As the cost of making video games has gone up, publishers and developers have looked for ways to get players more invested in their franchises. The more invested a player is, the more likely they are to buy DLC for the game and sequels in the franchise later on. They are also more likely to buy the outside merchandise like toys, books, and board games. One of the big problems to solve was getting a player to spend more time with a game until the DLC or sequel came out.
For example, Star Wars: Jedi Knight could be beaten in about 20 hours the first time through the game. There were two different endings to pursue in the single player and a basic multiplayer mode, but not much else to do after that. That meant you were pretty much done with the game after a month or two. If you liked the game, you might come back and play through it again from time to time. By the time the sequel came out you may have forgotten what Jedi Knight was about.
People are afraid of the unknown, which causes doubt about buying the sequel. If they do not remember how they felt when they played the previous game, they are less likely to buy the sequel. However, if they were playing the game just a few weeks or months prior, they might remember how much fun they had and decide to preorder the sequel or buy it on launch day. When developers started looking at ways to get gamers playing their games longer they found one particular genre of games that seemed to do this well: RPGs.
Role-playing games by their nature are longer than other games. The basic idea in role-playing games is that the player gets to make many choices throughout the course of the game. They can choose which items to equip on their characters, which character skills or spells to use, how to respond to non-player characters (NPCs), which quests to tackle, and what order to tackle them in. All these choices could greatly change how the game plays, creating opportunities for replay value. Continue Reading