Slashdot Mirror
Coming Soon, Shorter Video Games
Hugh Pickens writes "Blake Snow writes that according to one expert, 90% of players who start a game will never see the end of it and it's not just dull games that go unfinished. Only 10% of avid gamers completed last year's critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions. 'What I've been told as a blanket expectation is that 90% of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube,' says Keith Fuller, a longtime production contractor for Activision. The bottom line is people have less time to play games than they did before, they have more options than ever, and they're more inclined to play quick-hit multiplayer modes, even at the expense of 100-hour epics. 'They're lucky to find the time to beat a 10-hour game once or twice a month,' says Fuller of the average-age gamer. 'They don't feel cheated about shorter games and will just play a longer game for as many hours as their schedule allows before moving on to another title.' Even avid gamers are already warming to the idea of shorter games. 'Make a game worth my time and money, and I'll be happy,' says Casey Willis. 'After all, 10 hours of awesome is better than 20 hours of boring.'"
So I can spend 50 -60$ on a 20 hour game? Yeah, that's EXACTLY what I'm after. Sounds like a good way to keep development costs low and reap in more profit. I call bullsh*t on this.
Where does the signature go?
'After all, 10 hours of awesome is better than 20 hours of boring.'
That could be said for every other form of entertainment (including sequels, threequels, etc), work, relationships ... you name it.
Of course the real reason for this is paid DLC, but hey, we're just doing it for our customers.
Yeah like that will ever happen.
For some reason, I feel like Bioware should have something to say about this. If most of the people who played Mass Effect didn't finish it, I will shit a brick. The type of game and how it's presented matters a great deal more than length. Failing to finish a Rockstar game is no surprise whatsoever; they're not necessarily bad, but an open-world game almost always has that one goddamn mission that makes you really want to quit it. I think San Andreas was the only one I've ever finished myself, and I don't have anything to do with my time but play videogames.
It's the quality of the game.
Sure, you can "play" RDR. It has a halfway decent story. But it gets lost because of all the damn grinding, and getting lost, and generally farting around in the wilderness shooting birds and wolves. Or you take a weekend off and even with the mission hint system, you can't remember where the fuck you were in the storyline. It's even worse for all the goddamn JRPG's in the world. Or you have Celda Syndrome, where you play for a good 15 hours, and then spend 60 hours on "Hey Link, go sail a boat around the world looking for the 8 pieces of trash so you can make a goddamn macguffin and get back to the fucking story already."
Borderlands does a lot better about it. I can put that down for a month, come back, read the mission descriptions that actually carry some fucking backstory, and get back into my character easier.
Now, do we like shorter games if done well? Of course. Super Mario Bros. can be beaten in a few hours. The Megaman games, originals, had no save points but could be finished in a few hours. The key there is that they can be played over and over and over again, even after you've beaten them, and they are still goddamn fun to play. Just like how arcade games that generally only played for a few minutes - Joust, Galaga, Gyruss and more - were so fun and addictive that they could be played over and over and over again.
But the key is not making the game shorter. The key is not doing the things that make people bored with the fucking game. Avoid grinding. Avoid needless "now you need to run back and forth around the map 50 times for quest X" garbage. And that means a few changes to game design, like making your enemies scale somewhat so that they remain a challenge to a high "level" character while not being unbeatable for someone who hasn't spent 50 hours grinding in the side areas of the game (looking right at you, Final Fantasy series).
Shorter games? Fine.. but also drop the price then.
Personally I like my games to be long. It's not uncommon for me to play a 6-8 hour single scenario of Sins of a Solar Empire or Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
But if they are going to change it like they did with SupCom:FA to SupCom2 where they made it shorter but also just dumbed the game down, then I'm going to be mad. I've played through SupCom2 once, but I still play SupCom:FA.
Why do people enjoy playing against a computer? I play COD, Quake Live, Battlefield, and several others, never touched the single person mode, can't stand playing a computer, it isn't interesting.
But playing people, much more fun (and aggravation) than any computer opponent, they learn and adapt, conversation is possible and the greatest blast of all, a pub game where your human team actually works together.
It should all be multiplayer IMO, but apparently some people like playing machines.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I've already pretty much given up on console gaming in lieu of MMO's because I want more than 10 hours of content in a game, and now they're pushing to make games shorter??
Jesus. Gaming sure is starting to suck...
When I was a kid, I had time to master a game because I could play hours and hours, and hours. These days, I'm lucky if I get an hour of gaming a week and on bus/plane trips when I'm on vacation. So, take my last vacation: I advanced nicely on GTA Liberty Stories on my PSP (Yes, yeah, I know... ). I come home, go back to normal life. Would I pick it up again, I'd be stuck. Most of the story has been forgotten, the level of skill required is definitely not "in me" anymore and the only option I have is to restart the game.
