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Monday, May 16, 2005

Round up - Replayability

Replayability seems to be reaching a kind of meme-state in the blogosphere right now:

- Zen of Design notes a gamasutra article exposing short but replayable games. They even refer to them as "microgames" although by their description I would just go with "classic"

- Note GameDevBlog's hiring request which is trying find someone to help create the "feel like there's infinite variety in our city missions" in Treyarch's next Spidey game.

- Marble Blast made it's way onto XBox Live Arcade, marking a ramp up in indie titles cuddling with big business consoles.

So where will this go? In mainstream games, titles with heavy replayability mostly include the sports genre, and the rare deathmatch gem. (Editor's note: and the strategy game genre) Will gamers remember the days they used to spend hours at an arcade replaying a game fondly ... or will they hug Half-Life 2 until it dies?

2 comments:

Troy Goodfellow said...

Don't forget strategy games in your replayability list. Though still mostly confined to the PC, no genre opens as many options or outcomes to the player. Most have random map generators, too, which means more surprises and no chance of always playing on the same maps.

Josh said...

A most excellent point. And a particularly bad oversight considering that we have strategy games to thank for keeping some of the classic ideas of random maps and scenarios alive.