If the game is good, I doubt most people would return it. “The Dark Queen of Mortholme”¹ comes to mind. I didn’t really find it enjoyable (good idea, boring execution) but the reviews praise it and I do get why.

The game takes 30 minutes from beginning to end. Maybe you’ll do 90 minutes if you want to try multiple things, but you can do everything in under two hours. And yet it’s a success, not a return fest.

¹ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3587610/The_Dark_Queen_of...

Games have the trouble that users have very different appetites for the gameplay. Some want short games, some want 1000s of hours for their $50. Devs do their best to provide a reasonable amount of content. This means that the reality is that most will not 100% complete your game and so you need to tune accordingly.

Its not fundamentally wrong to play a game until you're satisfied. Ideally the game can be structured in a way that the core story thread can be finished by then but sometimes that just doesn't work out.

I can still replay them to completion. Feel relieved when help arrives after securing the little hill after normandy beach in call of duty 2. It takes so long but it’s worth it.

I’ve only ever felt the core gameplay loop repetitive on strategy games where every new challenge is the same one as last but bigger with a more complex inventory if that makes sense.

Fun fact: Jeff Gardiner, who is quoted in the article, was hired by me for his first job in the video games as a junior level designer. Yay me!

In this way, it feels a lot like modern movies: in a lot of cases, cinematography seems to be some sort of objective science which has mostly just improved. And nowadays even a fairly bad movie will have great cinematography. It's just that the writing / plot / acting / etc. are quite poor.

That is, a proven gameplay loop can still fall flat quite badly. Easy examples would be all the modern hero shooters / looter shooters.

It's also worth noting that the definition of what constitutes a "gameplay loop" is pretty loosely defined. 1993 Doom clearly has a gameplay loop in the strict sense of the word: start level --> get weapons / ammo --> get keys --> kill monsters --> exit level. But this feels much less mechanical and gameified than your average modern game which almost certainly incorporate things such as RPG mechanics / stats / level-ups / FOMO events, etc. The latter feels much more artificial and forced, whereas Doom feels like "just playing a game."

So I don't like games that have replay value or "endgame". I don't mind game loops but I want a game that finishes in 2-12 hours. 2 games that came to mind are Inscryption and Chants of Sennaar, both took around 12 hours and gave me a mindblowing experience.

Here I spontaneously wondered how many of his meals Joey finishes, that feels like it would be about as relevant information as the two numbers he gives here: there's just not obvious how one helpfully compares the Lord of the Rings book with the video game Celeste.

Number one is of course "free" games, where the loop is infinite and designed for you to give in and get IAPs to accelerate it.

But the problem is older than that. I kind of blame it on a generation of designers that spent a lot of time in world of warcraft and its successors and somehow decided having a slow grind is acceptable in single player games as well.

I think what the series does is to have multiple gameplay loops. Like a Dragon is the rebranding of the Yakuza series, of which Infinite Wealth is the 9 mainline entry in the series.

Yakuza 0-6 were effectively role playing games where the conflict resolution mechanism was a beat-em-up/fighting game. Seven represented a rebranding of the series and 8 is Infinite Wealth. These games change the core conflict resolution to a straight up Japanese RPG system.

However, in every game, there are minigames and sidestories to complete. They include racing circuit cars, Pokemon style battles, darts, pool, bowling, batting cages, management sims, mahjongg, poker, blackjack, koi-koi, dating sims, etc.

So I think they've addressed the problem by just giving you a lot of different gameplay loops, with the main story just a vehicle to allow you to get from loop to loop.

Honestly, when I read essays like this I always have to ask: have games changed, or have you? I had what felt like infinite time as a kid to devote to gaming, and as I've aged, my relationship to video games has changed substantially. I can relate to wanting more bite sized experiences, but then again, a single run of a roguelike, the ultimate "gameplay loop" can feel just as satisfying as a short narrative game.

There are plenty of valid complaints to lodge against modern game design, but I think the author's framing is flawed.

Game loops should be invisible as once a player can see or sense them it breaks the immersion.