Last month, writer Ben Abraham delivered two messages to the collective video games press. They were as follows:
1) “‘Replayability’ is not a word…”
2) “…so stop using it, you idiots!”
Some offense followed, accompanied by plenty of chin-stroking. Case in point: What, precisely, is wrong with a term like “replayability?” Sure, it’s not in the dictionary, but neither is the definition for an acronym like “FPS.” That doesn’t make it any less valid for use in games articles, right?
Abraham’s beef with a fantasy word like “replayability” is the loose definition it’s paired with. What is replayability? Well, even someone outside the gaming pastime can guess at that one: Replayability refers to how, uh, replayable a game is. But then we have to ask: What is a “replayable” game?
Abraham takes a stab at penning his own definition of the term: “The ability to play the game again, making different, non-trivial choices.” Hey, that works, right?
Nope. As Abraham points out, that’s not an acceptable definition. “For what defines the line between trivial and non-trivial? Does the presence of 100 templar flags to collect push it over into the ‘non-trivial?’ What if I played this game once when I was twelve but that’s eleven years ago now and I totally don’t remember it? Does that mean the game possess more of the elusive quality we seem to be calling ‘replayability?’”
Abraham doesn’t allow comments on his blog post, but sites that have re-published his rant are thick with opinion from the gaming community. Much of it defaults to, “Man, this guy is thinking too hard about all this.”
It’s tempting to not take games writing seriously. When you tell other grown adults what you do for a living, the ones who don’t play games nod kindly as if you told them that your job involves drinking apple juice and scribbling pictures of our dog with crayons. Sure, video games are fun, and so is writing about them. But they’re also a very lucrative business, and thus deserving of well-researched articles and opinions that are clearly defined and supported. Abraham is right: “Replayability” is not a helpful word in a review. Its loose definition doesn’t even make it acceptable jargon. Not for experienced gamers, and not for newcomers to the pastime.
And that’s something games writers should keep in mind whenever possible: New inductees to gaming poke their heads in every day. They don’t need to have their hands held, but clear, down-to-earth writing that’s free of unexplained jargon will help them find the information they need about their new distraction. The person reading this article might be a teenage male. Or she might be a preteen girl. Or she might be a mom who recently discovered the joy of iPhone gaming.
(Hint, mom: Try Heroes of Kalevala.)
Some jargon in games writing is certainly acceptable, and is ultimately inevitable. But Abraham has the right of it: We should think carefully about what we write, whom it’s meant for–and whether or not the words we make up actually have a solid meaning to this readership.
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Scott Steinberg is the CEO of video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global, and founder of GameExec magazine and Game Industry TV. Hailed as a top technology and video game expert by dozens of publications from USA Today to Forbes and NPR, he’s covered the field for 400+ outlets from Playboy to Rolling Stone. A frequent on-air analyst for networks like ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, he’s also the author of Video Game Marketing and PR.
It’s probably not necessary to identify, as part of the definition of “replayability”, the criteria that make a game replayable or not replayable. That’s for the text of the review to do.
Replayability should mean, for whatever definition of “play” is applicable for a given game, the level of interest the reviewer sees in the prospect of re-playing it.
That may mean different things for different titles and genres. For a story-based game with multiple endings, “playing” the game might mean completing it, and “replaying” it means to start over in order to work towards a different ending– regardless of whether the differences or the choices that lead to them are “non-trivial” or not. For a puzzle game, where gameplay continues until the player loses and then starts over again from the beginning, every “play” after the first is a “replay”, so there’s a different meaning in this context. For a multiplayer game where each play session is a few minutes, but gametypes and playspaces are of limited variety, “replayability” might be determined by how enduring the appeal of those combinations are, or the range and variety of those combinations.
The differences themselves aren’t relevant– what is relevant is that for any definition of “play” as applied to a given game, a game is “replayable” if the reviewer is of the opinion that “replaying” the game is an appealing prospect.
The definition need not be as narrow as the article suggests in order to be useful. Almost any term generally thought to be widely understood can be overdefined into self-contradiction and uselessness. In this case, “replayability” means the long-term appeal or shelf-life of a title, much like the term “rewatchability” might apply to a film. A movie you watch one time and never again is not rewatchable, and is just as well rented as purchased, whereas a “rewatchable” movie is worth owning.
Regardless of the details, I’d say that “replayability” is the thing that pushes a title towards being worth owning, as opposed to only worth renting.
Narcogen has it right. “Replayability” in its broadest sense, could be defined as the reasons to continue turning on a game after the ending credits have rolled.
Regardless of the definition, there’s a general concept for what it means. And, unfortunately for Abraham, “replayability” is an increasingly important aspect of games these days – for better or worse – so we need something to define that aspect. I know the problem isn’t the word itself, but if you don’t like it, you can’t just refute it. The concept it’s describing needs to be addressed. So come up with a new word / phrase / label or deal with it. That’s all there is to it. It’s too important to simply discard.