The gameplay lifecycle

All games go through this gameplay lifecycle.  Consider the perspective of the gamer.  As an individual, their attention and interest must first be obtained and piqued.  Then, with enough interest and motivation, they will buy the game and begin playing it.  The first play is critical, because it will define how long they play it thereafter.  Eventually after completing or beating the game, they'll put it down, and perhaps do one of two things: either sell it, or keep it for later.  In the case of the latter, they'll wait until the game becomes interesting enough to once again replay it.

Once a game product is finished, and even before, it begins in the Advertising & Marketing stage, where players are given First Glance opportunities.  These could actually come from trailers and other pre-marketing strategies, such as demos or screenshots.  During this time, a player is contemplating whether he or she wants to buy the game when it is available.  The player also develops expectation levels about how good they think the game will be.  If the expectation is more than what is essentially their threshold for buying the game, then they will do so.

At that point, the game is bought, and the player enters the First Play stage.  This represents the game's Playability phase.  At this point, all expectation is either brought to realization or it isn't.  If it is, and the game successfully minimizes distraction from immersion, then the player will keep playing it, absorbing the content and entering the "Game Replay" stage.

At the point of Game Replay, the player has made the conscious choice to play the game for various reason encompassing the aspects of replayability.  All the while, playability considerations remain important, because unplayable content will add to the player's growing list of reasons to quit the game.  If that list of reasons becomes too heavy, the player will quit, which is the final stage of gameplay lifecycles.

Quitting a game isn't so bad as it sounds, as long as its for the right reasons.  The wrong reasons mean that the game didn't provide enough reasons to keep playing, i.e. the aspects of replayability.  Other wrong reasons could mean the game didn't minimize distractions from immersion.  Sometimes such distractions are impossible to avoid -- the player could simply be too busy for good life reasons.  Other distractions should and must be avoided, such as game lag (network or system), discontinuities in the story, bugs and defects, unfair content (i.e. challenge flow zone not correct), and more.

In any case, the player must quit at some point.  This is inevitable.  When that does happen, the player can resume game play at any time at a later date.  If they sell the game, they may be reconvinced through First Glance to buy it again.  If they keep the game, they may decide to simply play it later, with different experiences (playing for impact) or for other reasons.  And lastly, the most common, they quit because they're simply done (or ran out of time) for the day.  Their gameplay session done, they'll go to sleep, wake up the next morning, go to work, come home and have another gameplay session in the Game Replay stage, and so on.

Understanding the gameplay lifecycle is important because, it can help game developers understand how their end-users are behaving.  It is likely something they already know, deep-down inside, but to put it to voice and reason and on paper can be very helpful.  First and foremost, developers should know that every product they make has the destiny of being quit by their end-users.  But that isn't a bad thing as long as its for the right reasons.  Understanding the branch points when players make their decisions can help identify what the reasons might be.  For example, if players aren't committing to purchasing the game, then its because of poor First Glances, which could be due to bad advertising & marketing.  With this kind of information, the developers can then address those concerns, and make their game (or the next one) a little better.