Long games are dead, says Spector Comments by Robert Purchese

Is it national "Games Industry Mouthpiece Say Something Fucking Stupid Day" ?

I hate this thinking, it's idiotic. If the quality is there, gamers will play a long game.

The way thing are going he is right. Everyone seems more interested in the casual gaming as that's where the money is now. Us "hardcore" gamers are becoming less important now mum dad and gran are all having a go. Thanks Ninty, thanks a lot.

I sense a PC gaming revival in the next few years.

Finished GTA as in getting 100% score? Nope, thanks. Finished GTA as in getting storyline done, having fun and enjoying the free-roam. Yes, please! I finished it around 70+hrs gametime and loved every minute of it. :)

It's bigger than that!

MAKING SWEEPING GENERALISATIONS BASED ON LOCAL MINIMA/MAXIMA....IS DEAD!

So what he means is that he can make more money on short games that take less time and money to build, but retail for the same as long games. Gamers end up spending more as they have to buy more titles.
He is a nob jockey.

What it boils down to is he's too lazy to make a proper game anymore.

I for one prefer quality over quantity any day! 6 - 8 hours for campaign is the sweet spot imo. Ive completed the GTAIV storyline in about 18 hours and that felt like a shore towards the end imo.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is more my kind of game in that way. Short - but very very sweet.

Yeah. Everyone wants small, casual games which don't require a large commitment of time. Like World of Warcraft.

GTA isn't a good example, either. Surely, just by driving around the city for an hour or so, listening to the radio and occasionally shooting people, you've actually "experienced" 60% of what the game is about. It's actually the ideal example of exactly the type of long game people should be making. It's a long game which you can play in twenty minute - half/hour instalments or seventeen hour marathons, depending on your lifestyle/commitments.

I don't see long books on the way out?

I don't know. I half agree. COD4 was brilliant but short but probably my favourite games of all time are Final Fantasy and zelda games so I do like long involved games as well. Guess it's just finding the time

Gaming time grows thinner with age, I'll give him that. Nowadays, if I manage to play for 1 constant hour per day I'm happy man...

I love the current crop of 'self justification' currently sweeping the industry. If he moved to Rockstar I would be expecting 'Sand box gaming the only way forward'. Long games are not dead. Short games are not dead. Gamers prefer variety and quality. His one size fits all commentary is a tad naive.

I finished the GTA story in 29 hours. Loved it. But I don't spend that long on a game unless it's mindblowingly spectacular. There are just too many good games coming out these days that if it's more than 10 hours and isn't a 94+ scoring game, it doesn't get a look in for me. The shorter the better. Games like GTA are the exception. I like my games like Heavenly Sword, Gears and Halo, 6-10 hours long.

He's got a point; at some point most games start feeling like a chore. "Casual gamers" would like to get on with it. There's a reason that most feature films lasts about 2 hours and not 70 hours :)

However - GTA IV is a rather bad example. That is an open world game, and they need to be huge. OK so Rockstar went over the top, but still: an open world game that feels constricted is not really all that open. So them games need to contain hundreds of hours of gameplay - but the main plot might be made clearer and even easier to complete, with side quests, exploration, co-op and online being the real time-sink.

The thing is - if the GTA IV story could be finished inside 12 hours of focused gameplay... I still probably would have been doing side missions and races with Brucie, not to mention going to Split Sides with Little Jacob - which is what I'm doing righjt now anyway. The point is: why not do both, and statisfy both?

Will I ever listen to all the radio stations, to completion? Will I complete all the stunt jumps? Will I see all the performances at the clubs?

