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Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long
CNN Money's Game On column has an interview with legendary designer Miyamoto in which the respected Mario-maker says that today's games are just too long to capture his interest. From the article: "There's not a lot I want to play now...A lot of the games out there are just too long. Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play." Commentary on the column at Press the Buttons.
I guess it's a personal opinion, but I dare disagree. In fact, a lot of the casual games can be finished in about two days. I'd much rather have my games be so immensely large that it can keep me busy, preferrably without dropping variety ("Hi, pick up # of #, enemy # drops them.", multiply by a couple thousand.)
I think he means games are too padded. If I spend 40 hours playing a game it better offer more than repetitive gameplay and some poorly edited FMV. Look at Chronicles of Riddick or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. No extra filler, just gameplay and the minimum necessary background and story.
we have an expression for this, which I can translate more or less like - "Arrested for having a dog, and arrested for not having one...".
:)
I think there's an equivalent expression in English but I don't remember it right now
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
This is something I've been saying for a while myself... It sounds real cool as a bullet point to say "over 140 hours of gameplay!!" or whatever, but do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long? It's a lot of work to get the payoff of a completed story. What I would really like to see in the case of huge epic tales is an episodic approach. A game that can actually be played to completion in the same time it takes to watch a movie is actually really appealing.
that there aren't just two kinds of gamers (those that like short games and those that like long expansive ones). Some times I want one and sometimes another. I remember people complaining that there was a rumor that Sony was encouraging shorter PS2 games so that more could be produced faster. People want to get their money's worth. That's why they want long games, sometimes at least.
On the other hand, if I can rent a game, beat it in a couple days, and return it, then how likely am I to buy it. Sometimes short games just aren't the answer unless there is some serious replay value.
do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long?
Yes I do. I don't want a game that leaves me with, "What? Thats it?" when I get to the end of it. If I wanted something quick I'd watch TV or rent a movie.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Games too long? I think the opposite. There are many games that I finish and then wish that they should have been longer. I was sorry to see Golden Sun end, and who else here thinks that KOTOR TSL was cut rather short? In many game reviews, a major statistic is hours of gameplay, and a low number usually means a complaint in the review.
However, I can understand where Miyamoto is coming from. Many games end up rather tedious after a while, such as (IMO) most Mario games. But I have never gotten tired of the Zelda games. Perhaps rather than making games shorter, they should make games with more interesting, less linear storylines, more interesting characters, and plenty of sidequests. They would hold the gamers' attention and the designers would gain good reputations and gamers would perhaps buy other games from them.
I dont think that he is so much against games that have 20 hours of linear play. I think he is against games that pretty much require you to dump two hours into a single play session.
With a game like Final Fantasy, if your going to play it, your probably going to try to clear at least an hour of your time to play it, probably more. Halo probably takes what, about 30 mins for each level?
Compare this to Wario Ware. You can pick it up, play for 15 mins, and walk away. Your not going to beat the entire game in 15 mins, but you are going to play a decent chunk of it. Animal Crossing is much the same way, you play it for short bursts of time, but you will likley pick it up more often in a given day.
I personally think the sweet spot is about 5 to 15 mins for a single level, and expect the player to play for 30 to 35 minutes. If you give a player the opportunity to safely put the game away every 15 minutes without losing progress, you will prevent a great deal of frustration from very casual gamers.
As for the overall duration of a game and playing it to the end, that is another debate, and is determined more by the kind of game and intended audience. Miyamoto is known for making games where 40% or so are secrets or optional. You dont strictly need every heard container in a Zelda game. You dont need every single star / shine in a Mario game. You can finish the game pretty quickly if you stick only to the essentials.
As for my prefrence, I think that a game should not outlast its enjoyability. If a new user gets bored without finishing the game, you need to cut down on the elements that are taking up the extra time and make them optional.
