Are next gen games getting shorter?

[FatRabidRamboCow]

...but the problem is that publishers are expecting us to pay 60 bucks for (maybe) ten hours of entertainment. There's very few games I'm so interested in that I'm gonna plop down that kind of money to get. The local Gamestop or eBay vendor will probably get my money for most of my games because I just can't justify that expense.

That's my problem with it all. I paid £40 for my copy of Condemned, only to finish it in 7 hours. I paid the same for F.E.A.R (13 Hours), Half-Life 2 (12 Hours), Doom 3 (13 Hours), World of Warcraft (400 Hours), Battlefield 2 (380 Hours), and so forth. Why am I paying the same amount for one game when I'm obviously paying the same for more time spent enjoying myself on another game?

"But we filled it with shiny new graphics and innovative features!" - If it was all really that great, why didn't I play Condemned for 100 Hours?

 

[Alex Karls]

FatRabitRamboCow....uh, can I just call you RamboCow? I agree with you, and I think that's why shorter media for cheaper is a better idea. Condemned was fun, but the only thing that made it reasonable for the price was that it was a launch title.

 

[Katana314]

Holy shiznick, 40 pounds? Isn't that like $80? Isn't that like...ludicrous?

 

[shadow skill]

The price of a game and its length does not correlate and it will never correlate. If it did would you pay a hundred dollars for a game hat was a hundred hours of the most mindnumbingly horrid gameplay, vapid story, and ass for graphics? I don't think any game should be sixty dollars but I am getting tired of people bitching about the length of games in relationship to the price of the product or it's worthiness as a purchase. I marvel at how ass like Halo 3 is considered a great buy, by some even though just about everything in that game is ass, including the multiplayer which is the sole justification for many of these people.

What people need to be upset about is the amount of ass that keeps being pumped out. Is everything going to be a master work? No, but there is a real problem with the amazingly lame games that have come out over the past two years with a few exceptions.

 

[Arbre]

The game is meant to have you take time. The vast and empty citadel, haunted by souls, and filled with mechanisms, is really a place you're meant to spend a lot of time wandering through. There are not many games where I'm actually encouraged to pause and just gaze in the open.

That's my point, Arbre. Optimal length isn't just about telling the story as quickly as possible. I think you've just misunderstood me. Out of the millions of games out there, I picked precisely that one in part for what you're talking about--the castle doesn't add any 'story' but no one thinks that the time spent wandering through it is 'filler' or 'bloat'.

I admit, sometimes I don't get the point you're trying to make. But glad we agree.

 

[Katana314]

It just seems like everyone believes that if you add to one thing, you must subtract from another. Whatever game gets GOTY will get it because they had a great story, great gameplay, etc. By the logic of the people here, having a great story would mean BAD gameplay, or vice versa. I think the perfect game could very easily go beyond just a great gameplay form, plot, graphics, etc...and make the great experience last longer. It's a lot to expect, but hey, we are talking about the PERFECT game.

 

[ccesarano]

Holy shiznick, 40 pounds? Isn't that like $80? Isn't that like...ludicrous?

I actually went over this with my Welsh pal. While games in America are technically cheaper, the minimum wage over in Tea-and-Biscuits Land is equivalent to about our $10. So, in the end, ten hours of work for them gets you the same or more than ten hours of work for us depending on the state you live in.

 

[Katana314]

Minimum wage here is $7 or so (depending on the state)

 

[nagumo [deprecated]]

There is an actual LIMIT to what can go on a disk. Better graphics take up more space, so there's less levels. Remember--this was a selling point for the Blu-Ray format. The discs could hold more data and reduce the need to for two disc games.

I'm sure money is a consideration too. Isn't it always? But I remember waaay back when the consoles were all in their pre-release state that actual space on the game disc was becoming an issue.

I have to disagree with this capacity argument, mainly since there is no supporting evidence for, but rather to the contrary. By your logic, games that are available only on the PS3, and on BluRay BDROM's, should all be extremely lengthy titles. Yet this is not the case. Thus far the only thing the extra capacity has been used for is PCM audio with lower compression ratios than what we're used to seeing in titles shipping on DVD.

Another factor is that there are games on DVD with hundreds of game play hours available to digest. Oblivion immediately stands out here, firstly because it's a current generation title, secondly because it is pretty much unrivaled in terms of game play time without mods of any sort, and lastly because it is available on a single DVD for both the Xbox360 and PC. This directly contradicts your theory of storage medium being the limiting factor for game length. After all, if space was the only factor, the PC would reign supreme with HDD's now reaching one full terabyte of capacity. In actuality, modern day data compression techniques make cramming a game on to a medium with X amount of space relatively easy if the goal is to ship on, say a single DVD.

