Long games ruin fun!

[Dire Roach]

I totally get what this guy is saying. It's like, I buy a long game and I'm having a blast with it, then BAM, along comes a new game that I must buy immediately and it sucks me in entirely. Then I remember about the previous game and realize I totally lost all interest in continuing it. And then the cycle repeats itself.

If all games were as short as Portal and CoD4, then the industry might just have a shot at keeping up with my uncontrollable consumer whore habits!

 

[Fat Dragon]

Depends on the type of game. If it's something like, say, a FPS I usually expect it to be only around 8 to 10 hours. Any longer than that and I just get bored with it since most of the time all you're doing is shooting at enemies the whole time, maybe doing a few boring puzzles along the way (those shitty see-saw puzzles in Half-Life).

RPGs though, it doesn't really matter if it has a short story as long as it has a ton of replay value and allows you to experience something different on a new play through. Fallout 1 was a pretty short game, but I'm pretty sure everybody here has played through that game multiple times.

 

[gamefan]

I totally get what this guy is saying. It's like, I buy a long game and I'm having a blast with it, then BAM, along comes a new game that I must buy immediately and it sucks me in entirely. Then I remember about the previous game and realize I totally lost all interest in continuing it. And then the cycle repeats itself.

If all games were as short as Portal and CoD4, then the industry might just have a shot at keeping up with my uncontrollable consumer whore habits!

Portal wouldn't of been good as a long game, it would of gotten repetitive and boring pretty quick.

Cod4 sucked compaired to cod 2 and 3, It was to short, i beat it in like 4-5 hours.

 

[pkt-zer0]

Well, it certainly is a way to solve the problem of players not being motivated to finish the game. I could imagine this actually being the proper solution, too: if you want to make a game for anyone and everyone, chances are that the majority of them indeed do not care too much for the game. That would imply some sort of investment, one that not everyone is willing to make.

Of course, it's also possible that after having realized that higher development costs would result in shorter games, they figured they'd need some excuse for that. Kinda like the "low sales -> blame piracy" thought process.

Also, I wouldn't mind Rise of the Argonauts only being 25 hours long. Heck, I'll be pleasantly surprised if they manage to fit that much interesting content in the game.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Its all just a psycho trick to convince the morons, that they want shorter games for the same price. It might actually work, like saying First-Person is high-tech-modern.

 

[kingcomrade]

Classic game quote time!

Welcome to your doom!

 

[Raapys]

Well, it does make sense from a game developer point of view. Shorter games means we have to buy more games to keep occupied.

 

[elander_]

Episodic games would actually be cool from a players perspective. I would not mind paying 5 euros for the first episode of say 10 hours, just to see if it's good and later buy more episodes if i'm having fun.

 

[Zakhal]

Portal wouldn't of been good as a long game, it would of gotten repetitive and boring pretty quick.

Cod4 sucked compaired to cod 2 and 3, It was to short, i beat it in like 4-5 hours.

Portal was also much cheaper than CoD4. Im usually happy if I get atleast somthing like 1 hour of entertainment for 2-3€. Thats true with portal but not with CoD4 which was more like 8,5€ for 1 hour.

 

[WalterKinde]

The problem is they won't sell it at 5 euros.
They'll probably up that price by 50% or more for episodic gaming.
Which would mean it would be cheaper to just wait for them to finish the game and buy it as a collector's edition with all the episodes.
Then they'd say nobody wanted to buy their games or it was the evil evil pirates when in fact it was the price they were charging per episode.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Every time I see crap like this I can't help but think the next 60$ I spend on games should go to someone like the developers of Dwarf Fortress or Cave Story.

 

[Kavax]

:shock: And I thought that all the games I liked (Fallouts, Arcanum, PS: T, Ultima VII, Morrowind...) were too short!

 

[Ismaul]

Good content can be as long as it wants, really. But filler, the more you have, the lesser game you end up with. NWN2 would be so much better if it was shorter and more focused on the main storyline.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I agree with the authors VD is bashing. It's like when you're in love. I mean, yes it's nice and pleasent and all, but the lack of perspective of when would it all end is really troubling.

 

[Dire Roach]

Here's a good way to put it in perspective: a couple of weeks ago was my 25th birthday. When I realized I still had around 75 more years left to live, I just couldn't stomach continuing it. But I'm a hardcore gamer who always unlocks 100% achievements so I decided to take the gun out of my mouth and put it back in the sock drawer.

