The Optics - and Actuality - of Depth and Replayability in Games

All else being equal, it’s good if a game has depth, right? But how do we calculate depth? Do you just know it when you see it? Is there a way to actually compare one game to another in terms of depth?

A related concept crops up in gaming marketing these days: Replayability.

Spend more than a few minutes browsing board gaming crowdfunding pages and you’ll read some breathless marketing copy telling you that the game you’re viewing is INFINITELY REPLAYABLE!

Paid reviewers will parrot this language, happily telling you that the experience won’t grow stale any time soon, with the dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of play permutations in the title.

Except that’s obviously a lie. In a technical sense, sure, no experience is exactly the same as any other. Throw enough variables into the equation and you’re guaranteed a “unique” experience each time. But this is mathematical uniqueness, not a surefire sign that we would happily play a game 10,000 times.

The game may actually be pretty fun, but the language surrounding replayability these days is almost invariably hyperbolic.

So what is replayability? What is depth in gaming? We’ll look at both roleplaying games and board games here. I’m also going to take some shots at the idea of replayability itself, and why it often doesn’t matter for most people.

What Replayability Isn’t

Replayability isn’t the number of components in a game. It’s not related to the number of rules in a game. It’s not the number of action options. It’s not the variable setup conditions that create a slightly different array of resources or options each time you play.

It’s also not the number of expansions or extensions the game has. For RPGs, it’s not the number of adventures tied to a system.

Rules systems and slight, randomized variability are proxies for replayability in that marketing copy I mentioned above. They won’t invoke gameplay. They’ll simply tell you, for example, that with 10 playable factions, 6 possible endgame bonuses, and 10 starting scenarios, you have 600 possible play experiences!

Of course, those 600 sessions might actually feel similar to one another. But the language used at this phase of game publishing is about getting you to make a purchase, not about full honesty about gameplay.

What Depth Isn’t

The same caveats apply to depth. Probably the most insidious element that I see conflated with depth is the number of options available to you on turns.

I’ve played some games with 25 different action options on your turn. And others with three action options.

Depending on the execution of those things, the game with three options could absolutely be deeper than the one with 25 options.

This isn’t hypothetical. One of the deeper board games I’ve ever personally played is Tigris & Euphrates, and its gameplay is somewhat famously streamlined.

Types of Gaming Depths and Replayability

Admittedly, it’s easier to identify what depth “isn’t” than to define what it is. This section isn’t going to be comprehensive, but is going to approach the topic through a series of examples that can be extrapolated out into general principles.

Interpersonal Depth

I’ve gotten into a few online debates with people who think I’m trolling when I tell them that I spend as much brain power in Codenames as I do in far more mechanically complicated games.

But it’s not a troll. Codenames can be played casually, half paying attention while you socialize. This is a valid way to experience the game. It can also be played in different ways.

I’ve played Codenames over 100 times, and occasionally something more nuanced happens. I have opportunities to pick up on body language, or compare what I know about the person to their clues. Or I go down a fairly involved logic tree trying to determine what a particular clue refers to, and just as importantly, which cards it is meant to push me away from.

Similarly, I’ve been able to use table talk to confuse the opposing team, but it’s through table talk with my own team that I’m subtly pushing them away from a particular card or toward another, hoping to trip them up.

This is higher-level stuff, requiring concentration, focus, and a clear understanding of how communication affects human behavior.

But it’s not the type of depth we normally associate with games.

Social deception games are a victim of this. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is an example. Some see the proceedings as entirely random, or nearly so. Others, however, see a nuanced interpersonal maelstrom where subtle manipulation and the ability to read unspoken signals and body language accounts for a lot of good play.

These are legitimate gaming skills that can be learned and refined. Ignoring depths of this sort is to ignore how many games ideally function.

Taking these examples into a general principle, I’d say something like this: Games that allow for metagame elements, negotiation, bluffing, double bluffing, and other forms of manipulation and obfuscation can possess levels of depth that go beyond their mechanical trappings.

This isn’t always the case, of course. Some bluffing games are notoriously shallow. I could name names. But the potential is there.

Tonal and Thematic Depth

Pax Pamir’s 2nd edition made a bold move: it changed how scoring works. That doesn’t sound too profound, but the game’s theme maps to the struggle of warring tribes in Afghanistan in the 19th century.

More specifically, it chronicles the colonialist empires that fought proxy wars via these tribes, often leaving the area worse than they found it, in order to gain political influence half the world away.

What does victory look like in such a scenario? If it’s a temporary victory only, and the reshuffling of alliances in the next generation invalidates previous victors, is calling anything a victory truly possible?

Rather than have a zero-sum Win/Loss condition, the game grapples with these questions. The designer knowingly did this, as both creation of a plaything and as a critical look at history’s villains…or at least those cloaked in shades of gray. It’s not extolling the virtues of these empires; it’s casting their actions into doubt via play.

Therein lies tonal and thematic depth. Nevermind that such gameplay won’t be for everyone; it’s not meant to be. And many games are merely intended as entertainment. They have nothing to say about history or humanity or human interaction. This is fine.

Some do, though. And they possess depths that the playthings never will.

Emergent Depth

I did a whole article on emergent depth that’s worth reading, since I won’t have a chance to go into full detail here.

Essentially, these are the games where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This usually happens when single, often simple actions have cascading effects on

To me, these games are often deeper than those that boast more options on the surface. Tigris & Euphrates is a poster child for this, with untold depths springing from just a few action options and component types.

