping their customers happy, they will ensure that those also buy the next DLC (Downloadable content) and continue playing their game.

I call this the “Replay Index“, meaning how likely is it that a gamer, will replay the same game over and over or continue the game even after having finished the main story line, or finished the game. There is more than one mechanism to increase the “replay index” of a game, of which timed events is one of them.

Some non-exhaustive mechanisms know to me are:

• Timed events: which introduces certain goals or activities during a certain period only. Some example games with timed events are the MMORPG World of Warcraft by Blizzard, Destiny by Bungie or Assassin’s Creed: Origins by Ubisoft.
• Game+ (plus): which requires you to replay the same game with the same levelled character in a more difficult setting (or game plus 1), with higher rewards and better gear, and such. Some games that are using this mechanism are the Dark Souls series by From Software, the Dishonored series by Bethesda, the Uncharted series by Naughty Dog and many more
• Seasons, Ladders and Rankings: which requires players, like in sports, to prove themselves again and achieve the required rank from scratch, earning new rewards and features depending on the season. Games like Blizzards Diablo or Hearthstone card game are good examples.
• Character or skill type variations: which for me means that I have to build a different character with a different skill set, that approaches the same story and game in a different way and
• Collectibles: which card games are of course a good example of like Hearthstone or Magic, the Gathering by Wizards of the Coast , but also games like the FIFA soccer game by EA Sports or even Destiny and other shooters where you can collect weapons or gears are appealing to our Neanderthal hunter-gatherer instincts.
• Trophies or Achievements: unlike ladders or rankings these are calling to our “I have to be the best” instinct. Some gamers keep replaying games until they have collected all Trophies (on PS4) or Achievements (on Xbox) which often means repeating the same game multiple times. Check out some interesting articles why this works (e.g. Why do Achievements, Trophies and Badges work? by Jamie Madigan)

Feel free to comment on this post, if you know of any other “Replay” mechanisms that have been introduced. I want to avoid adding DLC as a mechanism, as this actually often adds completely new parts and content to the game and requires gamers to buy it.

The “replay index” is very important to gamers as it means that the ROI (Return On Investment) of the game is higher, because we can play the same game for longer period and get more out of it.

For example, a game with very low replay index will cost us around 60 Euro/USD and it is finished in approximately 10 hours. This means that the game cost us 6 Euro/USD per hour (which is the average wage of some players). If the game has a high replay index, a gamer may replay the same game or continue playing the game and get 60 hours or more out of it. In other words, the game costs only 1 Euro/USD per hour and we get more fun out of it.

Bottom line, the game industry has increasingly made games that went from single play through games to everlasting games. This leads to more satisfying gamers and keeps the game industry alive. Gamers stick to the games they bought increasing the income of the producers and on the other hand allowing gamers to enjoy games for a longer time. I consider this a win-win situation!!!

I am interested in hearing from my readers what they think about this trend of everlasting games. Do you like it? Do you find it boring or annoying? Let me hear your thoughts, ideas and critics.