On Videogame Length - Less Is More?

Thanks to Eurogamer for their opinion piece criticizing the excessive length of videogames. The author initially states: "It's the woe of every committed gamer: piles of uncompleted games. We all swear we'll go back and complete [games] but the sad reality is most of us will - most likely - never get around to resuming our valiant quest to conquer these epics." He points out the relative lack of time most players have: "For the majority of gamers, squeezing in the time to play games means - pretty much - not spending much time doing anything else in our leisure time", and goes on to advocate episodic content, arguing "I long for a future when games are delivered in short sharp chunks like all the best visual entertainment is."

Comments

Short chunks?

[Etone]

"I long for a future when games are delivered in short sharp chunks like all the best visual entertainment is."

Unfortunately, most of the best visual entertainment that is delivered in "short sharp chunks" takes much less time to produce. Look at the development schedule for Half-Life or Grand Theft Auto 3 and compare that to the time taken to produce a television show, or newspaper, or magazine. We're talking several years vs a few days to a week.

When making games becomes a faster, more streamlined process, then we'll see more streamlined gaming experiences.

I couldn't disagree more

[zenobr]

I much prefer the epic games that I pay 50 bucks for and then play for a solid 3-6 months (30+ hours actual play time). I hate nothing more than buying a game and beating it within the first week, or less than 10 hours of play time. My main complaint with most games recently have been their lack of story/game length (Halo for instance). Just my 2 cents I guess.

And this is a problem because...?

[El]

When it stops being enjoyable, stop playing it. Feel bad about shelling out $50 for something you never use? Form a lending library with all your friends. Each agrees to buy a different game, and lend it to one of the others when they're not using it. I really don't see the economic sense it spending so much money for something you're going to play with for a few week, then stick on a shelf and forget about. Let's spread these unused games around! (And yes, I do have a 6 foot long shelf full of software I never use!)