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rj
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« Reply #20 on: October 21, 2014, 06:23:20 AM »

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

you'd think (the logic stands that if you want to play something for less time then you probably wouldn't want to play that same thing multiple times, because it would even out to a similar amount of time in the long run) but (and this is just my feeling/experience personally) i've always found that i play shorter games way more often and more times over than longer games, as long as there's some kind of randomness or choice in the matter. a good example of this impulse is The Stanley Parable, which is an exceedingly short game for every ending possible but by that very nature invites many replays. games that have branches or other methods of choice (and are short enough for me to not feel like i'm jumping into an ordeal if i want to play again to see everything) can manage much more replay value that way.

another note: if you do have branching content or somewhat meaningful choice in your game then consider having a NG+ option where you can skip to the first meaningful choice point or whatever that the player hasn't experienced every branch from, such that the player doesn't have to slog through what they've seen already (which can be tiring in certain cases).
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #21 on: October 21, 2014, 07:11:19 AM »

i almost never replay games in general, but i've replayed long games, typically about 10 or 15 years after i originally played them. when that long of a time has passed, you forget the details of a long story, and playing it again is like re-reading a novel you liked as a kid

e.g. i suspect most of the people who bought the recent final fantasy X/X2 HD re-release for the ps3 *already* played and beat the games on the ps2 a long time ago, and just want to re-experience them a decade or so later. i agree that after you beat a 100 hour game you don't want to immediately replay it, but replay it after 10 years? sure
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« Reply #22 on: October 21, 2014, 11:13:47 AM »

Yeah, I think the issue for me isn't that long games aren't good, just that you've got less free time when you're no longer a kid, and there's many other things to be doing with your life.

And, these days its the case for more and more gamers. The average age of game playing humans is over 30, and there's now more women over 35 playing games than there are boys under 18 playing games.

Lots of short games however, are relatively shallow. So while Limbo, Ico and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons provide a satisfying narrative experience in an evening, there's not much to go back to afterwards if I wanted to.

Maybe a model similar to Western RPGs - but with a much shorter main quest - could be an interesting direction? Say it takes you 2 - 4 hours to play the main quest, but a host of other locations to explore, quests to complete, opportunities to explore the mechanics more deeply?

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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #23 on: October 21, 2014, 12:06:16 PM »

an important distinction to make though is that demographics don't equal time spent since people buy variable amounts of games per year. e.g. if a 15 year old spends more time playing games than a 35 year old, they also buy more games. so most games will tend to be bought by younger people even though the average age of a gamer is higher. i mean look at the indie games that have been successful, e.g. minecraft. minecraft's audience is largely 12-17

i'm not saying to make long games if you don't want to though, just that the justifications for making really short games (like that gamers are older and tend to prefer shorter games) tend to ring hollow to me. i can't think of very many indie games that were short that sold in large numbers; most of the successes i can think of offhand (the aforementioned minecraft, fez, super meat boy, aquaria, rogue legacy, etc.) tend to be at least 15 hours long, and often have 30+ hours if you try to do everything in them

another thing is that the time spent making a game isn't like x hours of work for x hours of gameplay; a 30 minute long game can take almost as long to make as a 3 hour long game, since you have to create the controls, mechanics, art, music, etc., for both, the only major difference is that the 3 hour long game has more levels and perhaps more variety in some game elements. but a 30 min game could easily take 80% of the effort of a 3 hour long game. that's one thing to consider too: that turning a short game into a long one doesn't take all that much effort, relatively. and if that extra content that makes a game longer remains optional i don't see how it's a bad thing to do that
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« Reply #24 on: October 21, 2014, 02:46:50 PM »

i actually found that i mostly play longer games now that i have less time to play them. instead of playing 10 billion new releases, i focus on a handful of really big complex gams that i can keep coming back to and play those. i also play a lot of ios games on the go.

