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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 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.
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 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