Some of my personal observations:
80 hours of gameplay is only good for some REALLY excellent games, and even then only if the "learning by death" factor is very low.
I personally enjoy playing those little arcade racing games a lot ( Rollcage for one, since it''s one of the few fun games bundled with my new PC. ) Sometimes long gameplay is fun, but I tend to do a league or two, 20-30 minutes of playing, and not much more than that. This goes doubly for a lot of the hacknslash roleplaying games. I get sick of having to do 10 minutes of combat for every minute of exploration. It''s hard enough to map out the bloody surroundings without having to worry about combat incessantly.

However, I do agree that price is a factor. Shelling out $40 for the newest game to find out there''s nothing more to it after 30 minutes of playing is an expensive joke.
BUT - replayability is more important than length. As is content. Perhaps even collectability?



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
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Collectability is a factor I didn''t even think of. I would love to have the satisfaction of having the greatest game of all time BEFORE it went Gold. But Collectability is only an issue if the game was good in the first place. Nobody collects crap games (at least, they don''t pay much money for them ).

I think if depth and interest can be increased, I could do with less hours of gameplay. I probably exaggerated the gameplay hours (at 80) which I actually think should average at about 40. I like a lot of time consumption for my money

Slash''n''hack are still fun at the moment, but their shine is fading. These games need to start looking for another rope factor (or hook factor) if they are to keep their popularity. I found it rather boring killing Diablo (in Diablo II) because all I did was stood there clicking (whilst writing to my friend who was shooting him ). The only real excitement was when I slipped and went up the portal that he had left for me (damn lag) and came back to finish the job to see my friend running off (like the woosy screaming girlie amazon he was ). So I killed him and that was that... I am beginning to ramble...

This form of battle needs to be changed to make it a little more interesting. Maybe you should attack different areas for each of the spots that you clicked on? I don''t really care, but clicking is boring

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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My brother is neck-deep in Diablo two in the same room with me as I write this. As much as I credit it''s developers, Diablo and it''s sequel are the source or manifestation of a great deal of my personal problems with the game industry.

There is a game called Neurostatica which I have never played. It is described in a textbook of mine, and it is what started me off on the time issue to begin with...

Apparantly the story is a set twenty minutes long, with or without you. All plot developments happen in their respective locations at thirty second intervals, so that you cannot possibly see everything during the first playing. The book says "The user is rewarded for repeated viewings of Neurostatica, and, infact, the only way to get the uber ending is to actually piece together ''hints'' from each of the ten interconnected storylines."

An interesting principle. When you shell out for this game, you are paying for a twenty minute segment of reality that will happen with or without you. But you may observe/interact with that environment however you wish... that''s be worth my 40 bucks... There''s more:

Creator Douglas Gayeton was quoted: "...the twenty minute length... ensures the dramatic semblance of three act structure, in that each story plays out over twenty minutes... and, it fulfills the same type of "contract" that a sitcom makes with a viewer, in that it agrees to deliver a complete experience in a mutually agreed upon time frame."

However, as mentioned in the first quote, the user is richly rewarded for multiple playings. If the story is well written, and the player really enjoyed the experience, how happy would they be tom know that there is so much more that they have waiting for them? It''s like the deleted scenes on the DVD of your favorite film (Fight Club...)

You don''t need to run off of a timer, either. Anytime you make two occurances mutually exclusive, you create the potential for this kind of event. However, if you don''t use a timer, you''ll quickly find yourself in a Tree of Death situation, especially if your game time runs more than an hour...

======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

Interesting ideas. Seeing games as a form of, "commercial" products. I mean, you can already go to the video shop and rent console games, but the way ou put it is interesting.

But first a bit of ranting against Landfish : "imagine a Final Fantasy VII quality production without all the filler! sure it would be 20 minutes, but I think it's worth it!"
I agree and not ... I mean, take, did you read Tolkien, did you skip all the bells and whistles, and the little details, all the lenghty descriptions ? I am sure Tolkien could have put his plot in one single book, instead of three, with the same exciting plot. Unless the plot WASN't exciting that much, it was rather the WAY it was told that made it that good.
If reproduction is the point of sex, then why do we bother with all the happy stuff and make it last so long ?

