I'm standing on a balcony, staring off into a dazzling sunset which (let's be honest) is doing most of the atmospheric heavy-lifting for a part of town that wouldn't normally pique your interest. Pacifica's a dump, after all. A refuse-heap for the broken dreams of corporate demagogues that nobody now remembers. It has very little going for it, but – in the right light bright enough to blind you to the refuse-strewn beaches, decrepit buildings, and packs of roving gangs – it sure can catch you off guard, every now and again.

I find myself coming down here more often, nowadays. I've finished every gig, sidejob and NCPD contract. My rep's solid with every fixer around, I'm swimming in credits, have a small hangar's worth of premium wheels, and apartments all over town. I'm parked on the precipice of concluding the madcap dash to get that extra voice out of my head. I've hung out with rockstars, helped well-meaning techies try to do some good, put exiled nomads back into their family's good graces, and even backed the last honest cop in NC on his quest for justice. I'm at the top of my game here – achieved something that few people ever did (and lived)... So why do I feel so– Empty?

It's a situation anyone who has played at least one open-world game is acquainted with: you've reached the end of the line, consumed all of the content the title has to offer. A few generations back, you would be staring at a "game over" screen, but nowadays you can just keep going – at least for as long as you can think up things to do. In terms of gameplay, your options are limited to: 1) starting over and playing the same content differently; 2) starting over and ejoying what little extra content NG+ can offer (if available); or 3) ambling around aimlessly in a self-imposed limbo until you finally give up and move on to a different game...

But what if you didn't have to?

People (as my non-extensive pseudo-research shows) form attachments easily and enjoy investing themselves into things that bring them joy. If they find something they like, they want to stick with it by any means: be they sequels, spin-offs, tie-ins, or any of those other pesky marketing ploys to extend the lifespan of something that happens to be popular at the moment.

People are also constantly and subliminally aware of their own mortality. It might not always manifest as such, but it's the reason why the end of every book, comic, movie or game that they enjoy leaves them feeling a little forlorn. It's why sequels work. People are never satisfied with conclusions. They want to know what happens after the credits roll. They want to keep being a part of their favorite story.

Now, I'm just a simple, game-reviewing pig: I have no inkling of what running a profitable game studio entails, or the intricacies involved in putting out a big-time game on the market. What I can offer, however, is an alternative to the established way of doing things. Namely: more content.

I know, I know: an underwhelming reveal. You're the one reading a column written by a pig, though. I'm not sure you came into this with reasonable expectations.

It's not fancy graphics, a memorable soundtrack, or clever mechanics that keep players invested. Good design and atmosphere help, no doubt about it, but – in the end – no matter how well a game is put together, our interest in it ends the minute we run out of things to do. Because running around in a stunning world with great backstory and nothing to do is kind of what we do in between blips of interest in our own lives. We've got boredom covered, in other words. We need something more.

To date, the solution to this has been the tried-and-true episodic approach. Gauge the public's reaction, make the next installment (if profitable), ramp up the graphics (so it looks like you're "improving" the game, sure, but probably also to make a buck with the guys selling hardware); prest-o, change-o – continuity!

Except, not really, because in the time it takes a studio to build a meaningful sequel, people's attention wanders. They move on to other things. The, sometimes, hundreds of hours they've invested into the game world fade from memory, to be replaced by the Next Interesting Thing... So – like I said – more content. But not addons, or expansions, or DLCs. Integrated. Continuous. A content stream, if you will.

If you've never played Dying Light – you should – and if you have, you'll know it's the 2015 first-person parkour simulator with zombies (or zombie-simulator with parkour); a fast-moving survival game, at any rate, with jumping, crafting, and tons of exploration. Not a great game, mind (for one, it could never make up its mind whether it was an over-acted, character-driven drama, or a challenge-ridden bro-fest for challenge-minded bros who love beating the best times of other bros); but a very, very good one, with co-op and a game-world so expansive and detailed, you could lose yourself in parts of it for hours on end, with no real aim to speak of. The Following, its first and only expansion, let you roam free of the confines of the burning dumpster-fire that was Harran and into the open fields of outlying villages. It also introduced driving as a means of getting around. And this is where my pig-senses started tingling.

As you will no doubt know, after 7 years of meaningless DLCs (mostly in the form of skins and weapons), Techland (Dying Light's creators) moved on to Dying Light 2, which... Exists. I don't know how much it cost them to make the thing, but from what I've seen and read, it hasn't exactly revolutionized the genre. Which makes no sense, because – with the first game – they had a decent-sized, regular player-base that kept coming back well after meaningful game development had ceased.

