Are Shorter, Cheaper Games The Way To Go?

At $60 a pop, videogames are probably the most expensive consumer entertainment medium on the mass market, and with a price tag four times as high as CD’s and DVD’s you have to ask yourself, “are we getting our money’s worth?” The average single player action adventure game usually lasts between twelve and fifteen hours, that seems to be the sweet spot for what’s considered a fair length in the genre. RPG’s are generally expected to last considerably longer (why is that?) coming in at anywhere between thirty and a hundred hours. Isn’t it strange how we as gamers seem to place so much emphasis on the quantity of game we’re getting as opposed to the quality? Of course no one wants to feel ripped off, but don’t you feel much better having gone through a really, really good nine hour game at full price than you do after wading through a thirty hour monstrosity having paid the same amount?

Lets be honest here, an unfolding story is rarely, if ever, meant to be told over the course of forty hours, often times there simply isn’t enough story to tell. How often in a Final Fantasy game have we sat through an absurdly dim witted piece of extended dialogue that more often than not has little to no bearing on the storyline and bores us to tears? There are also those segments of games that just don’t feel quite right, that aren’t quite up to the standard of the rest of the game, filler segments just thrown in there to artificially inflate play time. If the designer does have a 30 hour story to tell why not stretch it out over the course of several games in an episodic format (like a TV show). This format would allow for better pacing and more even digestion by the audience.

Would you feel better if you knew that game designers were trimming the fat, getting rid of all that useless padding they stuck in there to stretch a game out to the “fair” nine hour mark? Would you feel better if you walked into the local game store and saw the price tag on the games was $25? So what’s the sweet spot, what’s the amount of time game designers should be aiming for that would be both fair and fulfilling? I say five hours, five hours is just short enough that if you really wanted to you could play through the whole game in just one sitting, but if you felt like it you could also extend the play time over the course of a week. As the average gamer gets older he/she has less time to spend grinding through wave after wave of random battle and poorly executed set piece. Five hours is also short enough that most people will be able to actually finish the game. Of course none of this will fix a sucky game, if you buy a title and it sucks it doesn’t matter whether it’s six hours or sixty, it still sucks, but hey, at least you spent thirty five less dollars on it. So what do you guys think, shorter, cheaper games for all, or stick with the current trend of doing things?

At $60 a pop, videogames are probably the most expensive consumer entertainment medium on the mass market, and with a price tag four times as high as CD’s and DVD’s you have to ask yourself, “are we getting our money’s worth?” The average single player action adventure game usually lasts between twelve and fifteen hours, that seems to be the sweet spot for what’s considered a fair length in the genre. RPG’s are generally expected to last considerably longer (why is that?) coming in at anywhere between thirty and a hundred hours. Isn’t it strange how we as gamers seem to place so much emphasis on the quantity of game we’re getting as opposed to the quality? Of course no one wants to feel ripped off, but don’t you feel much better having gone through a really, really good nine hour game at full price than you do after wading through a thirty hour monstrosity having paid the same amount?

Lets be honest here, an unfolding story is rarely, if ever, meant to be told over the course of forty hours, often times there simply isn’t enough story to tell. How often in a Final Fantasy game have we sat through an absurdly dim witted piece of extended dialogue that more often than not has little to no bearing on the storyline and bores us to tears? There are also those segments of games that just don’t feel quite right, that aren’t quite up to the standard of the rest of the game, filler segments just thrown in there to artificially inflate play time. If the designer does have a 30 hour story to tell why not stretch it out over the course of several games in an episodic format (like a TV show). This format would allow for better pacing and more even digestion by the audience.

Would you feel better if you knew that game designers were trimming the fat, getting rid of all that useless padding they stuck in there to stretch a game out to the “fair” nine hour mark? Would you feel better if you walked into the local game store and saw the price tag on the games was $25? So what’s the sweet spot, what’s the amount of time game designers should be aiming for that would be both fair and fulfilling? I say five hours, five hours is just short enough that if you really wanted to you could play through the whole game in just one sitting, but if you felt like it you could also extend the play time over the course of a week. As the average gamer gets older he/she has less time to spend grinding through wave after wave of random battle and poorly executed set piece. Five hours is also short enough that most people will be able to actually finish the game. Of course none of this will fix a sucky game, if you buy a title and it sucks it doesn’t matter whether it’s six hours or sixty, it still sucks, but hey, at least you spent thirty five less dollars on it. So what do you guys think, shorter, cheaper games for all, or stick with the current trend of doing things?