Money! Now there's a motivator if ever there was one. One thing that has drastically changed over time is the amount of money required to develop a sparkling AAA game on the PC, PS3, or Xbox360. I've seen reports that some titles have burned their way through as much as $20,000,000 or more, and that's not counting pressing, distribution, and PR costs. With game development requiring so much capital, it makes sense that development time is reduced to shorten the amount of time the investor must wait to see any return. This has the added side effect of allowing the developer to work on more titles, once again increasing revenue. Shorter games also make it more likely that gamers will buy more product to sate their gaming desires.

 

[LisaB1138]

There should be some correlation between game length and price, but replay should come into play as well. Mini-games, unlockable levels, difficulties--they do help bring the value up.

The type of game it is makes a huge difference. I mean, most folks are going to get their money's worth out of games with multiplayer or RPGs. It's the third person action adventure that suffers the most.

 

[nagumo [deprecated]]

The price of a game and its length does not correlate and it will never correlate. If it did would you pay a hundred dollars for a game hat was a hundred hours of the most mindnumbingly horrid gameplay, vapid story, and ass for graphics? I don't think any game should be sixty dollars but I am getting tired of people bitching about the length of games in relationship to the price of the product or it's worthiness as a purchase. I marvel at how ass like Halo 3 is considered a great buy, by some even though just about everything in that game is ass, including the multiplayer which is the sole justification for many of these people.

What people need to be upset about is the amount of ass that keeps being pumped out. Is everything going to be a master work? No, but there is a real problem with the amazingly lame games that have come out over the past two years with a few exceptions.

This is the price you pay when something that was formerly a niche product designed to appeal to one set of standards (gaming geeks) goes mainstream. Part of appealing to a mass market is giving every demographic a bit of what they want without catering to any real specifics. You'll see the same trends in film when comparing mass marketed summer blockbusters to lesser viewed, yet tightly scripted dramatic films.

 

[nagumo [deprecated]]

The problem with a price correlation to game length would be in the return to investors. A short game still costs plenty of greenbacks to develop. If a publisher had to sell a shorter game for significantly less money, even though it cost every bit as much to create as a longer title, it would never get made in the first place. That helps nobody.

 

[ccesarano]

In terms of price, I have a theory that games would sell a lot more and a lot better if they were all priced around $25-$30, more comparable with film DVD's. So far, however, the only thing I have to prove this is Nintendo DS software sales. A lot of experimental titles are being purchased for that system, and I know before I got rid of mine I usually thought "$30? Meh, even if it's not great, it's not like I spent a fortune". I ponder if more games would sell if they were made cheaper, even if the overall profits remained same.

But that's just sort of a theory and has nothing to do with game length.

I look at it this way. 12-15 hours of gameplay is decent enough, as it means I beat the game in about a week. If it's on Xbox 360, I can then spend extra time trying to score achievements, replaying it on a harder difficulty, etc. These can add around 5 to 29342038420394 hours, depending on the game (nailing the Zombie Genocider achievement in Dead Rising took quite a while, yet, oddly enough, was still entertaining). On a Wii, it simply varies from game to game. After beating RE4 on the Wii, I began to replay it until I had to start my summer co-op and also had other games coming out (like Overlord). RE4 nets about 15-20 hours itself, and still offers replay. Metroid Prime 3, on the other hand, while it offers a lot of hours initially, I had no reason to go back and replay. Even on a harder difficulty, as my experience with the previous Prime titles pretty much have convinced me that hard mode = more tedious mode.

So, MP:3, a 20 or more hour game, hasn't gotten the same overall dedication that Dead Rising or RE4 have gotten. Hell, I've already netted more time into Halo 3, and I haven't even played multiplayer outside of co-op in that.

I guess my summary here is that I could care less if the game is 12-15 hours as long as I have reason to go back and play it more. Of course, Halo 2&3 and Gears of War all resulted in one similar feeling: there needed to be at LEAST one more level. For Gears and Halo 3, I think it's mostly from a lack of satisfaction with the story. Nonetheless, even though the first play through was short, I've still enjoyed replaying those titles numerous times.

