going back to the start
While one can read a book (or watch a movie/show) infinite times, its design is oriented for one to do it only once.
The “plot twist” is used up. The cliff-hanger is resolved.
Video games can also be designed this way, but the expectation is that one can play them again.
This property, in the game design jargon, is called replayability.
Why do we care about replayability?
There are expectations from the players: most associate $ with hours of gameplay. And playing again is a good way to increase hours of gameplay.
And also from those who produce games: it is so costly to generate content that creating branches that players never see is a waste of time and money.
I’m not saying we have to force players to replay our games.
It’s all good with a play-through being self-conclusive and the player not wanting to play more.
What matters most to me is the arrow in the other direction: what happens when the player wants to explore our story through another path.
This is where most game writers fail.
The reason is simple: doing a good job requires thinking like a game designer and not just a writer.
One of the most common problems is that the player has to re-read a lot of the same text to go through alternative paths in the story.
No options are provided to facilitate this (skip text, shortcuts, etc).
This demotivates the player, leaving much content unseen, and a negative feeling about something that, if better designed, could have been a great experience.
It is the responsibility of the writer to ensure that the narrative design favors replayability.
This includes working with programmers and game designers so that the necessary features for this are developed.
It’s not an easy job.
But nobody said it was easy, right?
Tomorrow I will write about a technique to address this that I’ve been thinking about for several years.
And I hope we can figure out more solutions, because it’s an open problem.
Is this something you’ve experienced as a player?
What other problems do you identify that a writer might have to ensure the replayability of their stories?
Do you have any interesting examples of how a game resolved replayability?