narrative games (even short ones) are probably the ones i play the least b/c they require the most 2nd most effort to play right after online multiplayer games (which i don't play at all anymore). my "problem" w/ narrative games is that i have to emotionally "tune into" the story and pretty much have to play them in one go to fully appreciate them. even if the game is only 2 hours long, setting aside 2 continuous hours just to play games is hard. with an ostensibly more "time consuming" game like crusader kings 2 i can hop in and out as needed. but that might be a personal thing idk.
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baconman
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« Reply #25 on: October 21, 2014, 09:47:10 PM »

Game availability and budget is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than it was in the 90s. I was lucky to pick up maybe 6 games a year - so when I did, I made SURE they were blockbusters that I could enjoy for practically forever. Titles like Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi's Island, I sat and mashed through REPEATEDLY, just because they were always fun to execute the manuevers in. Same with MegaMan X2/X3, Chrono Trigger, etc.

Games now are a totally different cup of tea. I mean, an experience like Terraria, Spelunky, or TBoI would've easily been one of my choices back then, too. But how much would AAA industry sell a game like that for? Probably $70, at least. And here we are now, regularly picking them up for LESS THAN $20; and with a lot more to work with than a $5/week allowance. Sometimes.

That said, I STILL go for games with tons of replay value (moreso than raw length), and even though I've picked up some other kinds of games, I'm STILL enjoying the replay value of my earlier purchases enough to be backlogging a huge portion of what purchases/downloads I've been making.
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« Reply #26 on: October 22, 2014, 11:27:25 AM »

Okay, here's another idea kind of touched upon by this critique of Skyrim's storytelling and kind of related to game length.

The article argues for a more open open world than that which Skyrim offers. Sure, there's lots of "quests" to do, but every one has a beginning and an end, is fairly linear, and takes some time commitment to complete.

What if we abandoned the idea of completeness in these kinds of games? Instead, the focus would be placed upon building consistent living worlds that respond to the player's actions in big ways, not just the minute ways of 'killed enemy -> enemy dead', but world changing ways such as 'stole chalice from castle -> war starts', and 'killed king -> war ended'. Each action doesn't take much time, but has big effects on the world. They can be seen as conclusions in themselves, or plot points in an ongoing story, depending on how you play.

Bit of a rambling post, and rather ambitious, but the general gist is: create living worlds and game length becomes less of an issue. Move away from quest design and more towards world design.
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« Reply #27 on: October 22, 2014, 12:00:50 PM »

Quote
Okay, here's another idea kind of touched upon by this critique of Skyrim's storytelling and kind of related to game length.

The article argues for a more open open world than that which Skyrim offers. Sure, there's lots of "quests" to do, but every one has a beginning and an end, is fairly linear, and takes some time commitment to complete.

really? because skyrim (and elder scrolls in general) is one of the most "open" rpgs out there. pretty much all the content is freely accessible from the get go and the quests are just an optional guided tour. i played morrowind for hours on end without doing a single quest (and i know im not the only one).

Quote
What if we abandoned the idea of completeness in these kinds of games? Instead, the focus would be placed upon building consistent living worlds that respond to the player's actions in big ways, not just the minute ways of 'killed enemy -> enemy dead', but world changing ways such as 'stole chalice from castle -> war starts', and 'killed king -> war ended'. Each action doesn't take much time, but has big effects on the world. They can be seen as conclusions in themselves, or plot points in an ongoing story, depending on how you play.

living worlds have been a thing for a loooong time. sid meier's pirates (from 1987!) is the earliest i can think of. the entire game world is basically shaped by a bunch of AIs playing a strategy game against each other (that you can influence ofc). another famous example is frontier (the sequel to elite). mount & blade basically copies the format of pirates for its campaign mode.

the concept fell out of fashion for a while but its making a comeback now. paradox's strategy games have seen a rise in popularity (crusader kings 2 in particular) and the nemesis system in shadow of mordor is a "living world" mechanic in a recent AAA game.
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« Reply #28 on: October 23, 2014, 06:17:01 AM »

Didn't want to bash Skyrim, or make it sound like I didn't think it was open. I just think its not particularly flexible game in terms of game length. I find that the series requires serious time investment to do anything significant, so are nor particularly satisfying for players with less time on their hands. And there are structures present, like quests, and levelling up stuff, that demand player time.

