Audience wants shorter games - Argonauts dev Comments by Robert Purchese

"No longer are videogames almost exclusively played by 14 year-olds over summer vacations where they have days and days on end to play through these epic journeys,"

When was gaming ever like that?

I agree with this guy 100%. There is nothing worse than a great game that you never got to finish due to lack of time.

We can't afford/be bothered to wade through days and days of crap games, agreed.
Days and days of something as good as Deus Ex is a different matter.

TES: Oblivion says otherwise to this article.

It sounds like a bad excuse to spend less time making a game, coming with shorter game, but still charging full price.
What does the length of game have to do with whether people play it or not? I'm working adult, and yet I like it immensely if game tells a story I can participate in for days. If it's good. If it's bad, 15 minutes is enough for me.
Does he imply that games have to be played non stop from beginning to end? It's not like we don't have 'SAVE' option to take a break when it's needed.
He's not making any sense.
Unless he's a console person; those are notorious for making you play for as long as devs want, without ability to save where you want, only when game wants to save...

Death of the MMORPG: announced here.

adaptive game length, the quicker you play through the game the longer the game becomes! if you don't play it for a week skip a chapter.

Part of me agrees with the sentiment, the other part of me put 140 hours into Burnout Paradise, lord alone knows how many days into COD4 and has spent two months dipping in to GTA IV, before more recently popping back into Oblivion where I've probably invested 60 - 80 hours

I think there is room for long games in the market, and I don't think that just because Rise of the Argonauts is going to be, apparently, short, that Charley Price should make assumptions about how *all* gamers feel about this.

More of a problem is the number of *good* games that there are to play - each new one is a distraction from the ones that have gone before - hence I ended up finishing Mass Effect and Ninja Gaiden 2 and GTA IV (storyline) before 'completing' Oblivion.

I'm hoping for at least a pause before any new Great Thing comes along, to give me time to dedicate dozens of more hours to Oblivion and work through some of my other back-catalogue wanabees.

If you don't have the time to dedicate to the games, don't buy them?

I'd go for quality over quantity anyday

Not when this audience is paying more for games.

If they want to start making shorter and shorter games (just come off a project where they cut the last few levels due to budget concerns), then they need to start charging people less for those games end of story.

id rather have a game that lasts 20 hours and takes about 1 week to complete rather than a game thats not gonna last a weekend of playing, the GoW games are a good example of balance, its got a brilliant story line and lasts about 9 hours which isnt bad. but the Kingdom Hearts series is probably the best in terms of a great story line and length as KH 2 can be completed in 24hrs

in the cinima you pay the same to see a 80 minute film as you would a 3 hour one

this is non news though. there already are short and long games allowing people to chose. if you dont have time you dont complete it, big deal.

"if you dont have time you dont complete it, big deal"

Its like watching only the first part of a movie. Who would do that?

Shorter games with higher quality is the way to go.

translation: morons who play games once a week for 10 minutes can't be arsed learning the game, so we need to start making them dumb, quick fun.

Don't these devs realise that *except in a few rare cases* simple games that are "fun straight" away get really ***ing boring after about 2 hours?

"No longer are videogames almost exclusively played by 14 year-olds over summer vacations where they have days and days on end to play through these epic journeys,"

This man has *read my mind*!!

Hold on, the thing with Oblivion was that there were lots of small, 10-minute long quests. Oblivion, mission and gameplay-mechanic wise, could have passed on a portable!

Why do they have to be one or the other? There's enough games to satisfy both groups of people.

Personally i won't go near a short game. I don't buy many games because most of them are shit, so the ones I do buy, i want to invest a lot of time in.

And just because I like quantity, doesn't mean i dislike quality. Games can be long AND good. It just takes a good developer.

More games with the quality and length of Portal would be nice. I wouldn't pay £40 for them though.

Thanks for telling me what I want. Or is it just a poor excuse to hide that you had to scrap large sections of the game? I guess your games are not worth my money then.

I used to love being a student and being able to spend countless hours playing games.

By gamers, I'm assuming that Price is meaning Wii owners, because that's the biggest selling console of the current batach also with the highest number of casual gamers and they're the ones who probably don't want long games?

Personally, I like long games but at the same time I still like to mix them with the shorter ones as that means I can play more games. If developers are going to be making shorter games then does than mean the games will become cheaper? I bet they don't though. Making shorter games will be a dream for publishers as it means their developers can churn out more games and make them more money. It's no wonder so many third-parties are latching onto the Wii... it's instant money really.