Most likely not. And that is perhaps what makes GTA IV so great. Even though it does become a little boring and unwieldly at times. But this game is special, in a sea of shovelware this game stands out as - dare I say it - a work of interactive art. Maybe 99 % of the people who have bought it won't finish it - they won't get to see the whole picture - but that's the thing with art. You don't neccesarily finish looking at a sculpture, or a picture, or a dancer - you just admire it until you sort of thet the idea, or until you're full, and then you walk away. Sure, there's a market for disney shovelware, but don't believe that is the only business model in the industry. Just because the Wii is so poular with "casual gamers" right now, that don't mean that all restaurants must become McDonalds francises instead, or that all movie producers have to start making porn instead of character-driven drama.

i think long games are fine if you can play them in small (say 1 hr) chunks. However if you make the game good enough people will play it till the end no matter how long it is

Gaming time grows thinner with age, I'll give him that. Nowadays, if I manage to play for 1 constant hour per day I'm happy man...

exactly. this is why he's saying what he's saying - the gaming demographic is maturing. i've read various studies placing the average age of gamers at mid-20s, up to early 30s - there aren't many 30+ yr olds that can afford the amount of time a really long game needs, we've all got wives, children, jobs etc. obviously, most posters here are probably in the 'hardcore' category, ie uni/school students, unemployed, single - people with lots of time to spare, so will rail against shorter games wherever they can. but in terms of most normal gamers (who fall halfway between some invented hardcore/casual divide), we just don't get the time to play epics any more.

the other point is the amount of resources it takes to crate a game - as he says, if they're gonna put 100s of man-hours into creating a game (at vast expense), they want most people to actually see what they've worked on...

i think you have hit it on the head about the bitesize chunks paulf. That is why I really enjoyed Oblivion.

also being able to save/restart at any point would be really useful, one of the worst gaming experiences is when you are half way through something that will take say 1hr to do and something interrupts you so what do you do continue and ignore the interruption, or switch off and start again later (losing the time you've put in).

advance wars is a great example of getting this right (maybe because of the turn based structure) but really you can save/restart at any point - hence being my friendly tube companion for a good 9 months :)

long games are teh awesome.
Fuck off with your casual disney crap
Bring on DX3

What's wrong with both? There's a market for both - longer games like WoW and GTA4 have proven that many times over, as have shorter games like COD4. I'm not a student, I work for a living, I have friends and responsibilities, but I still love a long, well-made epic. It's only the crappy games that feel like a chore after a certain amount of time, or those gamers with a mysterious urge to complete a game as fast as humanly possible.

Plus... what's wrong with black leather and guns?!

if you say so mate....

Tbh I think different coloured motion controllers in the shape of cooking implements being released every month is the future of gaming. Anything with any more scope or ambition than that should be canned.

I think you have to make the distinction between short games and “casual” games.

As has already been said, as you get older you have less time, so short games are good. However that doesn’t equate to you wanting to play simple short games. You still want to play the same type of game, but in a shorter form. Half life 2 Episode 1 & 2 for example.

I think he's making a Mickey Mouse RPG.

Some of my favourite games recently have been short (Portal, Beyond Good and Evil, Half-Life Episodes) and no worse for it.

I only have a problem with long games if things begin to feel repetitive.

The best long games are either open-world with plenty of short missions (GTA, Oblivion) or are linear with evolving gameplay and environments to keep things fresh (HL2, COD4). If the play stays the same, long games do begin to feel like a chore to complete (Gears of War and Bioshock were pushing it in my opinion).

So Specter has a point, but only if making games long for the sake of being long.

I half agree, though i see something like GTA as a single player MMO something to dip into when i've got a couple of hours to kill. It balances the games that don't last long enough for how much they cost.

You just have to look at GTA's sales figures to know that there are plenty of people want that kind of lengthy involved experience.

The problem he has is that people will complain if a game is too short (see Heavenly Sword) but just won't complete it if it is too long. Of course the quality of the game makes a big difference, I've completed Oblivion, Mass Effect and Lost Oddessey but not Two Worlds. Secondly how much time is needed to invest in the game? I only play MGS4 at the weekends incase I have to sit through a 90 min cut scence but play Ninja Gaiden whenever as I know it won't be too far until the next check point (or I die).

So long as there are long adventure games (especially long adventure games like Deus Ex) I will play them.

