How to Keep Players Engaged (Without Being Evil)

For me the last game that completely engrossed me was Civilization 6. I played about 20 hours in two days, and then had to put it down, and tell myself I can't play it anymore. The same thing happened to me with Europa Universalis 4 a couple years ago. Those super deep strategy games always suck me in a way other games rarely do, but they become really unhealthy for me because I can't think about anything else (I dreamed about civilization for about a week afterwards).

I know it’s not for everyone but Rain World sunk it’s teeth into me. The chaotic randomness of surviving an ecosystem around you and eventually exploring to find out more about the world you had no idea existed felt cool. Needed to have a break though after my first 50 hour run. Still have 6 more Slugcat campaigns to play where the gameplay switches up based on which slugcat you’re playing as.

Pikuniku is fun and my favourite game ever

My taste in games is really weird. The last game that I just couldn't put down was an indie game called Rakuen. It's a puzzle RPG. The thing that makes it weird, though, was that the puzzles aren't hard. Like, at all. A lot of it was just fetch quests or "put things in place". Given the actual gameplay, I should have hated Rakuen, but I loved it. The main reason why was the story and dialogue. All of the characters just oozed charm, and I loved all of them. The bright color and cheery soundtrack just make you want to frolic in a field and chat with all the woodland pixies. This contrasts with the occasional horror elements in the best way possible, so that when you're running to get past the Envoy, the tension is insane. And don't even get me started on the main story. It is so good, and it is executed amazingly. I won't give any spoilers here, but the darker themes were intertwined with the happy tone perfectly, and it made me genuinely cry at several points, which takes a lot. I would definitely recommend it to anyone reading this, even if the puzzles themselves might be considered repetitive and backtracky

Funny I just got this video recommended after I tried Doom today and deleted it after an hour from boredom.

You need to play ultrakill

(looks at CoD) Okay, sure.

Rogue-like, Metroidvania and RPG games are extremely engaging to me. Usually I expend months playing on of those three genders everyday until I finish the game or grow tired of it and shift to another one.

The last game I couldn't put down was Paquerette down the Bunbarrows, and the reason I kept booting it up was because I kept thinking of different ways I could combine the mechanics, or remembering levels I hadn't fully exploited yet.

Minecraft makes its worlds simultaneously very personal to the player (this happens over time), yet also too big and random to ever explore completely, and you forget there's even a world border at all. Most games with "maximum freedom" just feel meaningless. But Minecraft gives a bunch of little ways for the player to imbue meaning into the landscape.

I would like to find out what I didn't get about the Firewatch ending. I don't think it was very satisfying

Vampire survivor was soo good i coulnt stop playing

I bought sekiro shadows die twice. But couldn't play it for even 2 hours. Same with bloodborne, I completed dark souls 1 and 3. Most of 2, but couldn't bear Sekiro for some reason. Back to Rocket League where i've been gold 2 for 3 years.

EA watched this video but they read "how to keep players enRAGED"

I never finished doom either, and I loved it as well, I also just lost interest after a while, weird

I finished 1 game in my live

I’ve been playing a lot of Days Gone recently. The shooting is fun, the story is engaging but a little slow moving, but most of all, the freakers are genuinely threatening when they’ve piled up enough. Deacon is also fun to watch when he’s arguing with people.

I finished Titanfall 2 in one sitting and I didn't even realise it, I know the game is short but the way it hooked me made me forget the time passing

I found Noita to be irresistible to keep playing. I keep dying in it and i have only ever beaten it once, but i keep coming back because each run is different from the rest.

capitalism.

I loved the mastery of skills in Rocket League, training to pull off certain shots in free play and longing for the day to hit them in a real online game.

Even though I'm seeing this just now, Starfield was just released on gamepass and... I'm bored of it already. By all means it's very detailed and a lot of work went into the world. I just spend half my time in menus, navigating the meta aspects of the game. It's missing that special sauce that I feel like I may never find again. I miss the days of Fallout 3 when every little detail meant something and was worth exploring.

that game would be FrostPunk

Sometimes all it takes is for me to like a character that's closely tied to the story, be it the one I'm playing or just supporting cast. I'm invested in everything that happens with/to that character.
Currently in baldurs gate I like my player character, I want them to be rid of their affliction. The other party members stories are engaging as well, but they would not be enough to keep me around by themselves

Great video. I've been trying to work out why Cyberpunk doesn't keep me engaged (I still haven't finished it!), and yet Fallout 4 really does. This goes some way to explaining that.

