Game UX - Patience is gone
-a look at Players #1-
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The YouTube algorithm has clearly understood its job and managed to pique my curiosity to make me click, even though I had just started playing the mobile game Pokémon TCG Pocket. Along the way, it recommended a creator I didn’t know, who promised in their title to detail the NEW FEATURES (in all caps, yes).
“Today marks 15 (fifteen) days since the release of Pokémon TCG Pocket, and I can tell you, they’ve got some big things planned. […] Yes, there’s news. For the past few days, Pokémon TCG Pocket’s communication has been pretty weak. People were waiting for some updates because, after 15 (fifteen) days since the game’s release, we hadn’t really gotten any major news apart from the various events they’ve offered us.”
It’s with this introduction that this young French creator, specialized in mobile gaming videos, begins. And it’s upon hearing these few sentences that I quickly felt both annoyed and old.
Yet, when you think about it, we can identify some of the sources of this growing impatience among the broader audience. And it’s this journey through attention and patience that I invite you to take today.
The abundance of content elsewhere
If there’s one common theme in the era of digital omnipresence, it’s the War for Attention. Every piece of content, and more broadly every platform, seeks to carve out a place in the daily attention span of users.
At a time when internet connections have become so efficient, and when viewing devices offer the best quality even in the palm of your hand, every possible means is employed to capture the only resource that has remained finite and impossible to expand: our available time.
Whether it’s autoplay, which allows videos to play continuously without any action, entire seasons released all at once, cloud gaming that lets you play without downloading anything, or even home deliveries that ensure you receive consumer goods without leaving your house. Everything is designed to save us time, with the goal of having us spend it elsewhere, on something else.
By heavily betting on the right cognitive levers, the digital economy hopes to snatch attention away from external distractions. This portion of reclaimed time grows a little more each day, with the aim of serving us even more advertising content.
The role of games-as-a-service
In recent years, the world of video games has seen the rise and success of a new consumption model: games-as-a-service (and it hasn’t escaped the attention of the President of Electronic Arts, though, well, you know). Briefly explained, this term refers to a way of evolving a game over time by adding new content to its core foundation.
All genres are affected, from adventure games to shooters, including monster-catching games, sports games, rhythm games, management games, strategy games, and so on. Some of the main components of this model are, of course, a “seasonal” system, which brings its share of new features and changes, but most often featuring the now well-known mechanic of the “cosmetic pass.” Each season introduces a new theme, and with each theme comes a new pass containing customization and/or gameplay elements.
The game that has probably contributed the most to the democratization of this consumption model is, of course, Fortnite Battle Royale. And in my opinion, it’s a prime example that has played a role in this loss of patience and the growing desire for “always more” among players.
Let’s take Fortnite as an example, then, as it perfectly encapsulates this transformation in content consumption.
Since its creation and the launch of its first season on September 26, 2017, Fortnite Battle Royale boasts an impressive total of 27 seasons, which includes a proportional and therefore colossal number of skins (character outfits), changes to the game map, and a host of new mechanics. Organized into Chapters (4 at the moment), these seasons last on average 11 (eleven) to 12 (twelve) weeks, or about 3 (three) months (with a few exceptions).
In video game development, three months is short. Very short, even. This primarily indicates that, to deliver so much content each time, Epic Games (the creator and manager of Fortnite Battle Royale) employs a large number of people and has them work long hours. And yet, an incredible paradox emerges: the more content players receive, the more they demand.
This creates a typical gameplay cycle for Fortnite Battle Royale, which more or less follows this pattern for most people:
- Release of a new season (and a new cosmetic pass): Playing excessively to unlock as much new content as possible and discover changes to the game map.
- Extra effort for some: The collector’s mindset of completionists pushes them to complete more daily quests to unlock all available rewards.
- Loss of interest (generally quick): Only a few locations are modified per season, so they are quickly explored and mastered.
- Demand and anticipation for the next content: As soon as the new content is consumed, players begin waiting for the next season, and so on.
