Are games getting shorter?
- Thread starter Vault101
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I'm over 50% through in one play of two I'm doing (One for solo, one for co-op). On the other hand, I also played this game more in the first two days than I did the last game.Vault101 said:
However, I'm sort of feeling this is a shorter game. I just don't remember how much time I spent on the actual missions in the last game. It could simply be perception based on how much time I've spent devouring this game.
I didn't buy DLC, it's not part of the core game so I don't see why it should be counted as it? Otherwise I coyuld add another 10 hours onto Dragon Age and another 10 hours onto Half Life 2 (counting the episodes)Jazoni89 said:
I did every loyalty mission, a few sidequests, got all the upgrades from the Normandy, it took me about 15 hours.
Something that hasn't been brought up so far is games are becoming more forgiving (or easy, perhaps.)
Modern FPS: Hey, you've taken a lot of damage, but don't worry. Duck behind this wall for 10 seconds and you'll be good as new.
OldSchool FPS: Hey you've taken a lot of damage, and you've already grabbed all the health packs on this level. Guess you'd better just do the last six rooms with 3% health. Haha. Sucks to be you.
Portal and Portal 2 are perfect examples of this. VALVE went out of their way to smooth the play experience, which means a) the controls are effortlessly responsive and you'll rarely feel frustrated at trying to make that one perfect jump over and over again, and b) you'll rarely get delayed by anything for too long, making the game feel shorter.
If I get killed in a modern title I'll get kicked back to the last autosave point, maybe 5 or at most 10 minutes earlier. If I get killed in an oldschool title and haven't remembered to quicksave recently I'll be doing the whole damn level again.
It's possible to play through the campaigns of 90s shooters like Doom and Quake II in only slightly longer than it takes to run through many modern 'short' shooters. But you won't, because there's a lot of trial and error involved in learning the levels first.
Modern FPS: Hey, you've taken a lot of damage, but don't worry. Duck behind this wall for 10 seconds and you'll be good as new.
OldSchool FPS: Hey you've taken a lot of damage, and you've already grabbed all the health packs on this level. Guess you'd better just do the last six rooms with 3% health. Haha. Sucks to be you.
Portal and Portal 2 are perfect examples of this. VALVE went out of their way to smooth the play experience, which means a) the controls are effortlessly responsive and you'll rarely feel frustrated at trying to make that one perfect jump over and over again, and b) you'll rarely get delayed by anything for too long, making the game feel shorter.
If I get killed in a modern title I'll get kicked back to the last autosave point, maybe 5 or at most 10 minutes earlier. If I get killed in an oldschool title and haven't remembered to quicksave recently I'll be doing the whole damn level again.
It's possible to play through the campaigns of 90s shooters like Doom and Quake II in only slightly longer than it takes to run through many modern 'short' shooters. But you won't, because there's a lot of trial and error involved in learning the levels first.
Are particular games getting shorter? Sure. Of course. Are they getting shorter overall? Of course not.
And even many of the games that are shorter are only shorter because they're cutting out the filler. Many "long" games are only long because they're packed with diversions, collectathons, and other artificial crap meant to keep you playing. Long playtimes aren't impressive in those cases.
And in any case, who's to say how long a game SHOULD be? People think a ten hour game isn't worth $60, and their main reasoning is that there are other games that are thirty hours. Big whoop. What they fail to consider is that the ten hour game might just be a much better game than the thirty hour game. That counts for something with me. Dead Space 2 was short, but it was all action. Assassin's Creed 2 took me like 30 hours maybe, but so much of that was just wandering around collecting stuff and buying buildings for my little town.
And even many of the games that are shorter are only shorter because they're cutting out the filler. Many "long" games are only long because they're packed with diversions, collectathons, and other artificial crap meant to keep you playing. Long playtimes aren't impressive in those cases.
And in any case, who's to say how long a game SHOULD be? People think a ten hour game isn't worth $60, and their main reasoning is that there are other games that are thirty hours. Big whoop. What they fail to consider is that the ten hour game might just be a much better game than the thirty hour game. That counts for something with me. Dead Space 2 was short, but it was all action. Assassin's Creed 2 took me like 30 hours maybe, but so much of that was just wandering around collecting stuff and buying buildings for my little town.
Well okay , FPS were not reknown for length. I should have probably given some example.Smertnik said:
Goldeneye 007 , perfect dark , duke nukem 3D , quake 2 , turok
Vs
Modern warfare 2/3 , battlefield bc2 , battlefield 3, left4dead , halo3
Now , i will not deny that there are games with proper length like metro2033 and singularity , but a current trend is to cut down on single player to spend more time on multiplayer due to cost and whatnot . The past gen games didn't have online multiplayer so they had to make a proper lengthed singleplayer game to justify the 60$ cost. And i'm not here to debatr whether or not multiplayer is killing the genre , that a whole new disscussion.