END COMMUNICATION
The great thing about games like GTA: If you dont want to follow the story and engage yourself in the whole big expansive thing, you dont need to dedicate any time at all to that. You can get into a car and drive. The best description of GTA is: "It's Pac-Man, except the dots are people." This is completely, 100% accurate. The police even make the same "Woo-woo" sound. GTA is Pac-man that people who like big expansive games that require dedication can ALSO play. But they are certainly not the only people who can play the game. Of the several people I know who play GTA, only a couple of them have bothered with the story mode- most just drive around and avoid the cops, trying to get the most stars or the longest distance before getting wasted. Someone who says GTA is too long doesnt know anything at all about videogames. (yeah, I know)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I don't have the time that all these high school kids seem to have. That is, between my significant other, managing my house, and work, I've got myself a 60-80 hour week.
If I pick up a game that brags of over 40 hours of gameplay, I put that fucker right back down. I don't have time for more than 8 hours of gaming a week, tops. WoW is nice in that I can have a WoW session that lasts an evening, and not be penalized (thanks to their rest system). Or I can spend a week and some change beat a 10-12 hour game. A 40 hour game usually takes more than a month to beat, especially if it requires that I level characters in repetitive, stupid, RPG combat.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
... because most of them are boring rehashes of previous games. Where is the Elite of today? Why don't we see more well-done hybrid games like the original Deus Ex? What about the old 'innovative' games that fell through the cracks (witness: "Hardwar")?
... and about a half-dozen others whose names I cannot immediately recall.
Generally speaking, companies like making money. Now, there's nothing wrong with making money, but when it's almost a proven fact that people will buy due to the eye-candy over gameplay, then it's easy to see why so many of today's games are just... mediocre rehashes.
Still, there are a few that have managed to make the grade:
- Thief: Deadly Shadows
- Babylon 5: I've Found Her
- Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
- Lock On: Modern Air Combat
- Aliens vs Predator 2
- Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
In summary, the problem is not that games are too short, but that most games suck.
"Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."
But Miyamoto is the one who created The Legend of Zelda, a game which for its time was the biggest, most expansive game out there (which I remember taking a lot of time to beat when I was younger). You would think he'd be excited about having the capability to make larger, more rich in-game worlds. It's pretty apparent from this that Miyamoto's perspective has changed now that he's older; it's unfortunate that he can't recognize that other game developers have the same creative impulses he used to have.
... and of course "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay". That was one fine example of a game that completly blows Mr. Miyamoto's opinion out of the water. (Note: I'd never heard of Riddick before I picked up the game - now I own both movies on DVD.)
:)
That game seemed too short by a couple orders of magnitude.
I don't play games, and that's why. When I was a kid, you'd drop a quarter in a tempest machine, and you could play without making much of a committment. Now you have to buy expensive hardware and dedicate 40 hours to learning how to play.
The other side of the argument, though, is that there are obviously plenty of people who like games the way they are -- they're certainly making a ton of money.
Agreed. I love huge, free-form games (Privateer, Daggerfall/Morrowind, Darklands, some other decent RPGs...). I don't need to finish it to enjoy it.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Most people who develop games no longer have the time to play through them. If you're working 10 hours a day at a job, then come home to spend some time with your wife or husband and kids, you just don't have more than a few minutes to pick up a game between the time that you put the potroast in the oven and the time to pick up kids from soccer practice. Game development makes this even harder, as you're surrounded by them all day long anyway. Your need to game is at least somewhat satisfied, but your need to see your family, read a book, or pay your bills goes wanting all day.
Working people need games that are short, intense, save-anywhere, and highly intuitive. The ability to play with your family is also a plus.
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Dog arrest you!
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Real video games don't have ends. They just keep on getting harder, and faster, and more brutal, until either you call it quits, or your score overflows 2^16 and wraps around.
Power-ups are for sissies. Health bars are for sissies. Just give me 3 lives and an extra at 10,000. A true test of skill is a game like Asteroids or Centipede or Ms Pac Man or Joust.
If a game has an end, then it is a rip-off.
I'm not sure that current games are longer, but one thing that is certain is that they are often less interesting. For example, I think, overall, I had more fun with early Final Fantasy games than the later ones, but I'm not sure the early ones were really shorter. There are a few modern games that are really good, like Deus Ex, but most just lose my interest in striving for realism. It's almost as if there's so much time in making it real, that it just isn't real at all.
