Poll: Less is more

[Caliostro]

This is a theme that's been debated "on a tangent" on a lot of other topics lately, so I decided to give it it's own topic.

Do you remember when new games usually took somewhere around 2 - 3 years to come out, but, mostly, they had a considerably addition in content or were entirely reviewed by the developers...Remember when "campaigns" actually felt like campaigns and took more than 5 hours to complete? It seems nowadays the crushing majority of developers are taking the "EA route" and instead choose to release a new title of the same series every year or so but add nothing or very little to it... It just felt like games used to "last" more...

It just tends to feel like the finished game was rushed to meet the deadline, and they often are, because the dev teams were given an unreasonably small amount of time to come up with a new game so they just copied the last one with minor changes...

On the other hand more titles released can also mean more change and variation from title to title, which can be refreshing.

Discuss.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Do you really have to ask...? Anything good is worth waiting for.

 

[OverlordSteve]

More content. Less games means less money spent on my part.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

I don't know if more content is really the only way, making the content great is important too.

Still follows the fewer games trend.

 

[insectoid]

Less games with more content is the only way to go! Only if it's good content obviously...

 

[ElephantGuts]

Empire: Total War is going to be amazing. That's why I'm willing to wait for it.

 

[TheBadass]

This seems like a landslide for content, and I can't say I'm suprised.

 

[Raven28256]

Like I mentioned in the other topic...I wish companies would take more time (About three-four years) to take their time and craft an overall better game with more content. I can be a patient man. I don't need a new version of a game franchise I like every year. Look at Vegas 2 and GRAW 2. They came out about a year after the original and offered very little in terms of new content. Sure, they were FUN, but I was left longing for...well...MORE.

Same with the Call of Duty games now. Sure they are fun, and I spent many countless hours on Call of Duty 4, I just wish they would have let Infinity Ward take an extra year or so to give us more weapons and a longer campaign. I would have liked to play as Kamarov's troops (The Russians who help you in several missions) in Call of Duty 4, as opposed to just the Marines and SAS. Like how Call of Duty/United Offensive and Call of Duty 2 had campaigns for the Americans, British, and Soviets.

 

[Scarletmarine]

Almost every game I've waited a long time for has been a big disappointment: Armed Assault, Final Fantasy XII, Resident Evil 4, Spore etc.

STALKER is the only game I can think of that took years & years to finish and still turned out to be decent.

A game shouldn't take any longer than two years to make. As soon as you start fattening it up with extra "content" it can lose its shape and, in extreme cases, its soul. I say get it out there before the devs lose their enthusiasm.

No shit most of those games sucked to begin with...
xoxo

 

[some random guy]

It's perfectly possible to create reasonably long AAA games in a short space of time. Insomniac, for example, is currently releasing a AAA game every year (none of them too short) and downloadable content for certain games and Quest for Booty (another R&C game, probably downloadable, will follow late next year).

 

[Flour]

Less games, more content.
Since I'm mainly a FPS gamer, I guess I'll use that as my argument.
A good 8-10 hour game on the first playthrough is worth my 50-70 euros, and IMO I'm not asking for much*. A decent story(optional, if going for a Painkiller or Serious Sam type game) with good 'normal' controls, a bit no regenerating health, levels without fake difficulty [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty] and respawning enemies used in a plausible way.(not like in CoD4 and a lot of other games: an infinite amount of enemies coming out of a bathroom)

Spoiler: *

Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Turok, Call of Duty 1 and just about every other FPS until and including Halo averaged around 8 hours for my first playthrough. Yes, I know I was a lot younger, but I was a better player a few years ago, playing the games on hard difficulty, now I usually find "normal" difficulty in these games challenging.

 

[Caliostro]

Almost every game I've waited a long time for has been a big disappointment: Armed Assault, Final Fantasy XII, Resident Evil 4, Spore etc.

No offense but, maybe you're just looking at the wrong games to begin with?

Resident Evil started going downhill since the 2nd, spore seemed bad to me from the start and Final Fantasy was more of the same "with a twist", which was either loved or hated by the fans depending.

I do concede that taking too long in the whole development process can be negative, but I'd say 2, 3, even 4 years is quite acceptable.

in b4 reference to Duke Nuke'em Forever.

 

[Flour]

Armed Assault, Final Fantasy XII, Resident Evil 4, Spore etc.

No shit most of those games sucked to begin with...

Resident Evil 4 is a good game but should have gotten a different name since it moved away from the original RE gametype.(heck, it could've started a new game series, but no, that way they couldn't cash in on the existing fanbase and apparently a single game selling good is worth losing 50% of your previous loyal customers)
Spore's target audience are children who like the Sims and people that can spend days creating a creature that looks exactly how they want it to look, and in that way it's a decent game.
Never played FF12, but every 3D FF game has been completely different from the previous and every FF game has a group of followers that claim "FF is the best ever" while claiming the others are worse than an Uwe Boll movie.

 

[Caliostro]

Never played FF12, but every 3D FF game has been completely different from the previous and every FF game has a group of followers that claim "FF is the best ever" while claiming the others are worse than an Uwe Boll movie.

Having played every Final Fantasy from FF VII to FFXII (except FFXI), I can tell you all FF games are exactly the same. All they change are the graphics, the characters and the location. The story changes slightly, but the core of it remains the same: Starts with good guys going about their business,just another day, suddenly you meet the bad guy, that often looks like he's a good guy at first, then you find out he's trying to destroy the world, you ride out with your party to stop him.

FFXII was the first to introduce an overhaul of the gameplay, and even so it's more of a "pseudo overhaul", as the game remains essentially turn-based, but now you can see the enemies instead of having random encounters.

 

[Humanfishboy]

Less games more content!

Damn you, Half Life 2 Episodes, you're so so good but so so short!

 

[Downside]

voted for the less games more content options.

Good things come to those who wait - guiness reference ftw!

 

[Caliostro]

Less games more content!

Damn you, Half Life 2 Episodes, you're so so good but so so short!

I feel half life sort of escapes this as they follow (or try to) the route of "episodic gaming"... But as Yahtzee once put it, they continue to struggle with the "released more frequently" aspect of it...