Which is what I do... Ever seeing the "end" of GTA. Never gonna happen.
Sometimes, I just hit a hard wall within the game. I have Assassins Creed "Bloodlines" on the PSP. I played and now I'm simply stuck at a boss. I played for hours and hours, trying to beat that damned witch, but I can't. Back in my youth, I'd probably just have persevered, but now, I just put it aside. Haven't touched the game in a year, probably ever won't again as I'll have to start again and probably get stuck at the same "wall".
This, to me, is the nature of gaming at a certain age. Yes, I'd rather finish the games too, but I don't think making them shorter is going to help. A dynamic adaptation to the skill level of the player would be much better for players like me.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'm betting the "good" games have a substantially higher finish rate than the "bad" ones. So perhaps instead of making games shorter, you should make them not suck instead.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Please, stop making the game character die over and over and over and over in the same few f*****g spots in order to make your game feels as if it LAST LONG. Wake-up! We are not in the 80's where dying over and over was a requirement in order to suck in the next quarter. Also, how difficult is it to add a few program lines like so:
if ( num_deaths > 10 ) { transient_difficulty_level = RETARDED_NOOB_LEVEL_LOL; }
GODAMMIT!!&*&&@
The list of games that I was forced to give the tl;dr treatment to and have never been finished:
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Bioshock
Deus Ex
Metroid: Prime
Metroid: Prime 2
Took me 15 years to finish Final Fantasy 1
Well, I've probably spent at least 100 hours on Minecraft and it is a sandbox game too. Not all sandboxes are like GTA.
That being said, I've always enjoyed games which have no real ending - not necessarily sandboxes though. I've probably spent 100+ hours on Mario Kart and 60 hours on Civ5 in just one year. NetHack has probably taken over 200. None of these are sandboxes, but all are open-ended.
It's been my experience that I'm much more likely to finish a game that has a decent story behind it. I don't mind a little senseless grinding if there's a worthwhile payoff in the end. But so many games these days have only the pretense of a story. There's just enough to loosely tie action sequences together but nothing to really compel you to continue with the game. It's like watching a modern action film. Cardboard cutout characters moving around with big explosions and lots of flashy effects gets boring fast.
I guess this is a "get off my lawn" rant but I think that flashy graphics have ruined games. Without fancy graphics, the game developers had no choice but to make the games interesting. The first time I saw a new console game system with 3D I was impressed by the graphics but the game the guy had was nothing more than just driving around the game world grinding away at some inane monotonous task that didn't seem to have any purpose.
I don't know how many times I spent grinding through Diablo to the end. The graphics were decent for the time but it was the game play that brought me back over and over. I wouldn't have cared if it was done in ASCII art, it was a fun game to play. I haven't broken out a copy of Larn in over a decade but it was one of those games I wasted hours upon hours playing over and over again because it was a fun game.
A couple years ago I was playing one of the GTA games on an XBox. I spent quite a bit of time playing it but realized that I just didn't care about the endless monotony. The story wasn't interesting. And as it turned out, it didn't matter what I actually did on the side, the game forced the story in one direction. And that just made the grind feel pointless. And after spending quite a bit of time on it, I found out I was less than half way through the story. So I stopped playing.
I don't mind grind in a game if the grind has a real purpose. Grind for the sake of grind just isn't interesting. So I guess I'm glad game designers are taking it out and making the games shorter. But it won't compel me to buy and play the new games. They're still not interesting. And even though the cost to me is trivial, they're still not worth it.
Sandbox translates into "great, you've finished the 4 fucking hours of crapass story we decided to make. Now go shoot some people, fuck some hookers, beat them up after, kill all the cops you can find, and generally make an ass of yourself in GTA 4 till we make GTA 5."
But the sandbox is by far the best part of the GTA games. That's why they force you to go through the missions to unlock it, because otherwise you wouldn't bother with the boring-ass crap that they make you do in the missions, usually multiple times until you either find the trick or get lucky.
Not everyone is a good novelist. Some people are outstanding when they limit themselves to writing only short stories, but they'd get completely bogged down attempting a "War and Peace".
The video game industry, by and large, has a problem because they've set expectations of how long a game "should be". Game writers should quit worrying about hitting any targets of a specific length of time to complete a game, and just concentrate on making everything in it as FUN as possible. When you run out of creative ideas, maybe it's time to end the game there and focus on cleaning up the details of what you already wrote!
Replay value is another factor to consider. If a game can be completed quickly, that doesn't necessarily mean it lacks value for its price. If it's designed the right way, some people who finish it will still enjoy it enough to go back through it again (just like some people will re-read a really good book). It helps if the game allows completion with different classes of characters, and is flexible enough to make things play out in very different ways when it is played through with different characters. That's a potential advantage a book author doesn't have, with books being static.