To diversify and continually find new ways to retain its players, Fortnite Battle Royale will create an astronomical number of exclusive, event-based, and/or temporary skins, as well as in-game events like concerts and cinematic transitions between seasons. They even went as far as creating a parallel island designed like an amusement park (where movies are also screened), stimulating curiosity and creativity while keeping people engaged in the Fortnite universe through near-constant entertainment.
The impact of ultra-frequent releases
It’s also hard to remain patient in the face of the abundance of entertainment content available these days.
We’ve already talked on other areas where attention is overstimulated, but the world of video games is clearly no exception. The releases of games across various platforms in 2024 are a particularly telling indicator of the ocean of diversity that is gradually drowning our attention.
On the Switch in 2024, over 2,600 games were released (data from Switchscores.com), which roughly averages to 220 games per month, or 7 games per day. That might seem small, but releasing a game on a console is a very unique process. Developers need access to specific hardware to create games compatible with the proprietary system (this applies to Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo alike).
On PC, just the Steam platform (the current leader in PC game sales) saw the impressive release of 18,939 games (data from steamdb.info). This roughly averages to 1,580 games per month, or about 52 games per day. Fifty-two games. Every day. And that’s without even considering other PC gaming platforms (like Epic Games, GoG, or Itch.io, to name just three), and especially without including mobile gaming, which has become a highly popular platform and is seeing more and more productions of all kinds.
Of course, not all these games are equal in quality (story, production, gameplay, longevity — no matter the criteria, as varied as they may be), and some games cater only to a very specific niche (and what a time to be alive, where we can access games that suit us more or less perfectly). Still, the fact remains that if something bores us enough to glance out the window for a second, we’ll quickly find another butterfly to chase.
So, when I hear someone say after only two weeks, “Well, it’s about time we got some new content,” of course I understand why people’s patience has dwindled, especially since it’s been under constant assault. But that doesn’t stop me from gritting my teeth.
And what are the consequences?
These significant changes in consumption patterns inevitably have consequences that are difficult to predict in the long term, but we can already identify certain behavioral shifts that potentially stem from this abundance of content.
There are, of course, some positive consequences, such as increased creativity thanks to constant stimulation if one seeks it, as well as the possibility of having content available that closely matches our preferences, even when our tastes are more niche or refined.
Some other consequences, perhaps seemingly benign at first glance, could bring their share of bad news.
I am particularly thinking about this notion of the need for ‘always more,’ the very idea that led me to write this article and that risks fueling a fatigue that is both more impactful and quicker to set in when faced with fresh content. It is probably from this fatigue that other trends are already emerging…
Consuming more and more content can quickly raise expectations for a game in development (the very concept of hype) and lead to swift disappointment when faced with reality, which often differs from what we imagined during the waiting period of development.
Seeing more and more similar content arrive in waves can accelerate the onset of nostalgia, shortening the cycle of ‘trends’ and reducing the time a particular genre remains in the spotlight compared to others. Everyone has experienced a major ‘era’ of a genre — the MMO era, the zombie era, the vampire era, the Viking era, the Japan era, etc. — but these eras are becoming shorter. This forces development teams to rush in and capitalize on them (often at the expense of production quality) while exposing players to an overflow of similar content in increasingly condensed periods, sometimes risking an overdose of a genre.
Forcing regularity and mass production of new content in live-service games can create the illusion that implementing new features for each season is quick and easy. This practice tends to make the public overlook the number of employees working behind the scenes to produce this content and downplay the efforts teams put in to sustain such production — sometimes even at the cost of their own quality of life at work.
To end on a positive note, I’d like to imagine that this pressing need for increasingly diverse content will lead the gaming industry to realize that the quality of a production does not necessarily depend on its lifespan. This could open the door for certain genres to break away from the metric of ‘forced game longevity,’ which is often artificially stretched to reach an assumed acceptable number of gameplay hours.
Sometimes, it is more honorable to create a game that leaves a lasting impression through its quality and originality rather than its lifespan. But perhaps that’s a topic for another time…