Also
Adore me!llew said:
I don't think the games are getting shorter it's just that these days we have check points and game saves. So they feel shorter. Back in the day very few console games outside of rpgs let you save your game. So what would end up happening is you'd be starting games over from the beginning a lot. If you try playing an old school game on an emulator using save states you could finish a lot of them in an hour or two.
It's come from the apparent necessity for online multiplayer.
Developers usually put more work into the multiplayer because that's where the replay value is. Campaigns can only be done once or twice because of the repetativeness, especially in FPS games. But multiplayer offers variety through the different play styles of each player. Developers have recognised this, which is why Battlefield 3 advertised its multiplayer more than the campaign. Unfortunately, this means that there is less time, money and workforce to make a good singleplayer (Battlefield 3 can also be the example because of its crap campaign).
Developers usually put more work into the multiplayer because that's where the replay value is. Campaigns can only be done once or twice because of the repetativeness, especially in FPS games. But multiplayer offers variety through the different play styles of each player. Developers have recognised this, which is why Battlefield 3 advertised its multiplayer more than the campaign. Unfortunately, this means that there is less time, money and workforce to make a good singleplayer (Battlefield 3 can also be the example because of its crap campaign).
Games are certainly shorter...but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Most games have streamlined mechanics that felt like a grind in ages past. You seldom come across backtracking anymore where it was a common annoyance in days past to pad out a game.
Many FPS titles that are 40 hours long involve seemingly endless corridors that feel the same and very little story development in the process. These days, the focus turns to action set pieces and storytelling. You're seldom walking around buildings for more than a few minutes without anything interesting happening.
The above being said, there are certainly games that feel too short to be worth full price. A game can be 5-8 hours long...but to be worth its price there had better be a great story worth revisiting and compelling reasons to go back.
Most games have streamlined mechanics that felt like a grind in ages past. You seldom come across backtracking anymore where it was a common annoyance in days past to pad out a game.
Many FPS titles that are 40 hours long involve seemingly endless corridors that feel the same and very little story development in the process. These days, the focus turns to action set pieces and storytelling. You're seldom walking around buildings for more than a few minutes without anything interesting happening.
The above being said, there are certainly games that feel too short to be worth full price. A game can be 5-8 hours long...but to be worth its price there had better be a great story worth revisiting and compelling reasons to go back.
Its not just your imagination. Blame it on the DLC craze. I play RPGs myself and I personally believe that the game should take enough time to tell its story, establish its characters and have a satisfying conclusion. However considering that games generally run at about $60, 50-100 hours for the main body of the game is generally what I believe is acceptable. (Not including grinding, which in RPGs should be minimal, or well woven in so it isn't noticeable and should equate out to maybe another 5-15 hours depending)
I actually want to applaud Bethesda in regards to Skyrim for making a long and, possibly to an extent, self sustaining game with dynamic events.(I'm not that far in mind you) Most of the RPGs I've played lately eke out to only about 40-50 hours(In the case of Dragon Age 2, that includes all of the F$%^& grinding)
I actually want to applaud Bethesda in regards to Skyrim for making a long and, possibly to an extent, self sustaining game with dynamic events.(I'm not that far in mind you) Most of the RPGs I've played lately eke out to only about 40-50 hours(In the case of Dragon Age 2, that includes all of the F$%^& grinding)
Agreed, even many games on the SNES and Mega Drive were much shorter than games made today.MetalDooley said:
Though I have no problems with games being short, Portal is an fantastic game and can be done first time in 2 hours. Indeed the second Portal had some pacing problems when they made the game longer than the first. As long as the game feels complete the length of the game should not matter.
In a word "Some".
I played through the recent Prince of Persia game not long ago and it was over before it began, even more recently I plonked about 60 hours into Driver: San Fransisco, Which to me is a decent length.
I played through the recent Prince of Persia game not long ago and it was over before it began, even more recently I plonked about 60 hours into Driver: San Fransisco, Which to me is a decent length.
Wow! So far, I've spend ~25 hours on Revelations, and I'm only in Sequence 3. I guess it depends on how much time you want to spend just exploring, training your recruits, freeing towns?Tazzy da Devil said:
For me, a game should at least offer 20-25 hours of entertaining, side quests and all the other jazz included.
You have summed up my thoughts exactly on this entire medium, and the 9 million people who bought Call of Duty 4.4 on launch day.Blargh McBlargh said:
Why do we need even better graphics than we have already? Last I checked, I couldn't tell the difference between the fidelity in MW1 and MW3, or even MW1 and Half-Life 2 (except, y'know, the lack of iron-sights.) Bottom line: stop trying to upgrade your engine, stop spending hours and hours rendering the butt-crack of a player-character we're never going to see, and put all that time and money into making the actual game.
Also, if there's any finished DLC by the time the game comes out...ship it for free. And if that goes against your big-business sense, at least ship it for free with new copies.
