Devs ask: Are AAA titles too long for the average gamer?

[Gord]

See: Are AAA-games too long?

Seems that 10 hours is the new long.

Much in there...

 

[Oriebam]

It wasn't?

edit: I mean, old/current "long game time"

 

[Konjad]

Games should be 2-3 hours long, also full of alien sex and AWESOME. Oh, and they shouldn't have too much gameplay, because that's too hard, better if they are full of cutscenes.

 

[torpid]

Good god that was an unpleasant read -- both rage-inducing and depressing. So even CoD and Halo and whatnot are dinosaurs and Facebook games are the future of gaming. I guess the silver lining here is reading butthurt Gamespot denizens railing about the decline, OH THE IRONY.

The panel starts out by discussing "the relevance of narrative-based gameplay," which makes it sound like they're going to criticize games trying to be movies, but instead their complaint is that games are too long and "gamers are losing patience". As for developing narratives in casual games, "the panel cited soap operas as an example of how ongoing storylines could work within a game environment." Gaming: now truly catering to bored 40-year old moms.

The likes of social and casual games, particularly the cheap games available on mobile, have changed the expectations of gamers, the panel concluded. By gamers are paying less money, there's less need to create 10-hour-plus gaming experiences, because consumers no longer feel shortchanged. This could be particularly beneficial for self-publishing indie developers, they said, who could charge less but gain a larger percentage of sales.

I really hate this trend -- mediocre indie games based on simple gimmicks sold for $5-10 on Steam, with gamers expecting that to be the price of any indie title. Not that it's harmful in itself, as the players are probably getting their money's worth at such a low price, but it's closing the window on non-AAA developers who still want to make full games and sell them at an intermediate price point. We're going to be left with the full-priced CoD clones and the $5 indie gimmicks and nothing in between. Save us from the decline AoD

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The only long game that I was playing lately was X-Com. And to be honest, I got burned out with it after going through 35 or something tactical missions and throwing a hundred of soldiers into the meat grinder.

I'm mostly playing casual wargames like Armored Brigade or (earlier) Firefight and flight sims nowadays. I'm not playing linear story-based games that last hours and hours and hours.

 

[Turisas]

Boring story with piss-poor writing => players don't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

Shorter boring story with piss-poor writing => players still won't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

And so on.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Boring story with piss-poor writing => players don't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

Shorter boring story with piss-poor writing => players still won't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

And so on.

The main problem is basing games on a story with mechanics as an afterthought. Then there's a question of the length of the stories. What does a long story add to a game?

 

[Turisas]

A story is as long (or short) as it needs to be, it's just that the industry sorely lacks good writers.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

A story is as long (or short) as it needs to be, it's just that the industry sorely lacks good writers.

And what would they add to a game? Good games should allow winning or losing the whole game. Storyfag games are forcing players to SFL through them.

 

[felipepepe]

Games should be movies.

Fixed for ya.

 

[Turisas]

And what would they add to a game?

... a good story? For RPG's at least I'd say that's pretty damn important.

 

[Rhalle]

"Gamers are losing patience" with 10-hour-plus games

Shameless.

(P.S.: Jews)

 

[Gord]

And what would they add to a game?

... a good story? For RPG's at least I'd say that's pretty damn important.

Many (older) classics have not much story to speak of, but then they often had a certain complexity and challenge.

 

[Hobo Elf]

AAA games ARE too long, but only because devs don't know how to pace content properly or make it good. It's repetitive and tedious, thus, too fucking long. But if it was 30 hours of quality then then it wouldn't be too long.

 

[MetalCraze]

story with writing => players don't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

More story with writing instead of game => players still won't finish the game.

Devs: "Let's make it shorter!"

And so on.

Fixed it for you

... a good story? For RPG's at least I'd say that's pretty damn important.

What was the last RPG to have a good story in your opinion?

 

[Grunker]

A story is as long (or short) as it needs to be, it's just that the industry sorely lacks good writers.

And what would they add to a game? Good games should allow winning or losing the whole game. Storyfag games are forcing players to SFL through them.

I'm a huge storyfag and huge combatfag. While I more than agree with you that the trend of putting story before gameplay is tremendously detrimental to gaming, I don't see why one has to exclude the other. Game-mechanics need to go back to being front and center - completely agree on that point - but the evolution of story-telling shouldn't come to a halt because of it.

 

[MetalCraze]

The devolution of storytelling you mean.

A good storytelling: SMAC. The story is just a mere background of the game. The writing is a quality sci-fi inspired by a golden age.
1999

A shitty storytelling: TW2. Cutscenes, fucking cutscenes. Gameplay where you just twitch 2 buttons all the time without even thinking what you are doing just to see another long cutscene. The writing is shit you see in B-movies and more like an extremely bad parody of fantasy. Tits, dragons, special forces and stereotypes everywhere.
2011

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

A story is as long (or short) as it needs to be, it's just that the industry sorely lacks good writers.

And what would they add to a game? Good games should allow winning or losing the whole game. Storyfag games are forcing players to SFL through them.

I'm a huge storyfag and huge combatfag. While I more than agree with you that the trend of putting story before gameplay is tremendously detrimental to gaming, I don't see why one has to exclude the other. Game-mechanics need to go back to being front and center - completely agree on that point - but the evolution of story-telling shouldn't come to a halt because of it.

The main problem is that the longer the story is, the more problematic is making a game from it. What we usually get is just a linear sequence of events that is pushed on players like in BG2 - get out from the dungeon, get money, go to Spellhold, go through the maze, fail to kill Irenicus, go to the underdark, go back to Athkatla go to Suldanesselar, fail to kill Irenicus again, go to hell, kill Irenicus.
Even worse, as a second game in series, it basically ignores C&C from the previous game, including the party composition (because such a long game requires too much work for making it long to devote it to C&C and continuity)

Compare it to for example Fallout, where you first have an objective of finding the water chip (which may be done in various ways - in one playthrough, I went to Necropolis on very low level as I met Patrick the Celt who told my character than the chip is probably in Necropolis) and then an objective of neutralising the mutants - which again may be done in different order and different ways depending and what's your character and what you've done before.

