game-length
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Game length in MMOs and elsewhere
Back when I was in college, when we asked a professor how long our papers should be, he answered thusly: "Like a skirt-- short enough to keep it interesting, but long enough to cover the subject." More and more, it seems that you could say the same thing about videogames. In days past, the length of a game was a selling point-- the more gameplay you could get out of it, the more the game was worth. And so MMOs especially ask for a lot of investment, and were asked to give a lot of gameplay in return. I used to beat old NES and Game Boy games in minutes, and now, like Fullbright, I've got days and weeks logged in the MMOs I play.But is that a good thing? I hate to keep harping on it, but Fullbright brings up Portal for me (a game that seems destined to redefine what we think of as games this year)-- there's a game that only takes a few hours but delivers an experience that lasts much longer than that. In terms of MMOs the current trend seems to be both towards shorter gameplay and less investment for that gameplay.MMOs may be the exception here-- you sit down to create one character, and heading into a persistent world should make you want to be there. But with many MMOs on the market than before (and an older, busier audience than ever), the trend seems to be headed towards shorter games, not longer. That's not to say that a great game shouldn't cover the subject (no game should end before its time), but designers are feeling more and more pressure to make things short enough to keep it interesting, rather than throwing in random FedEx quests to brag about a few more hours of gameplay.[Via GSW]
Too Human's Denis Dyack: games need to be shorter
GamesIndustry.Biz has an interesting interview with Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack up on their site. In it, he says "Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. People don't want that any more. I don't care how good the game is, I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long."He goes on to argue that games not only need to be shorter, but need to be split up into chunks so that the masses can digest them easier. He also points out that the games need to be self-contained. "That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies. Too Human will be self-contained across each game of the trilogy."
How much is an hour of gaming worth?
Gamasutra's Question of the Week now tackles a subject that, at this point, has been thoroughly abused by debating strangers constantly ramming into it as it strolls to the shop. How important is a video game's length? It's a very good question, but a clear answer has yet to emerge or even prove that it exists. The industry's responses to the issue make for an interesting read, certainly if you're a gamer juggling a demanding hobby with personal life and midnight crime fighting. Several commenters point out that a shorter game length better accomodates a busy lifestyle, with the completion of a short adventure proving more satisfying than the abandonment of a longer one halfway through. Predictably, several pundits argue that a $60 game should give you plenty of hours of gameplay and that it's simply a matter of getting what you've paid for. Such an argument has merit in extreme circumstances, but it also points towards some mysterious equation that could be used to calculate your game's value. Just how much should you pay per hour? With largely subjective things like gameplay and enjoyment proving difficult to measure in meaningful ways, it's clear that a game's value -- which stretches beyond cost and length --is very difficult to adhere to a handful of dollars. Is an hour of Psychonauts worth the same as an hour of Devil May Cry? How many anti-meh's (see: The Algebra of Wows) per hour for each game? The best answer seems to be: length doesn't matter at all, it simply comes down to how you feel about the game. You'll know when you've gotten your money's worth, perhaps after spending just 15 minutes with the game. Fun fact: This blogger gladly paid full price for Space Channel 5, a game that can easily be completed in under 45 minutes.