I don't think it would be that good to have concentrated content throughout the whole game. It's jsut like in everything, you have to have a rythm, periods of activity, and period of rest. Halflife is really good at that, some periods of "going around looking for the exit, God, why didn't they just put a straight corridor instead of leaving me in the dark"... and periods of hardcore action "WHERE do they come from ?!".
I don't know you, but when I play a 15 minutes deathmatch, it's just like playing a whole hour of single player. THe adrenalin is just concentrated.
Each has its advantages though, the short game is nice, like a snack meal or a sandwich, to take a culinary image : you take when you're hungry, it feeds, and you are done with it. Period. On the other hand, the lengthy play would be more like a restaurant meal : salad, meat, cheese, dessert, with different drinks in between to make breaks, and chat with your friends. Do you get my point ?

As well, I am not sure you could really put a standard length on all types of games.
All movie types seem to have a 2 hours standard nowadays, with kids stuff being around 1h30.

For games it's a bit different. If we take an analogy to Real Life (tm). When you play indians and cowboys, wolf and sheep, or other Hide and seek games as a kid, it's around 10-20 minutes ... and guess what, I would see Deathmatch, mutliplayer FPS games the same average length. For a good old wargame, a single battle would easily last for a good 12 hours, but it was not real time. For RPG, a 100 pages scenario lasted for a year of play (around 40 weeks, 8 hours a week = 320 hours). And there were 3 episodes. And OMG I was proud to have played them all, and I was happy it lasted so long.

So there should be standards for different genres. And different publics.
Are we going towards a kind of PG system "this game is intended for hardcore veterans gamers". I would love that for sure. I'm sure it would be good for marketing. While Dad is playing the 300 hours long latest Ultima, his son would be playing Ultima Lite, adventures in the Realms of Britannia for the kids, please stay close to the druid. LOL

Personaly, I am feeling all this is a bit of a non-problem. If I want to play a short game, I launch good old MotoRacer, and here we go, I beat my highscore yet again, and I still love it. If I want a deep, involving, game, I'll launch the latest RPG I can find. If I want a not too long game (say an hour), I'll load the latest HalfLife thrill "They Hunger".

yeah, I guess the "episode" format is becoming the new marketing trend.
Stephen King and "the green line"; the guys doing the Blair Witch meets Nocturne game, planned in 3 episodes; card games : Magic the Gathering and its never-ending explorations, Legend of the Five Rings and the never ending battle against Shadowlands, Lord Moon, the Ninja, etc ...

Pff, everything is converging, everything is going to freeze into a state of blissful uniformity.


Hopefully the calm before a tempest

Edited by - ahw on August 7, 2000 8:46:26 PM

You''re right about the genres... you must forgive me I tend to think only in terms of RPGs, mainly because I actually PLAY other games and think that they are FINE the way they are.

I mainly meant standardization for RPGs, because most are aimed at an audience that is increasingly without the time to play them. The scenario above with the father playing the 300+ game is exceedingly unlikely, and growing unlikelier, because games compete for time. Time to work/watch evil television/take in a film/take a walk. Time is money, and paying $50 to LOSE 300+ hours of life is NOT something most people want to do. This is why many people don''t play games.

I think that RPGs have next to no market appeal in the long run. I think that if RPGs were done RIGHT (my opinion of which would scarcely resemble the original...) they would have incredibly wide market appeal. But time consumption is a major factor.

ost games are actually too long compared to their stories. If the creeators weren''t cramming more and more empty gameplay hours into these games, they might be quite wonderful to play...

Mmmh, yes, I believe you have a point. But what you are saying is, "mmm kay, we have got to have people play RPGs, so let''s modify them so people like them". This is very much a question of belief, and even though I am not of the fanatic kind, I am not sure this is the way to go. Or don''t call it RPG then.
(For f*ck sake, WHY is everyone calling Diablo a RPG. It''s NOT, it''s a damn Roguelike !!!)

The problem with RPG (and I refer to paper ones), is that whatever you do, they are just NOT a mainstream activity. In France, the problem is well known, and even though we are around 500 000 players, the main magazine about RPG disappeared 2 years ago, after widening its target audience, after numerous format changes, after trying to make it easy for beginnes (and I believe they made very good things for this), but still ... RPG are just not a big market.
Just like not everybody likes to read big books, not everybody likes to play a game where you pretend things, while sitting at a table.
Now try to do this at a computer, ALONE, and you get something that really really doesn''t appeal to many.