I think that short games (like Fallout) are much better for evolution of story-telling (as resources can be dedicated to letting the player create his own story using game mechanics) than long games.

A good storytelling: SMAC. The story is just a mere background of the game. The writing is a quality sci-fi inspired by a golden age.
1999

SMAC?

 

[Wyrmlord]

The devolution of storytelling you mean.

A good storytelling: SMAC. The story is just a mere background of the game. The writing is a quality sci-fi inspired by a golden age.
1999

A shitty storytelling: TW2. Cutscenes, fucking cutscenes. Gameplay where you just twitch 2 buttons all the time without even thinking what you are doing just to see another long cutscene. The writing is shit you see in B-movies and more like an extremely bad parody of fantasy. Tits, dragons, special forces and stereotypes everywhere.
2011

You can't have it both ways, Skyway.

You are basically arguing, "The more important story is in a game, the lower the quality of the story itself."

Either you say story should not matter. Or you say story should have quality. But why complain both ways? It doesn't make sense.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The devolution of storytelling you mean.

A good storytelling: SMAC. The story is just a mere background of the game. The writing is a quality sci-fi inspired by a golden age.
1999

A shitty storytelling: TW2. Cutscenes, fucking cutscenes. Gameplay where you just twitch 2 buttons all the time without even thinking what you are doing just to see another long cutscene. The writing is shit you see in B-movies and more like an extremely bad parody of fantasy. Tits, dragons, special forces and stereotypes everywhere.
2011

You can't have it both ways, Skyway.

You are basically arguing, "The more important story is in a game, the lower the quality of the story itself."

Either you say story should not matter. Or you say story should have quality. But why complain both ways? It doesn't make sense.

No. He complains that dropping tons of story and cutscenes into game makes a low quality game story, not that story doesn't matter. A high quality game story is an integral part of the game and storytelling is driven by game mechanics.

 

[felipepepe]

This issue goes to the root of RPG, PnP. If the GM had worked hours creating a massive dungeon, but the players decided to go do some other shit, either the GM forces the players back to the dungeon or creates a whole new content on-the-fly for them to explore.

Since developers can't make anything like that, they have to put the players on rails sighseeing the story, letting them choose wich track to follow now and them.

Derp edit: Luckly Bethesda created AWESHUM Radiant Story, that makes the story while you play! We are saved!

 

[Crooked Bee]

SMAC?

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, I presume.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, obviously the point of good storytelling (In PnP or video games) is to make the rails invisible by making the player WANT to follow them. It's retarded to make your most elaborate part of the world something nobody would have any particular reason to visit, much less put in within sight of something more compelling.

If the player feels like he should be able to simply skip the dungeon so he can wander off into uncharted territory to explore mostly empty wilderness, you've done a terrible fucking job at making the story interesting. The player should be dying to get to the end of that dungeon, whether for curiosity, greed, or revenge.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

AAA games ARE too long, but only because devs don't know how to pace content properly or make it good. It's repetitive and tedious, thus, too fucking long. But if it was 30 hours of quality then then it wouldn't be too long.

Bingo. If the gaming industry had some sort of "editorial" (?) standards beyond cutting content due to either possible public objections to said content or a lack of time/resources to implement the content, there probably wouldn't be complaints of "too long", or at least they wouldn't be as loud. But this concept of trimming the fat is lost on developers. However, I find it hard to lay the blame for this mentality solely at their feet. There is a loud group of voices in the gaming community, constantly extolling the virtues of games that post a high "hours consumed" count.

"Fifteen hours? Ha! I got 100 hours out of Oblivion. That's fifty cents an hour! Look at the value in that!"

There's no accounting for quality here, 100 hours of shit that passes for "engrossing exploration" becomes a mark of good design, especially among more mainstream cRPG fans, to the point where devs market to them. Often you'll see developers boast of our 40+ hour main quest or something similar, without any mention as to what exactly those forty hours will play out like. But hey, if shit sells and customers clamor for it, why rock the boat?

 

[Konjad]

"Fifteen hours? Ha! I got 100 hours out of Oblivion. That's fifty cents an hour! Look at the value in that!"

I've got 307 hours in Oblivion I've paid for it with all add ons included about $100, which makes it ~33 cents per hour. Look at the value in that! Though, much of that time was getting mods to work.

 

[MetalCraze]

No. He complains that dropping tons of story and cutscenes into game makes a low quality game story, not that story doesn't matter. A high quality game story is an integral part of the game and storytelling is driven by game mechanics.

Hence why SMAC example.

Yeah the 2nd time you play it the story isn't important (but what's important in this case is that on the 2nd playthrough the story becomes non-intrusive at all and even videos can be easily skipped, unlike "RPG" cutscenes) - but the first time it supports the game and the atmosphere a lot.

And it's pure quality too.

I've seen BG2 mentioned here. Oh BG2 did it rather good. Most of the time you can select the "shut the fuck up, let's dance" option and skip more text (which you read much faster than watch a shitty cutscene) at once. In "RPGs" you must watch the shitty cutscene. You must select retarded options once in a minute or two with none being "shut the fuck up".

For some reason devs believe that someone just has to listen to their shitty writing while watching their retarded pinoccios all the time even if it's of Uwe Boll quality (which in 95% cases is true) because cretins like to see themselves as movie directors.

 

[Black_Willow]

SMAC had as much plot as Civilisation. Which isn't surprising, being it a Civilisation clone.