Meanwhile, I still haven't beaten Zelda: Twilight Princess, simply because so many games have come out since it has and, honestly, 40+ hours is just too damn long for me at this point in my life. If I can't beat it in a week, then there's a good chance I may never beat it at all.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Maybe this has something to do with game length: game companies don't expect a game to sell that much after launch. It seems like games are now all about the pre-release, that far far fewer people pick up a title based on anything they hear after the game comes out. Instead it seems that it's all about the launch--I mean, what's with 'collector's editions' for a new game, one that isn't even a sequel?

How do I think this is related to length? Well, maybe it's that game companies know that there are going to be very few sales to people a month after launch. So why design a game that people are going to still be playing a month later? It's not like that continued game play by one person is going to wind up getting another person to buy the game because they come over and see the game and say 'hey! I gotta get me that!'

Maybe that's part of it, that there's been a shift in the way people buy games a lot like the shift that happened years ago in how they go to the movies. It used to be that a movie would be released and a lot of times it would build some word of mouth buzz and people would start filling the theaters. Now, if a movie doesn't crush the competition at the box office in the first weekend it's written off as a failure. Maybe the length of a game's content is shortening for the same reason the length of the theatrical run of a movie has shortened: everything is about that short launch window and pre-release buzz, and a game that you play for a month doesn't generate more sales than one you play for a weekend because word of mouth plays much less of a role in getting people to buy a game.

Price V cost, its always Price V cost, They can't build better games because it takes to long plus launching a game at max hype is another issue they blindly do, frankly at the results of the finished product the game industry better halve its 50-60 max price sure they ignore it after a few months regardless but even 40+ for a mediocre title is somethign I refuse to put up with I only wish others would stop buying new.

The more gaming becoems the new hollywood the more the price per game needs to drop...

 

[Jacques 2]

The industry is dominated by a few super-corporations, like Electronic Arts, who of course, push mass market appeal into their products as if they were getting some sort of sexual satisfaction from the rape of creativity. The thing is, a lot of people don't give a damn about creativity, they like Halo, they like Madden(Insert year here), or whatever, they are sheeple (sheep-people) and they enjoy what is popular, what is relatively easy, and what satisfies them in a short period of time. Half-Life is something alot of people have heard of, but outside of the gaming community, is not something most people know beyond title and grav gun.

I'm going to skip a lot of explanatory bullshit and get to the point, the industry can put out short, terrible games, so long as people will buy them. Shorter games mean less demands for what the game offers. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Arbre]

Well, on the same hand, I'll like to check the price of games over the last two decades, including inflation.
We'd probably see that for the relative same prices, the production costs kept increasing on and on.
If this is right (about the price of games), it could explain why games get shorter. Making a game longer doesn't give the publisher and studios more money. Making games shorter force the consumers to move on, and reiterate their consumption act, by grabbing new games. Of course, for this to work, you need to make more and more sequels, otherwise your consumers will buy someone else's product.

In general, though, for solo games, a dense story is good. Again, duration is not the key problem. It's how the game's lenght is exploited. If the story endlessly stretches, it sucks.
If the story is cramped, it sucks.

 

[Alex Karls]

'From the go' is an English (UK / Aus) idiom. Thus it is excluded from normal grammar rules, and I used it correctly. If you don't know it, don't comment on it - I'm really not going to try and argue over if GTA IV uses correct 'gangsta slang' since I've no idea on it.

Actually, that's perfectly valid in SAE as well.

- Portal isn't a full game. Its a PoC, and what games would be like if the creative / coding departments weren't whored out to the media marketing / PR people. Call it what you want, but its basically a sly call to war by the team at valve who still remember making interesting games. And yes, its fucking magic, but that doesn't excuse HL2 being, well. About as revolutionary as The Sims 2: stalker in your neighbourhood and paparazzi garbage search.

Also, their proof of concept was Narbacular Drop [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_drop], but I'll accept Portal for that answer too.

Still, it sounds like you're discounting what Half-Life 2 did for the FPS genre. Here's my list of merits and flaws:

+ Amazing graphics for the time, such that they were able to have some truly expressive characters
+ The Half-Life franchise back from the dead. Yes, that's right, everyone was waiting for it. I know I was.
+ The Gravity Gun. This is perhaps the single greatest gameplay advancement (for an FPS) in the last few years.
- It's still an FPS.
- You've still got a golfbag of weapons.
- It's still an FPS.

So, my last question to you is this. Is it possible for you to reply without a) getting into a flaming contest with someone, b) getting generally angry with everyone, or c) being generally antagonistic?

Me, I like civil conversation, hence the request.

 

[Jacques 2]

What is more revolutionary, the gravity gun or the portal gun? just an off the wall question since both have been tossed around the thread for a while