Cyberpunk's story is good, but the open world just feels repetitive, the gameplay loops don't feel that rewarding (skills don't feel that impactful or even needed beyond just stat boosting), there's not much mystery or discovery involved other than in the main story, and the difficulty feels just kinda random at times.

Mass Effect 2: Fantastic story, very well written characters, great pacing.

A mistake some games make is giving you skills and powers a bit too late. At the end of Metro Exodus, I was hungry for more gameplay... because there was some cool tools and weaponjs... we just didn't get to use.

You know... F.E.A.R was a decent game series that didn't have the most compelling story or greatest graphics. The jump scares were usually more or less predictable, and there honestly wasn't much about the game that brought me back except the alure to find out how Alma came to be, and more importantly the game mechanics.
The firing was spot on (not shooting to the side like most shooters), the time warp was nice, it kept the difficulty in check just in case you found yourself over your head, and the enemies were actually smart enough to move around and find decent shelter (most of the time).

Not my all time favorite game, but I'm surprised that these were games I finished more then once. Where as Assassins Creed bored me to hell, I never finished a single one.

Well, can someone explain the difference between Stardew Valley and an addicting, "evil" game?
Sure, things are free on Stardew Valley, but it's still a product you have to buy to play, so by having you play for longer, it will get positive acclaim.
If you reduce Stardew Valley to its key components, it's a bunch of countdown timers, items with prices and the promise that one thing will unlock another thing to unlock the next thing, all interconnected.

So what is the distinction that makes it evil? Promising something and then expecting more money for it? Having no upper ceiling of how much money one can spend in one game?

cool
but also u can go outside, play reallife sports and board games... but dats just me

Three games that it was nearly impossible for me to put it down were:
- Detroit (amazing game about a dystopic future where humanoid machines start to create life, and they want the same freedom as humans. You decide how the story goes on this)
- Spider-Man (both of them. they're simply amazing)
- God of War (2018; I never played the Ragnarok but should be as good as the first one)

Splatoon because story lore dialogue and character growth and humor

One thing developers seem to not understand; generally you never get bored shooting things. Everybody hates fishing missions and X spamming when the burning cabinet falls onto you.

Ghostwire: Tokyo. The smooth gameplay plus the difficulty curve from `Getting one shot by every enemy ` to `Im a GOD-Tier Exorcist` was insanely rewarding

I can't watch this, since your showing a game that is boring AF

I hate to burst your bubble, but Uncharted Legacy of thieves collection was so boring. I hated it!

I know myself well enough I don't need to point to a specific game. min-MAX-er to the core:

For me it's power-leveling, and 'breaking' game mechanics. Or just relaxing and unwinding; sometimes also with some bent game mechanics. And if there's a reasonable completionist goal (like all the exits in Super Mario World, or a 'real' ending in Spelunky ... but NOT 100% achievements, or 1 copy of every weapon there is in any given game) I enjoy going for that too, with, you guessed it, possible game mechanic manipulation. ;) Any time I can beat a games mechanics or sequence break, I will enjoy that game so much more. I enjoy puzzling out how to most-efficiently and sometimes brutally beat the game into submission using its own mechanics. ;) Then sit back and relax while the rest of the game/plot/narrative plays out.

I would rather spend hundreds of hours over-preparing and have fun trivializing a big boss battle, so I can pay more attention to the story, than go at the intended pace and realize I need to power up a 'little' more before tackling that hurdle. A good example is Pokemon... I'd rather level up too much, than not enough when I go into a gym. My standard practice it so get all my pokemon to level (Gym# x 10) before going after the badge. Takes for ever to get to lvl 70 or 80 but I have more fun overwhelming gyms 7 and 8 when I get to them.

I will spend ridiculous amounts of time powering up anywhere I can before going the intended route. Sometimes this leads to me be level 65 before leaving disc 1 in the original Final Fantasy 7. Other times it's diving ALL THE WAY INTO THE UNDERNET in the early Megaman Battle Network games, to get the more powerful chips so I can wipe the floor with the early enemies, when I finally get back on track for the story. That's not hard to do per se, but it does take a lot of patience and time. I emphasized it to convey the silliness to readers who might not be familiar with the series. Or that one time I figured out how to get the airship before doing ANYthing else in the plot in Final Fantasy 1, after the bridge got repaired (regular ship + canoe + certain mouth of one river).

I'm also the kind of guy that will take the extra time to build resource farms in sandboxes like Minecraft and Terraria, just to have easier access to required resources later. Common examples are XP farms on Minecraft, dungeon farms in Terraria built before the real coin-droppers show up in later game... and maximizing how much money I can get from peeps in RollerCoaster Tycoon earlier before I can drop everything to "good value" for them later. Basically plan and gouge early, so I can be super-cheap later and make the important stats and items better later.

