I would rather play a game that is a great overall experience with no filler than a pretty good game that lasts me 1000 hours. I pay for quality, not quantity. Think of it this way... if a two books are $15, and one has 150 pages and the other has 1000 pages, does that automatically make the 150 page book worse than the 100 page book? You can apply the same thing to movies (is a 10 hour movie better than a 2 hour movie?). I love Morrowind and KOTOR, that offer tons of play time, but do I think they''re way better than Max Payne 2 because of the game''s length and did I feel ripped off by MP2? No, maybe I just have an odd sense value though.

Maybe the problem is in the dual nature of games? Nowadays pretty much all single player games (and definitely all 5-10 hour games) are both games and stories and are generally pretty linear experiences. Like it''s been said, this wasn''t as big a problem in older titles because of difficulty, replayability, player expectations, etc. There is also no standard length for gameplay time. Movies are generally 1-3 hours long, TV shows are 30 minutes or an hour, CDs are about an hour, etc. Average gameplay time can vary widely, from 1 hour to 1000 hours.

Possible solutions? Maybe there just shouldn''t be linear single player story based games. Most games with a set story and and certain set of levels will only last you so long. While people complain about Call of Duty taking 5 hours to beat, how long does the average FPS take? Do most story\level based first person shooters really give you more than 20 hours of single player (if that much)?

But... Like I said before, a lot of older NES and SNES platformers don''t necessarily give you that much gameplay time and people don''t complain about those. It could be the save\load systems though. Would call of Duty be significantly longer if you couldn''t save anywhere in it and had to restart a level every time you died? If this added 5-10 more hours to the game would you feel satisfied?

I haven''t played Prince of Persia, but it sounds like they did get it right. I''d like to take the lessons from it and put them into my current game project.

As for a middle ground of distribution, I''d have to say it''s this: release the game free on the internet (I''m a free software(OSS) fanatic), but design it to function based on pluggable data that defines levels and "move-along" material such as the story and cutscenes. Then make your money by selling these data packages, and by renting server space to non-official data packages. Some packages should be included with the game though.

void Signature(void* Pointer)
{
PObject(Pointer)->ShowMessage("Why do we need so many pointers?");
};

Chasing off on the random encounters tangent...

Kingdom Hearts had its combat take place in the field rather than the traditional Final Fantasy pocket dimension (or wherever the fights actually take place) meaning that, while generally you couldn''t see fights coming (enemies spawned almost on top of you when triggered) you could often run away.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time also had combat take place using the same engine as ordinary navigation, and again, you can evade a reasonable proportion of combat. In fact, on my fourth time through, I deliberately evaded combat where possible, and ended up shaving roughly 25% off my previous last save time(s) without losing out on the combat related powering up.

On the subject of cutscenes, whenever I replay Zelda: Ocarina, I spend about half the first hour reading a book while absently tapping ''B'' at a couple of Hertz to page through the unskippable dialogue and interminable cutscenes, not forgetting the handy play-tips that keep popping up ("Pay attention to what the Action Icon says" - comes up twice that you can''t avoid - and I''ve tried - as well as once you can trigger if you want) and demanding your complete attention. If you must have handy hints with no option to skip them or turn them off, then at least could they just appear across the top of the screen or something and let you ignore them if you really want to.

Back to Final Fantasy:

In general, I find there''s a point (relatively) shortly before the last boss where the entire world is open to you and you have a chance to do all sorts of side-quests and generally buff yourself up before the big fight. In FFVIII, it''s just before the assault on Lunatic Pandora with Ragnarok just before the end of Disc 3, in FFVII anytime after you open the Northern Crater until you reach the point of no return - where it''s easy to spend an extra 10 hours or more just chasing loose ends, upping levels and trying to track down (and kill) the bonus monsters (I still haven''t got around to mopping up the Dark Aeons in FFX or facing Ozma in IX). Actually, I don''t really have a problem with this - in general you don''t need to do the added side-quests and extreme level-ups, still less face down the bonus monsters; you can pretty much go on and face the final boss and roll the end titles more or less any time after you get that far. My complaint lies in the other direction. If you pay attention to the plot, which keeps urging you relentlessly onwards, you invariably run into the problem of moving too quickly - playing Final Fantasy X for the first time, there were several times when I hit a boss fight at full speed, and bounced. I then had to wander around in circles (small or large) until I could rack up enough random encounters to level up my characters. As I said, I don''t have a problem with the large amount of non-essential material: side-quests, hidden areas, bonus items and ridiculously tough monsters; I do have a problem with the main thread of the game having a key mechanic that keeps forcing you to stop and mark time for a while whilst the plot keeps urging you onwards with no small urgency. I''m willing to concede that there may be a small element of skill involved in losing some of these boss fights, but in general, the difference between being hopelessly outclassed by a monster, and being able to walk all over it is only a few levels, so the outcome of a fight is dominated by character level rather than player skill. That being so, why does Square persistently punish players for being too efficient at progressing through the game?

Yeah, that''s important. There''s no real excuse for making a highly plot-driven game wherein you have to stop and workout before carrying on.

