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[hmm]

Heyo,

Been reading a lot of opinion pieces calling for shorter games recently.

Basically, the argument is against padded out, over long single player experiences.

While I'm all for cutting the fat and making shorter, leaner games, I feel an important part of the argument is being missed: replayability.

So if you make a short game that doesn't take long to play through, make it so someone can come back to it and play through it again and get something else out of it. This is, in my opinion, the appeal of multiplayer games: short sessions that can be replayed endlessly. This applies to everything from Chess to Football to Call of Duty.

Can this model of short, highly replayable games be applied to single player games too? Story driven games?

What are your thoughts on game length? Does it all just boil down to a "depends on the game" argument?

[ThemsAllTook]

"Depends on the game" pretty much trumps everything else, but beyond that, I'm of the opposite opinion. I feel like too many new games rush through their story and end much too early, before they've fully explored the potential of their world and mechanics. One of the reasons I love the DROD games so much is that each one comes with a huge meaty pile of game content. Level design quality is consistently high, new mechanics continue to be introduced the whole way through, and the puzzles take a long time to solve and never get stale.

I think some design discipline is required to not tip your entire hand to the player at the beginning of the game. If you give away all of the mechanics all at once, the player doesn't have nearly as much to discover as your game goes on. What causes a game to overstay its welcome is if the content becomes redundant. Copy-pasted dungeons in open world adventure games are a great example; once you've seen one or two, you've seen them all. Keep showing the player new things throughout their entire experience.

[s0]

Can this model of short, highly replayable games be applied to single player games too?

yeah, thats what roguelikes and "endless" action games are, basically.

anyway, a good example of a game that accomodates different levels of time investment is pokemon. you can either just casually play through and beat the elite four (or whatever it is these days) because the game is easy enough for that,  you can try to "catch em all" or you can get into pvp and dive deep into the stat system. many of the better mmos and "casual" games have similar things going on.

[Alec S.]

I actually wrote my thoughts on this a while back: http://renegadesector.com/2013/01/why-i-like-short-games/

Basically, my ideal for a single player games is something that you can play beginning to end in under 10 hours, and preferably less, but can open up if you replay it or play it more thoroughly.  Platinum has a pretty good blueprint going for making games that reward replaying them, although a lot of those are around the 20 hour mark, which tends to make me less inclined to replay them (or at least less inclined to replay them right away, which is what they seem to want, since you unlock hard mode after beating normal, and if I spend a lot of time away from the game between playthroughs, then I'm no longer ready for hard mode).

[baconman]

I'm sorry. But requiring completion of a "normal mode" to unlock a "hard mode" defeats the purpose of either one.

[Alec S.]

I disagree in this context.  It basically means that you can get a complete experience playing through what amounts to only part of the game, but if you really want to explore the combat system, there's more waiting for you after the story is over.  The point of a hard mode in a platinum game isn't to give you another option in case normal mode is too easy (There is generally a choice between easy and normal at the start, and normal is itself pretty challenging).  The hard mode doesn't mirror the structure of the difficulty curve of normal mode, it starts where normal mode left off.  It's also worth noting that a lot of stuff only becomes available when you reach hard mode, like alternate costumes in Bayonetta.  You've already played through the story (as much as a platinum game can be said to have a story), now you get to play around (in some ways it's kind of an extension of things like New Game Plus or the overpowered items you get at the end of MGS).

[SirNiko]

I thought the Megaman Battle Network games did this extremely well -

The main game is relatively easy and you can complete it without ever learning more advanced techniques like secret chip combos. Along the way there is optional content like harder versions of bosses to fight for special attacks, but these can be ignored. A low-skilled player will find the final boss difficult but not impossible. A skilled player can defeat the final boss quickly and keep going.

After defeating the final boss you unlock a new area and harder sidequests that start unlocking more powerful chips, which you'll need to survive the harder bonus bosses. That eventually leads up to collecting every chip and defeating the hardest versions of every boss including a harder version of the final boss that requires you to exploit nearly every trick in the game to survive.

It accommodates players who would like to have a short, complete main game and offers harder, longer content for players who want to continue.

[Graham-]

I'm sorry. But requiring completion of a "normal mode" to unlock a "hard mode" defeats the purpose of either one.

There's value both ways. Difficulty controls can let the player get a better experience right away, but they also can extend a game's length. The hard mode in some Ratchet games unlocked from normal, and let you keep your gear from a previous run-through.

The idea was, in Ratchet, that you could explore mechanics more fully. The difficulty control was in-game. You could go to arenas to get better guns, or just dawdle through levels (slowly).

So while the actual difficulty control was in-world, the regular/hard modes - in-meta-world - were padding, of the good kind.

There are many ways to build games. *shrug*

[ThemsAllTook]

I'm sorry. But requiring completion of a "normal mode" to unlock a "hard mode" defeats the purpose of either one.

