Problems With All Games: Being Too Damn Long
Mass Effect 2: Obliterate your free time, in spaaaaaace!
This post at Kotaku piqued my interest, covering some issues similar to what I usually look at in this blog.
Taking a point from said post, Mass Effect 2 has been released, and it seems like the topic du jour in gaming circles. Am I playing it? Of course not. I’m still stuck (for want of a better word; it’s not a chore) in Dragon Age, and it sets my tightarse sense tingling when it comes to paying full price for a game more than once every 3 or 4 months. What was Bioware thinking, releasing these games so close together? And the tight release schedule doesn’t stop – there’s more Dragon Age DLC coming in March. It’s insane. I like RPGs but fuck, there’s a million-ish decent games coming out in any given year and adults have jobs and kids and families and shit like that. Of course, I have none of those, and I barely consider myself an adult with my lack of responsibility and all-round juvenile sense of humour, but it’s the principle, dammit.
As I’ve written about before, as a kid you get what you’re given on Christmas and your birthday, so an RPG is brilliant, if you’re into them – more bang for the buck. It’s one thing to play a game over and over until you can do it with your eyes closed, but to have the same amount of game time with fresh content the whole way? Brilliant! The love story didn’t last – I fell out of love with JRPGs a while back, when I realised they were just treading the same ground again and again. I’m not so disillusioned that I won’t play any JRPGs at all, I just won’t waste my time and money searching for obscure spin-offs involving Thug no. 3 from Shadow Hearts‘ (no doubt) riveting backstory.
This also gives me the positive side-effect of having more time to spend playing other games that aren’t quite so demanding on my time, although those are getting less and less. Yes, I realise the irony of a WoW player saying this, but games are often just too damn long. Generally it used to be that it was either RPGs or ‘sandbox’ games that would suck up your time like a Hoover, but it seems to be creeping into all sorts of genres. I understand that the current revenue model involves bleeding you dry: full-priced games, or better yet, the ‘collector’s edition’ (hint: anything ever labelled as a ‘collectable’ when released is unlikely to ever be so) with some plastic chintz at maximum price, with the supposed ‘value’ in the 20+ hours of gameplay you get in exchange.
To me, value is in the intensity and enjoyment of the experience. I didn’t feel ripped off by the 6-7 hours of Shadow Complex I played, nor in roughly the same amount of time in the first Modern Warfare single-player game, although that one was at a discount. The experience was finely-tuned and there was rarely a lack of action. So I propose a new game model, to replace the game lengths and prices that are steadily creeping upwards.
Value is not in a 25 hour game with hours of cutscenes. Instead, provide a 5-15 hour experience, tuned for maximum action/enjoyment, at roughly half the price games are available at now. Make multiplayer a seperate entity at a price that means the single player experience + the multiplayer experience are available at a price on par, or better yet, slightly below, what full games cost now. Have some single-player modules, essentially just like current DLC, available at launch. That way, people who really like the single-player game world can have more of it without having to pay for a multiplayer experience they won’t use, those who don’t have time to play through a massive game can get a tight experience at a good price, and multiplayer-only gamers can avoid paying for superfluous single-player content they’re just not particularly interested in. Everyone gets the parts of the game they want, the incentive to buy secondhand is lessened (and thus developers and publishers lose less money to the secondhand market) because games are cheaper, and with more time and money on their hands, people may actually buy more games. A pipe dream, I know, but one I hope to see, especially with the rise and rise of digital distribution. Perhaps it’s a case of ‘check back in 5 years’?
Picture from Platform Nation.
Splitting the single-player / multi-player into a great idea, but my gut feel is that it’d actually reduce revenues. I don’t play multiplayer, so I’d only ever buy the single-player component at the lower price. I’m price insensitive enough that I’ll still pay full price for most games I want, even if I never crack open the multi-player component. So, if they offered a cheaper option, they’d lose 50% of revenue from everyone who’s similar to me. That’s a scary concept to a publisher who’s probably already struggling somewhat …
I’m with you on providing a punchier experience though. Too many games still have too much “filler” in them – I don’t mind paying full price for an extremely well designed, 12 hour game. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have wanted Fallout 3 to be any different …
@Evan
I guess it’s a question as to whether splitting the components or at least reducing the price along with length would garner enough full-priced sales to offset discount and second-hand sales. It’s true, I don’t see your EAs or Activision-Blizzards of the world exactly rushing to the model, and those small enough to experiment are the ones who can least afford to have the experiment fail.
There’s definitely a place for sprawling games – I loved Fallout 3. I think that’s because you could pick your own pace – just follow the story missions, or go off exploring for as long as you like. What gets to me is where it’s not a choice – you either do it the way the developer made it, or you don’t do it at all. I use the example of the interminable cutscenes in MGS4 which, if anything, made matters more confusing, not less, and padded out the game ‘artificially’.
-Eddie
Heh – funny you should say that. I liked the example someone gave with the latest iteration of Prince of Persia – after Elika dies, the only way to finish the game is to resurrect her and undo all the good work you did. I can’t remember who it was now, but whoever it was decided to entirely reject the developer’s intentions and end the game there. Simply, they walked away from the console and, to them, that was the end.
It’s pretty darn post-modernist, but did their actions create a new ending unintended by the developer but equally as real? We think of our games as rollercoasters built the designer, but they needn’t be that limited. The Path‘s another interesting one where interpretation pretty much defines everything – choice is pretty hard to define in a game where the goals are undefined, the outcomes uncertain, and the story opaque.
But, generally speaking I think you’re right – most sprawling games follow such a common formula, it’s borderline frustrating. One of the Webcomics nailed it – Mass Effect 2 feels like I’m a spacefaring counselor. What happened to the kick-ass and chew bubblegum space hero Shepherd from the first game, I ask you!?