"If we're spending USD 100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level!" he added.

But why?

Surely if they are spending USD 100 million on a game, they just want people to buy it. I don't imagine rockstar are crying over their piles of gold because not everybody has finished the story, or the time and effort they have put into hiding pigeons has been wasted on the majority of the game buying public.

Surely this depends entirely on content? I've completed almost every game I've bought, but the ones I haven't completed were left that way because they were crap...

I like long games. I like games where I really get immersed into them. I don't like games that force you to play for hours until you find the next save point (consoles, I'm looking at you), and I don't like games that make it hard to jump back into them if you've been away for a couple of weeks and forgotten exactly what you were meant to be doing.

In short - people don't finish crap games, length has nothing to do with it (in my opinion).

Deus Ex is still one of my favourite games of all time. Mainly due to the depth, but also the variety of ways which you can approach the missions, the number of paths available to you, even the minutia of the game's plot which you can influence.

Heck, even if games are shorter, doesn't mean they can't be deep! Better a short game with many paths through it(literal paths), than a long linear game which simply begins to feel like a repetitive chore.

I hope Mickey Mouse will have many choices in his way to the warehouse to take down an illicit generator, protected by weak groups of NSF. Rewind.

I have the key to the city!

I rather like long games too sometimes. At other times I want games that are short I suppose. Story driven games are still high of my list of loves though, and they tend to be long by their very nature.

I really like a lot of the stuff WS has done in the past, and hold him in far higher esteem than other apparent visionaries that I won't mention. However, this does all smack of "dev says how thing he is working on right now is exactly the thing he wants to be working on". He is hardly likely to say "I love making long story driven adventure games, far more than the 3 hour stuff Disney are making me work on" is he, so I take it all with a pinch of salt.

Eventually, every visionary becomes redundant, and the best thing they can do at that stage is talk PR without getting in the way of proper development (again, naming no names, but I'm sure some spring to mind). I respect WS a great deal, his record speaks for itself really. I'm interested to see what he works on next, even if it turns out not to be my bag.

P.s. People who use the word lazy in this sort of context have no f*cking clue what they are talking about. Making games is not the same as making little houses out of lego you know. Its a complex business, with no one person calling all of the shots. And to suggest that games that take less time to play must obviously take less time to develop is just idiocy.

Well I think Resident Evil 0,1,2,3,CV all got the length of game about right RE4 on the other hand isn't something you can play through in a single sitting

Hope games are not as long as Gears of War, oh wait...........

i LOVE long games.

I also wonder how this links to his previous statements about longing to return to the deus ex franchise

I agree with Warren Spector

Another thing: when 100 million dolars is spent on making a gam, it's not like 99 of those millions were spent on level- and quest design, with the rest being game mechanic programming. It's rather the opposit: the gameplay IS the game, while the quests, the levels and the charaters you get to interact with (IE shoot in the face) simply allows the gamer (customer) to experience said game(play).

So - a game that allows the customer to drive all sorts of cars, helicopters and boats + shoot all kinds of weapons + go to clubs et cetera et cetera - just vide variety of differen gameplay mechanics - needs to give the customer a lot of time to enjoy and experience thaose mechanics. Makes sense, no?

Whereas a game that is basically about just running and gunning don't really need to be all that long. That would certainly become boring fast.

One thing tho: GTA IV could hav had a lot more flexible retry system. Retrying a mission always starts immediately after the cutscene briefing - which isOK - but the commences with a long drive over to the first part of the objective, which is useually to enter a car or something that starts the real mission. Having to do those lengthy drives again and againg are gettin on my nerves, it's just meaningless repetition that fluffs the game up dozens of boring hours. I have started hopping in taxis for all my dates and "hanging out" things; driving is just too boring - picking up people, going to a club, having fun for 5 minutes and then dropping the contact off again is really pretty boring. So: I'm all for getting rid of boring time-fillers like that.

black leather carrying guns

It's all about guys in black leather, carrying swords.

Or even better, gals in black leather...