This idea of shortening the length of play is nice, it would sort of be like reading a short story, rather than a novel.
I guess it''s doable. Make an episode based game.
You would have a hero that you could create separately from the game itself, and you would play scenarios the way you play levels in an FPS.

The real problem is to make something that doesn''t turn a 300 hours game into ten 30 hours games, that you would still need to buy in order to finish the real plot. ie. Don''t cut the full story into bits with the excuse of "shortening the length of sessions".

which leads to my conclusion. Given the low level/ simplicity of most stories out there (yes, this is not entirely true, and it''s because of this and that ... ), do you really expect story writers to give us something like a Babylon 5 level (a 5 years story arc, that is not far stretched a la Star Trek, and here independant episodes are in a vast majority still very much enjoyable without prior knowledge) story on a standard basis ?
Well, I HOPE so, but is this a realistic expactation ? Now, i would love to see it happening.

Actually, I''ll take all this into account for my future ideas, because it''s a very wise point of view.
But I feel this is not going to be any more RPG as most the stuff we have been playing so far. Then again, this could be the way to put paper RPG on screen...

Hopefully ?

youpla :-P

First off... Thankyou... Roguelike is the description I was looking for with Diablo/II. The other that I would have settled upon is CPG or CCPG. But anyway, now that we have something REAL to call that blasted timewaster...

Now, standardising the time of games is definitely a good idea and shortening the length, but increasing the content is what is really necessary if we are to do the former. I am not going to rant about this as I have in other threads, but there you are.

ahw: I don''t think anyone wants to destroy the story, I think they want to improve the story, by decreasing the length of the game and increasing the content... but I have already ranted about this

About the content in storylines of games matching that of the famous Babylon 5, and the not so famous Star Trek (LOL! I am only kidding, although personally I like B5 better, and maybe Voyager... but that is due to another matter ). I think, if you can bring some content into the story, then you could add sequels to your game that could eventually build into a deep story (like that in those shows mentioned above).

The real way that we can achieve this is through an indy game scene, because we can do anything and have no restrictions (other than hardware or software limitations). Because we are artists, and because we can change opinions, we can make a difference by using what we talk about to actually DO something.

We just need to make a story that is strong enough to hold, and fits into a shortish timeframe then we can make a precidence for future additions. I would like to see this happen. Like has already been stated (well, in another thread), Tolkien couldn''t write his story in one book and still have the same effect. So I say, how can we as game programmers create a story that is good enough and has enough content to be placed in one game? We should follow in a masters footsteps by realising that we are going to create a sequel which REALLY furthers the story, not just adds to it....

Enough of my $(2*rant/100)

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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I think this is a losing battle... RPGs, to me, are enjoyable because they do not have set acts or short sections, and especially because they have many hours of gameplay compared to other games. I like to know I could spend 30 minutes or 6 hours on Ultima VII when I wanted. Having a game-enforced break after 1 or 2 hrs would have broken the flow, and part of what makes RPGs great in my opinion is the flow of the world, the progress, the fact that it comes as one continuous believable entity which I can interact with as I please.

I can''t help but feel that you are right in saying that the limited-gameplay-per-session thing is a hit with the more casual gamer, but I personally believe there is a far smaller overlap between those who like to play RPGs, and those who want to only play in short bursts. Going with something ''ahw'' said, Ultima Lite is an amusing prospect, but I think you''d have to strip all the ''Ultima'' out of it first...

I don''t think that I actually meant regulating intermissions or anything. I just think that we could establish a kind of "understood" minimun time period in which you could play a game. For instance, I will rarely ever start up a game during the day if I can''t get at least a half hour in. It''s not worth my time, I can''t get into it at all.

The more we know about HOW people play games, for what time periods at what times and how long in general, the better we can construct games to take advantage of these things. That''s all I''m really getting at.

=====
Are you aware that the people who bring you television actually refer to it openly as "programming?"

Time is irrelevant. You will play our game forever and pay $9.95 a month while doing it.

Resistance is futile. Your money is in OUR account now!