Long games ruin fun!

[Vault Dweller]

...says Rise of Argonauts' lead developer.

" Every time someone invests 25 hours of their life into a game and then realises there's another 75 hours to go, they just can't stomach continuing and they walk away with a sour taste in their mouth - no matter how much fun they had with the game.

"They need to be doing something achievable with the end in sight; people's expectations are evolving for what they want to get from the experience," he added.

Liquid Entertainment has designed Rise of the Argonauts with this philosophy in mind...

Yes, it really is devastating. There is nothing worse than playing a good game and realizing that it's quite long.

 

[MetalCraze]

Except mediocre games like this one (no doubt) must be short. Seriously. Or they will bore to tears.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, that's why I stopped in the middle of Planescape Torment and that's also why nobody ever bothered to finish games back in the DOS age, when they were soooo looooong. This is ridiculous. If I enjoy a game, I *love* it when it's long.

 

[Xor]

I probably put in 100 hours on Kirby's Pinball alone, back when my Gameboy worked.

Looks like I'll be passing on Rise of the Argonauts. Not that it had much appeal to begin with, but I just can't tolerate rewarding stupidity like that.

 

[WalterKinde]

A shame any argument to not work hard on being innovative or producing good games.
On another note if they decide to produce games that last only 20 hrs does this mean the price of these ideally short games will drop too?
I mean $70 for the collector's edition of a game thats only 20 hrs seems a bit much as is too the $50 they will want to charge for the regular version.
If they know a game is only going to take 4 days to finish at most then the price should reflect that.

 

[Suicidal]

Yeah, games that feature enough entertainment to be worth your money are bad.

 

[Lumpy]

Depends on the kind of game. If it consists primarily of mindless combat, even if it's enjoyable for the first 10 hours it's going to get boring eventually.

 

[spiwak]

That's nuts-speak. Just look at a couple of the massively popular action games from the last few years. RE4 had a campaign longer than 20 hours and Half-Life 2 I think was about the same. Or Zelda with their 30+ hour games. If a game is good, then everyone wants it to be longer or provide tons of replay value. It's that simple.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's teh conspiracy!

Gamers no longer want to play games that last 60 or 100 hours according to Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack.

"Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. People don't want that any more. I don't care how good the game is, I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long," Dyack told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview published today.

" If we're going to craft an epic story we decided we had to divide it into manageable chunks for the consumer," he said, referring to Silicon Knights' proposed Too Human trilogy for Xbox 360...

 

[Kraszu]

Maybe he doesn't know about save option.

 

[Lumpy]

"Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. People don't want that any more. I don't care how good the game is, I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long," Dyack told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview published today.

Of course they've changed. I don't think anyone playing Thief though "How many fucking levels are there left before I finish this goddamn thing?", but rather "Hell yeah. Another level." Probably because the fun in a game should come from playing it, rather than finishing it.
Which doesn't seem to be the case anymore, what with games becoming non-interactive movies with boring combat inbetween every two bits of exposition.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Teh plot thickens!

"They're constantly referring at Valve to people who really think a lot about games and play games, and many of my adult friends never, ever finish games anymore. Like, they don't finish them. We just thought it would be nice to have a game where, if you play it, you probably will finish it, unless you just don't like it."

From there Wolpaw and Swift speculate on what this might mean for games in the future, pointing out that they can use the Steam stats system to monitor play and completion times for games played over Steam. It takes most players around three and a half hours to play through Portal apparently.

"it seems to be a trend. In Call of Duty 4, the single-player is awesome, but I think it took me five and a half hours or something. So it's not super-long either. That seems to be the trend. BioShock was pretty long, but it almost seems like a throwback, in how long it was."

I thought the biggest throwback was that the game lacked substance and had nothing but pretty visuals to offer, in which case it was definitely too long and overpriced.

 

[Shannow]

Every time someone invests 25 hours of their life into a game and then realises there's another 75 hours to go, they just can't stomach continuing and they walk away with a sour taste in their mouth

If the gameplay is crap.

- no matter how much fun they had with the game.

