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40 hours promised vs. 40 Hours Played


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(This is a little something I've been cooking up to post to my MyIGN blog, hope you enjoy)

http://www.ign.com/b...bindusara_cidel

Part I: Why are we here?

 

Gamers nowadays are a very different breed than they were ten, or even five years ago. There was a time where we as gamers waited patiently for the next video game magazine to come out so we could pour over every page, over every badly taken picture of a new title and hung on every word about a new game. These days getting information about a new video game is as simple as opening your web browser. Because of this, many developers give away much more about a game than they used to, and often make even more promises about a game than they should.

 

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Some people will promise you the world...over and over

 

A lot of this posturing is just the way that video game marketing has evolved over time. You oversell your product in the hopes that you will reach a much larger market audience come its release. Even if your product doesn't live up to all the hype by launch time you will at least have a mass majority who will refuse to return their product because they are already so emotionally invested in their preorder through the proliferation of advertising and social networking.

 

The "larger" issue here is that many developers feel that because of reseller outlets such as GameStop, which buy used games and sell them for an increased markup, (with no profits going to the developer) they have to extend their gaming experiences for the end user. Often times to the detriment of the game's story and general game play functionality.

 

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It was fun for about five minutes guys...

 

I can't quote any developer going on record as to saying they have done so for that reason, but to many gamers when we hear of a "feature" such as multiplayer being added to a franchise that was previously a single-player experience we can't help but think that this is just a way for developers to keep us interested in their product so that we won't return it to our local game store for resale. This, in and of itself, isn't a bad idea. However these afterthoughts are usually just poorly implemented. More often than not we hear about all these great new games that are coming out that are "over X number of hours of game play!"

 

I will play devil's advocate here to my own argument and say that when I was a younger gamer, hearing that a game that I was saving up my hard earned money to buy was over X number of hours (X typically being a value over 10-20) I was excited, because I knew I was getting my money's worth. I'd only get to buy one game every few months and the prospect of a game keeping me going for that long was well worth it. (I'm looking at you 99+ hour Final Fantasy 7 save file). Promises of that kind of game play are now becoming the norm instead of the exception and I see it becoming a trend that sacrifices story and all around fun of the game for the sake of longevity.

 

Part II: The Skyrim/GTA versus Bastion/Portal debate

 

What defines a "great" game? Many would say it is excellent game play mechanics mixed with a great story and an awesome soundtrack, as well as refreshing game play concepts. Rarely in discussion about the most groundbreaking games of all time does the concept of completion time enter the equation. As an adult gamer, more so than when I was younger, I have my feelers out when it comes to a new game release. I do my research; I listen to critics, not just the reviews they put out in print and online, but also via podcasts that I often listen to on my commute to work. I listen to them debate and discuss the newest games coming out and the one thing they never seem to touch on is the time it takes to finish a game, unless it is in jest.

 

I listen to developers talk about their games through websites and podcasts and I often hear about the length of campaigns in their titles versus how empowering it makes you feel to play their protagonist and that worries me. I hear about games like Grand Theft Auto 4, where less than 30% of the people who purchased it actually finished the game. I ask friends who were obsessed with Skyrim when it first launched what they think of it now and I hear things like "It eventually just became another Bethesda game I gave up on" or "It was awesome at first but then I just had so many quests I stopped caring about it."

 

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Sometimes too much IS too much

 

More recently I knew a handful of people that had heard about Kingdoms of Amalure: Reckoning and were ready to throw down their pre-sale cash when they heard that it was a 200+ hour game. That was, of course, to hit the 100% completion. Some might say that there is a lot of value to be had in a game that offers that much time to the player, but to gamers like me who don’t have that time to dedicate to a single title it can be difficult to justify purchasing a game that requires that much of an investment.

 

The converse of this is the titles that I so often see getting Game of the Year, or high praise from both game reviewers and players alike. These games only have a short initial game play time, but people end up playing them for well past that because the experience was so fulfilling.

 

Portal and Bastion are thought to be 4-10 and 10-15 hours, respectively. (These play times dramatically increase once you have cleared them once and have their levels memorized.) Both of these games earned high praise from well-known gaming websites as well as fans. Some might even think the phenomena of Portal could border on obsession with the community that surrounds it. Yet these experiences could potentially be taken on in a single session, depending on your available free time.

 

Both Portal and Bastion introduce you to a universe you are initially unfamiliar with and ease you into their mechanics without an excessive tutorial segment. By the time you feel you've gotten a grasp on the game play mechanics you are already close to finishing the game. No hand holding, no story mode that requires you to play for 40 hours or more and yet there are people who've played through the campaign Portal ten or more times, and people who have played through Bastion through multiple sessions just to get every ending and learn more about the universe. None of this was required by the publisher, it was just an option presented to the player if they wanted to extend their experience within the universe.

 

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You thought I'd make a cake joke here didn't you? You monster.

 

Part III: What does this all mean?