If you're going to stretch out a game for the sake of stretching it out, and it shows (which in most cases, it does), then no, people are never, ever going to finish.
However, if you make a genuinely good game that JUST SO HAPPENS to stretch out 100 hours? People WILL finish it.
The problem is the quality of gameplay, in most games, decreases the further you get.
Either because the story lacks any real interest "KILL THE BAD GUYS BECAUSE I SAID SO GO" or the gameplay doesn't ever change in the slightest past "Kill enemy A B and C to progress to the next area."
No one wants to play an amazing game for 10 hours, then the last 90 are utter shit that the game devs more or less recycled from the first 10.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
New Vegas pissed me off. It uses a similar model, but the half the world map has been reserved for DLC. Then why the fuck is the game not cheaper?
I am not buying any of the DLC, I will get the GOTY edition for $20.
I have stacks of games that are years old I have not finished yet, some I have barely started, that doesn't mean I want them to be shorter in fact quite the opposite. I'm a collector, games are what I collect. I love long involved RPG titles, they are like a good novel or movie to me. I eventually make the time to get around finishing it but there are soo many good games out there and I have increasingly limited time, so it's no surprise how many of them I haven't finished yet. Also consider that games take skill to complete. I'm not the most skilled gamer but I'm willing to keep trying that one annoying encounter granted I may shelve the game for a few weeks or month before getting back to it. The reward in finally completing the encounter comes when I get to continue the story, it definitely causes me to be more engrossed when I have to actually work to progress the storyline What gets me about prices is how all new games are priced the same regardless of length or quality. A long AAA game costs more to make than the average movie so yes I expect to pay more in that case than a DVD or theater ticket. But not all games costs more to make than a movie. Why should someone pay the same price for a sequel to a shovelware game compared to a AAA title that actually took years to make?
The great thing about Oblivion, FO3 and FONV are that the main quest line isn't too long....and all the other stuff is optional. so You can do what you like doing and play the game how you want to play it. They also have good quest logs, maps notes and whatnot, making them easy to get in and out of.
My Oblivion save hit 200 hours before I ever visited Kvatch, and I STILL haven't completed the main quest.
It's not just the price, though. Sure, if the choices was between 10 hours of truly awesome vs 20 hours of boring, and they both cost the same, well, ok, I might actually splurge on something that's awesome for a change. I mean, honestly, out of some games maybe a quarter of the time was actually fun, and the other parts were filler that didn't really bring anything worth my money. If I paid the same, but got only the parts that were actually worth my money, in the end I'd get the same value for my money, if not better. In fact not only I'd pay extra to have that filler removed, but I _have_ occasionally actually paid extra to be able to skip it. E.g., by buying a GameShark or the like.
But that's unfortunately just theory. Anyone want to bet that that won't happen?
I've seen games get increasingly shorter for two decades now, but I'm just not seeing that awesome stuff emerging. I'm not seeing many people actually cut out the parts that make a game boring, and leaving the juicy meat intact.
The metaphor that comes to mind is basically imagine buying a nice suit, except it has 20 pounds of lead sewn all over it, so the tailor can claim you're getting a whole 25 pounds of material for your money. It brings no extra enjoyment whatsoever, it serves no function that I'd actually want, and frankly it even detracts from my enjoyment of wearing it. Would I pay the same money to get just the suit without the lead padding? Hell yea. I'd even pay extra.
But now imagine that after hearing about how the customers don't want heavy suits, and lighter is the new way and all, you go to the same tailor, and now for the same money you get a shirt and jeans, and only 10 pounds of lead sewn to the pants. You got something lighter, but you didn't get the same for your money.
Now the next round of interviews goes by and you're reassured by everyone that THIS time they'll cut only the unwanted parts out, and you'll get only 5 pounds of suit for your money, but it will be just the awesome part. Except what you actually get this time is a T-shirt and some shorts, and 4 pounds of lead sewn to it.
That's been what's happening to games. Each time we hear them talk about how people don't want huge padded games, and how gamers would be ok with half the game, but only the awesome parts. And some of us would indeed. I would have paid the full again for some games, if I got a version with all the good stuff and without all the boring padding.
But then the next game does come along with only half the hours, but the percentage composition is largely the same as before. Now instead of an 80 hour game, out of which maybe 20 are interesting stuff, you get a 20 hours total game. Yippee, it will be just the 20 hours of fun, right? Wrong. Now you have maybe 5 hours of fun stuff and 15 hours of padding.
