Why do gamers want SHORT games?

Back when I was a kid....hmm... never thought I'd say that..... I had to walk 10 miles to school! Oh wait no... games were longer!

People wantshorter games and its ridiculous. They say "We don't have time to play these long games and see the ends!" Such as Oblivion awhile back. Doesn't that tell you something? Maybe our lives have gotten to fast paced. Maybe you should cut back on whatever it is your doing. Here in American at least its known that our lives are WAYYY to fast paced. So now we get less bang for our buck in terms of length because people would rather lead busy lives instead of relacing a little. Its sad when I can beat a game in a day. I use to be able to rent games and I had to rent them AGAIN because 1 week wouldn't cut it. Not now.

I agree 100% But as development costs go up you will start to see smaller games. Its really dumb imo... a single player experience should be 15 or more hours minimum! If it can't hold your interest and keep you involved for that long... then the developers are not that talented.

Its one thing to have a good idea and stretch it well over a few hours... but to have a 20-100 hour game with several overlapping ideas all mixed together in a cohesive mix is what we need to see more of!

Back when I was a kid....hmm... never thought I'd say that..... I had to walk 10 miles to school! Oh wait no... games were longer!

People wantshorter games and its ridiculous. They say "We don't have time to play these long games and see the ends!" Such as Oblivion awhile back. Doesn't that tell you something? Maybe our lives have gotten to fast paced. Maybe you should cut back on whatever it is your doing. Here in American at least its known that our lives are WAYYY to fast paced. So now we get less bang for our buck in terms of length because people would rather lead busy lives instead of relacing a little. Its sad when I can beat a game in a day. I use to be able to rent games and I had to rent them AGAIN because 1 week wouldn't cut it. Not now.

AssassinExDeus

Back with the NES people had to beat games in one sitting or else they'd be erased either when you shut off the console or when the game screwed up and the screen started blinking

[QUOTE="AssassinExDeus"]

Back when I was a kid....hmm... never thought I'd say that..... I had to walk 10 miles to school! Oh wait no... games were longer!

People wantshorter games and its ridiculous. They say "We don't have time to play these long games and see the ends!" Such as Oblivion awhile back. Doesn't that tell you something? Maybe our lives have gotten to fast paced. Maybe you should cut back on whatever it is your doing. Here in American at least its known that our lives are WAYYY to fast paced. So now we get less bang for our buck in terms of length because people would rather lead busy lives instead of relacing a little. Its sad when I can beat a game in a day. I use to be able to rent games and I had to rent them AGAIN because 1 week wouldn't cut it. Not now.

bezaire2005

Back with the NES people had to beat games in one sitting or else they'd be erased either when you shut off the console or when the game screwed up and the screen started blinking

yea... guess how many hours it took for that person to get good enough to actually complete the game! :o

however want's short games is an f**** r***** . The MP for a lot of games suck unless they were designed for that ( EG. UT , Halo , Battlefield) On the up side you can finish them fast so you can rent them

PS : by short games I understand games under 6 hours.

Because games are being pushed. How often do you find a game that has an overarching quest where you must repair this broken thing, find all 8 pieces, and then fight the boss at the end? Those are 8 pieces that don't need to be in 8 different corners of the world, but they're put there to increase value. I stand by short games, not because I don't have time, but because longer games typically have a lot of unneeded filler.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against long games, or even games that include a bit of filler. If a game needs 40 hours to tell its story, then so be it. If a game only needs 6 hours to tell a story, then that is equally acceptable. When a game randomly throws a plot twist, and forces you to go through another 20 hours just to recollect yourself, I go mad. It isn't needed. The story was about to conclude. But it didn't.

Additionally, longer games will typically be less rewarding. There's only so much you can do to reward the player to keep playing through 120 hours. And understand that narrative isn't enough for everyone. People will play Gears of War for some action, not for narrative. Those same people, the ones who make up the bulk of the industry, shudder at the sound of a 40-hour RPGs. Why? Well, the reward comes through a 15-minute cinematic, not blowing someone's face off.

I do understand that value is important. No one wants to spend $60 on a 6 hour game. But at the same time, 15 hours of filler isn't the answer.

I dont' want shorter games i want GOOD games. If it's long for the sake of being very boring at parts then meh. prefer to have an excellently paced 10 hour game then a boring 20 hour game.Kratos_OMEGA

I liek quick games as in 10hrs give or take a few hours. Many games even in the past were this short if not shorter.

Since I play mostly RPG titles, my "filler" genres (inbetween RPG plays) need to be short and sweet. I want something I can enjoy without dediacting too much time with, which I set aside for RPG titles.

And as for life being fast, I want it that way... it's short enough as is for what I plan on doing with it, I need to make the most of the time I have.

Games today are not, I repeat NOT shorter than those of the "good old days". Take a game like Gears of War at it's average of 10-12 hrs. How long were those old 16bit 2D side scrollers?

Not as long as they appeared to be. Back then the only objective path of the game was getting from point A to Point B, level to level, where you would finally beat the final huge screen filling boss, thus rescuing the princess, saving the galaxy or what ever. Were those games 10 hours of actual play time? 20 hours? Not even.

Back then when there was a constrained limit of how much content could be squeezed into those 8 and 16 megabit cartridges (which reached a max of 2 megabytes on the 16 megabit) of stages, environments, audio, characters, and if you were lucky, 2D slideshow cinematics. With such limits of content, the designers used difficulty to stretch out the game time, where you were really repeating a level over and over and over again from repeatedly dying. Most games having limited lives and continues, at some point you would have to start the game from the beginning and and use less lives in the earlier stages to make it to the later stages.

I'm sure some here can remember the frustrations of Super Ghouls'n'Ghosts. When played from beginning to end, and counting only the consective minutes and not the re-tries, a game was on average an hour long, 2 if you were lucky. Take Golden Axe as another example. On XBLA, with the unlimited continues, you can blow through the game in 20 minutes.

Now we have fully fleshed out stories, more complex objectives in games, as well as multiple story paths in the players hands top choose from, that make actual game time an average of 12 hours for most action games, and much much more in RPGs which have side quests out the wazoo. The cinematics which are now interactive using the game engine instead of movies are much more part of the game. In other words, games today are much more than the "point A to B" formula of old and we are immersed in fantastic worlds which makes for lengthy gameplay, with a great deal more content than the games of old.

Uhh...what the hell? Who are these gamers? I remember reading an article in GI that supported short games. I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I wrote a blog entry on this a while back: http://www.gamespot.com/users/majadamus/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-24990185

Most sane gamers want to get as much playtime as possible from their games.

Wait...

Maybe our lives have gotten to fast paced. Maybe you should cut back on whatever it is your doing.

AssassinExDeus

"Yeah, coach? Umm... I'm not going to make it to football practice today...or ever again. Why? Oh, no, I like playing and being on the team, its just that I need more time for long video games. Ok, bye!"

/thread

people want shorter games so they can quickly finish it and enjoy the awesomeness of multiplayermingo123

Typical halo fanatic logic.