@gooners2006 - GoW? Brilliant story? :?

Do you mean Gears of War or God of War? The former has a cliched, virtually non-existent storyline... I fail to see what was so brilliant about it myself. God of War on the other hand... well that WAS brilliant...

Two of the best games last year could be completed in five hours of less, Portal and COD 4. I get what this guy is saying and completely agree with him. However, I would be a bit pissed off if the next Zelda or Final Fantasy game was only ten hours long.
There has to be a market for both, just like there is a market for Ratatouille being 80 minutes long and Lord of the Rings being around 12 hours total ( Extended editions and all three put together ), and I do really like both these films it just depends what mood I am in.
But there are other games too, ones you can dip in and out of such as SMG or SMB where sometimes its just fun to go in and complete a few stars or levels but you can still have fun trying to get everything in the game.
All of these types of game deserve their place and lets not forget WOW, how many subscribers does that game have?

I'd definitely agree with him. I think my desire to get completely obsessed with a game has dropped off as I get older.

Take Oblivion: everyone raved about how many hundreds of hours they'd spent in it. 15 hours in I realised that it was basically a few hours of gameplay repeated many times over. That's fine for a while, but I just can't be bothered now.

Luckily, I don't have to put up with that any more, so I went and bought Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, DiRT and Ratchet and Clank and played them instead.

I'll probably go back to Oblivion at some point, but it's becoming increasingly unlikely.

Price - ""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.

What an odd thing to say... if I like a game, I mean really, really like a game, as I did GTA IV (100+ hours) and Oblivion (300+ hours) then I don't want it to end but it's not like I know how long I have left to finish it anyway, how would I if it's only the first time I've played it!!! Do people really think "Oh I'm enjoying this game, it's fun, but I can't be bothered to finish it because it's too damn long!". I mean doesn't that mean that they're NOT finding the game fun...? :?

if this guy wants shorter games, then he should put his words where his mouth is and ask/make games shorter in price

anyways, i lost all credibility in this developer and will not buy their game, will only rent it for a few hours, complete it and return it....i say that's fair :)

@Darren

I think his point is that they play the game for 25 hours, get bored of the repetition and stop. Which means:

- They don't get to see the whole story
- They remember the game as "that boring game I stopped playing", not "that great game with the cool ending" and are less likely to buy a sequel
- The developer has spent 75% of their budget on part of the game that much of their audience never sees, so the 25% the player has seen isn't as good

Personally, the 25 odd hours that GTAIV took to complete was about 5 hours too long, by the end it was really dragging.

@Zelos - Oblivion's main quest lasts 15-20 hours and if you want you can just do that and nothing else and still "finish" the game. The other quests and guilds are completely optional so you don't have to do them but they add an enormous amount of longevity and value to the game for those that do want it. Oblivion is a perfect example of a game that caters for casual and hardcore gamers alike and much like other sandbox games like GTA IV, it's perfect for dipping in and out of as you please.

Which is better an 8 hour game that leaves you disappointed at its brevity or a 100 hour one that offers lots of gaming and value for money? There's no reason a game can't last you several years... I've been playing Oblivion on and off for over two years now. Surely if more games lasted longer then you'd need to buy less? Or is THAT the REAL reason for the industry leaning towards shorter games, i.e. they can make and sell more for the same price they do now thus maximising their profits? I mean prior to this generation we had publishers griping about development costs so it all seems to make sense that they'd be pushing for shorter games. Right?

Great, they'll be offering a drastic reduction in the price of their games then. No? Didn't think so.

Frankly it's appalling how much shovelware that sells for the same RRP as sprawling epics like Mass Effect, MGS4, GTAIV et al.

Despite the fact I have clocked up well over 100 hours in Oblivion (and that's with just one character), I happen to agree with him.

Some games lend themselves to hours and hours of playtime, and I don't think they should go away, but for me at least, the perfect length for an action/cinematic game is about 8-10 hours. That's plenty of time to tell your story, and enables developers to cut out the weaker parts that are usually only added to pad out the length anyway.

edit: The developer has spent 75% of their budget on part of the game that much of their audience never sees

I think this is the most important point. I imagine this happens far, far more than people might think.