And game length is the question here. The question is; could a game be played for 3 hours and 30 hours and provide satisfying narrative for both?
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rj
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« Reply #29 on: October 23, 2014, 06:50:46 AM »

why does it have to be a satisfying narrative, though? i've definitely played both ftl and super hexagon for over fifteen hours apiece and neither one of them has much of a narrative over that time frame (ftl has a narrative every playthrough, but that's different).

i feel like an ideal longer game should work like a long book; you play it in spurts, at some points you can't put it down, and then you finish it, it's satisfying, and you move on with your life

a satisfying narrative over 3 and 30 hours would have to be something like a vastly extrapolated + intricately linked version of the stanley parable, where there are so many story threads over time that you can find satisfying closure for a few in the short term but can glean a much larger amount in the long. like the movie magnolia but with similar mechanics to the stanley parable. maybe



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« Reply #30 on: October 25, 2014, 06:21:33 PM »

Skyrim (and other Elder Scrolls games) are pretty ideal with regards to choosing your game length. You can focus on the main quest to the exclusion of the other content (and scaling stats mean that monsters are generally beatable even at low levels, more so if you are careful to obtain good gear). You can do sidequests if you want the game to be significantly longer. You can wander around exploring or making up your own goals (owning houses, killing NPCs) if you need even more game time.

The only weakness for Skyrim is that a lot of the sidequests don't improve the narrative - they're unrelated to the main quest and can make you lose sight of it. Most characters in the game have no relation to the main story.

If you're keen on adding hours and improving the narrative, I'd suggest something like Assassin's Creed 2. If you just want to do the main story you can finish the game in a few hours by skipping the optional content. You get a complete narrative and closure. If you need more, you keep playing the game to find hidden files that reveal backstory that improves the narrative but isn't necessary to get a complete story.

Other games do similar things, like the Gossip Stones in Zelda revealing bits about the world and the main characters, or Neverwinter Nights letting you discover background of NPC helpers by doing quests with them, or Dead Space giving you background for finding datalogs. There are a lot of ways to do this, but basically it boils down to adding optional content that reveals more information than is necessary to understand the story and be satisfied with it.

I don't think it is nearly as complicated as RJ has suggested.
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« Reply #31 on: October 25, 2014, 07:56:15 PM »

Short games are so nice, you can finish them quickly and be like "yeah, that was nice"
All the game for sale in shops are like "how would you like to work second job with no pay and no end in sight!"
I miss videogames, so few are short enough to fit into a busy/working life
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« Reply #32 on: October 26, 2014, 08:37:01 AM »

All the game for sale in shops are like "how would you like to work second job with no pay and no end in sight!"

This brings up another interesting topic: Games with no ending.

I've found that I usually need a win condition to be satisfied with a game. If the game world keeps going after I've consumed all the content, it inevitably leads to me stopping because I'm tired of playing. This leaves a much worse taste in my mouth than a nice clean "you won, now you can either stop or start over". I could make up my own win conditions, but that requires knowing enough about the game ahead of time to plan, and it means I'll already have hit the you've-done-everything-and-now-the-game-is-boring wall.

An endless game with no saves and an unrecoverable lose condition can work too, if it's hard enough that I never get to the point where I can play forever without breaking a sweat. I just need a point where I can stop playing without leaving any loose ends.
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« Reply #33 on: October 27, 2014, 03:58:32 AM »

Yeah, that's another thing that is popular these days, have 1.8 million hours of "side quests".
So that after you finish the story, you can get put back in the world and be told you've only finished 3.64% of the game
After I killed the main dragon in Skyrim that was suposed to save skyrim from ALL the bad dragons that were present.
Instead I go back to find Skyrim is still full of dragons ruining peoples lives, nice to know I didn't even get to achieve the one thing the story said I was meant to do.....

