While I wouldn’t quite call it a Journey Game (a la Elite Dangerous), it is very much not about The Destination.
People play it because they like to play it. The idea isn’t to build an endgame character who can do anything and everything. The idea is to build a lot of different characters that do a lot of different things and so forth.
And, grain of salt, but based on my own personal experience and non-rigorous polling of the discord and reddit, the vast majority of regulars are just playing it seasonally. A new update/season drops and a lot of folk hop on to play it.
But it speaks to the fundamental nature of live games/MMOs/whatevers. Some (probably most…) people want to work towards goals and check boxes off. Every single thing they do is a pop-up saying how amazing they are. Call of Duty is the most well known example but it is also very much why games like (ugh) Kingdom Come Deliverance do so well. Number go up and everything you do Matters because the game told you it does.
But there are the weirdos (yo) who… kind of just like playing games? We don’t need a pop-up saying we are a good boy because we either make our own goals or… we just like the way it feels to play a game. The Elite Game genre (not to be confused with the Elite series… which are Elite Games) tends to be emblematic of this but it is also what made Arena Shooters so popular in the day.
I play a lot of Squad, which has no progression or anything that’s tracked from match to match. I’ve also played a good bit of X4, which is a space sandbox game, where you mostly set your own goals. Factorio is also one of my favorite games. I’m fine with games where you set your own goals. I just don’t get NMS.
I think part of it is that there’s absolutely no friction when saying. For example, flying makes it impossible to crash. There’s just nothing at stake and progression feels mostly pointless. If there was danger or a threat to defend against, I think that’d go a long way to making it feel like there’s a reason to do what you’re doing. As it is, it just feels like chores.
While I wouldn’t quite call it a Journey Game (a la Elite Dangerous), it is very much not about The Destination.
People play it because they like to play it. The idea isn’t to build an endgame character who can do anything and everything. The idea is to build a lot of different characters that do a lot of different things and so forth.
And, grain of salt, but based on my own personal experience and non-rigorous polling of the discord and reddit, the vast majority of regulars are just playing it seasonally. A new update/season drops and a lot of folk hop on to play it.
But it speaks to the fundamental nature of live games/MMOs/whatevers. Some (probably most…) people want to work towards goals and check boxes off. Every single thing they do is a pop-up saying how amazing they are. Call of Duty is the most well known example but it is also very much why games like (ugh) Kingdom Come Deliverance do so well. Number go up and everything you do Matters because the game told you it does.
But there are the weirdos (yo) who… kind of just like playing games? We don’t need a pop-up saying we are a good boy because we either make our own goals or… we just like the way it feels to play a game. The Elite Game genre (not to be confused with the Elite series… which are Elite Games) tends to be emblematic of this but it is also what made Arena Shooters so popular in the day.
I play a lot of Squad, which has no progression or anything that’s tracked from match to match. I’ve also played a good bit of X4, which is a space sandbox game, where you mostly set your own goals. Factorio is also one of my favorite games. I’m fine with games where you set your own goals. I just don’t get NMS.
I think part of it is that there’s absolutely no friction when saying. For example, flying makes it impossible to crash. There’s just nothing at stake and progression feels mostly pointless. If there was danger or a threat to defend against, I think that’d go a long way to making it feel like there’s a reason to do what you’re doing. As it is, it just feels like chores.