Games getting shorter and shorter....

It seems these days games, more specifically fps and action games are getting shorterand shorter, its getting ridiculous. call of duty 4 epitomizes this (yea it had multiplayer butthere are other examples at my disposal)and yet with so many people buying these games at such high prices despite these shortcomings itbegs the questionwhy would companies put in that extra time to make a 12 to 15 hour long game atleast, instead of a 5 hour game when people keep on disregarding it? maybe it is becoming harder to produce games nowadays which is why they cant all be as long as they were 10 years ago obviouslyand thats what is causing games to be so much shorter these days but then its contradicted by many modern rpgs like oblivion, the witcher, etc., etc.which have more than 30 hours of gameplay (far more)?

Is it our fault so many fps' and action games are ridiculously short these days or do you think its got to do with something entirely different?

to be honest im sick of it, i want my money's worth. why dont fps' and other action games come with even half the longetivity of rpg's these days? it wasnt always like that and with the amount of money infinity wardmust be making im sure they can afford to make their games worth their money but as i said thanks to so many people who fork out a hundred dollars regardless of how ridiculous a 5 hour single player campaign is why the hell would they do otherwise?

Indeed, games like Uncharted and Assassin's Creed, that can be finished withinten hoursreally annoy me. You pay 50-70 bucks for a game, just to be done with it in a day or two. Sure you can play through them again because you can still find some hidden medals or whatever. But in my opinion, thats just developers being lazy.

id rather a 12 hour game with no replay "value" than a 6 hour game with a bunch of stupid concept art and almost irrelevant unlockables. thats twice the fun and if a game is good enough it doesnt need any unlockable stuff to give me replay value, i played half life 2three times. the quality of a game should give replay value, not getting a medal that no one will ever see for completing level x on difficuilty y (or watever).

"replay value" is a bunch of **** half the time, its just the developers slapping together some last minute extras to try and give you a sense that your getting your money's worth. it doesnt justify some of the ridiculously short single player campaigns we are seeing more and more commonly. sometimes these aspects are put into a game well but it shouldnt compensate and doesnt compensate for a game that lasts less than 10 hours.

They actually made a prediction about this on bonus round last year regarding PS3 and 360. because of high costs of development, they predicted shorter games. Looks like its true.

On wii however, Super Paper Mario, trauma center, MP3, and SMG are LONG ENOUGH! (smoothe moves, however...too short single player)

I dont know if 8 hours is to short. take a movie the mostlast 1.45 hour. And not all people have the time to play 4 hours a day.

Short games dont bother me as I cant play for too many hours a day, but the trick is it needs to be an ennjoyable 10 hours. All the games I own I could pick up and play any of the SP parts of the games anytime and not be bored with them. When a game is 10 hours long, and cant keep you wondering what will happen next is where the problem is. Sometimes I get annoyed with 40 hour games because they arent 40 hours of greatness and have parts that make you lose interest in the main story or it is just too repetitive. I'd rather pay 60 for a great 10 hr game than 30 for a mediocre 40 hour game.rockydog1111

True, but there are plenty of good long games out there, like Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and the Witcher.

I don't mind a short game with high replay value. Ala Crackdown, Gears of War, and CoD4. Oh, and I couldn't forget the original Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force :Dmusicalmac

True, but there are plenty of good long games out there, like Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3and the Witcher.Can-o-Mark

I actually thought that Prime 3 was kind of short.It took me 11 hours,and I wanted at least another 4-10 hours.:?

Games have been getting quite short.I've been playing Thousand Year Door again,and one of the main reasons I like it so much is because of how lengthy it is,and how many sidequests there are.

Three words: Time and money

It costs money to make long games, and it takes developers longer to code in all the extra material. So the choice becomes: Do we (the developers) spend more out of our own pockets to make a longer game that might not do well, spend more time to make a longer game and push back the release date by months or even years, or do we do the best we can to get a product on the market so we can try to turn a profit.

I don't mind a short game with high replay value. Ala Crackdown, Gears of War, and CoD4. Oh, and I couldn't forget the original Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force :Dmusicalmac

Elite Force was fantastic, the MP was so surprisingly awesome.

