Jeff: You might be right… I’ll have to think about what makes a game replayable. However, even if what makes it replayable is very different from what someone might expect, it is still something that makes the game replayable.

I’m saying that, whatever it happens to be, if you need your game to be replayable, use it! Whether it’s permutations, or agency, or beautiful art - use it!

My only question to you, Craig, would be what makes a game replayable? There’s no real new plot points that can occur in System Shock 2, for example, so the branching is not part of the replayability of the game. Some of my favorite games that I’ve played over and over again are adventure games, which not only have no new plot points, but no new challenges really (because I already know the answers to all the puzzles). But why do I replay them?

I personally think that for many of them the feeling of agency is what draws us to them, and we want that feeling again, even if we know exactly how our actions will affect the game, and even if the affects are the same every time.

We’ll wait to see what Darius says though.

Craig: I think a short game, if priced well, doesn’t necessarily need replay value. Especially if that short game is, say, episodic in nature.

I want to play a game for a certain number of hours based on how appealing the game is. Some games pull down two or three hours of play, others I’ll gladly play for fifty or sixty.

If the game is ten hours long, then I may never finish it if it’s a bad game. Or, if it’s a good game, I may want to replay it five times. If it doesn’t have that kind of replay value, I’ll be very sad.

For example, I’ve played System Shock II literally a dozen times, and it’s a moderately long game. But I’ve never managed to finish a Tom Clancy game, even though they’re not exactly long games.

High quality or short (or both)? I suggest REPLAY VALUE.