I sense less depth in games that bombard me with card abilities, resources types and methods to score points. Usually these elements are designed to chain into one another and amplify one another, so while you can technically do anything within its structure, “good” play is very bounded to the specific synergies that the designer planned for us to find beforehand.

I feel less creative in such an environment, whereas I feel more opportunities for creativity when “optimal” play is something that can’t be mathematically defined, and valuations of action options shift along with board state and player psychology.

Depth and Replayability in TTRPGs

Tabletop roleplaying games are sort of built with replayability, because you are bringing so much to the experience yourself that isn’t explicit in the game itself.

For example, with a single box of supplies and a handful of books, I can run Dungeons & Dragons for the rest of my life and never truly repeat myself with story arcs or plot beats. The game is staggeringly vast in this regard.

Yet you’ll hear some people say that D&D is limited. And they’re not wrong, but they’re looking at it from a different perspective.

D&D does fantasy-based, heroic, high-adventure campaigns quite well, and it comes with a crunchy rules system with numerous supplements to extend the game into many directions.

But what if what you’re looking for is a more minimalistic mechanical system, one that emphasizes narrative and character elements? Then D&D looks quite clunky.

For clarity, D&D can absolutely have strong narrative and character elements. But you’re also signing up for its chunky mechanical system. Why read 200+ pages of rules to absorb the full system when you can read 20, if what you’re really after is improvisational roleplaying?

Similarly, I’ve seen a lot of creativity in bringing D&D into different settings: sci-fi, noir, mystery, heist missions, historical settings, and so on.

But the mechanics and settings are designed primarily for what I said earlier: heroic high adventure in a fantasy setting.

There are frankly other systems and settings that do a better job bringing other styles of play to life. These are systems designed from the ground up with a particular play style in mind. Superheroes, underpowered thieves and hackers, Lovecraftian investigators, and so on. Better systems exist for these, and many more.

D&D can be anything, but for some, that same ambition often means it’s not the best at anything either.

So replayability in this context is trickier to pin down, because I first have to ask you what you’re after. For some, D&D is infinitely replayable. For others, they have half a dozen favored RPG systems, because each one is the best at a particular gameplay style they enjoy.

Whether or not something has this replayability is more subjective.

504: A Case Study in False Replayability

504 is a game from legendary designer Friedemann Friese. It somewhat famously has 504 different permutations of mechanics, each of which can be added or removed to create a completely different game.

Stated differently, 504 unique games are in the same box. It sounds like a replayability match made in heaven!

Here’s the issue: the majority of the game’s players quickly realized that the majority of 504’s different game modes weren’t terribly interesting. Most found a handful they enjoyed, or perhaps a few core modules that they usually wanted to include. But 90% or more of the game’s possibility could be safely ignored after that.

It’s a delightful design experiment, and I don’t doubt that a lot of skill went into its creation. However, it also highlights how variance alone isn’t enough to provide sustainably interesting gameplay. The fervor surrounding 504 has died down; it has some fans, as every game does. But its promise was always going to be larger than what it ultimately delivered.

Most games don’t promise 500+ unique game modes, but they do implicitly send the same types of signals in terms of replayability. Many of these claims are equally as vacuous.

Why a Lot of This Doesn’t Matter

Ok, and now here’s the part where I tell you that most of what you just read is entirely academic.

I stand by my opinions on depth and replayability, for clarity. But it rarely matters.

Why? Because if you’re involved in hobby gaming, you’re probably playing a lot of games a small number of times. You aren’t sinking into most of your games enough for depth – or lack of depth – to ever matter.

Even if you’re not involved at a level where you identify as a hobbyist, how many games do people play dozens of times in a year?

There are exceptions, of course, but they prove the rule. Some will happily tell you, for instance, that they played 500+ sessions of Race for the Galaxy on the phone app last year. Or they’re entering online tournaments for a particular game. Ok, sure, there’d better be some depth to those systems to justify that play count and/or level of competitive investment.

Most of the time, though, it’s pointless. And where it’s most pointless is often with those crowdfunding campaigns I mentioned earlier. They’re “INFINITELY REPLAYABLE,” remember? But the entire business model of platforms like that is designed to get you to buy something, maybe play it a few times, then divert your attention to the next “infinitely replayable” game that’s coming down the pipeline.

Which is absurd. You’ll barely have scratched the surface at that point. Yet this is what hobby gaming has become for many, and some will still tell you that replayability is important to them.

The other side of this is equally concerning to me: some people I’ve talked to have started to admit that they’re just churning through games and will never play most of them enough to discover their full depths. They’ll tell you that they got 3-4 good plays out of a game before it became boring or they moved onto the next new thing, but they’ll still consider that a good purchase.

Everyone’s money is their own to do with as they please, but I hope you’ll forgive me in saying I can’t empathize with that approach. If games are meant to be discarded and forgotten after a handful of plays, I’m in the wrong hobby.

So the even more amusing thing to me is that it also doesn’t matter if a game ultimately lacks replayability or depth. Playing enough times to truly figure that out means that you’re getting your money’s worth. Sure, some games are duds on the first play, but not from lack of depth but rather because it’s just not a good style for you.

So the next time you worry about how many plays a game has in it before it becomes rote and boring…maybe don’t worry? And the next time a reviewer or breathless marketing blurb tells you about a game’s replayability, maybe try to see it for the BS that I think it often is.

You’ll never find that point of diminishing returns with tons of games, and when you do, it will be because you got your money’s worth.