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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, the first instalment of which is currently in development. "At the same time we wanted to do a game that it has a chance to evolve and take advantage of development changes.
"We think the future is all about content. By getting our flow of process together for the first game we can then look at it and evolve the way we work for the next games in the series. We didn't want to have to start from scratch again after the first Too Human. Is it gutsy to promise so much? Yes, but making games is hard."
However, Dyack warns that even if you split your story into chunks, you can't expect every player to keep up. "Each game needs to be self contained," he argues. "That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies. Too Human will be self-contained across each game of the trilogy.
"There'll be more background for those that play all three. It's not a hook, it's a promise that if players want something epic, this is where to come. What we're trying to do is create something that moves the industry towards a very content-rich environment. I love trilogy books and series. We've got a lot of things to say in Too Human and we couldn't do it in anything shorter than three games."
For more of Dyack's views on the current state of the games industry, including his belief that consoles must converge into one format to become mass-market, read the rest of the interview.
Part one, in which Dyack addresses the role of previews and the press, can be found elsewhere on the site.
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JediMasterMalik
03/05/07 @ 10:52
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So too human shorter than expected?
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 13:45
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TwistidChimp
03/05/07 @ 10:54
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Yeah well, I'm not so sure he can speak for "WHAT PEOPLE WANT" Short games can be great, so can long games, its when the quality is sacrificed for length that you get into trouble.
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I wonder if that includes people who spend hundreds of hours with online multiplayer.
Personally I like 60 - 100 hour long games*cough* RPG's *cough*, it makes me feel like I get my money's worth when i plonk £40 on a game even if it takes a month or two to complete. But yeah if the game is REALLY 20 hours long and the other 40 hours is needlesly filling the blanks by collecting stuff to just waste time (Wind Waker I'm looking at you) then that's where i agree with him.
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 11:58
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kangarootoo
03/05/07 @ 11:01
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I think it depends on the game in question. You try telling a hoard of Oblivion fans that gamers don't want 100+ hours opf gameplay.
"That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies." Err, yeah. Which is why they sank without a trace. @itamae Nail, head, hit on. |
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jack_klugman
03/05/07 @ 11:02
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Arguably you need to assess your priorities if you have 100 hours to pour into a video game. More high quality, film length games please!
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It's nice to have the choice, though, isn't it?
So you can burn through GTA: San Andreas in Storyline-Mission-completing mode, or spend... well.... bloody ages in there just tooling about (as I still am). Can't decide, really... edit: I, personally, DO want to spend 60 - 100 hours in games - so I simply have to disagree with Dyack on this.
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 12:04
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The_Aardvark
03/05/07 @ 11:05
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I wouldn't mind shorter games - it's rare that I finish games these days. But I want shorter, cheaper games, not just shorter.
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ORLY all of you??
Guess that is why the Wii is sinking... oh.. er... wait. The fact is that the hardcore crowd always think they need long games.. in reality short games are more fun for more people. We have many games and we want to move on to the next experience. Some games you can play for very long time... and some games even have this "just play for 30 minutes" quality that you can repeat for many hours but few of these "epic" games can keep me entertained longer than 20 hours.
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 12:08
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Shorter games that cost the same amount as the old longer games.
Shorter games that don't distract you from buying a new game by not having finished them yet. I wonder what I'll be told I want next? "Gamers want their games sooner rather than later, so we'll be stripping out time consuming features which gamers can then buy later as premium rate DLC. It's all about choice!" |
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Devs should just focus on the games themselves, too much time is wasted with the technology behind then (Gabe I'm looking at you). 10-20 hours for older gamers seem fine, but kids have loads of free time so they might not like this formula.
As for shelling out 40 notes or more for games, well gaming isn't as mainstream as film.. Which is why EA is the only real winner here, seeing that their development costs are controlled while managing to sell truckloads of their rehashed tosh. Personally I'd like to be given a choice of shorter campaigns in (J)RPGs.. 100+ hours of playtime is simply too much for me and many others who don't want that kind of involvement with their games. |
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Well clearly he is wrong. Yes of course there are some people who don't want to play games that last 60-100 hours. But similarly there are obviously lots of people who do like games like this. There also must be a third group of people who like getting stuck in to games for 60-100 hours but don't have the time. Its fucking stupid to make make a categorical statment like that.