@Zelos - If someone stops playing a game part way through then that means it wasn't good or engrossing enough to keep people playing it. Thus it's the developer's fault for not making their game better not the gamer's. GTA IV is a wonderful game and if it wasn't for other games coming out that I wanted to play then I'd have completed it (I'm close to the end anyway). I do finish games but they tend to take a while due to the number of games I play. Oblivion took me about a year to completely finish all the main quests in and Kameo took me that length too!!! LOL

I've played many long games and if I feel compelled to finish them then that means it's a really great game in my book. I can't think of a long game recently that I've felt has dragged but then I do tend to enjoy long single player games, mostly because I'm not really interested in multiplayer modes so I feel they offer me value for money.

Anyway, don't some people play games like Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War online for dozens and dozens of hours? If you ask me, those are repetitive because stripped of the offline campaign's story mode they feel almost pointless to me.

@Darren

But the main quest is fairly uninspiring so far: perhaps if they hadn't spent so much of their dev budget on the side quests the Oblivion dungeons wouldn't have to be copy-pasted so much.

I'm fine with buying more games, I don't care about the 'value' I get out of my gaming pound that much. Hours of gaming per pound/dollar is pretty meaningless beyond a certain limit.

It would seem hard to please both parties, those who don't have enough time and those who DO want an epic adventure, but it's my idea right now, soon we may see my precious, soon...

Kameo only took me a week, but I had it on rental, so I probabbly couldn't afford to spend a year on it ;)

@Darren

"If someone stops playing a game part way through then that means it wasn't good or engrossing enough to keep people playing it"

Not really. Even the best game can become dull if it's repeated too many times. Portal was great fun, but I wouldn't want to play slight variations on the levels 30 times over.

IMHO, the GTAIV main storyline was about 5 hours too long, by the end it was really dragging.

I'll also add that there's a tendency with many games for the developers to concentrate too much on the multiplayer IMO, seemingly at the expense of a short single player game, e.g. Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, Halo 3, etc. That's fine if you enjoy playing those games online but what about those people that don't care for them? Should they be expected to pay £40 for what is essentially half a game? I'm not saying that those types of games should be 50+ hours long but of those mentioned I felt that they could have been 33-50% longer if less emphasis was placed on online multiplayer.

That's the reason that I love RPGs and sandbox games, both genres offer lengthy single player games and even if the latter has an online mode, like GTA IV and Saints Row, they don't feel like they've compromised the offline game.

NO WE DON'T!!

Hello Mr Games retailer i paid £40 for this game and it's just too long, i'd like LESS content for the same price if you please.

@Zelos - Portal is more of a puzzle-type game that doesn't require you to sit down and play it in one sitting or over the space of a week. Why couldn't it have 30 or 100 levels such that you could continue to dip into it for years? I've read comments from people who've finished the game and felt it was too short for example.

@Darren

Because given their budget the later puzzles would be less and less inventive and the Glados voiceover would have been stretched out and less funny.

Portal (and Heavenly Sword, Uncharted etc.) took their game mechanic and story and created great experiences. Another 30 chapters of all-but randomly-generated enemies would not have made Uncharted more fun.

Edit: Thinking about it, wasn't Portal pretty much designed to be played it a few sittings? Stripped of the context of the story, the drive to escape and Glados it would just be yet another quirky puzzler, IMHO.

Multiplayer games have social and competitive aspects that keep them fresh longer than single player games. There's also the fact that the community itself evolves, so you have to keep changing strategy.

@skillian
edit: The developer has spent 75% of their budget on part of the game that much of their audience never sees

I think this is the most important point. I imagine this happens far, far more than people might think.

I'm not entirely sure that's the case. Quite a few games I've finished recently seems to count the last 25-50% of the game where it can just shove difficulty ramping shit in to prolong how long a game takes, instead of giving you new content in the same proportions as the rest of it. Alone in the Dark is my recent bugbear:

Putting in stupid timed puzzle and driving sections when you've been given control over a clubfooted man with twitchy arm syndrome does not a fun endgame make. Burning the Roots of Evil just turned into mindless drudgery, and the final "Race to the Museum" was bloody awful.

Thinking about it, the only game I can recently think of where I think where they have invested consistently throughout the whole game is MGS4, where if you didn't get to Act4, you've probably only seen half it. The film, that is. :)

"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."

