Do Gamers Want Simpler Games?

A recent GamePro article sums up a lesson that developers and publishers have been slowly learning over the last few years: gamers don't want as much from games as they say they do. Quoting: "Conventional gaming wisdom thus far has been 'bigger, better, MORE!' It's something affirmed by the vocal minority on forums, and by the vast majority of critics that praise games for ambition and scale. The problem is, in reality its almost completely wrong. ... How do we know this? Because an increasing number of games incorporate telemetry systems that track our every action. They measure the time we play, they watch where we get stuck, and they broadcast our behavior back to the people that make the games so they can tune the experience accordingly. Every studio I've spoken to that does this, to a fault, says that many of the games they've released are far too big and far too hard for most players' behavior. As a general rule, less than five percent of a game's audience plays a title through to completion. I've had several studios tell me that their general observation is that 'more than 90 percent' of a game's audience will play it for 'just four or five hours.'"

Comments

Re:As if quantity of content is its only measure..

[AuMatar]

I think of the exact opposite. I don't like sandbox games at all. If I'm playing a game with a storyline and a quest, I want the gameplay to be tight, focused on the storyline, and with minimum to no distractions or side quests. I play those games for the story, I don't want to wander around lost or go off and do other things- I want the story, and I want a well written plotline engaging and long enough to be worth the game with nothing else tacked on.

When I think replayability, I think Civ. Strategic gameplay instead of tactical and each game plays very different just by altering the starting conditions.

Re:Break em up into episodes

[Max Romantschuk]

We've been playing the Tales of Monkey Island episodic games on the Wii with a couple of friends lately. It's usually 3-4 hours to beat an episode, and at 10 Euros that's dirt cheap compared to a movie for the four of us. Win-win :)

Re:Is the game play actually net new?

[severn2j]

The problem with episodic gaming is that each of those four parts will not be 25% of the price of the whole and you will more than likely end up paying more overall for the whole thing than you would have if it wasnt split into chunks.. Whenever there is an opportunity to increase price via obfuscation, you can be sure it will be taken. As has already happened with DLC.

Re:Is the game play actually net new?

[the_bard17]

I believe he's referring to the "balanced leveling"... where Oblivion levels the world with you. It's why I've moved to using OOO (lately, FCOM) as a major mod... it overhauls the world, including releveling the bad guys.

Re:As if quantity of content is its only measure..

[Colonel Korn]

What if I want to jack all of them up? Oh can't do that, not in the script.

Fooie.

Yes you can. None of those people were invulnerable. You just didn't make a good attempt.