Is there a game that you can meaningfully play forever?

[Norfleet]

Exactly. So the games with the longest longevity are ones where you are crushing other players. I notice that the "lamentations of their women" angle is often underexplored, though.

[anvi]

I think it is sort of possible on paper but not really in reality. I always thought Elite was amazing how they fitted a universe on a floppy disk. But in reality, procedurally generating planets that are little more than a circle is not really going to work long term for most people. Amazing for a game made in the 80s though. If it had endless procedural style quests similar to Space Rangers 2 and an infinite procedural universe, then I guess people could play it forever. But I didn't even like playing Elite (Frontier was my era) for more than a month.

Procedural quests don't really cover the "why" loop, only "how". WHY are you doing quests, procedural or otherwise? It's probably not for the joy of doing quests, since most quests, procedural or otherwise, are of the form of "Go to place, interact with thing". Quests are never anything but a means to an end. You do quests, to receive a reward, which can be the thing, or something that leads towards obtaining the thing. Why do do we obtain the thing? This is the question that must be answered. No game, no matter how much content there may be, lasts unless it can answer the question of WHY, whereas a game that has relatively little content can go on for years if it CAN. Thus, the game which have the most longevity are the ones which provide the players with what is best in life.

And what is best in life?

I thought of that too. But I think the why is easier to handle. Most games have you questing and doing combat for a pretty basic reason, like in Bethesda games it's usually just a basic narrative reason. Like save the world, find your dad, save your son, avenge your wife, etc. And people can be motivated by character development. Those things could be extended indefinitely. You could probably even procedurally generate the why as well as the how.

In Space Rangers 2 I was motived entirely by the Dominators being so hard. At first I could barely kill a pirate so you play for a while to get strong enough to handle that. Dominators are still so hard you have to avoid them completely. Then later you get strong enough to pick off a few Doms and then flee before they team up on you. And much later on, you can fight an entire system full of them. It took a long time to get to that point and I liked the sense of progression. Once you defeat them that's the end. But maybe if there were multiple enemies beyond that which each get harder, you could always have something to strive towards.

Some games somehow manage to hook me even without that. Like Command & Conquer series I played over and over a million times and it was always the same goal. But it was fun just because building stuff and sending it off to battle was fun, and winning the overall battle was icing on the cake. Same with fighting games, there isn't much of a motivator, maybe none at all, other than rising the ranks. But the fighting is fun enough that people are focused on that more than what the long term goal is. So I could imagine a game with moment to moment gameplay that's fun enough that you don't need much of a long term plan. A lot of RPGs I played through without even knowing what the story is, because I don't like stories in games. I completed BG2 without really knowing anything about the story. I was aware of Irenicus and kinda wanted to get revenge on him, but I was only really focused on trying to build my party and get better spells. I enjoyed going from battle to battle, and having some serious bosses from time to time was enough to motivate me. I tried a dragon and lost, so I went to some other places first knowing that I could go back to the dragon later.

[DemoGraph]

I notice that the "lamentations of their women" angle is often underexplored, though.

GAHAHAHA

[Norfleet]

I thought of that too. But I think the why is easier to handle. Most games have you questing and doing combat for a pretty basic reason, like in Bethesda games it's usually just a basic narrative reason. Like save the world, find your dad, save your son, avenge your wife, etc. And people can be motivated by character development. Those things could be extended indefinitely. You could probably even procedurally generate the why as well as the how.

The flipside of this is that most people seem to ignore the plot of Bethsoft games. It's an excuse plot people often don't care for, and the more of it you're burdened with, the less people actually like it. Many of the ES games, for instance, just have you as a generic prisoner. Why you're there is unimportant never explored. If anything, the Fallout-based plots are actually less favored. "Find your dad", "Save your son", these plots didn't resonate well.

Once you defeat them that's the end. But maybe if there were multiple enemies beyond that which each get harder, you could always have something to strive towards.

"The game itself ends" is kind of a hard dealbreaker when it comes to "play forever".

Some games somehow manage to hook me even without that. Like Command & Conquer series I played over and over a million times and it was always the same goal. But it was fun just because building stuff and sending it off to battle was fun, and winning the overall battle was icing on the cake.

If anything, "winning" is anticlimactic and ultimately a downer, yes. Because it ends the game.

Same with fighting games, there isn't much of a motivator, maybe none at all, other than rising the ranks. But the fighting is fun enough that people are focused on that more than what the long term goal is.

Infinite defense is a common way to have a fighting-driven game with no defined end, but generally, the difficulty increases until the player dies and thus ends. It's not a coincidence that the longest-playing games are things like Rimworld, which is basically at its core an infinite tower defense taped to a Sims game, where all the "endings" are just excuse-plot conclusions so that the player can call it a day with closure, rather than a goal to be generally pursued.

[Nemesis]

He sounds like a dork that wants to feel important by having people really want to be in his game.

I admire his commitment to keeping a D&D game going for so long and creating an immersive experience for his players with cool miniatures. Unfortunately, his downfall was agreeing to do media interviews.