Sorry, but anyone who thinks GTA IV is a piece of "interactive art" don't know what they're talking about. Killer7 was art, Ico was art, System Shock 2 was art, there are a few more but I've made my point.

GTA IV is just a myriad of poor design choices masquerading as an openworld game. It's substance and usage of time and space was severely limited. A visionary game should not be judged on size and certainly not on subject matter. I remember reading an article by a movie critic that said GTA IV's story was better than the majority of movies released so far this summer. Unfortunately the guy was talking shit, because GTA IV's story was an amateur take on ground treaded already by Coppola and Scorcese, and Tarantino to an extent. It also is artificially lengthened to a ridiculous degree. Pacing to me is the most important thing in a story and GTA IV is hampered by both poor gameplay and story pacing.

The game is the most overrated game of all time, a piece of shit that doesn't do a thing to advance on it's already rather superficial predecessors. The newer hardware just exposes it even more. And that brings me to what Warren Spector said. Frankly I can't say if he's onto something or not. I mean, GTA IV, for better or worse (way worse) did sell very well, so I guess in a way it proves him wrong, yet he's right to a degree because not very many games commands the sheep quite like GTA does through marketing and appealing to the lowest common denominator. Dues Ex certainly didn't take the easy route, and game that doesn't is going to struggle if it's high budget.

This can't be the same man that bore Deus Ex.

'Sorry, but anyone who thinks GTA IV is a piece of "interactive art" don't know what they're talking about.' so the 66+ professional reviewers who rated it one of the best games of all time don't know what they are talking about? overated maybe but calling it a 'piece of shit' just shows a lack of knowledge of the medium as a whole

Can anyone tell me how quickly you can actually finish GTA4?

I think I've invested like 17 hours or something on it. I'm on Alguauaa, whatever, the Manhattan bit, and I would really like to see the end one day.

"so the 66+ professional reviewers who rated it one of the best games of all time don't know what they are talking about?"

They don't rate games as art, they just rate them based on a mix of hype, marketing and schewed opinion. You want to disagree with my assessment, that is fine, but you're doing yourself, not only me, a disservice to try and bring those idiots into this because no, they don't know what they're talking about and they rarely do, because they're not and never were very good critics. Have the balls to forge your own argument about why GTA IV is great or don't bother.

@hybridial and paulf

You are both wrong. It's neither sh't or art.

It's a very good game. End of. Nothing more, nothing less.

Uh-huh, long games are dead...?

Please! I want less content for my money! 'kaythxbai!

...moron.

I don't see why i should have to forge an argument against someone who's most eloquent point is concluded with .. a piece of shit'
and since when did you have the authority/experience/knowledge to criticise the gaming press in such a generalised fashion, I respect your right to have an opinion but when you use it in such an uncultured fashion I cant take it seriously.

"when did you have the authority/experience/knowledge to criticise the gaming press in such a generalised fashion"

Since when did they have the right to judge games for everyone else? Where did they get the authority/experience/knowledge? I'll give you a clue, it's from the same place as everyone else. I don't respect them, any more or any less than I respect you, in terms of deciding what is a good game or not. That is, none of you are telling me what is a good game with any kind of authority. And I suppose I did let me eloquence go a little, I guess I got my arguments mixed up. Calling GTA IV that should be more my response to the guy who said it was just a very good game. Much simpler argument, and I'm quite happy to go that way, it's just a lot easier and I don't feel the urge to slap someone for saying it's a good game than when I do when someone tries to claim it's something more than that.

"100-hour games are on the way out. How many of you have finished GTA? Two per cent, probably. If we're spending USD 100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level!" he added.

No, that's up to the player.

Some people play to the end, some half way, some start over a couple times. There's allot of game there so you can do what you want, that's the beauty of it.

It's not the end that matters, or even reaching it, it's the journey that's important.

Then again not every game needs to be a 100 hours long, it all depends on the experience you are trying to make.

Just don't force a particular length onto a game because you think players might not make it to the end.