Survival games are not about surviving

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Survival game - Wikipedia

There are lots of different survival games. Minecraft, Don't Starve, Conan Exiles, No Man's Sky, Subnautica, etc. What is the common trend between them?

Creative mode.

Why is it that practically every survival game either has an official creative mode or mods to make it function like creative mode? It's because practically every survival game becomes "creative mode" the longer they're play.

Humans don't need that much to stay alive and once food, water, and shelter are taken care of, a survival game has been "won." Don't Starve has more things that can kill you and has probably the best survival gameplay yet still follows this graph.

Survival is effectively just used as a prologue. It can be very fun but all of these games put a lot of effort into what comes after it.


This is not a Forged Kingdoms thread but just for fun here is how its graph would look.

Spoiler for Hidden:

<div class="centertext"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/G8rmXFd.png" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy"></div><br>Players start out with their basic needs taken care of. There may be a moment or two where survival becomes incredibly challenging but it functions as a gameplay beat, nothing more.<br>