I think however that there is a more universal consensus among gamers that playing games that are too short is really fucking annoying. And he is entirely wrong with his Lord of the Rings comment, that it was a flaw that no film stood on its own. How was it a flaw? I can think of plenty of other flaws those films had but that is not one of them. All he has done with this interview is show that he has no idea what people want. He certainly has no idea what I want. |
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I prefer my games to be 15-25 hours at least as I'm not a bigger lover of online gaming (which seems to be where most of the longevity comes from on the 360) and never will be. The odd 100+ hour RPG like Oblivion is most welcome but generally I'd rather play more, shorter games as opposed to less, longer ones as there's only so many hours in the days and being a multiformat gamer means I'm not short on choice.
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I think he's right. Lots of people just don't have the time to finish most lengthy games.
Look at stats for Ep1: http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/ A total play time of 5ish hours, and less than half the players have actually made it to the end. It would be interesting if we could see stats like that for other games. |
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crazyhorse174
03/05/07 @ 11:24
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Question then: Do we get to pay less for shorter games, than longer ones then?
Or do we get shafted for the same money, for a shorter experience? |
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What a load of bull. Games like Okami we're like 60 hours worth of content and I loved it. Not talking about megahits like Oblivion, Warcraft, etc.
He's just saying. Let's split 60 hours up into 3 parts and get 180 euro's instead of 60. Like I'm really selling out 60 for a 10 hour game. Well, if they made it 30, that would be different. I really don't understand some of these pricing rates. FFXII for 50 while GoW2 was like 60 euro. I could breeze through the latter in 14 hours. Sure is was hot, but so was FFXII. |
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Seems like he isn't advocating shorter games at all, he's advocating longer games split into shorter portions. Which will probably each be sold at full price anyway, so you'll end up paying £120 instead of £40 for the same amount of game. Because that's what gamers want!
edit: yeah, pretty much exactly what menage said in the post before me. balls.
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 12:29
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FunkyRenegade
03/05/07 @ 11:30
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Wow.
He needs to talk to some gamers. probably about 80% of my friends would pick a story driven RPG over a 10-15 level Shooter. |
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"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,"
Yeah, that changed from 'gamers' to 'I' quite quickly there, didn't it? I'm pretty sure people who bought Zelda and FFXII are going to disagree with you on that. You know those games, they were some of the biggest selling releases recently? Yeah. He's also way off the mark with that Lord of the Rings comment. |
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Artemis_Matsas
03/05/07 @ 11:33
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He's full of shit. They just want more money for less effort in their part.
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insincere_dave
03/05/07 @ 11:35
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It's not the length of games that put people off, it's the repetitiveness, difficulty spikes and lack of quality that make people bored. Legacy of Kain I'm looking at you.
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It reads as
'shorter games, developed quicker, but for a premium price, better share holder dividend, bigger bonus for me!' personally if it's an rpg then i expect (no demand) 50+ hours of gameplay.. if I want a short game I'll play Pro evo, burnout or something on the psp/ds.. perhaps their having trouble finishing Too Human... or after spending years developing the game engine don't actually have a game to put in it, and need to get some cash quick.. so it'll end up like the first fable game.. a game you really want to play...pretty to look at, but you soon find how shallow and short the actual game is and not really worth the time or effort.....Paris Hilton if you like... |
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i would like shorter games but the pricing needs to be scaled, the flat £x per game no matter the budget or life of the game needs to change too.
Just cos people buy a 60 hour game in droves does not mean that they could be bothered to play all the way through. Saying that it depends on the game. i have put in hundreds of hours on the rainbow six range especially online. However when its a game like wind waker where its just padding, or that random battle shit and conversations about fairies in JRPG's, then make it shorter. I dont have much spare as a grown up and this is shown in my shift from JRPG and flight sim which i used to play all the time when i was at college and uni. |
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Carpathian
03/05/07 @ 11:45
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I think it has to be said that as long as the core of the title is well done people won't mind them being shorter.
Note that I said "shorter" and not "short" - those two letters make a good few hours difference !
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 12:46
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nickthegun
03/05/07 @ 11:55
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I read it as 'People dont want 100 hour games, so we are going to chop ours up into 3 chunks of 30 and sell it to them that way'.
