News Do gamers want shorter games?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/07/08/do-gamers-want-shorter-games/1

Developers like Charley Price, lead designer of Rise of the Argonauts, think gamers want shorter games nowadays. What do you think?

 

I personally still believe in a little thing called "value for money". If a game costs £50 like X360 and PS3 games do, then you'd damn well hope you'd get a lot of game for your money.

Flattening a learning curve is a good thing, however.

 

he's definately right for the first half hour thing. if i don't get captured in about 30 seconds often the game goes on my shelf for when i'm bored. ie, most RPGs. however, if it's good i'd happily spend a lot of time on it, like diablo 2/battlefield 2. however, i'm in the middle of FF3 on my DS and lovin it (and i only get to play it about an hour a day at the moment). Also loved golden sun which kicked ass. so it's pretty simple, games, so long as they are good, can be as long as they want. i didn't want golden sun to end, it coulda gone on for a long time i woulda played it.

 

If it's immersive, I'll play it for months.

If it's not, then I want it out of the way ASAP. If they're going to make games shorter, make the prices lower to reflect it, otherwise there are going to be many fingers. I might even grow some additional fingers to wave.

 

i wouldn't mind shorter games as long as they still offer an interesting story. they should be cheaper tough.

 

too short, i want something i can sink my teeth into, ala pc gaming of OLD

 

Fair enough if you charge less or the quality is better. I think 20 hours is a good length. A game I can complete in one sitting on my first run through doesn't feel right.

 

If its short, it needs to be re playable.

 

Making a long or short game does not make it good.
There are plenty of Games out there that can be finished in a few hours, and are great fun.

There has to be a good balence. I do think that a lot of the older generation that has grown up on games probably does not have as much free time those days so short games are good in that sence.

 

I want replayability, it doesn't have to be something where "the environment changes" or "there's 200 different endings!" They normally make the game just feel like a chore.

What I want is a game as fun as Zelda; OOT, I've lost count the number of times I played that but the game never changed each time I played it. COD4 is fun for the multiplayer, I keep going back to it.

GTAIV has been unplayed for about three weeks now, I just got bored.

 

for me, its hardly ever a case of 'x length of time is better'. I enjoy l0ong games like FF7 and FF10 because they reward you with a story and a decent ending to them (unlike FEAR. damn 30 second endings). others like Castlevania; symphony of the night are good and I can fnish that one in around 10 hours if I go a moderate speed.
Thinking 'we need to make games shorter because of the market in X' is bad for the gamers I think. Don't make games longer or shorter because of the market, make them the length that feels right for the game.
Game genre's naturally lend them selves to approximate lengths anyway, with action games generally being relatively short and RPG's being long etc (though as always there are exceptions to these rules).

 

Depends on the game... With action games, which aren't really focussed on story, it doesn't matter about length, since each level is just a new place to shoot things...

However, when you stretch a story out to 40 hours... There is a limit..

Most of the depth of RPGs is lost on me.. all the upgrading and whatnot.. It bores me.. yet that's a HUGE chunk of the game for many.

 

I can't stand the newer shorter games. They feel like a waste of money.

If I want a nice one-time experience for that amount of money I'll go to a restaurant and order a steak, not buy a game. It needs longevity and replayability. If this is the way forward I'm better off dusting off all my old games which STILL HAVE LIFE IN THEM and play them again!

 

depends on the price. i only expect ~3 hours from a £10 game, but 40 hours from a £30 game. (PC games, consoles are just unreasonably expensive)

not sure whether your poll wants to know about episode releases. IMHO it's good enough. HL2 episodes are at perfect length.

 

Note to self: Must aquire Deus Ex

 

Here's the thing, when developers make statements like this it's often a rationalization for putting out less game at the same price as everyone else. Truth is I do like short games, I'm just not going to pay $60 for less than 6 hours of entertainment. I will quickly throw $10 to $20 at one of these games (see Lost Winds or Portal), but if a developer's going to pull a Call of Duty 4 on me their game goes straight to the Gamefly list.

 

Value for money is more important that length, IMO. Max Payne 2, for example, I finished in under six hours and it had little to no replay value. Now, even though I got it cheap, I felt ripped off. Same with Halo. I liked Call of Duty 4 initially, but as I'm not a great multiplayer enthusiast, replay is non-existent.

I might part with a tenner for 6 hours of game... but more than twenty quid and it's got to have a lot more gameplay in it.

 

Length isn't that important...

It's definitely secondary to the quality of the experience.

I'd rather play a 30 minute game which provided the best story and gameplay of any game ever, than a 100 hour borefest which is evidently horrible within the first 10 minutes.

 

I prefer a game that can be picked up and played in short bursts but still has a lot to do, the Lego Star Wars and Indiana jones games have got this spot on for me. I can start them up, play through a single level, close them down and then come back later without having to stop and restart part way through a section and yet still have hours and hours of content.

 

RPG + RTS = nice and long
FPS = short unless it offers significant variety throughout.