If "hard mode" means the same thing as "normal mode" with numbers tweaked a little bit to make things more difficult, I'm in agreement, but in some games it's a different experience or a continuation of normal mode. Nightmare mode in Diablo worked pretty well, since you keep all the gear you accumulated in your first playthrough, and the entire set of dungeons is cranked up so that they'd be completely impossible if you started from the same point as normal mode.

Difficulty selection at the beginning of a game is tricky business, because there's no standard measurement of "easy" and "hard" - one game's hard might be the same difficulty to me as a player as another game's easy. That's a separate discussion though...

Edit: Whoops, didn't notice Graham said almost the exact same thing above

[Graham-]

That will cost you 3 fingers, and a toe, and your courage.

Doesn't matter. Content is good.

[rj]

games should be exactly as long as it takes to run through all of the themes (both narrative and mechanical) that are the best without any fat or padding

limbo did this pretty well. it has some ideas, it uses them all, it's over. portal 1 did this pretty damn well too. that's the ideal scenario.

i tend to favor shorter games.

super metroid is another perfect example: it's exactly as long as it needs to be.

[Graham-]

Length has a lot to do with the exhaustion of content. In JRPGs for example, I over-exhaust the battle system long before new mechanics are added.

If you remove padding, that is good. Whatever length you are left with is good.

I actually prefer monstrously long games. They are just harder to tune. Stories are hard to keep going for that long. So I'd say make your game as long as you can, but don't give redundant experiences. Often that means making a shorter game.

The reason I like length is because I like to make an investment. With movies you have a certain sitting length, same with TV. With games, however, I am investing myself into a skill. That skill is important to me, like a skill painting, or playing guitar. I want to get as much out of that as I can.

If I get an extra 10 hours to hone a skill I spent 10 hours already practicing, that is excellent. Just don't bore me. That is the hard thing to do.

[hmm]

I'd agree with this prevailing idea that a game should be as long as it takes to unveil new and interesting variations on the game's mechanics. Many games, however, go way beyond this point, perhaps due to how shallow the mechanics are or due to the fact that almost identical games already exist and so the mechanics offered are nothing new to the player.

This idea works in the context of highly replayable games. While the mechanics of a baord game are often presented at the start, variation of those mechanics is only experienced over multiple play throughs, with different players. So, in a way, these kinds of games also unveil their depth over time, just in a different way that is not tied to linear progression through a story.

The difference is that replayable games provide much more opportunities to quit the game and still feel a sense of completion. You play 5 sessions of Monopoly, then never play it again, but are satisfied that you completed 5 games, won some, lost some.

Linear, or narrative driven games feel incomplete if you quit half way through. You may have exhausted the gameplay, but the story remains unfinished. What if instead the story is over long before exhausting the gameplay? Are devs using story to extend playtime unnaturally?

Difficulty modes is an interesting point to bring up. Definitely a gameplay motivator for replaying a completed story.

Ramble over.

[an]

Can this model of short, highly replayable games be applied to single player games too? Story driven games?

Yes, I definitely think so.
For narrative games I absolutely love and appreciate short games, just the way I like short movies.
If you want to tell a certain message, you don't always need 8+ hours.

The replay value then comes less from a gameplay perspective but from a story one (The reason why one watches movies multiple times), and from the freedom of choices (Walking Dead).

I also see short narrative-driven games as a brillant opportunity for aspiring devs to try and learn.

btw: 1st post! nice to be here, yay!

best,
an

[jolene]

for narrative games it's the same as rewatching a movie so just... make it good? also i don't think the people wanting shorter games care much about replayability so i wouldnt stress that

[armedpatriots]

I have been thinking about making a 1/2 hour game with a strong message? Is this unacceptable to you guys?

[ThemsAllTook]

My most recent game was only about 10 minutes long. If it's the appropriate length for the game, go for it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think you should be able to complete any game quickly if you know what you are doing, but that if you want to keep playing there should be a lot of content to keep you entertained

e.g. my ideal would be something like: 10 hours for the main quest, 200 hours for optional content and side quests

there are a number of games that come close to this actually, primarily western RPGs like baldur's gate 2

(this is also what i'm going for with saturated dreamers; the main game can be completed in about 5 hours if you know what you're doing, but there's about 50 hours of optional exploration if you want to take your time and see everything)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

another thing not to forget that is pretty important is that adults have less time to play games than kids and teens do, and if you make games, a lot of your audience is going to be kids and teens. so like just because you may not have time to play a 100 hour game doesn't mean your players won't. try not to judge what your audience likes only by what you like (though i mean if you just want to make games that people like you yourself would enjoy playing that's fine too). generally the people who play your games will be much younger than you are, and have more time to play games

[an]

I have been thinking about making a 1/2 hour game with a strong message? Is this unacceptable to you guys?

This is absolutely great if you think it's the perfect length according to your content. Send me a link when you're done