“Wait! Just… one… more… turn…”
The first video game I played on a computer was Civilization 5 when I was seven years old. It was the perfect “laptop under the covers” game for a kid staying up past his bedtime and the first game I played that made hours disappear in seconds. The phrase that emerges from the culture of the Civilization games, “one more turn,” is written on the button the games let you press after winning. It refers, too, to the feeling that you’re never quite ready to put down a session of Civilization. You always think, “just one more turn,” which inevitably turns into several more turns and before you know it, daylight is streaming through the blinds and you’ve got to get ready for school. My running theory for how the Civilization developers made this happen is dark magic, but that seems insufficient as an answer so for now I leave the question be. I can recognize, however, when I feel that drive again: the “one more turn” drive. I feel it when I play survival games.
There is a piece of advice given to aspiring creative writers: learn to write horror stories. Books, as opposed to other media of storytelling, need a reader to actively turn the page. Getting the reader to turn the page is difficult and getting them to turn it hundreds of times over the course of a novel is close to impossible. This is the challenge that the advice about writing horror seeks to overcome. The engine of a story is tension. By mastering tension the writer masters the ability to get the reader to turn the page. Horror is a lean genre; these are not stories that are acclaimed for their fanciful romances, their efflorescent prose, nor their inspiring protagonists. Horror stories are tension machines. When a new writer starts with horror, they have no tools but tension; they are forced to become experts in it. I see this pattern in survival games. Like horror stories, survival games are lean experiences. They are rarely graphically ambitious and they are unlikely to have compelling narratives. The thing they do better than any other genre is keep the player playing.
Why not horror games? The engine of a video game is not the same as the engine of a written story; the written story needs to encourage the reader to act, to turn the page. The video game does the work of turning the page all on its own, as long as it is running. The video game needs to avoid presenting moments where the player wants to turn the game off. Horror games are uniquely bad at this; they are fatiguing to the player and provide a lot of good stopping points through checkpoints and chapters. If a game wants to keep players logged in, it needs something else; it needs to put the player on a treadmill. Treadmills are simple machines—they just need someone to put one foot in front of the other. Survival games function the same way, and the survival progression track is the treadmill belt.
Survival games come in a lot of different styles, with progression tracks that sit on a spectrum that ranges from loose to tight. On the loose end there are games like Minecraft where many of the progression goals are self-imposed and where the distinct upgrades in gear and power are relatively easy to achieve. An experienced player could reach nearly the maximum power within a couple of days and even a player not interested in getting the best armor and tools in the game will have the vast majority of content accessible to them. On the tight end of the spectrum are games like V Rising, where every zone and upgrade is carefully placed on a track that the player will follow exactly. V Rising is the kind of game that’s always pushing you forward, that can’t wait to show you the next zone or boss. No matter where a game’s progression sits on the spectrum, whether the goals the player has are self-imposed or defined by the game, every survival game’s progression track follows a similar rule; the next step towards a goal must be substantial, deterministic, and quick.
Progress in survival games tends to take the form of discrete jumps. In Valheim, upgrades feel weighty. There are trees that cannot be cut until you have a strong enough axe, ore that cannot be mined until you have a powerful enough pickaxe. Enemies do debilitating damage when your armor is too weak and become minor annoyances once your armor is stronger. Every part of your character that can be upgraded is worth upgrading and every step opens new areas of content or makes older areas easier to approach. Upgrades in Valheim are deterministic. The player needs three corewood logs to craft a bronze pickaxe. They’ll get those logs by cutting down one pine tree, and they can find that pine tree in any Black Forest. The player is aware of what they need to do to accomplish a goal, and approximately how long it will take. Additionally, these upgrades do not take long to acquire. Valheim goes to great lengths to slow the player down through long travel times and imposing survival mechanics, but the player is still always within reach of the next step of a goal. In a tighter game like V Rising, the player is never more than 15 minutes from completing the next step. These three factors—goals that feel substantial, deterministic, and quick—put the player on a treadmill. When the next upgrade is always just a quick adventure away and that upgrade is important, it is difficult to ever step away.
The progression track treadmill is a morally neutral design tool that can be used in dangerous ways. Gacha and mobile games in particular are devastatingly effective in their implementation of the treadmill, typically with the aim of extracting money from the player. Idle games use this tool as well, though they slow the engine down dramatically over time. The distinguishing factor between these three genres and survival games is purpose: what is all of that progression good for? Gacha, mobile, and idle games compel the player with colorful variations of “number go up.” Survival games give the progression track substance; players can manipulate the world through construction or destruction, and in entirely their own way. The player’s capacity for manipulation is directly tied to their progress on the track. Access to the next zone or resource is gated by gear upgrades or levels. Even in a game like Minecraft, where the gear progression track is very short, players have to gather blocks and resources to build large projects. That gathering is itself a progression track. There’s a magic to how survival games run their engines. The player wants the bronze pickaxe because it lets them build a house on the other side of a beautiful lake. The player is not being tricked into staying on the treadmill; they love to be there.
Survival games are one of my favorite genres. They have a rhythm to them, a natural pacing that can make hours disappear. I can feel the progress engine turn and I’m happy to let it. Every time I play a survival game, I know I’ll be playing until there’s daylight streaming through the blinds.