It’s an interesting avenue to think about, especially with AAA games turning into monstrous overloaded time-sucks no one can really consistently finish..
Like, instead of adding value by throwing in more of everything to the video game equivalent of a five hour director’s cut, add overlapping AAA modes, or sub-systems..
Gwent is an ok example.. or imagine, like, if AC Origins or Odyssey had a AA-AAA caliber chariot racing game built in, and a smaller map.. or the “fight pits” in Shadow of Mordor were an actual fighting game engine .. the problem is balancing all of those modes, so you keep narrative motion but can accommodate “diversions”, and the diversions don’t overwhelm the rest of the game..
Or the marijuana farms and bar construction in Mafia III, woven into the gameplay loop or built into a separate business simulator, but also - like the cargo system in Death Stranding, totally optional..
Take Mafia III as an example - there was so much padding in that game, you could’ve made it half as long, or a third, put that time into sub/side-games, and had something better..
Fallout 76 is a disappointment, but I can’t be the only person who liked Fallout 4’s settlement system as much as (maybe more than) the primary game..
In theory you could make more money, I guess, selling game modules individually (a polished, deep, dense Fallout settlement/vault building community simulator without an RPG plot I’d probably like more than the bad MMO they’re doing)..
But what’s to stop, say, EA from cloning the gameplay from Def Jam or Fight Night, reskinning and adapting it, and putting it in the third Mordor game as “fight pits”, or for a subplot in an Arkham game?
or Rockstar from putting a fantastic table tennis simulator into Bully 2?
Is it technically difficult, or impossible, or just aesthetically tricky/jarring?