[QUOTE="musicalmac"]I don't mind a short game with high replay value. Ala Crackdown, Gears of War, and CoD4. Oh, and I couldn't forget the original Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force :Dgingerdivid

Elite Force was fantastic, the MP was so surprisingly awesome.

I agree a game shouldn't be 6 hours of game time only, but you also gatta not make it last too long. Otherwise, you run out of content and have moments of dragging the player by their feet just to reach the next part. Earthbound was only 20 or so hours for me but while that might be called short for an old turn based RPG, it filled each moment with non stop epic and fun.

im also unhappy with this.

there are a few reasons its happening though

1) costs...makign epics is getting alot more expensive

2) gamer demands (or percieved demands at least). a small dev could easily make a long and crackin game that looked like baldurs gate. it wouldnt cost much at all. would it be done though? absolutely not. in this day and age, devs believe that if its not 3D then it aint worth snot. the industry believes that we absolutely dmeand the best graphics and technology available. that costs an absolute fortune. if the market was willing to accept something less cutting edge on the technical side then we could see longer games again. cant have the cake and eat it though. the only other way is to charge more for longer games or greatly expand the market so that more ppl are buying said games.

3) stats. if we are to use steam as an example, very very few ppl finished HL2. relatively few finished ep1 (and thats very short) lots and lots of long games are never finished by the player. so the industry thinks we want shorter SP games.

I dont know if 8 hours is to short. take a movie the mostlast 1.45 hour. And not all people have the time to play 4 hours a day.

Rip870

a movie doesnt cost over 60 dollars

i also agree that i would rather a ten hour great game over a 40 hour bad game but that isnt the point. 10 hours is still way too short for something that im paying this much for and when compared to how much longer games used to be. if you think that the games getting too boring after 8 hours of gameplay is a reason why they shouldnt be longer then maybe companies should just find ways to make them not boring dont you think?

I think reviewers and gamers alike need to be alot more critical of games like heavenly sword and call of duty 4, thats part of the problem, since no one seems to not buy games since they are too short and no reviewer marks a call of duty down due to their length developers arent going to bother spending more money on games with more longetivity, there is simply no reason for them to do it at the moment.

i think this is why the community is to blame now think if a role playing game only had a single player of about 15 hours (meaning if you did all the side quests or watever), rpg gamers wouldnt stand for itand its one of the reasons why they are significantly longer than action games where 20 hours would be considered epic.

some people may say that its harder to produce games with better graphics and so forth which is why games cant be longer but then why the hell do you then get games like oblivion with over 100 hours of gameplay almost if you include all the side quests and places to explore that there are?

games should be longer, but they also need to be harder. what goods a long game if its too easy?

I do agree that most single player campaigns are getting shorter, with more emphasis being put on online MP modes, which to me is fine because I personally would rather spend less time going through the SP and more time online. That is because I don't really have time to play through long games. When I was younger it was nothing to dump 70+ hours into FFVII, I actually did it twice. Now it is more worth it to be able to get through a game in a few sittings, then have a decent online option to turn to when I have time to kill between new games. I guess it all depends on how much time you actually have to game that determines weather this is a good or bad trend. I took exception for Mass Effect, I pretty much had no life outside of work for a solid week to put hours into that game.

[QUOTE="Rip870"]

I dont know if 8 hours is to short. take a movie the mostlast 1.45 hour. And not all people have the time to play 4 hours a day.

Minglis

a movie doesnt cost over 60 dollars

i also agree that i would rather a ten hour great game over a 40 hour bad game but that isnt the point. 10 hours is still way too short for something that im paying this much for and when compared to how much longer games used to be. if you think that the games getting too boring after 8 hours of gameplay is a reason why they shouldnt be longer then maybe companies should just find ways to make them not boring dont you think?

I think reviewers and gamers alike need to be alot more critical of games like heavenly sword and call of duty 4, thats part of the problem, since no one seems to not buy games since they are too short and no reviewer marks a call of duty down due to their length developers arent going to bother spending more money on games with more longetivity, there is simply no reason for them to do it at the moment.

i think this is why the community is to blame now think if a role playing game only had a single player of about 15 hours (meaning if you did all the side quests or watever), rpg gamers wouldnt stand for itand its one of the reasons why they are significantly longer than action games where 20 hours would be considered epic.

some people may say that its harder to produce games with better graphics and so forth which is why games cant be longer but then why the hell do you then get games like oblivion with over 100 hours of gameplay almost if you include all the side quests and places to explore that there are?