"This is something I've been saying for a while myself... It sounds real cool as a bullet point to say "over 140 hours of gameplay!!" or whatever, but do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long?"
Ordinarily I'd say "Yes!!". But I've had San Andreas since late February. I'm still only about halfway through it. The reason? I'm a busy guy. I'm really itchin to buy Tempest X for the origional Playstation. That was fun. Throw the disc in, play for about 15 minutes, put it down. Maybe when my schedule lightens up I'll put more time into the longer games. But right now, I'm leaning towards what Miyamoto says.
Then again, maybe part of the problem with San Andreas is that it takes so fricken long to actually get going. I should drag out my N64 and get Blast Dozer going again.
"Derp de derp."
Personally, I wouldn't say that games are becoming too long but more that games are becoming too long for no real reason. The perfect example of this is Jet Force Gemini for the N64; the game essentially had 2 endings, the first on occured after about 10-15 hours of gameplay and the second one in the 40+ hour range. The problem was that the game was amazing for the first 15 hours and then you had to replay through all of the first levels (to collect a bunch of bears that to this day I wish I could have killed) and then you had to play through an equal number of new levels (several times) before you could actually beat the game. It is these artificial barriers that increase the length of a game that are the problem.
Right, because having 4+ times the real estate, controllable planes, casino games, gang control, fence hopping, movement while crouching, stealth kills, train hijacking, parachuting, alpine bike racing, rural areas, vehicle hitching (tractor train, anyone?), body and car modification, bicycles, etc. has absolutely zero impact on gameplay...
If they are only offering a 2 hour game, then it had better be 1/70th the price of a 140 minute game (assuming similar replayability.) Okay, maybe even 1/7th of the price would be appropriate. Hmm... a series of $10 episodes of a very high quality video game? Might that actually take off? Video rental places would either make a killing off of it or suffer dramatically, depending on if they marketed them the same as regular games.
I think the industry would end up losing out if it went to this. Basically a group of friends could get together and split the costs. On second thoughts, people trade video games all the time. It was a right of passage as a teenager/preteen. This could even work to disuade piracy in a "It's not my time to hack this $10 little game" way.
And then after a while, just release the whole thing as one giant box set with a couple of bonus features. Could probably charge more for that than for a single game, but volume just wouldn't be that high. However this would be after development costs are pretty much paid off anyways.
I don't know... I'm not a video game developer. And the ones I know would probably just laugh at the idea.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I love the guy, his games are my favorite, but...
This explains why Luigi's Mansion, Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker and Minish Cap are pretty short compared to their ancesotrs. The Twilight Princess had better not suffer shortness due to this.
What he actually means is "we have to convince people that shorter games are better so that we can spend less time and money in development and still charge the same amount for them."
---- Take the Space Quiz!
If that gets modded "Funny," I'm going to fucking kill somebody.
I'm going to fucking kill somebody.
I never finished Skies of Arcadia. I lost interest shortly after the point where the player had to search Deep Sky for that stuff, I forget what they were.
I almost never finished Grandia. After I finished the first disk, I didn't continue far into the second before something else came up, and by the time I had time for Grandia again, I had forgotten most of what I was doing. While recently I went back, started over, and finished the whole thing, it strikes me as odd that it took me so long to do so -- Grandia has great writing, head and shoulders above most other games, and is usually a joy to play.
This has only been getting worse over time. I've actually yet to finish Zelda: Minish Cap. The problem, as I see it, is that if I get interested in something else, maybe a project or a book or another game, then my chances of going back to the original game decrease dramatically.
I think the best way to handle this, however, might not be to make games shorter, but provide more continuity links to player who stop playing for a while. Maybe recaps of the story at periodic intervals, that kind of thing.
to put 40 hours into a videogame while you're trying to carry on any sort of semblance of a normal adult life. Hell, by the time I account for my commute, my lunch, and my eight hours work in a given day, I've lost at least nine, if not ten, hours of my day to my job.