Yeah, I always get bored with sex when it takes longer than 40 minutes or when I have it more often than once a month
But it is nice of them to release their games in four pieces that cost 10€ instead of one piece that costs 40€.
That way you only blow 10€ on crap. That will probably help removing games from inventories

EDIT:

Maybe he doesn't know about save option.

LOL

 

[Herbert West]

Every time someone invests 25 hours of their life into a game and then realises there's another 75 hours to go, they just can't stomach continuing and they walk away with a sour taste in their mouth - no matter how much fun they had with the game.

There's a big [10 million people big] flaw in his reasoning and it's called World of Warcraft.

 

[Vault Dweller]

OMG! They are everywhere!

[Warren Spector]: "One-hundred-hour games are on the way out. How many of you have finished GTA? Two percent, probably. If we’re spending $100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level!"

That makes sense. How about making the first level the last for extra drama and urgency?

An interesting thought, but way off the mark if you ask me. Personally, I love long games because I feel like that way I got my money’s worth. To me, there’s nothing more frustrating than spending $60 on a game and then being finished with it in a couple days with no incentive to go back and play again. I think Spector’s comments bend more toward catering to casual, ADD gamers than the core audience that gets caught up in epic titles like the Final Fantasy series or GTA IV. While my wife will never sit down and play Oblivion from beginning to end, I can’t imagine going through a game like that and not hitting every guild quest and hidden dungeon that’s thrown in.

...

 

[Raapys]

Yah, someone should really tell this guy about how popular MMORPGs are.

 

[BearBomber]

Fucking great. Now that, what next? I've got an idea:

Gamers today don't want to play complicated gmes with bizarre gameplay so our new RTS will by long series of quick action events.

 

[MetalCraze]

So it looks like the next best thing shitty devs came up with this year.
Excusing their piss-poor games with a piracy is so 2007.
A new hot trend for 2008 - long games are shit - that's why there's nothing better than a short game for the same price of $50!

 

[Kraszu]

Every time someone invests 25 hours of their life into a game and then realises there's another 75 hours to go, they just can't stomach continuing and they walk away with a sour taste in their mouth - no matter how much fun they had with the game.

There's a big [10 million people big] flaw in his reasoning and it's called World of Warcraft.

But you can't finish WOW, and infinities have diferent rules.

 

[Black]

Fucking casuals. There's no such thing as "too much" of a good game, it's always not enough. More Torment dialogue? Yes plz. Mawr Arcanum? yes plz. Moar plot twists in Deus Ex? Fucking yes.

Tards playing shitty games are surprised that they want shorter games.
Well, here's a hint- PLAY A GOOD GAME.

 

[JarlFrank]

An interesting thought, but way off the mark if you ask me. Personally, I love long games because I feel like that way I got my money’s worth. To me, there’s nothing more frustrating than spending $60 on a game and then being finished with it in a couple days with no incentive to go back and play again. I think Spector’s comments bend more toward catering to casual, ADD gamers than the core audience that gets caught up in epic titles like the Final Fantasy series or GTA IV. While my wife will never sit down and play Oblivion from beginning to end, I can’t imagine going through a game like that and not hitting every guild quest and hidden dungeon that’s thrown in.

...

Well, this quote is actually good.
It shows that even stupid mainstream gamers who enjoy Oblivion like long games and would be disappointed if they were shorter. Especially with RPGs [even though you can't call Oblivion an RPG, but let's leave that one out right now]. If a gamer who enjoys Oblivion is ready to spend long fucking months with the game, the "Gamers want shorter games nowadays!" argument is just a sorry excuse for "Actually we're too lazy to make a long and interesting campaign."

 

[MisterStone]

"Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. " People don't want that any more. I don't care how good the game is, I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long," Dyack told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview published today.

Holy shit! In just the past few months people decided that they don't like long games anymore! How quickly things change.

So is he basing this shit on something (market research?), or is he dictating to us what we are supposed to like now?

 

[Saxon1974]

Wow the stupidity in the industry is endless. Is this what they teach at game develop schools now?

 

[BearBomber]

Classic game quote time!

Welcome to your doom!

 

[Xi]

This reminds me of the "Thin Crust Pizza." Fucking genius!