If you’ve ever read a game review, you’ve probably heard the term “replay value” or “replayability,” and, no matter what other reviews say, modern games are severely lacking in replay value.

Most games recently only have replayability because of multiplayer, and this isn’t a valid way to improve a game’s lifetime for two reasons. One, it has absolutely no benefit to people without online play, especially since most games no longer include split-screen play or only offer two-player split screen. Personally, I hate online play in most games. Sure, it can be fun occasionally, but I think most people agree that, unless you’re playing with a group of friends, online play is generally just frustrating. Second, not everyone likes multiplayer. Unfortunately, games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have shown that making games almost entirely focused on multiplayer sell well, but this is causing the market to become flooded with generic “shoot-em-up” games that only appeal to one kind of gamer.

Another way a lot of games try to increase their lifetime is by providing limited “choices,” but as we’ve seen with recent games such as Mass Effect and Dishonored, the choices you make during the game don’t really affect the outcome very much, if at all.

But the worst way games try to extend their lifetime is by having “collectibles.” I don’t know about you, but running around a huge area trying to find tiny little objects scattered around takes a very specific kind of person to enjoy. It’s a kind of person that most gamers are not.

The terrible thing about all of this is it isn’t exactly hard to make a game that’s fun to play through multiple times, like Dark Souls, Skyrim, or Fallout. Dark Souls has a combination of three things that greatly increase its replay value: several hundred items available to the player that you cannot get in a single game, challenging and rewarding gameplay, and New Game +, which allows you to start from the beginning with all of the items you got the first time through.

Skyrim and Fallout create high replayability because there are literally dozens of ways to play through the game, as apposed to “be evil or be good” choices. You can choose whether to use guns or swords, sword and board or magic, heavy armor or no armor. There simply aren’t combinations you can’t try. Now, I know I just said moral or otherwise “choices” don’t necessarily give a game high replayability, but they can certainly help if done correctly. Most games, however, present the player with black and white options, and extreme ones at that, such as, “Kill the orphan,” or “Adopt the orphan.” Games rarely give you more gray options, like, “Walk away,” or “Give the orphan a few dollars.” Choices need to not only affect the outcome of the game, but also open up other choices later on.

If developers want their games to stay popular, they need to implement a variety of choices and cater to single players. When this happens, we’ll see a rise in the replayability factor.