Building Forever Games, Starting with RIFTSTORM
Throughout history, only a handful of forever games have been released. These games have persisted throughout generations and transcended different media forms, evolving with their audience and the gaming industry’s trends. Some examples of these games include Dungeons & Dragons, Pokémon, Counter-Strike, Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, and Mortal Kombat. These are the games that almost everyone has heard about.
Understanding what makes a forever game is the key to success, helping game developers figure out how to build one.
Why Build a Forever Game?
Forever games are games almost anyone can pick up. They are easily teachable, and most new players are eager to learn them. Part of a forever game’s appeal is that players can play it with their friends. Together with friends or community members, players often find memorable moments and create fun, meaningful experiences together in-game, so they keep coming back for years on end.
A 2024 Newzoo study revealed that 60% of the average gamer’s playtime is spent with titles six years or older. Most forever games have grown and evolved with their players. Whether it is a new Pokémon generation or new content for Dungeons & Dragons, these games have largely figured out what their players want.
Games like this create an unlimited opportunity to expand the project as an IP and business. This is why every game developer dreams of creating something that becomes a forever game.
The Anatomy of a Forever Game
From a game developer’s perspective, forever games have several common elements. Examining each one can help pinpoint the formula needed to create something that stands the test of time. Let’s take Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft (WoW) as examples.
Fundamentally Fun: The games that last the longest have a core game loop that simply makes them fun to play. Counter-Strike has established a timeless formula that many other first-person shooters follow. WoW created the baseline for MMORPG grinding that feels rewarding.
Player Agency: Forever games are designed to be flexible, allowing players to control how much or how little they want to play. If someone wants to play Counter-Strike or WoW, they can estimate how much each game or quest lasts. They can decide to play one game or go for longer sessions.
Deep Progression: A sense of growth is fundamental to player motivation. Players can keep grinding to unlock a desired build or a skin. A Counter-Strike player can try to increase ranks, and a WoW player can quest for more powerful loot.
Emergent Gameplay: While a fundamentally fun core loop is essential, lasting games also create opportunities for gameplay variation and fresh experiences. Each game of Counter-Strike can feel different because of new challenges created by changing maps, teammates, and enemies. WoW’s social aspect creates similarly different experiences in each game, helping the game stay relevant for decades and even building lifelong friendships among players.
Continuous Evolution: A game must continue evolving or risk another game taking its spotlight. Counter-Strike was among the first games to introduce player-made skins, allowing further exploration into future designs. WoW did so through expansions and eventually released WoW Classic for long-time players.
How RIFTSTORM Can Become a Forever Game
Today’s forever games show that collaboration has always been key to success. Dungeons & Dragons is an inherently collaborative game where players and the dungeon master work together to craft a compelling and personalized experience. They shape a sandbox through their decisions, leading D&D to become the precursor to the role-playing genre.
Confiction Labs’ early research also revealed continued demand for cooperative and PvE games. PvP games make up a lot of multiplayer game traffic, but the collective player experience is often a mix between enjoyment and frustration. Going on a losing streak could leave a bad taste in the players’ mouths or expose them to toxicity. Complexity in PVP games also increases over time as the skill floor of the player base increases.
Feedback on RIFTSTORM playtests has shown that players love the idea of engaging thematic content they can play solo or with friends. They enjoy games that are easy to pick up, whether they’re doing it for the first time or coming back after a long break.
Looking at the forever game’s anatomy, here’s how the Confiction team tackled RIFTSTORM’s core:
Fundamentally Fun: RIFTSTORM adopts mechanics from beloved ARPGs, looter shooters, and roguelites. Think Diablo, but with guns. This has already proven to engage players beyond planned play time during playtests. The third RIFTSTORM playtest in October 2024 had 9-13 hours of story quests and endgame content. Retention for the game reached its highest, with 46.2% of players still playing after the third day, a 100% increase from the second playtest.
Player Agency: RIFTSTORM targets 10- to 15-minute missions, giving players enough flexibility to decide how long they want to play. Players can easily continue from where they left off in the story or go on extended sessions with friends to find loot or conquer bosses.
Deep Progression: RIFTSTORM leans into progression via loot, character customization, and optimization. Players can get character skins and find optimal load-outs through weapons and crafting. Over time, they can craft an ideal load-out that fits their playstyle or experiment with builds to find new interactions and experiences.
Emergent Gameplay: RIFTSTORM adopts roguelite elements to ensure that no playthrough is the same. It has modular dungeons, missions, power-ups and loot systems that create familiarity and freshness each time players jump in. While loot can affect a player’s progression, in-dungeon power-ups can change how a player plays for an entire mission.
Continuous Evolution: The Repository will evolve RIFTSTORM through community choices and user-generated content (UGC). This will open new possibilities for lore, skins, dungeons, etc. The community will be able to submit different types of content, which can bring new ideas for RIFTSTORM’s Occultical universe. Currently, players can influence upcoming content through event missions. The third playtest saw 80.3% of players opting to save the character Gray 6, which will affect future content.
From the ground up, RIFTSTORM is designed to be a forever game, with the team focusing on solid fundamental core gameplay, emergent features and scaling through collaboration. Players will consistently encounter a fresh experience while feeling that their decisions matter and influence the game’s story. Exponential growth continues, with increasing Steam wishlists and playtest sign-ups. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 38 during the third playtest also shows positive feedback, with anything above 20 considered a hit in the gaming industry.
Collaborative Entertainment Expands the Forever Games Thesis
RIFTSTORM will be the first game to adopt Collaborative Entertainment, spearheading this new entertainment vision within the gaming sector. Through Collaborative Entertainment, the game can become something greater than the developers’ vision. The players’ imagination, ideas, and feedback can all work together and directly affect the game’s direction.
People love influencing the narrative, and as RIFTSTORM evolves, the players help shape the universe in the best direction possible. As a game that opens the door for community members to become more than players, RIFTSTORM is the ideal case study on Collaborative Entertainment’s potential to bring new ways to enjoy games and IPs.