So wrong IMO. I enjoy 100 hour epics. If someone does that every time, they need more patience (unless they just don't really have the time, in which case fair enough).

Also, longer games + enjoyment = value for money

Oh and:

Shorter games + Huge enjoyment + Cheaper price = even better value for money

lazy bastards, any excuse to charge more for less game.

Doesnt that depend largley on the genre ?

Most old arcade games never had an end. you just kept going and going.... Even arcade games these days seem to have an end.
Kids today .... tch tch.

I see both sides of this argument, on the one hand, I think it's an attempt to dodge the sharply rising dev costs, but on the other Naughty Dog unashamedly made a short game of the highest calibre with Uncharted and although it was only 8hrs worth, it was pure, perfectly refined enjoyment with no annoying fillers or lazy backtracking.
If it's done right, then great, but in the most part it'll just be an excuse for devs to make shorter games with no extra quality.

@HiddenAway

It's incredibly simplistic to equate the value of a game with its duration. Nobody does that with books or films.

Why would anyone bother wasting 100 hours of their life on a game that's only kind of fun and requires lots of patience to trudge through?

(oh, and hi fellow guardianista!)

@Zelos - Re: Portal - From what I played of it, the game would work just as well as a series of puzzle rooms without a story or voice-over, that's the point I'm making when I said the game could have 30 or 100 levels for that perfect dip-in-and-play appeal. Jeez, the extra levels could be in the form of an additional mode to the "story" one. Anyway aren't the developers working on a Portal 2, i.e. they're just going to sell these extra levels at extra cost?

@Zelos - "Why would anyone bother wasting 100 hours of their life on a game that's only kind of fun and requires lots of patience to trudge through?"

The point is that they won't, surely? I mean if I'm not enjoying a game then I'll stop playing it, I won't persevere with it for 100 hours just for the sake of getting my money's worth out it. I doubt most other people would either, you only play a game for as long as you're enjoying it. But if a game only lasts 8 hours then it's surely poorer value than a 100+ hour one that you played for 50, even if you never finished it? ;)

For every person that thought Oblivion was boring to play for 5 hours there'll be someone else who loved it for over 50 so it goes back to someone's earlier point that there's room for long and short games, it's up to the individual which they prefer. When games cost £40, you surely want more value for your money not less even if you don't complete them?

Sure, there's a market for both types of game, and I'll happily play a long game if it's good enough. But he's a commercial developer, so he has to target his games to the people who are going to give him the most money.

Well i kinda agree with him. Even if I’m enjoying a game immensely, if it drags on too long, i never find myself finishing them. I think it’s a combination of my now limited playtimes but still wanting to play the latest releases...

I guess I'm in the minority though :)

On the plus though, it keeps the trade-in value of most things quite high ;)

Trying to squeeze more money from people is, sadly, common nowadays (or perhaps just more pronounced than usually).
And making short games that gravitate towards five minute arcade game entertainment is worryingly common.

Take mass effect for example. I got it, based on bioware reputation of making long, story based games.
Truth to tell, while a decent game, it didn't quite live up to my expectations. That's for two reasons.

1. While idea of the story was on the usual high level, execution was lacking. Characters in game were introduced in a
sketchy way at best, giving me impression that one was not supposed to talk to team members, but focus on arcade
shooter part of the game. Which is putting the whole concept of story game on its head, taking huge chunk of immersion
and fun out of the equation. While characters were not at half life 2 rebel teammate level, they were close.
Compared to Knights of the Old republic, it's oversimplified in character story department, to the point of being
detrimental to the whole game experience.

2. Game length. Having gotten it around friday, and knowing from reviews and forums that it's *not* long, I still didn't expect
to finish it around saturday evening. Watching end credits, I've scratched my head and thought to myself:
That's it?? Second time I did everything one can do in game, not even using taxis at citadel. Total game time, 40 hours.
Too long for arcade game or a shooter, maybe, for for a story driven game, that's...sad.

Bottomline. If different devs want to make shorter games, that's their right. No one out there to tell them what to make and
what not to make. But when they make arbitrary judgements saying that this is good, and this is bad, while a lot of people
disagrees, then I have a problem with that.

PS. Whole argument about long games not being fun is flawed. Length of a game has nothing to do with enjoyment.
If devs make a good game, people enjoy it, and being able to enjoy it for longer is certainly better than enjoying it
for a few moments, right?