Some people say, "That breaks the game, how is it fun to just 'breeze' by all the tough challenges?" - To them I say... "Do you have, ANY idea, how much work it takes to be ABLE to breeze by those things?"

back when i didnt have any interest in playing hollow knight i kind of wacthed poeples theories on it or gameplay etc for the funsies idk. But i forgot most of it except the sealed vessel fight. and all i remebered when i started playing is that sealed vessel stabs himself and that he has a badass design. so i knew it would be a very unique and emotinal fight which kept me going. It was like the major thing i was looking forwards to. Then i finally beat him and needless to say it was a masterfully crafted fight. But then it just spaened me back at ther bench and apparently i didnt even complete the game. so i took a short break, read some lore, watched some theories and oh. apparently radiance exists and shes like really fucking cool and her lore is really unique which had the exact same effect as knowing about sealed vessel. and then i finally beat her. and then thinking i finished the game i found out about absolute radiance. whihc had the exact same effect again.

Also the fact that hollwo knights world is jsut so beatiful had an imapct too

EVERY INDIE RPG EVER. why are tiny indie companies able to make such BANGERS

Just figure out what makes your playerbase tick. It's different for every game.
My players really enjoy leaderboards, achievements and breaking my game to find hidden things, so I go out of my way each update to add leaderboards, create new achievements for them, and drop in some lightly intricate easter eggs for them to find.

Man I've got to double down on your mention of factorio. That game is crack for programmers that enjoy gaming and optimization. When you start playing the game you don't have a lot of options on how to solve the need for a resource so you go with a simple probably low quality design. Then by the time you unlock new options you have probably learned quite a few ways about how you want to approach the problems the game poses to you with the possibilities you had until then. You get faster. The newly unlocked options inspire you to think of how you could apply them to improve your factory and so on. Every now and then you have to take a break from creating "the pinnacle of human engineering" (your spaghetti base) because the natives of the planet you're polluting come knocking on your door which gives your brain time to recover while you mindlessly (or in a panic) get rid of theirs. When you finish a production chain of a new product for the first time and watch the products flow down the output lane it's so satisfying...

I could go on and on about it. If you are thinking about not getting it for one reason or another do yourself a favor and try the free demo from their website. I actually got Satisfactory before factorio but the gameplay of factorio is so much nicer because the top down view makes building a lot easier. So if you're debating between them you know my choice ;)

Very well done. I have noticed some of the points myself. Games like Horizon zero dawn and God of war introduce new weapons and combat styles mid-game to keep things interesting. I was actually bored of AC Origins because the gameplay is the same throughout (and same as previous AC games as well).
Plague Tale also does this very well. You have stealth sequences, exploration sequences, high tension rat hoarde sequences, calm puzzle solving sequences, and the gameplay keeps evolving, you don't do the exact same thing from start to finish.

I think Diablo IV does not do a good enough job on pacing. Even though there is autoscaling to keep you in flow, I believe it is very repetitive even for a hack and slash.

I put down doom eternal to pick up ultra kill. I still haven't put it down, and I think it's because, while both are similar with a high ceiling of difficulty and intense shooter action, one is a 70 gig download stuffed with cutscenes, lore, fancy graphics, that kinda thing, and the other is 3 gigs, and looks like it could run on a ps2.
Something about all that work makes me feel like I need to appreciate it rather than, ykno, PLAY it. When you have someone spending 18 hours a day rendering a background detail I barely notice, or kratos' left nipple, or red dead's horse shitting animation, it's hard to focus on what I'm supposed to actually be doing

The last game that I genuinely could not put down (I played almost the entire thing in one 14 hour sitting wHOOPS) Was ghost trick phantom detective

The mystery was beyond gripping and the puzzles were so so satisfying

Demoncrawl is a game I keep going back to. There's exactly the right mix of variance between runs and building combos that do completely unreasonable things. Too bad it has so many stability problems. :(

I think these can actually be conflicting desires.

Part of what makes Doom's gameplay so great is that there isn't a lot of variety to it. There's some, of course, but it's a very tightly crafted great from start to stop experience, but that means that you may not want to keep experiencing that same experience for extended lengths of time, or over many sessions.

In contrast, even a game with very well crafted and paced varieties of gameplay... not everyone is into everything. Maybe I just hate puzzles... or maybe I just don't like them quite as much. I can't not do puzzles in a game like that though, whereas everyone picks up Doom for exactly what Doom offers, and they get exactly what they wanted.