The Incredible Shrinking Video Games

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It seems like games are getting shorter and shorter, in terms of the length of time required to beat them. I remember a few years ago, it would usually take me 4 solid days or even a week to finish a game... but now, I can beat most of them in 2 days or LESS. And I don't think that it's because I'm getting "better" at it... I think it's because the developers are getting "lazier." In the "good ol' days," you would get games with 30 or so levels. Nowadays, you're lucky if you get more than 10. What's up with that? If they want to sell short games, fine... but don't charge $50 for it! Put in some bloody levels! IMO, most games these days don't have enough levels to be worth $50.

Is anyone else annoyed by this "trend"?

In my day, games didn't have battery backup, so they were designed to be beaten in about an hour.

AND WE LIKED IT

You still think of games in terms of "levels"? Play some morrowind or some kotor...

But I do have to agree, games are getting shorter. The trend is towards graphics, graphics, physics, and finally more graphics. Gameplay is not as long...

Ya, look for example at GTA: SAN ANDREAS and compair it to GTA4. San andreas was insanly huge, I know I never beat it because I never had the time to, GTA4 is more manageble, the graphics are vastly improved and shorter gameplay means more people with buissy lives can play to win.

Now see... back in the 16-bit generation, most games didn't have a Save feature. You either completed it in one sitting or you didn't. The more you played it, the better you got until you COULD complete it in one sitting.

And some games... like Rocket Knight Adventures... were INSANELY difficult to beat in one sitting, but that was precisely what you had to do. Rocket Knight Adventures was SUCH an awesome game... I almost wish they'd made a modern-day recreation of it, but I know they'd just screw it up... so I'm not SO bothered.

The only ones that did have savepoints were the RPGs...
And I have to say.... modern RPGs have NOTHING on the likes of Phantasy Star IV, Shining Force or Earthbound (one of the few SNES games I played). I still play Phantasy Star IV on my megadrive emulator to this day..... oh, and Crusader of Centy / Soleil (which despite having kiddy graphics, had a VERY original sort of plot and awesome music).



These days though... all graphics and no real content for the most part.
Game-makers try to take the lazy route of neglecting story-based content in favour of asinine minigames and "unlockables". Afterall, why entertain someone with a longer story when you can just force them to run around pointlessly picking up little red gems instead? ..... O'course, being Aspergian, I WILL collect all the little red gems, but that isn't the point.

I can't provide a source, because I can't remember (probably GameSpot), but I remember reading a segment of an interview with somebody from Bioware, who was asked whether they would ever create a game with the same scope as Baldur's Gate II. For those who haven't played it, it's a 2D isometric RPG with a lot of freedom in both narrative choices and interesting, heavily developed, rewarding and challenging side-quests from earlier this decade. Basically, (s)he said that games take so much more time to develop these days due to graphics (textures, I'd imagine) and numerous other new technologies, that it simply wouldn't be feasible to build a game that large. As for developing a new 2D game in the same vein, it would be only feeding a tiny niche market and not garner enough profit - which is an understandable reason for not making one for any game company, especially a major one like Bioware.

Speak for yourself... I thought Kotor had an epic story to it...

Unless you were talking about the freedom to do whatever you want, in which case I completely agree with you...

PRGs don't seem to be getting shorter. I have had Pokemon Pearl for over a year and I still need to complete my national Pokedex and I play the game almost every day.

"Levels" are a relative term, because their size and the time it takes to complete them can vary. But even with that in mind, I still can't help but notice that the gameplay time is getting shorter. As a result, the entertainment value of a game is reduced. If they're going to do that, then those games shouldn't cost $50... at least not until inflation gets up to that. And since many game companies these days are huge corporations, they don't really have much excuse to make short games... with all the employees they have at their disposal, it wouldn't hurt for them to add a few more levels/gameplay time.

With all the special effects advancements, we don't see movies getting any shorter... so why should games get shorter?

Keep in mind, the disc medium is a fixed size, and aside from PC titles, you don't see mutli-disc games as much today as you did in the PSX days.

Graphics are a lot higher res, so they take up a lot more space...there has to be a tradeoff here, they can't fit as many textures as they'd like (graphics that stretch over the level geometry, basically). The levels themselves don't take up much space, but the textures sure as heck do. As well as any detail models, which also have their own skins (different name for textures).

Also, with console games, the consoles themselves have a limited amount of memory, so levels have to be chopped down to fit into these constraints (Thief 3 is a really good example).

Some are huger than ever, but many are indeed shorter. That's because it takes far longer--and far more people--to develop modern games. The technology, while more advanced, is more complicated.

Plus, given how shallow most commercial games are these days, if you put in more levels then the games would become dull and repetitive. Not that they aren't already.

This is one reason why I prefer the PC. At least you can upgrade things like the hard drive or memory without having to wait for a whole new machine.


Like I said, there are similar advancements in modern movies, and yet THEY don't get shorter.


Perhaps... but not as dull and repetitive as all the other forms of "entertainment" we have. So if games are the last shred of entertainment and escape that someone has left, you can't exactly blame them for being pissed when they're getting cut short.

I think publishers are realising that replay value is a better way of adding lifespan than making a game absolutely huge. Think about it, you might spend ages on the certain game but when you complete it, what incentive do you have to play it again?

That is why Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross where such huge hits.
The lengths of games vary for me because I am into RPGs and tactical games. The last game I played was Crisis Core for the PSP and it only took me 10 hours to beat.

On the contrary, I have more incentive to replay longer games because if there's more gameplay then it's harder to remember all of it. Shorter games get old really fast because they're too easy to memorize.

Another good point.



That's sort of a different thing, though...with movies, technological advancements means they can make them a lot faster and a lot cheaper (at the expense of quality).

Instead of spending time and money building puppets/models/sets/mattes/etc, they can just do it all in CGI.