Now imagine, if you will, that instead of investing in a sequel with marginally better graphics (I happen to think Dying Light's graphics were spectacular or, for the devotees of the cutting edge, "good enough"), Techland sets aside a department for the ongoing development of new content. Then, while the rest of their staff keep working on larger, The Following-sized expansions, this department starts weekly or bi-weekly downloads of New Things To Do. Maybe a week after you finish the main plot a new building opens up; or a previously locked apartment is now accessible; or a new wrecked car lies at the bottom of the bay, just waiting for you to find it. I know actual game content is more work-intensive than a simple skin, but a skin exists – that's all it does. You buy it, you turn the game on. It's there. You might try it on, you might (justifiably) decide you've just wasted money on nothing, but – that's it. That's the extent of "extra content" a skin provides.

Actual content, on the other hand, demands action and involvement. If every week you logged into Dying Light and it simply told you "somewhere, a new door has opened", I guarantee you'd go looking for it. It would be Something To Do and – no matter how small the addition, or how trivial the reward – you'd be able to justify delving back into a game whose content you had already exhausted. It would also give you things to talk about with your co-op buddies. You could compare notes, speculate, divvy up Harran into quadrants and go looking for the New Thing as a team.

With small, regular additions, players would have something to keep coming back for. And if said small additions were well-made and interspersed with more meaningfull content (say, once a month, you get a slightly longer quest that moves a story forward, or lets you interact with a favorite character, or just rewards you with something shiny and unique), the players would be stimulated enough to keep coming back until – a year, maybe two years later – the larger expansion finally drops.

On the developer side, on the other hand, if you can charge 3 or 4 USD for a new set of pants and a shotgun, charging 5 for a short quest or an empty room with stuff in it (which, unlike an optional, passive skin, a majority of the player-base would probably invest in) would provide you with a steady, weekly revenue stream to offset ongoing development. Us pigs don't make great economists, but 3 or 4 USD that maybe 25% of players invests in seems less than 5 USD or more that maybe 60% of the players would buy on a weekly basis. I'm sure in practice it would be more complex than that, but the concept seems sound, anyway.

Ultimately, the idea that kept haunting me for all of my extensive stay in Dying Light's wonderful/horrible world was "what if I could fix up this broken down bus, climb into it and drive? What if I could be in a completely different town tomorrow?" (it's the reverse of the idea that haunts me in Euro Truck Simulator 2, which is "what if I could climb outta this damn truck?") And, yeah, I know it's easy to have ideas and hard to see them realized, but I think, done properly, ongoing content like the scenario I described could be just as good a business move for studios as wasting 7 years on a sequel, which may or may not pay off. Coming up with more hardware-intensive graphics is not the way forward (though it sure seems to be the way to keep selling more expensive hardware).

During my many daily naps, I keep having a recurring dream: one of a game which continues to evolve well past its original design. One of a world that keeps me involved by adding new things to do (no – not like Stellaris, with its tacky cashgrabs). Of characters I can keep hanging out with, if I have the time and feel like it. Of procedurally-generated situations that can happen randomly every now and again. Of a place I don't have to leave sooner than I would like. Of a game that grows into its own sequel...

But then I snort awake and find myself leaning on that balcony in Pacifica with nothing to do. I know there's an expansion somewhere past that beautiful sunset on the horizon. I know the Cyberpunk IP will keep getting expanded with "future titles" – maybe even ones that I enjoy. But none of those titles will have the characters I've gotten to know, or the history I've been a part of, or the myriad doors that I will never get to step through.

Breaking with the accepted norm is never easy. Accepted norms work, after all. They're proven to do so. But every accepted norm, whether it likes to admit it or not, was once an Untried Idea. I'm hoping that a studio will try this one, at some point. And if I'm still around when they do, and they do a good job with it, I think that will be a game that I would very much like to hang out in for a time...

Pig Recommends:

-if you like first-person action games with RPG-lite development, parkour, zombies, crafting and oodles of exploration, give Dying Light and The Following a try (but do skip the skins, Hellraids and bro-tastic challenges);

-if you like great story-telling, a vibrant world, fast action, and are a stickler to The Kurgan's mantra, give Cyberpunk 2077 a go; it's still buggy in places, but great fun overall, with about 100 hours per playthrough and a truly beautiful/depressing world to explore;