Game Theory: Answers, Deception and Longevity
The idea that I originally had for this post was a discussion on the paradox of "a solved game has no value" and "in all games there will emerge a META" (a most efficient answer available). Researching this topic has lead me down a rabbit hole that can only be described as understanding the core mechanics of game longevity. We're going to follow the path I took and cover the major ways to increase a games life span after my realization from the initial paradox.
To follow my initial idea we'll need to agree on a couple things. The first is that a solved game has little replayability and low value as a game. The best example of this would be tic-tac-toe, anyone that has played the game and can look ahead even a little will always be able to force the game into a draw. This is why its at the top of most hated games across the web. You can teach kids basic concepts with it but as a game its worthless.
The second idea is that there will always be a best way to play a game. While not a singular "best" there maybe a minimal set of strategies and techniques that are considered the best compared to everything that's available. It's the idea that not everything has value because if everything has value then nothing does.
The last idea that we need to agree on is that stopping a game from being solved will extend the longevity of the game. To be clear this is not inherently positive or negative.
I believe most players would agree to these three ideas but they would never say that the game they play isn't good. Why won't they? I don't believe it's pride or ego and as I looked into this question more it's because each game attempts to stop players from completely solving it; each in their own way.
Mechanic #1: Adding Content
The first way a game extends its life, especially in modern times, is by adding more content aka downloadable content (DLC). In the beginning they were called expansion packs and games typically added a couple more units, a couple more maps and maybe some campaign missions (not to mention bug fix/patches). In modern times DLC is constantly added to artificially keep games alive as it does nothing to solve the original problem of the game being solvable. It only adds a couple more problems to be solved and once solved the game returns to not being played. While I sound overly negative about this solution I want to stress that not every game is meant to last forever. It's completely reasonable for a game to give X hours of content and then be done. It's perfectly legitimate to add DLC for $5 down the road to give customers that same feeling they originally had.
This is the core reason why I'm not a fan of pick/ban systems to "increase" the shelf life of a game. While it technically does give some more variance if answers are found in the ban system then the game is still solved. That's why a pick/ban system is more about player agency than extending a games life.
Mechanic #2: Execution
Next is the most common way of extending the life of a game, by basing it in execution or skill. We see this in fighting games, MOBAs and battle royals where the game only has a PvP mode. The game has an artificial ceiling because the only way to play it is against other players and testing your skill against theirs. Humans will never be able to play a game perfectly so no matter how high the skill level gets mistakes can happen which will keep things interesting. On top of that humans can adapt their style to current trends and METAs to take advantage of natural weaknesses that other games will never be able to emulate.
The main disadvantage of execution is that you cannot use it alone, it is very rare for games to stay popular for decades when only rooted in execution. Even games that have no support from the developer have only lasted because of the community creating mods (Heroes of Might and Magic 3) or maps (StarCraft: Broodwar). Outside of ancient games such as chess or Go the only game or genre I've seen stick around with absolutely no content is speed running which is just PvP time trials.
Another disadvantage is how to onboard new players after the game has existed for a while. Once a game loses some of its shine and the player base starts to lower (which is unavoidable) then the players that stick around become more skilled. If this goes on long enough you have an unclimbable wall for new players trying to get into the scene that only the grittiest of players will be able to climb. This is one of the reasons why Team Fortress 2 had massively casual mechanics like criticals. As seen here Richard Garfield (creator of magic the gathering) talks about the conversation he had with a Team Fortress 2 developer and how they used luck to onboard new players into a genre (FPS) that had a notorious skill gap between new and veteran players. With criticals a new player has some way of competing against a higher skilled opponent every now and then. They may still lose but they still had fun and engaging moments in the game where they fragged the opponent.
Mechanic #3: Uncertainty
The next way developers can keep a game fresh is through mechanics that deny perfect information and create uncertainty. The goal is to force the player to adapt quickly to different variables. Roguelikes add randomness to keep the game from getting too static while in PvP games there are mechanics like fog of war that hide information. By adding uncertainty players have to take time to scout or have to plan for their strategy to work against multiple unknown variables. This allows players a certain degree of agency to pick and customize their build and then to master it in the long run by understanding how their unique ideas go up against all of these hidden variables. This is what allowed StarCraft: brood war to create esports which is still highly competitive 24 years later. Humans are amazing at abusing deception and incomplete information, its this that causes the standard strategies to be understood over time which in turn makes them incredibly predictable and open to very specific counter tactics. This causes a natural cycle of strategy and tactics with no developer intervention; it is by far the best tool to add longevity.
The major downside to denying perfect information is that if builds, strategies and tactics vary too much then it can be seen as too random. In StarCraft 2 the Protoss race is designed in a very interesting way where their early game is set in stone but once they get to their first tech building they can diverge into three completely different technology paths. Each one requires the opponent to answer in a different way and while this is fairly balanced against Zerg and Terran when against another Protoss it felt very gimmicky. It was so gimmicky the best Protoss in the world would sometimes lose to players much less skilled than they were because they simply picked the wrong answer to a problem they couldn't see. While Blizzard attempted to fix this issue with defensive buildings and units to scout early the nature of imperfect information means random losses still happen to this day.