Never mind time spent in the moring before leaving to work (roughly a half hour) or time spent in the evening in various hygiene relate activities (at least a half hour). I'm a painfully single guy, so I really can spend Friday evening and all of Saturday playing games, but I have to do laundry sometime, there's still some TV I do watch, and I have a variety of other errands that have to be run in a given week, not to mention any other entertainment that I might engage in. I'm lucky right now if I get three hours of gaming in during a given week. There's just too much other stuff to do.
Shorter games that can be picked up for brief periods are a lot more attractive, since I've got to squeeze them in around the rest of schedule.
Canthros
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Ah, so THAT's why I never get to see the end sequence of any game I play. The games are too long! (the alternative being that I suck at playing games is thereby ruled out. Thank god for that)
--- Eat my sig.
When I was saying that Nintendo's game are too short by half these days.
Yes a short game is fun, and i'd spend a few quarters anyday on Tempest or Pac Man, but I'd spend quarters on Bubble Bobble too, which is a rather long game.
Wind Waker was too short. I bought a DS and a GBA and there is not 1 Nintendo made game I can't finish in less than 2 hours. The DS is not sitting on the mantle and the GBA is my 16 months old daughter favorite toy now (I bought her Dora The Explorer at the walmart bargain bin, she likes the music)
There is a place for short games, and there is a place for long one, depending on the genre. My girlfriend still plays Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, which I bougth when it launched. Shenmue continue to marvel me on my Dreamcast.
Unfortunatly a lot of aging designer like Miyamoto seems to confuse which game should be short and which one should be longer. Its not my fault if age make them lose concentration. And it seems to be a growing trend for Nintendo. Their idea of making a game longer is to make us collect coins and whatsnot. Every game out there on the Gamecube seems to have some sort of exploration bonus... I hate them, they don't bring any fun the game beside a sense of being Sherlock Holmes's bitch.
But then again, game that are too long suck too. I'm sorry but all the latest FF are too long and become repetitive. And only hardcore geek fully finish San Andreas and Sin City.
You need to try some interactive fiction. You get mysteries, romance, collect the treasures, solve the word puzzle, and more. Normally in combination. Most IF is all about story these days, so there often is no puzzle as in the old days.
Despite advancements in GPUs, games from the 1970's played on a vt52 still have better graphics than anything else.
I was a huge video game fan when I was a kid. These days, I have a real life, a girlfriend, and a job. I can't sit down and play some of these games because they take too damn long. That's why I don't buy new consoles and I don't buy new games.
But I still own a gray box, 8-bit NES system and about 50 games, and I love it. Most people do. Because even a guest to my house can come in and play and enjoy it. They don't have to sit down and play for three weeks straight, two hours a day to make progress.
Slashdot gamers are of course going to balk at this, but there is a market for shorter - play in one session kind of games for those Gen X adults raised on this stuff who aren't interested in becoming obsessively involved in video games.
If they are only offering a 2 hour game, then it had better be 1/70th the price of a 140 minute game
Hmmm. According to my calculations 140 minute game should only run about 16.6% more than 120 minute game.........
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
Which will be the first game to cost $100 million to develop? The next GTA (6?) or the one after that?
I think he meant 140 hours.
140h of "You have to play that long to see the end"-gameplay really sound awefull, they simply would mean for many players that they never ever finish the game and that always leaves a fishy feeling, I for one wouldn't buy such a game. On the other side its of course not wrong to offer a game thats deep enough to be played for hundreds of hours without getting repetitive, that however works best with free-form games, where you arn't locked to tightly by a story.
Yeah... 140 hours. Oops. And I proofread that one. Oh well.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Just because Miyamoto has a short attention span, my 50 bucks goes to a game too short to even be worth it? I've been complaining about games being far too short and he wants them to be even shorter? Nintendo's being driven into the dirt...
... that I'm going to be spending $10 more per game for significantly less playtime and replay value? Next console games are supposed to be $60 and Nintendo is expecting everyone to pay more for less gametime?
Keep living the pipe dream, Nintendo. Your hardware days are numbered.
Sit down, power on the game and play it for exactly 15 minutes. How much fun did you have?
Probably not much. You probably managed to walk around a bit, get into one, maybe two fights. Or go to a town and bought some stuff, and watched most of one cutscene sequence.
