Game designers like to think of their worlds as being like living virtual worlds that people can escape to. This is an appealing sentiment, but unfortunately most games don’t really qualify as living virtual worlds. One of the most important reasons why they don’t is because most games can only be experienced once, after which re-experiencing the game immediately becomes mostly an exercise in redundancy. A real living world wouldn’t be like that.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. A game can be made to be infinitely long and to create a new experience every time it is played. How long the game remains fun after that depends upon the strength of the core gameplay mechanics, but nonetheless the length and surface-level variation of the game can be extended to infinity relatively easily.
Continue reading Game Dev Tip #3: Make your game immortal using the power of PCG and random generation