Mechanic #4: Overwhelming Tasks
While we're talking about StarCraft I'll cover the next way to extend the longevity of a game that I've only ever seen in StarCraft: Broodwar. Give the player such an overwhelming amount of tasks that they humanly cannot do them all. It's incredibly unique because it's a mixture of limited programming of the late 90s, design decisions when there was no basis for video game design and simple laziness. Starcraft has little to no automation. You can't even make your workers mine automatically after they're built without telling them to do it every single time. The movement is programed so oddly that you can micro manage a unit so well that players will be unable to kill it without the proper answer. The more time you spend controlling your unit the more worth you can get out of it, simply moving a unit looks completely different from a pro to a casual. The problem is if you do that then you won't be building workers, or telling them to mine, or building units or doing anything else.
So much of the game is manual that you have to pick what you want to focus on and this what gives the professional players so much character in their play. Is it busy work? Yes. Is it tedious? Yes. Yet this causes the game to have depth where no other RTS has (to this day) depth. The degree of player agency and customization is insane with this type of system but the draw backs are immense. This is like playing a game that's half work and half fun with no quality of life changes. I think StarCraft is beautiful but I doubt any new game would ever take this approach but its very good to learn from it.
Mechanic #5: Overwhelming Choice
Let's keep with the theme of overwhelming information and move to the oldest game mechanic that has seen some recent resurgence, overwhelming options. Two ancient games use this mechanic, Go and Chess. I'm sure those games weren't designed knowing it would still be popular thousands of years later but it's this concept that allows the games to keep evolving and studied for what seems to be forever. What's amazing is that in Chess/Go you have perfect information so if a solution is known then it can always be seen and applied yet because there are so many solutions humans are unable to play it perfectly. Computers are getting closer to the point that the game will be solved which brings up the question, at what point will humans lose interest in chess as it becomes more about memorization than problem solving and forward thinking? Will the imperfect humans keep playing or will they study with computers and the game will lose value as it becomes more solved?
In either we can see the advantages and disadvantages of this style by looking at a very recent game, Tekken 7. While odd to compare chess and Tekken the results are quite interesting. Tekken is a fighting game; an entire genre that incredibly execution based. To combat the issues with a pure execution based game they did something unique, they gave each character a ridiculous amount of moves. The lowest that I can find is 64 moves, while the most is 180. To compare; the average move count for a character in street fighter is around 25. This has a profound effect on the game, players can't memorize all of the offensive and defensive options until the professional level. With players unable to memorize and recognize every move defense is a bit too unreliable which makes the game quite aggressive. This is important at the lower ranks because the games seem action packed and incentives offensive risk taking. It's a mechanic designed to create unprecedented upsets until players invest a lot of time to recognize each character's attacks.
This results in a game that's easy to pick up and gives the player great gratification by doing cool moves and taking big risks, even allowing you to randomly beat higher level opponents at times. At the higher levels it makes the game very difficult to master but quite rewarding as you should have a significant advantage once you learn all of the characters and all of the move sets. It's heavy visual reinforcement when you block all of the opponents attacks when years back you couldn't. Of course this has a theoretical limit as everyone "could" learn all the move sets but its highly unlikely. It's incredibly funny to me because this is such a brutish way to reach the golden solution of easy to pick up, hard to master. Something all developers hope to achieve.
So now what?
While it's interesting to list these out to see if a game extends its life in a solvable way or a natural way I like to take it a step further and group these so that we can get more insight. This is only my initial thought so it's far from perfect but I like to group these up as PvP or PvE mechanics. If it falls into one bucket then I believe it's opposite would fall into the other. For example extra content is heavily a PvE mechanic, as adding a few maps and heroes extends the PvE life out but then is done which is perfectly in line for PvE, you're not expecting to play those forever. While in PvP the longevity doesn't come from extra content, it comes from core design mechanics that are heavily repayable because of human partners. We can do this with the topics I covered (leaving out overwhelming tasks)
Extra Content - PvE
Execution - PvP
Uncertainty - PvP
Overwhelming Choice - PvP
It seems odd that most of the ideas for longevity is rooted in PvP game play but when you look at the history of gaming and see what has stuck around the longest its true. PvP and competition based games stick around for decades where PvE does not. Not only that but if we take the opposites we see what drives PvE gameplay such as perfect information, simple or "thin" design and putting decision making over execution. It also shows that modern game designers like to keep PvP and PvE mechanics completely separate. This separation is so extreme that PvE games that use PvP mechanics are extremely popular and well known such as the Dark Souls franchise or skill based platformers like Hollow Knight/Celeste. To take this theory one step further, the golden idea of "easy to pick up, hard to master" coincidentally lines up with our concepts. PvE mechanics will open the door to players and allow them a fun way to learn while PvP mechanics would be there to ensure depth and longevity of the game. While not an exact science if I was making a new game I would line up my core mechanics and see how they set in PvP or PvE to see where this game is going in the short and long run.
A personal note - This one I greatly enjoy researching and thinking about in game design. I had a question and a concept so I started writing about it. I got my ideas out on the paper where I could finally correct them. Once corrected I can use them as a tool against real examples to see if the original idea actually holds water and this is one of the few times where it not only worked but allowed me to see some interesting patterns that I can use in the future. It was a complete fluke that this lines up exactly with my Overwatch design discussion and how it's mechanics leverage casual design, not competitive. It gives both ideas slightly more credibility seeing as they lined up naturally.