Slashdot Mirror
The Impact of Episodic Gaming
GameDailyBiz has a piece up looking at what episodic content is, and what it means to the future of the games industry. From the article: "Our age is one of aging. Mainstream gamers are now older on average than they have ever been. When you are single and unemployed, it is easy to play The Godfather for nine straight hours the day the game hits the shelf. When you are married, it becomes tougher. When you have kids, it might be impossible. It is difficult to slice some time for yourself. And in that slice, you have to carve a portion for gaming. It is no wonder casual games that require no more than 10 minutes to play continue to grow in popularity. This is why we are more likely to login to Call of Duty 2 on Xbox Live to play a quick five-minute Team Deathmatch and leave the Lobby."
Now, it has all changed. I got a 360 at the beginning of the month. I think I have played it a total of 3 hours. I have not played any PC games that I use to. I barely am able to log into Eve just to make sure I am still training something.
It's called growing up. I really do wish I could blow a few days in Battlefield2, and maybe in the future I will try to work that in. But right now, I just do a little Geometry Wars before bed (the demo version) or Blazing Angels demo (a lot of fun, that one).
Honestly, episodic content's great across all demographics. Because there's not this drive to complete a game instantly, it makes it far more replayable. If you get tired of a game for a while, it's easy to put down, but when that urge comes back, it's right there again. That's not just an "older gamer" thing, that's across all age categories. Little kids do it, teenagers do that, college students go through it, and older gamers do it. I suspect it's one of the great successes of the early eras: those games, when they did have story, were easy to pick up and play and put back down. Sure, you could marathon finish the game, but you don't feel the driving NEED to finish it in a marathon. So, of course, you play it for longer.
I hate newspeak. I buy games in order to play them. This has worked fine up until now. I can buy a game for $50 and play it for 4 or 5 years. I'm happy with that.
The main problem I see with this push toward "pay us via subscription" is that there's only room for a handful of successful games with the kind of monthly charge they're expecting. $1/month? Fine. $20/month? Homey don't play dat.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
But, in all seriousness, it is true. My life no longer focuses on, "What should I do tonight?", it became, "What should we do tonight?" Otherwise, if I was to tell my wife that I was going to sit down for a few hours and game, my marriage would not be as happy as it is. I enjoy spending time with my wife much more than gaming.
In fact, my wife isn't opposed to games. She grew up with the same games I did - old school DOS Games like Commander Keen or Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. Or, we'll play FloboPuyo or Jump N Bump together. Sometimes we'll fire up DOS-Box and one of us will play those games for a while. Or, we'll even fire up the NES and play Mario for a while. My wife plays my old Gameboy Advanced more than I ever did, and sometimes we'll link them up and play against each other. However, we play more board/card games together than electronic games.
But, I don't feel that I'm missing much, especially with newer games. Mediocre titles and long gameplay are factors that turn me away. If anything requires that I have to spend over an hour focusing on, forget it.
Prove it.
My family bought it's first pc back in 1979, a TRS80 Model 1. My dad loved computer games back then, but he hated how long it took to get anywhere. He said, "why doesn't someone come up with a game where you can define how long you have to play, and it will make sure you finish something meaningful in that amount of time." Well, no one has made anything like that, and now he doesn't play games.
Back then I thought it was a dumb idea, but now that I'm in my thirties I know exactly what he meant.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I have to agree with the idea on casual games. I am surprised, however, that it hasn't been carried through to other game formats. I'm in the middle of about 3 or 4 games right now that I would love to finish. all three require you to go to a savepoint. The problem is that, as the game progresses, the savepoints get further and further apart. Therefore, I get 20 hours into a 30 hour game, but I can't finish it because I don't have a block of 4 hours to set aside to get to the next checkpoint.
The problem isn't going to be fixed with edispodic content. As long as the game makers keep placing checkpoints farther and farther away to increase difficulty, then the problem will always persist.
Get a divorce and let them have sole custody of the kids... BAM! instant gaming time attained!!!!!11
Maybe I'm too obsessive of a gamer, but when I was first dating the woman now my wife, I thought it was important that she was into gaming at least half as much as I was, just generally interested in my interests. My wife attends LAN parties I go to, we play WoW together, and she kicks my ass at Dr Mario when we play.
32 hours at a friend's frat house. Morrowind, about 3 months after it came out on XBox. The rule was that you could play as long as you wanted, but you had to a) keep drinking (beer, coffee, pop, water, didn't matter), and b) hand over the controller to the next guy when you needed a piss break.
Unpleasantries.
That's crazy. I play to have fun, and playing games for more than a few hours can get really boring for me, besides the fact it's terrible for your health if your too obsessive to take breaks, and excessive marathons have cause one or two otherwise mentaly ill people to die.
