Ken Levine Defends BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Length

[wulf3n]

I don't understand why the length of an experience matters.

I personally would rather a focused 2 hour experience over a padded 10 hour experience.

Would you prefer they make you backtrack constantly to find gubbins in order to progress?

I also wonder if game length acceptance is directly tied to movie prices the individual encounters?

 

[weirdee]

since blood dragon, this argument doesn't really have a leg to stand on regarding price being nonproportionate to length

 

[DeaDRabbiT]

its dlc. thats acceptable.
stop making mountains out of molehills.

It's 15 dollar DLC. You can buy a humble indie bundle for 1.96 and get 100x more hours of gameplay.

But hey, everyone can vote with their dollars.

 

[Battenberg]

This is perhaps the most appropriate time to use "too little, too late" that I have ever come across. After making people wait so long for real DLC (despite happily taking their money for season passes) you really should be giving them something of impeccable quality and a 2 hour game reusing an old setting and old characters just doesn't say that to me. To put it in perspective you could get through Telltake's recent 400 days in about 2 hours and that cost $5, as did each episode of the first series (well perhaps slightly more). There's nothing wrong with charging this much for 2 hours of content IF said content is impeccable and of fantastic quality, anything less and you should be charging less.

 

[Trishbot]

Is it strange I expect both quality AND quantity? Why not both?

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Well considering we pay through the nose for content here in Australia, 15 bucks is a bargin for 2 hours worth of content. I'm not having tea time at Macca's, woe is me.

But having experienced America's currency, I can fathom why everybody goes a bit nutty (seriously Pennys are fucking pointless, I'm just getting sick of local 5 cent coins).

 

[Brendan Voss]

Anyone who says it takes 2 hours to complete Burial at Sea ep1 is absolutely insane, I doubt anyone could even complete it in that time if they were doing a speed run, let alone if they were exploring the beautiful environment, listening to all the npcs and voxophones and doing all the "side quests" for infusions. It took me at least eight hours to complete it, although I played the market street level twice because it was so incredible, and guess what? They npc were saying different lines, I found additional areas and voxophones and enjoyed myself the whole time. The first area with rapture in its prime is worth the money alone.

 

[Evonisia]

Or in other words he ran out of ideas and decided he didn't want to pad it out.

Portal does this as well, but then again Portal never needed to be justified.

 

[unstabLized]

Meh, I was fine with the length. I picked up the Season Pass through GMG for $10 so I was fine with just having more Bioshock and more story to play with. Even if it was short, I really liked it, and I would've disliked it more if it was padded out. I took my time, explored every nook and cranny, and it took me 3 hours to complete. Then I went back and picked up any missing collectibles I missed on my first run, which gave me another 2 hours. All on Medium difficulty. Plus, I also believe the only reason they put a tag of $15 on EP1 was so people would buy the Season pass instead. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I was fine with what they did, I even expected it a little, and I'm still looking out for more. To me, it was short quantity, but great quality.

 

[A-D.]

Anyone else find it hilarious that someone would register to this site and make their very first post in a thread 2 weeks old? And all that just to disagree with the length which many more have pointed out at being 3 hours, especially if the lead designer says the same thing? Its kind of funny, really.

 

[Iwata]

The length was perfectly reasonable for the quality. If they'd drawn out the DLC before Ep.II hits, it would've felt contrived, and I have no problem with the price. I've paid more for worse, and as far as DLC goes, this is one of the better ones I've played recently.