I actually find this to be a flaw in Square''s game design. In the first Final Fantasy, you don''t even have much of a sense of destiny until you get toward the end of the game. You start out rescuing somebody, and then you find a town that''s being attacked by pirates, and then you wander around in a ship until you find a kingdom who''s prince is in eternal sleep. At that point you hit a major wall. You can''t possibly hope to beat that boss and get those items at the levels you''re at. Even if you''ve been taking your time, you''ve got a lot of time in the gym ahead of you.

It can be infuriating, but if you think about it, what are the odds that four guys who just squeaked past a band of nine pirates will be able to waltz into an evil wizard''s castle and kick his butt? Slim to none, that''s what. So you train, and buff up, and then try it again. In the mean time you''re seeing how far you can get into the woods and still come out again, you''re getting fancy new gear (damn that Silver Sword) and learning how to fight certain types of monsters. So by the time you can actually accept the mission and get it done, you''re more like real heroes than you were.

In the newer ones, you''re always some destiny-chosen badass, usually in the company of an elite group of warriors, mages, and other children of destiny. And yet, even though the guy who killed the toughest monster in the world is in your party, you can''t get past some thief in a dark alley without stabbing a hundred imps to death beforehand. What''s up with that?

Especially with the new plots, which invariably include extremely fast-paced adventures, the levelling system is incongruous, and eats up time. I remember in FFX, I couldn''t beat Seymour in this one fight, so I had to level up first. here''s the scene: Kihmari is standing with his halberd stuck in Seymour''s chest, hoping to buy us enough time to escape before he gets killed by Seymour''s powerful new magical form. Seymour, despite the wound, is gathering his magic to a crescendo in order to whack Kihmari and chase after us. We''ve decided that we can''t leave our friend to die, no matter how heroic it would be, and so we''re on our way back to rescue him. A merchant, with a bag full of handy potions and weapons of unprecedented quality in the world (for which he charges us standard competitive prices), is chilling out in the same room, and we''re running back and forth on a bridge for an hour and a half breaking robots and somehow learning powerful new magic from this activity. That''s idiotic.

Even with the cut-scenes, that game''s story is worth about five hours. Add in a billion stupid fights and a few tutorials, and even a sidequest or two, and that''s a forty to eighty hour game. I''m so mad at Square.

quote: Original post by rmsgrey
The one thing I can think of that I would definitely change in the game given the chance, would be the addition of a final completion screen that tells you how many sand clouds, magic fountains and other secrets you missed.

I agree that would have been a nice touch. I''m currently replaying part of the game because I missed finding the area to unlock Prince of Persia 1. I only knew I missed it because the option is grayed out in the extra features menu. There is no menu to let me know I missed other things.

I wonder if some games have filler to lengthen the game so the publisher can "justify" the $50 price. It might be a marketing issue. A customer might look at a $40 game next to a $50 game and think it isn''t as good, because traditionally game prices are lowered when a game is old or not selling well. Also, the high price equals quality perception has been proven in other industries.

I do think that game price shouldn''t be based exclusively on play time, but in some cases it should be taken into consideration.

--
http://www.zmgames.com/

quote: Original post by rmsgrey
playing Final Fantasy X for the first time, there were several times when I hit a boss fight at full speed, and bounced. I then had to wander around in circles (small or large) until I could rack up enough random encounters to level up my characters

I''m still surprised that ''level'' plays a part in these games, I''ve always thought that with the right strategy (and armour equipped + a few extra potions) you should be able to handle any battle that comes up... but hey.

No, Square''s games haven''t come very far at all. Some of the bosses have little gimmicky weaknesses, like casting Reflect on a boss that heals himself every four seconds and them just chewing on him for ten minutes, but generally you have to jack up. Really, the only benefit to the 3D versions is that in the overword map (when there is one) you can run in circles just by holding in left or right on the D-pad.

Just a reply to the OP...

Game companies need to make games that they would enjoy PLAYING, instead of just making something to compete in the industry. From that standpoint, they should be able to decide for themselves how long a game should be, and if it should be longer or shorter. Some games can stand to be longer only because of the pacing and content. Some need to be shorter for the same reason.

It''s when you respond to outside pressures that ANY work of art gets ruined and becomes typical. I''ve been unmoved by most games that have come out nowadays.

But a game company isn''t there to make art. They''re there to make games and to pay the bills from that. There are jobs and livelihoods on the line. It''s craft, not art.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL Docs | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost
Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff | Tiny XML | STLPort]

Well it doesn't have to be a question of short games vs. long games. Why not let the consumer decide how much commitment they want to put in? As in, serialize the games. Take that 60 hour RPG that costs $50, and instead break it up into three 20-hour games that each cost $25. Kind of like what they did with .hack (except they forgot the step where they were supposed to charge less per installment). So you can choose to buy just one, or all three.

People always complain about how there is not enough originality in games. Well, if new games weren't so expensive, then gamers wouldn't be so conservative with their purchases.

Cheaper games leads to more gamers taking risks with their purchases, which leads to more people buying Quirky New RPG instead of Final Fantasy (n+1)

[edited by - pinacolada on February 23, 2004 5:44:51 PM]