Hasn't the most games always been short take a look back on the NES and SNES era the only reason why the games lasted so long was because they were really hard to finish. But after some practiceyou could easily beat those games in 6 8 hours.

yes, some games.

definitely not most games like is the case today.

and even if im wrong about that (which im not), my point remains the same.

In general I think the perfect length for a game is between 15 and 30 hours. Any more than 30 and it drags on too much, and less than 15 is like "oh well, guess I'm done then".Zaxro

i agree, its about keeping the quality of the game as high as possible for a decent length of time, 15 hours would be sufficient imo. its not about sacrificing quality in a game for extra length or vice versa.

god of war 2 would get **** boring after 30 hours if they kept going through the same things over and over, this isnt what im saying here.

what about this?

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/medieval2totalwar/index.html?tag=result;title;0

hundreds of hours for 40 bucks...

I don't think games are getting shorter. Anyone remember right after the PS2 launched? The Bouncer, Zone of the Enders, and Gun Griffon Blaze? yup, I owned all three and all of them were very short. Hell, ZotE and The Bouncer are shorter then Heavenly Sword. It's always a trend to push shorter games in the beginning of a cycle because of cost and efficiency. You have to get used to the hardware but you can't spend oodles in the beginning doing so.Ibacai

and its a bad trend.

and shorter than heavenly sword? my god, heavenly sword took 6 hours if you were lucky and that is including cut scenes.

its definitely getting worse, those three games do not represent a whole generation of gaming. and its hardly the beginning, the 360 has been out for atleast 2 years now.

[QUOTE="Ibacai"]I don't think games are getting shorter. Anyone remember right after the PS2 launched? The Bouncer, Zone of the Enders, and Gun Griffon Blaze? yup, I owned all three and all of them were very short. Hell, ZotE and The Bouncer are shorter then Heavenly Sword. It's always a trend to push shorter games in the beginning of a cycle because of cost and efficiency. You have to get used to the hardware but you can't spend oodles in the beginning doing so.Minglis

and its a bad trend.

and shorter than heavenly sword? my god, heavenly sword took 6 hours if you were lucky and that is including cut scenes.

its definitely getting worse, those three games do not represent a whole generation of gaming. and its hardly the beginning, the 360 has been out for atleast 2 years now.

what about games like mass effect and oblivion?

people are so quick to highlight CoD4 but then you forget for every short game theres also more longer games.

Personally, im sure i'll be able to pull 10+ out of CoD4. increased difficulty + arcade mode + achievement hunting = win.

[QUOTE="Can-o-Mark"] True, but there are plenty of good long games out there, like Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3and the Witcher.VGobbsesser

I actually thought that Prime 3 was kind of short.It took me 11 hours,and I wanted at least another 4-10 hours.:?

Games have been getting quite short.I've been playing Thousand Year Door again,and one of the main reasons I like it so much is because of how lengthy it is,and how many sidequests there are.

Some of the length in that game comes solely from annoying fetch quests, though. See the General White quest for the most egregious example of something that sends you across the world and back for no good reason.

The developers from Bioware said it best. You can have longer games, but the graphics will not be as good as the could of been or you can have great graphics but shorter games. They try to find a balance and in my opinion they do an excellent job of it. I love Heavenly Sword, COD4, Uncharted, GeOW ect, because they find a perfect balance.Heil68

I don't mind if a game is short, as long as it does the story well. That is one of my problems with Mass Effect, it just feels like BioWare cheated us of a complete game in order to make the sequel more anticipated. xDonRob

dude i've been playing mass effect for over 20 hours. on 1 playthrough.

If you want your money's worth, don't buy them. Just rent. Call of Duty is way too short a game for me, and I think the multiplayer is pretty mediocre, so I wouldn't even play it online. But I did purchase Bioshock and I got Mass Effect for xmas. Or just wait until they come down in price.