There, now your post is more accurate, and isn't judging the whole of the gaming community by your own personal standards.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
What with all these "getting older" stories? Is the gaming community having a mid-life crisis?
Basically, yes.
Those of us who grew up as the first generation of video gamers are growing older. Sure, there's all sorts of new gamers, but we're starting to see gamers in their thirties who started on video games in elementary school. As a result, there's a lot of navel-gazing about people who still love games but can't play all the games they used to as a kid.
I'm a big console RPG gamer. When I was a kid, I used to regularly rack up over 50 hours on a run through FF4, and I probably played the game from start to finish over 8 times. I'd disdain strategy guides on the first run or two while trying to find everything myself.
Now, as a gainfully employed adult, I'm lucky to have enough time to play through one of my RPGs once. I don't have time to get everything I missed on a second run, so at this point, I'm hitting FAQs from before I start the game and using cheat codes at the end to bypass some of the tedium of finishing side quests. I have a lot of games that I've bought thinking that they'd be great that are sitting on my shelf unopened because I just don't have time anymore.
I also haven't played a good 4X TBS game in ages because I just can't see myself spending a week to finish one play-through.
That's a demographic shift for gamers that does actually mean something in terms of what kinds of products we buy, and since we're the money makers now, the industry is catering to us. That's why you're seeing so much about this.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You know, in Quake 3 Arena, you can hit Single Player, Skirmish, pick a map, hit Next, pick your opponents, and set a Time Limit and no Frag Limit. Like say for 15 minutes. And that's when the game ends.
I've been doing that for years.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Minimal.
Especially at the 20 bucks a pop method that I keep hearing rumored Valve will use. Particularly when it will just amount to a few linear shooter levels.
Meanwhile I continue to play Gal Civ II over and over with all the different outcomes for 29.99. Or even Civ IV for 50 bucks is a better investment.
No sig for you!!
I'm your age and single. I have just as much free time as when I graduated college and started working. In fact, I have even more free time since I'm not sucking up at the office and putting in O.T. to get on the boss's good side. I'm in cruise mode at the office.
/.? I know I do. ;-)
The reason you, a single guy with no g/f, have less free time is because you are unorganized. Here, do this. Put 15-minute blocks for the whole day in MS Excel (96 total). Now fill in what you have to do in those blocks. i.e. 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, 1 hour of commuting, etc. The blocks that you have not filled in are your free-time blocks. It may surprise you how much time you have. Maybe you waste time surfing
So if this article got a point this superlong game would not be selling. Except that it is.
So the story is complete and utter crap.
What is "important" for people with other demands on their time is the ability to segment their gaming. Or in other words. Save anywhere.
Call of Cthulhu is another Betsheda game yet while it is much shorter (except for some fake replay forcing) I can play it far less. In Oblivion I could play for say 5 minutes before saving and doing whatever is demanded of me. CoC would mean I had to quit and next time do whatever I did over again because I had not reached a save point.
The online 5 minute FPS section offcourse can't be saved but then again doesn't need to. Same with MMO games wich in way save CONSTANTLY.
I think the most important lesson game companies should learn is that older players with real live demands on their time will have less patience for being forced to play from savepoint to savepoint. Being forced to replay a game if they want maximum difficulty (what the fuck is up with that? Consoles are weird) or all the goodies.
Putting out games in small bits is not going to solve anything. So what if the godfather was segmented into 1 hour episodes. That STILL would not meet your 5 minute game session time.
I just wish gamemakers would wake up and realize that savepoints are a leftover from the days consoles didn't have enough memory to save a full game.
It is a tech limit NOT a design feature. I paid for the product, I decide how to play it.
If you think about it savepoint system is like that recent Philips patent to disable your TV controls during ads. It is the content maker telling you how you should play. Fuck that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe this is part of the reason why adventure games have nearly died out (not the only reason, obviously). It's one of the few genres where continuous playing for a long time is crucial to an enjoyable experience.
With, say, an FPS, as long as you stop playing when you finish an area/level, it's easy to pick up again on the next day. With an adventure game, it can be pretty crucial to have a lot of things fresh in your memory, like "I've definitely tried using my rabbit's foot with that checkout counter" or "I think the blind hermit mentioned something about frogs and WD-40 being an explosive combination".
Otherwise, trying things over and over again in separate gaming session gets really old really fast. So older folk don't have the time to enjoy playing them, while the kids, dumbed down by TV and MySpace, don't have the attention span.
I like Diablo II a lot. It's the only game I play. It's a lot of fun because I know I can sit down for 10 or 15 minutes or whatever and make a small contribution to my next level. I guess I would call it incremental gaming. After spending 4 or 6 hour chunks of time studying ochem or material for the MCAT in August, it is nice to run around whacking monsters and finding magical stuff. And since I play a little here or a little there, it doesn't really affect my family time at all.