 

[Jabbapop]

lol speaking of excessively long games i wish they'd just shorten baseball to 4 innings m i rite kekekek what a snoozefest

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

I'd rather 5 hours of good content that's highly replayable than 25+ hours of crap that only my masochism is keeping me going through. That's just me though. Anyway I think game length as a selling point or a barometer for how "hardcore"something is can be a bit asinine. Because basically game length is usually some inflated number that is, like just about everything else, a meaningless buzzword.

And to be honest...I'm not really a fan of long games. I prefer shorter ones that are replayable. Calling the demise of 75+ hour campaigns a symptom of the death of good gaming would be silly. Heck, shorter games are usually a good thing...it's just that the industry half-asses it...as always.

 

[Raapys]

I'd rather 5 hours of good content that's highly replayable than 25+ hours of crap that only my masochism is keeping me going through..

Yes, but I'd rather have 25+ hours of good content than only 5 hours of good content.

 

[BearBomber]

I'd rather add balanced multiplayer and have unlimited numer of hours of good content.

 

[gc051360]

Yeah...because when I'm having fun....the first thing I ask is "When will this shit end?!?!"

 

[bobisimo]

This is one pretty hilarious pile on. I'm surprised no one is picking up on the other side of the argument.

You know where this comes from? Surveys. A company like BioWare ships a title like Baldur's Gate II or a company like Bethesda ships a title like Morrowind or Oblivion and then asks 100,000 people how they liked the ending and find out that only 5000 actually finished it. When asked why the rest didn't, people say it was too long.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of uber-long games, but yeah - speaking as a consumer, I still want my money's worth. That said, it depends on the game and how fun it is, of course, but even at its most fun a game longer than 75-100 is probably too long.

It's kind of like movies, in a way. Movie-makers think 2 hours is a magic number, and 2.5 or 3 is going to be this epic experience that people fall in love with. Sometimes a movie really only needs about an hour or 90 minutes to tell a good story.

Anyway, I'm getting off the point.

The point is that the developers start thinking about putting all this effort into this enormous game and no one seeing it and get annoyed. Why spend so much time and effort on content that no one is seeing? Are you catering to the hard-core or the casual? Honestly, it doesn't even matter.

If you put effort into creating a quality 200-hour game and 1/20th of your audience gets to the end, then you wasted a lot of effort for a very small number of people. If you put effort into creating a quality 40-hour game, and 80 % of your audience made it to the end, the ratio works a lot better. Your sales are the same either way.

 

[gamefan]

Long games can be cool and bad.

If the game is fun and stays fun being long is a good thing.(deus ex)

If the game is crap or repetitive it should be short instead of stretched.(Kotor 2)

If a game is short but offers replay ability then fine.(Toee,Stalker,Gears of war)

If a game is short but does not have replay ability then it kinda sucks in the value area.(Mass effect)

 

[Serious_Business]

You have to wonder who he's talking to. Gamers 'don't want games to be long anymore' - obviously this means that since there are more casual gamers now, the majority does not want long games, right. But why is he assuming that the base (non casual gamers) would suddenly not like long games anymore, and try to convince us of that? If you're a casual gamer, you don't care, and you're not reading this. If you aren't, then you are a bit baffled, to say the least. It's really just justifying the laziness / lack of ressources / focus on unimportant things in today's game industry, I know, but this kind of bullshit is infectuous. It's not even necessary. Is this going to make people buy the game more, seriously? 'YOU DO NOT WANT GAMES TO BE LONG. THIS IS MY DESIGN PHILOSPHY, IT IS PRETTY DEEP. THIS GAME IS SHORT, BUY IT.' I guess the industry just needs to slowly accept that games are going to be short, this is pretty much evil shit, Codex rally to the flag, for the republic

 

[MisterStone]

Look folks... people don't like long games any more. Got that? PEOPLE DON'T LIKE LONG GAMES. Long games are old hat... last year's moldy garbage. Short games are the shit. Short games! All of you long game fuckheads are a bunch of fucking ludites. Long games as outdated as turned based combat, text passages as dialog and restricted game saving points. We will not be held back by a bunch of pathetic retro-gamer geeks who can't handle change and innovashun in game design! Get with it losers!

 

[Zomg]

It's just pure rationalization around the fact that they still have to sell games 50ish dollars new while their budgeting quadruples every generation. You can make a good argument that most of the length of stereotypically long older games like Baldur's Gate is generated by trash, but not that shortness is a virtue ceteris paribus.