Slow and Steady Makes Things Fun

Gamers. Love them or hate them, we are either gamers ourselves, or we know a few. It doesn’t take much to be classified as a gamer. Installing and playing any mobile game on your smartphone means you are a gamer, though “true gamers” will disagree.

Regardless of the type of gamer you are, you might have observed that game-play is getting faster and quicker. Less talking, more action. Nobody has time to wait for an NPC (non-player character) to finish speaking, mash that ‘A’ key and get it over with. jRPGs (Japanese role-playing games) used to be very popular, but killing the same low-level slime monster over and over in order to progress gets boring quick. There must be a reason aRPGs (action role-playing games) are so popular nowadays.

In this article, I will be providing 3 examples of games that suffer from power creep, mobility creep, and feature creep. These are changes in the game that happen slowly and go unnoticed until they are discovered. Hence, “creeping”.

Keep in mind that I will only include games I have played myself, and your experiences and opinion may vary.

-Mahatma Gandhi

1 Dota 2. This is a strategic, competitive game, where two teams of five compete against each other with their heroes: characters with unique skill-sets and specializations. Over the years, the game has progressed in a direction where heroes can move quicker and cover greater distances over a shorter time, something gamers have referred to as mobility creep.

Mobility creep, where newly released characters tend to receive more mobility spells, that allow them to traverse the map quickly and more effectively in comparison to older characters.

The reason for this is simple: revenue. Game companies are businesses, after all. Greater mobility generates more fights, more action, and this makes each match more exciting for spectators. More spectators means more money.

In the world of esports (a.k.a. electronic sports), Dota 2’s main tournament: The International, has had the highest prize pool for the last 5 years. The last tournament was held in 2019, with a prize pool of USD 34 million!

Adjusting the game towards this direction may make it exciting to watch, but not as exciting to play. Many heroes in the game are at a disadvantage due to lack of mobility, and are therefore not as desirable. This, in turn, reduces the variety and overall fun of the game.

-John Clifford

2 Path of Exile (PoE). This is an aRPG that is often compared with the Diablo series. It is much more like an actual RPG (role-playing game), in that you have a character that gets stronger as you play. This game is a good example of a game ‘afflicted’ with feature creep.

Feature creep, where games tend to add more and more features into a game as development goes on, until the game feels bloated and over-complicated.

This is slightly different in the case of PoE. In this game, there exists regular expansions, where the game receives new, temporary content updates for a period of time. At the end of this period, part of the content is added to the core game permanently. It’s kind of like having a beta server for players to test out the new content before it’s added to the game. It’s a very interesting and effective concept, as players keep coming back to play the new contents, while developers get to test new content regularly. Win-win.

Unfortunately, over the 8 years since the game’s release, there is just too much to do in-game. Oftentimes, it can feel like I’m playing 3 games simultaneously, which makes it hard to enjoy. Games that you don’t enjoy are simply not worth playing.

Feature creep also makes the game intimidating to new players. This is partly the reason that games such as Grim Dawn, which is often compared to PoE, is so popular. Many gamers consider Grim Dawn to be a slower-paced version of PoE, though this is a huge overgeneralization and an unfair comparison.

-Uncle Ben, Spider-man

3 Weiß Schwarz. This is a CCG (collectible card game), rather similar to the much more popular Pokémon TCG (trading card game), or Magic: The Gathering. This game has many interesting mechanics that got me hooked on it. In this game, you duel against another player by playing cards, dealing enough “damage” to win.

Weiß Schwarz has cards from different sets, each based on a different anime. Unlike many other CCGs or TCGs, each player’s deck may only consist of cards that come from the same set (I’m only referring to the typical tournament). This allows the game designers to balance the cards within each set, against other sets. Players cannot simply gather all the strongest cards from any set to create a powerful deck. That would simply result in everyone doing the same and the game would be no fun. A perfect way to balance the game… almost.

I played this game regularly in its prime, many years ago. Recently, I came across one of the more recent sets released. Comparing them to the sets a few years back, it became apparent that the game has suffered from power creep.

Power creep, where content released later tends to get more powerful as time goes, commonly games that have regular expansions or patches. It can also refer to the average increase in relative power for all released content in a game.

Due to the nature of the game, this is simple to prove: we pit decks of cards made from older sets against those made from more recent sets. Over the course of each match, it becomes apparent that newer sets are stronger, and would win the majority of these matches.

This means that in order to have the best chances in the tournament, players need to keep buying and using cards for newer sets. This is true even for recreational players, as older sets tend to lose, and losing is not fun. Players buying cards is undoubtedly desirable for the card game company, but it does mean players will eventually leave the game simply due to being unable to keep up with the costs.

Now that you know “creep” is not just referring to an unsavoury person, I hope you can begin to spot the same happening in almost every game that manages to “live” long enough.

-Harvey Dent, Batman: The Dark Knight

Or, you either stay in Early Access, or you stay released long enough to stay barely afloat with a dying player population.

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