I believe any (non-multiplayer) game should end like a movie, roll credits, exit.

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« Reply #34 on: October 27, 2014, 04:36:25 AM »

i play mostly "endless" games without a win condition because im interested in the process of playing itself, exploring worlds, exploring systems, exploring situations etc. i dont care about "beating" games, i want an activity i can freely tap in and out of.
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« Reply #35 on: October 27, 2014, 04:59:48 AM »

Its an interesting point about the need for an ending. It turns out that a need for closure is a legit psychological phenomena, and I think it may be the root of this increasingly common desire for shorter game experiences. People want to be done with the game, but don't feel happy leaving it until everything is over. Its the completionist mentality. I'm the same way with books.

So, those games that can be played through quickly, but have a lot of side content to increase the total lifespan, are a kind of unsatisfactory experience for those players who have a need for closure but little time to play. Even if you finish the main quest, there is the knowledge that there is so much more to do, so many side quests incomplete.

Of course, not everyone has the same need for closure. Many people are happy leaving things ambiguous and unfinished.


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« Reply #36 on: November 07, 2014, 12:28:44 PM »

Games that aren't satisfying in small portions have forgotten the ebb and flow of storytelling.


This could be any game. If it's too short, play it again. If it's long, you learn that rest period is crucial because next comes prep, which can include reflection on the last conflict and requires critical thinking.

An imitation of this work can be made that implies all the same elements, but it is formed completely wrong.

This next image will imply there's a rest, goal, and resolution; just to throw you into action immediately with no chance to stop playing either at the beginning or end. The preparation is actually a very short "get going", eat your cereal and go to school which can be skipped without thinking.


Bunny doesn't know when to stop. Carrot on a stick is all about misleading. You're going to make him sick this way.

Long games can be many satisfying short games that adhere to a single theme. Although, for every full and satisfying new idea, there are endless imitations that hope to imply they're the same; but they may just be carrot on a stick.
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« Reply #37 on: November 10, 2014, 09:13:16 AM »

 I agree with that sometimes games drag out and feel too long. It's easy to get tired of a game when it's 10 plus hours and either the narrative isn't pulling you in or the mechanics are tiring you out.

I would say that around 8 hours feels like the perfect length for a single-player, narrative driven game. That's how long it took me to beat Infinite and I felt satisfied with it. Didn't had a lot of filler and the story didn't drag out.

Then you have games like Skyward Sword that had tons of filler and padding to make them longer and just ended up working against the game. I understand that sometimes a game needs to be longer to feel bigger and more epic but this should only apply if there's a logical reason for it instead of "go fetch this three things".

Context matters when making a bigger game and if there isn't a logical reason why you are doing x or y then either the mechanics are that engaging or it's easy to get tiring. For story games you need to have some payoffs and keep the player engaged and for more mechanical driven experiences then the mechanics have to be strong enough to carry the game further.
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« Reply #38 on: November 15, 2014, 02:35:01 PM »

to add to the difficulty conversation, i think games should start out with both a normal and hard mode and have at least one harder mode that's unlockable.
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« Reply #39 on: December 04, 2014, 09:27:07 PM »

to add to the difficulty conversation, i think games should start out with both a normal and hard mode and have at least one harder mode that's unlockable.

^ FUCK THAT. At least, that part about "unlockable difficulty."

Make the hardest settings available from the get-go. Nothing is more annoying to hardcore gamers than having to waddle through some pussified shit - SPOILING 100% OF THE EXPLORE/DISCOVERY CYCLE THAT WAY - only to get to a difficulty setting that finally challenges them, but with no point now, because they've ALREADY WON THE FUCKING GAME ONCE.

STOP THAT.
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