 

It's not my place to say who's right and who is wrong when it comes to developing games; all I know is what I want as a gamer that is looking to spend his hard earned money on a new title. From my perspective, there are many games that are on the horizon that seem like they are artificially fluffed with “content” for the sake of extending the game experience well past its expiration date and only weakening the experience overall by doing so.

 

I think what developers need to realize is that if your game is good enough, if it is fun enough, if we have a hell of a great experience playing your game, the length doesn't matter in the end. It is how much enjoyment we get out of it as players. In the end, that's all that should matter.

 

Until next time: Good night, and good game.

Edited by Bindusara
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Ive never been so disappointed in a gameafter playing ghost busters... Wasn't that supposed to be a direct continuation of the movie?

 

Ah well.. I think this generation of gaming is so nickled and dimed. In addition, a new standard has been established (im guessng) in the wake of a terrible economy. Every game idea is being turned into a long winded rpg for the reasons above...

 

Sony is already trying to move more games into electronic format since theres no way to resell digital (whatever) legally.

 

This next generation is definitely gonna be pretty annoying imo. Hopefully a step up in hardware and no more motion" accessories. (PFFFT... wii U...)

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Yeah I definitely did't get my 200 hours out of Amalur. Fun game, for awhile. I had it for maybe a month, then trded it in for credit on a reserve. Just did the same with Prototype 2 and I love that motherfucker. It, unfortunately, was not worth buying though, at least at full price. It was the first game I ever platted and will probably be the last. I don't waste time with meaningless achievements and the fact that i did with that game said something. I put it toward Darksiders 2 which should give me alot more hopefully (p.s. Logan, play part 1! Everyone play part1!)

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I got plat in amalur in 48 gameplay hours, and they insisted they had a 40 hour MAIN campaign. I was playing on hard, even.

 

I do take note of hours, on a lot of these plats, when saves make it easy. 48 for amalur, 82 for Skyrim, 140ish for Sengoku BASARA, which oddly didn't faze me. Don't rightly want to play it again, but yeah. Right now, I'm trying to give games time to see their conclusion, and then adding more hours if i want to add more hours to it. Some are worth time, others aren't. But crafting something that's fun to play is always the best way to go. I wouldn't call Just Cause 2's campaign long, or even interesting, but there was always so much stupid fun to have in that game it didn't even matter. I think Just Cause 2 got a hundred of my life's hard-to-grab hours too. Wonderful, wonderful game.

 

But I'm not picky. What I want, largely, is something with a bit of challenging gameplay to take my attention. Dragon's Dogma had a bit of challenge and a bit of fun, but I don't know if i want to give more than the thirty hours I already have. And all these hours... it's a lot. If i had a steady job, I don't think I'd be able to devour these games like I try to. There are a lot of games that look great coming forward, and I expect to give them all their due, but I feel like I'm losing time with good games because more good games are out. I still want to finish collecting stuff in AC:Revelations - not to mention actually do some multiplayer! - but I haven't chosen to give it that amount of time.

 

The problem I see is that each game wants to last us for months, but there's a couple of them each month anyway. So I don't have room, or time, to give them their due. I bought SMT:Devil Survivor Overclocked. Damn RPG has like eight endings and five bonus endings, and I'm only on my first playthrough. It's worth more. But I can't see myself not playing OTHER games to continue playing THAT one. And that's more an issue of time than an issue of quality.

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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I think this OP rules and you hit tons of really good points that I couldn't agree with more.

 

This makes me wonder about the recent trend of indie open world games, sandbox games and other games with no real end or with randomized elements. This has so far been a pretty clever and comparatively cheap way to give us games with hundreds of hours in them. Like anything else, sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't, but when it hits.... holy fuck. Kerbal Space Program has more potential meaningful hours of gameplay in it than even something like Dragon Age because you can't "plat" it or 100% it. Eventually, even an Atlus RPG with 27 endings for each character or whatever is just finished, but people spend a thousand hours on some of these more open-ended games. I think player freedom and mechanics robust enough to support that freedom is what gets me into a game for 50+ hours, regardless of genre.

 

So here's a question, what can these expensive AAA games give me that cheaper indie games can't? It sure as fuck ain't length. Video games are unique because they often cost a different amount based on how much they cost to make. Generally music, films and books cost pretty much the same amount on release regardless of their budget. Should we pay more to see a Christopher Nolan movie nowadays because they're expensive to make (and long as fuck)? Should a 90 minute indie movie cost 5 bucks in the theater?

 

I understand why Spelunky cost $15 and Uncharted 2 cost $60 when they were brand new. I would say both are priced appropriately. That being said I played Uncharted for about 40 hours and never played it again (but I loved it) and I've played Spelunky for almost 200 hours (Yeah, I'm fuckin weird, whatever). So I think while AAA games need to justify their cost now more than ever, length is a shit way to do it, as length is NOT something that expensive games necessarily do any better than indie games. AAA games need to show me where the money went, and how they're giving me something I couldn't get for 10 bucks from a team of 4 people. This is becoming increasingly harder to do as developers toss these elements of "perceived value" (game length padding content, unnecessary modes or features) over fun (and nowadays, over stability... I'm looking at you, AC: Unity!)

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