Bethesda Veteran Says Players Are "Fatigued" By Seemingly Endless Games

5, 6, 7 year development cycles only to get an experience of what used to take 18 months... and then poorly written on top of that? That's what gamers are tired of Will. Starfield is one of my favorite games OAT but the writing was definitely not a strong point, and you get to wear that mantle no matter how you frame it. And I don't want to hear about the next Elder Scrolls that's coming out in the 2030's, gamers just want good games that come out on realistic time frames.

My fav large games makes you have to do the side content inorder to stand a chance. Usually this means a well balanced difficulty slider that you can max out to create a meaningful 'grind'. Ie GMGOW or for me that kinda sucked at Elden Ring - I simply had to explore _entire map_ and lvl up enough to beat Malenia.

Starfield didnt suck bc it was too big tbh.

Agree with most in here this is just corporate speak to justify the direction they want to steer the ship. Starfield suffered from antiquated design and a bloat of ho-hum content, not an oversupply of good stuff.

Baulders Gate 3 seems to be a pretty big elephant in the room here. But pay no mind! It doesn’t fit the narrative!

That’s not why I was disappointed with Starfield, but I am pretty worn out by giant games.

I believe players have more “buy know and we’ll fix it later” fatigue than this big games bad excuse

"the big game fatigue excuse"

def: video game industry practice of shifting blames of a big budget flop: people aren't playing our latest AAA game because they are tired from playing other games, not because our game suck.

synonym: "the too much content excuse"

latest example: "lead quest designer of Starfield"

No, players are fatigued from the recent trend of shit, bloated, seemingly endless games....

Immersion and gameplay will turn the tide.

People decide with their wallets.

Thats the compass.

I doubt that. Definitely not as much games getting made. Developers and game studios definitely don't risk as much as they use to. Plus games take longer to make. If anything the consumer needs more games.

No...more....auto....save...need....manual....

saving....anywhere....

I'm not fatigue to play a long, but very good game. I got 600+ hours in Elden Ring, probably 700+ in Monster Hunter World. A good 400+ in Fallout 3. The size of the game doesn't really matter to me, as long as it's good, and engaging.

It all depends on whether the hours are quality or quantity.

I'm fine with 100 hour plus games that I pick away at over a few months if there is quality in those hours. Too many games are just adding filler (fetch quests) or maps that are so large it takes way to long to traverse.

If the map was interesting it might be worth it, but most are just barren scapes with nothing to look at. Fast travel eventually helps, but that usually doesn't come till later after having to walk the landscape at least once.

It reminds me of Sonic Frontiers where there was a large map to explore. The initial running around felt good, but it got tiring fast and just turned into a collect-a-thon. The most exciting part of the game was the levels akin to more traditional Sonic games, but you needed to do the collection and fight the annoying bosses just to play these levels. Gave up on the game after really not seeing anything interesting in the free roam map and not wanting to be forced to collect stuff just to play the levels portion on the game.

That explains why people stopped buying Skyrim and GTAV /s

I hope we get some really fun, shorter games to hold my interest. If there is still a market for the bigger games, which I'm sure there is, it would be great to see an immersive world where my actions feel impactful and consistently fun for endless hours.

It's amazing that games are now the biggest entertainment industry in the world.

I struggle with these 100 hour games where quantity seems to aim over quality... Like needing to hunt and craft to level my character up in far cry so i can actually go and play the damn game but after wasting time in the beginning hours in these giant open world games i tune out and try again sometime later ...but my backlog is filled with games .. still working on persona 5 royal at like 70 hours and mehh... Struggling with the boring endless underground in Tears of the Kingdom and then games like cod require a huge time investment to earn battle pass rewards... Last good story game that had a good size to it was God of War Ragnarok and heck even Control before it... Not everyone can make red dead 2 but even that took like 20 hours to get going... Just burnt on my favorite hobby because of the industry... like games shouldn't be so much work to be fun for the player.. sorry for the rant but its also people who like to live inside of one game for years and years so they keep giving those players endless boring achievements and easter eggs and collectables and blah blah blah ... I like assassin's creed but its so damn boring ...like all of the recent ones

It’s the 2020s negativity drives interaction. Nobody likes anything anymore.

I agree. With a couple exceptions, I’m sick of these 50+ hour games. 30 hours is about the max that I want a game to last. I know I don’t have to do every side quest, but I also want to experience everything the game has to offer. Games don’t need hundreds of side quests and a 30 hour story. You can very easily tell a great story in 10 hours, with 10 hours worth of side quests. The same people who complain about games being bloated are the same people who seem to think that the price of a game is related to the amount of content. To an extent, that is true. You can’t charge $70 for a 2 hour game. However, most games used to be 8-15 hours for $50-$60. A game doesn’t need to be dozens of hours to be worth $60-$70.

I have permanent open-world fatigue to some degree, but I think what people are primarily tired of is bad content. Like Reggie once said, if it's not fun, why bother? We have many low quality distractions competing for our attention these days. Gaming can't just be another one of those, because it requires effort to consume. If a game's content is bad, you not only waste your money and time playing it, but your energy as well. So you have to consistently provide something entertaining and fun within your game if you want people to stick around. Starfield was the opposite of that.

100% true (for me, at least).

I literally go to HowToBeat.com for every game I buy these days so that I can ignore all these 50+ hour games.

There are tons of people who grew up with games back in the 80's, 90's, and early 2,000's that are now adults. They have careers, spouses, children, houses, and plenty of other responsibilities. We'd love to kick back, relax, and enjoy a game, but games these days never end, and they're filled with so much bloat—crafting, side quests, collectibles, level systems, fishing, party management, loot, and the list goes on and on—that you need a PhD in a given game to know what the heck you're doing, especially if you set it down for more than a week or two and try to come back to it.

Growing up, most campaigns were 8-12 hours. I'm thinking about games such as Banjo Kazooie, Halo: Combat Evolved, and Uncharted 2. They focused on gameplay rather than a million and one unnecessary features. I'm convinced that, as technology progressed, game developers felt the need to justify their game's price tag by cramming in more and more things. Now, you get bloated messes like seemingly every Ubisoft games these days—Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Watch Dogs Legion, Far Cry 6.

Simply put, games nowadays way overstay their welcome. Heck, I even like some of them—Persona 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, etc.—but I rarely finish those games.

Thankfully, the indie scene picks up the slack. Games such as Animal Well, Stray, Outer Wilds, Celeste, Gris, Abzu, Inside, Firewatch, Tunic and TONS more all clock in at reasonable playtimes. Additionally, they are often devoid of all the aforementioned "bloat." As much as I enjoyed Elden Ring, I preferred the exploration in Outer Wilds. As much as I enjoyed Persona 5, I preferred the story in Firewatch. As much as I enjoyed Red Dead 2, I preferred the simple beauty of the graphics and soundtrack in Gris.

I don't think AAA studios need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to produce crap like Skull and Bones. Limit the scope of your work. Produce simpler, shorter game experiences. I have no idea what it cost to produce Warhammer: Space Marine 2 other than Saber saying it was "affordable." That said, it's the perfect modern-day game, in my opinion. It's jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It has incredible world-building. It's simple yet visceral and immensely satisfying. And, it doesn't overstay its welcome!

Yeah, that's why players aren't playing Starfield. It's the length....*huffs copium*