Also "Each game needs to be self contained," he argues. "That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies. Too Human will be self-contained across each game of the trilogy" A) Thats a terrible analogy B) things that do that seem to suffer a quality drop and the overall story suffers. |
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The problem with his statement is that it's too definitive. For instance, Max Payne was great because it was short, sweet, devoid of any padding, and infinitely replayable. On the other hand, Knights of the Old Republic was great because it was deep, epic, and felt like you were taking part in an interactive Star Wars trilogy.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, it depends on the game in question really. |
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He knows what I want does he? o_0
Never met the bloke so when did i tell him that, maybe when i didn't fill in the questionnaire he sent around? Fek off, money grabbing, lazy bast. Begone with such shenanigans. It's the future though, they'll plough on with this extortion as they know there'll be enough fuckwits out there who will put up gladly with such plans to make it look popular. Cocks. :( |
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I've just gone back and re-read the interview just to check I didn't misunderstand him at all. This guy is a total dick.
'The future is about content' what a shitty sound bite piece of crap thing to say. What the hell does that mean anyway? The future is about breathing. Good one Dyack, I'll take that one to the bank with me. "I wish there was only one console" Idiot. When did gaming get really interesting? Go on Dyack tell me? Wasn't when Sony jumped into the fray was it? No, course not. We didn't see a complete explosion of the whole industry and the invention of loads of new game types and franchises did we. He can take his one console and pack it in the back of his one type of car that runs on its one type of fuel and take it home to run on his one type of TV. What a bell end. Multiple consoles gives consumers the one thing that they want in every single area of retail: a fucking choice. And how is the industry forcing people to buy three consoles? Only a hardcore gamer would ever bother to do such a thing. Most people just get one and are very happy with it. They don't even know about the other consoles or what games are coming out on it. If there was only one console would we ever have seen the wii? umm no we wouldn't. Competition is good. Or maybe we shoudl just have one developer as well. TIT. |
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Yep complete bollocks. He and people like him are the reason so many good developers are bailing or seriously disillusioned.
He hasn't got a clue what people want. He can't make a good game (probably still smarting from the too human comments he got) and so decides to sell short sharp crap instead. Even stuff like Valves HL2 episode 1 was too short, given the length of time to the next one! If you do a short episodic game, then you best have something ready to release within 3 months of it. 6 months to a year is way too long. What they gonna do. Have a re-cap at the start? I can see it now "Last time we left our intrepid duo blah blah blah...." |
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sanctusmortis
03/05/07 @ 12:57
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5 years ago, I'd have said he was wrong. These days, he's spot on.
Some of us, gamers to the core, have lives that have taken over now. 40+ hours at work, 2 kids and a marriage leave little chance of finishing a 100 hour game. In fact, it's one of the reasons I wouldn't go near FFXII, and love Crackdown and Guitar Hero II. It's alright people on here saying he's wrong, but to be blunt he isn't talking about you. He's talking about the market as a whole, a market that to get mainstream has to appeal to more people. A lot of people can't sink commitment into a FF game, but can spare time for, say, an hour or so racing on GT or Forza, a couple of crimelords on Crackdown, a few matches of PES or FIFA, a few missions of Splinter Cell or Halo. The vast majority of people don't have the free time to chuck at long games anymore. The people who spent ages doing everything in Zelda:OoT have families now, kids and marriages and houses and 40-hour work weeks, none of which really allow for 5 hours of graft on a night taking down another FF boss. Gaming and gamers are growing up. Just like 5-hour operas and plays have lost their audience to time constraints, so have games. Think about it: Gone With the Wind is a very long film, and most people these days couldn't watch it at all, never mind in one sitting. The movie industry these days considers 3 hours to be the peak time anyone's interest can be maintained on a film. Games aren't really any different; only the "hardcore" would sink more than that into a game a night. So, a 100 hour game would take over a month to complete, and most gamers aren't happy to do that. Yes, you could argue WoW et al are proof against this, but they're not. People still sink only 3 hours at a time in, and a lot of people fast lose interest. They're also the preserve, usually, of said "hardcore" gamers, and as such can't be said to represent the mainstream in any way. As has already been pointed out, the Wii proves his point nicely. |
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WickedDeeJ
03/05/07 @ 13:00
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I disagree; I prefer long games to short ones. With the price of especially console games gone through the roof, I feel sort of ripped off when a fullprice game is over in 4-6 hours.
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most recently on 03/05/07 @ 19:40
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AmethstSword
03/05/07 @ 13:07
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hmm...final fantasy xii....number of copies shifted....no one wants longer games?
ha, dont make me laugh. dont get me wrong, short games are fun but i dont want to be playing games that are forever 2 hours, boring. |
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