Lets try that with Metal Gear Solid. In that case, you probably wandered around a bit, maybe hid from some enemies, and maybe got a key.
Both of those are fine games. But neither is one your likely to sit down and play if you only have 15 minutes to kill. If you want to have an enjoyable experience in either of those games, you probably play for at least one hour.
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Dogg tops the charts!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Are games where you have to wander forever just to get to the next area where the action will take place. GTA and Zelda: Windwaker are two prime examples. Driving a car in a video game that is not about racing is freaking boring. Driving a boat? Equally boring.
If I play an RPG, then I can expect a certain amount of grinding (hell, I even beat all the extra dungeons on Star Ocean 3), but one of the reasons I don't play MMORPGs is because of the ridiculous down time between, well, any action. Running for 5 minutes in each direction just to fight with an NPC for a half minute is not my idea of fun.
Maybe it's just me, but I get more of a kick out of playing Crazy Taxi, Hot Shots Golf, Ape Escape 2, or Tony Hawk than I do out of these games where the point is to run around forever trying to find things to do. If I wanted a game that was to remind me about the drudgery of real life, I'd work a few extra hours of overtime and treat myself to a great meal and a movie instead.
This, of course, is another reason why the best computer game in the world is the best computer game in the world: Try finishing NetHack in one sitting.
I wonder how many of these Slashdotters who complain that they don't have enough time to play games, are also ones who purchase the 10+ hour Lord of the Rings boxsets, or occasionally sit through a Star Wars marathon. Excluding RPG's most games will average 10-20 hours. I don't think that is long at all. Why are video games any different than any other form of recreation?
It was a right of passage as a teenager/preteen.
"rite".
I don't want a game that leaves me with, "What? Thats it?" when I get to the end of it. If I wanted something quick I'd watch TV or rent a movie.
I think the point is that a game has multiple two-hour episodes, and you can skip to any episode you want.
Thanks again for the insight. I guess this is why Nintendo is on top and no one is buying those long games like Halo 2 or GTA!
Developers pay attention, your audience wants repeats and rehashes of 20 year old entertainment not large expansive and immersive worlds to play in.
With sports games like football or basketball, you can always sit and play for 15 minutes, and actually finish something...the game. You don't need to save and come back later. If you don't like how long the game is, change it to 2 minute quarters, and finish the game in about 10 minutes. I like that I can sit down, finish a game, save my season progress, and then get on with my life, all with about 30 minutes of gaming time.
Of course, if you read the article, you can see that length is only one of the things he mentioned. His real concern seems to be that because of the complexity of games, many more games than ever before take a great deal of effort to play with any sort of effectiveness. Which is probably why he doesn't play them, because learning a complex control scheme in a video game can be something akin to work when it is done badly (and sometimes even when it is done well.
Since I'm a fan of RPG's, I can't really complain about length, but the complexity comes not in the control scheme per se, but in the battle system. Now, admittedly, learning a new battle system can be a bit time-consuming and complex, but the nice thing is that you always know what your doing (i.e. you don't experience pressing the wrong button, or pressing the wrong combination of buttons nearly as often). You simply learn what kinds of strategies do and do not work, something I find way less frustrating than learning a complex controller layout.
The games that are the best (IMO) are the ones that are easy to play but offer you a rewarding experience and lots of options in terms of the depth of your experience. Animal Crossing is the game, to me, that exemplifies this sort of complexity, as you can just fish all day if you want, or you can write letters all day, or heck, you can just decorate and move around furniture all day. And though I personally get bored with it much quicker, the GTA series offers a similarly tiered experience, which is what makes it effective. And Burnout 3, though it is much more strictly focused than the other two, is the only non-RPG in a long time that I have loved, because it is both easy to pick up and extremely satisfying to play.
Ouch.
I hope you weren't accusing me of using the Windows calc... 14/12 isn't a tough one.
besides... I was just being a smartass. I made no claims on whether I agreed or not.
*shrugs shoulders*
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
I like games where I can play for hours but like playing for hours like well Half-Life 2 sure it's still only 15 HOURS... but none the less it left me groping for more...
Where's that cap to the Decanter of Endless water???