I'm seeing the same rhetoric happening again and again, and it looks more and more like a cheap excuse for gullible morons.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've played every Bioware game I've bought (which is their entire catalogue more or less) to completion. Most of them more than once. However I have other games I have not. I get tired of them and set them aside. Defense Grid is an example. Good game, not sorry I spent the money on it, however I was done with it before I finished all it had to offer. Some other games I have completed, but generally don't. Civ 4 is an example. I have played a couple games to the end, but I usually don't. I build up an empire, squash some people, get tired of that game and start a new one. More or less once I'm to the "it is a foregone conclusion" part I decide I'm done.
I fail to see how any of this is at all a surprise. First off, for me to want to finish a game it has to stay interesting. If I get bored I'll quit. Games are for fun, not for work. Then there's the simple fact that the more engaging and important the story, the more I want to finish. If I care about what is happening, I want to see the end. If I don't, maybe I decide I"m done sooner.
Plus Sandbox games are the ones people are least likely to finish because many don't give a shit about the missions at all. They buy the game to goof around in. I'm put a good deal of time in to Just Cause 2, and done very little of the story. I don't care about it, not only is it a lame story, but I got the game just to mess around. I run around and blow stuff up, that is what I got the game for. I may never finish the story because that isn't the reason to have it.
Yeah, the problem isn't that gamer's aren't finishing the games. The problem is that the games of the past few years are largely not good enough to warrant finishing.
While this may be a very personal statement....Having lived through the Halflife/Halflife 2 era of games, it's very hard for me to find anything that's fun enough to finish playing.
I can't count the number of games that I've started and been unable to finish because they're simply not fun or interesting enough. It seems like the only companies making truly fun games these days are Valve...and various indie developers (Trine was a fantastic game, for instance).
The solution isn't to make shorter games. It's to make games that are inventive, risk taking, and not clones of tons of other games (I'm looking at you, COD & MOH).
Something that is skirted around in the discussion of grinding is the increasing difficulty of gameplay. This is one that bugs me - the Big Boss At The End Who Is Almost Impossible To Kill. It's a gaming tradition at least as old as Ultima, and it usually sucks. Yeah, it makes sense that you've beaten the minions, now you face the evil itself. Still, the skill requirements tend to increase linearly through the game up until that point, and then jump sky-high, making it insanely frustrating.
Some are done well: Shodan in System Shock was tough but beatable and the story drove you to that point. On the other hand, while I absolutely loved System Shock 2, I never finished it. I gave up after several nights of trying to get 30 seconds farther in the final Body of the Many fight. It ended up just being stupid. I don't care if winning the game causes Shodan to come out of my computer as a corporeal love slave - I can't be bothered trying to master that degree of twitch reflex, especially when it's completely out of line with the rest of the game.
Psychonauts? Finished it, despite the damned nets (and this on a PC with default key mappings!). I HAD to get the last chapter of the story!
So game developers, please: Don't say to me, "Oh you're 98% of the way through the game. Time to start throwing anvils!"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Yeah GotY editions are good for that, if you weren't in a hurry to play it on release.
As for why it wasn't cheaper, I don't know, but there are a lot of theories online to read about it. I suspect it's because of the whole "premium" versus "budget" stigma. If you price a game at $30 on release, most people will assume it's crap and won't buy it. I mean, we know what top-tier titles cost, right?
But with the success of Steam's frequent sale pricing and the advent of DLC, I'm really hoping that gamers are more open minded about it now and that publishers see that as a way to undercut the competition without worrying about being labeled that way. I keep my fingers crossed, but I don't hold my breath :)
"Only 10% of avid gamers completed last year's critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions."
I would like to know how they were tracking us and why we weren't told about this.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have to disagree as well. My favorite game of all time, Oblivion, is partially that because it basically never ends. I had 300+ hours into a character that I lost when my PS3 died. I am now starting a new one (as is the rest of my family) after seeing the Skyrim promo. I am having just as much fun this time around.
I also liked Fallout 3, but was disappointed when I finished the main quest and it ended at about 80-100 hours of game play. I have been thinking about starting it again and not finishing the main quest till everything else is done, but it doesn't have quite the draw Oblivion does. Anyway, the answer isn't necessarily shorter, it is less dull/dragging.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I guess you also get up in the middle of movies and demand your money back because you couldn't actually influence any of the action on screen, right?
In fact, the attrition (or bounce rate) of video games is pretty pathetic.
This line is pathetic in of itself. Some games aren't that exciting; not finishing it because of that is hardly a "pathetic" situation. Other reasons for not finishing games? Family, friends, work, school, other hobbies and commitments... What would be pathetic is feeling you have to finish the game despite all that.
Games are entertainment or a distraction. It's not a necessity to finish it in order to gain some enjoyment or benefit from it.
If the expectation is that almost every game made should make you want to finish it to the end, then... wow... what a dumb expectation. Even in an "ideal" game world. //yes I've finish Red Dead Redemption, among a couple others...