What keeps you playing?

[shubla]

After 1 or 2 weeks most ppl get bored because they builded everything they wanted and don't know what they should do now. Grind for better Quality stuff? Make friends? Become a trader or raider? It's up to you to keep yourself excited and focused but most gamers today can't really do that.

Because theyre impatient lazy pigs that cant do anything else than play fps games where gameplay is basically - Shoot somone - respawn - Shoot somone - Respawn - Repeat

[TeckXKnight]

After 1 or 2 weeks most ppl get bored because they builded everything they wanted and don't know what they should do now. Grind for better Quality stuff? Make friends? Become a trader or raider? It's up to you to keep yourself excited and focused but most gamers today can't really do that.

They're too spoilt to do this on their own, they want the devs to do it for them with new updates, new worlds etc. one of the reasons why I like the sandbox concept of haven so much it's up to you how you want to waste your time :D

This is actually a very common problem for sandbox games. Players experience content once and then rather than utilize that tool, they consider that milestone finished and move on without using it unless it's to achieve the next piece of content. Don't Starve axed their in-game guide because it lead to this very behavior. This probably isn't even anything new or unique to video games. Individuals are goal oriented, which is why the model of 'carrot on a stick' is so successful; players do well when they can follow an objective through content versus exploring it on their own.

The trouble is, how do you show someone that there's more to the game than making a house and a wall? How do you introduce them to the concepts of exploration, trade, politics, war, and interpersonal communication? How do you develop a lateral growth mindset in individuals?

[VDZ]

It's up to you to keep yourself excited and focused but most gamers today can't really do that.

They're too spoilt to do this on their own, they want the devs to do it for them with new updates, new worlds etc.

Uh, dude, no, it's the game's task to keep me excited. If I need to keep myself excited, I might as well make my own game instead. With blackjack. And hookers.

If you want a true 100% sandbox, go play something like Your World of Text. If you really can keep yourself excited and focused all on your own, you can play that forever without getting bored.

In practice, though, the game needs to feel sufficiently rewarding. I could theoretically just try to mine 100,000 stones and put them in Milestone signposts as personal goal, but it wouldn't feel fun at all. The game's task (one that I feel H&H succeeds very well at) is to provide possible goals that feel rewarding. To name a simple example, you could surround your wall completely with flax for decoration. By itself, the action of planting flax has no meaning and is not fun or rewarding. But the way the game displays flax and the way planted flax aligns properly to form a consistent line makes the flax look really nice when planted around your wall, which makes it feel rewarding to the player. Nothing will keep even the most dedicated player excited and focused without the game providing the proper feedback.

The problem with players getting bored of the game is that the only goals they can discover (whether clear game-determined goals or own goals) feel more bothersome than rewarding. I understand why people lay brick art, but the hassle of collecting the bricks and paving exactly the right spots just for something that looks kinda nice is just too much a bother compared to what you get for it, for me. Likewise, there are people who feel that harvesting and replanting the same crops over and over just to get the quality number to a ridiculous number is too repetitive for too little reward.

You can't just blame the player and be done with it. It's a combination of the player's motivation and the game's feedback.