There’s a great article on GameDev about designing games for people – like yours truly – who either do not have the time for 20-40 hour epics; or who simply can’t be bothered with repetitious game-play, which is often just thrown in, because one of the measures for good reviews has become throughplay time: the more the better.
“I can afford to buy any game I like; but I rarely have the opportunity to play them.”
Good article. In reponse, I’d much rather play a great 5-hour game than a lousy 50+ hour one.
On some projects, like Shiny’s Messiah, you can tell that by the end of the production they were out of ideas or out of breath. The quality from the start to finish is like day and night. I’m more interested in playing a game that stays consistent.
Very good article that, nice find Michael.
I have to admit that unless a game involves me in a heavy way I tend to bin it after a few goes.
Theres currently only 2 games that I am playing that are fun, one is Richard Burns Rally – a fantastic rally-sim which is VERY sim, no arcade crap, a hard game but dam rewarding when you pull off that stage time to pull yourself into contention for the champisonship. And the second is Halo, enough said about that one I think.
Out of curisoity Michael, how does IO approach this sort of subject, ya know wether to go for a long game which is insanly involving or to go for something fairly indepth but doesn’t require the player to sit for 3 hours per go to get through one level (whcih I spent a lot of time doing during the Hitman series)
Good article. I must admit there are three common problems with to many games, in my opinion.
The first one is the “chrystal-save”-crap in survival horrors (Resident Evil) or fantasy games (Final Fantasy whatever). If you have to come to one special place to save, you can get thrown back 30-60 min., or even longer if the game has been real easy (and you therefore forget to save), and along comes a uber-boss and smacks you back to the stoneage.
The second one is platform/jumping parts…i just HATE, having to try the same exact jump a million times, because I press the button one millisecond before I should.
The last one is the real killer: forgetfullness. Who has’nt tried going halfway through a game, where the whole game is more or less 1 huge level (Resident Evil). This is all fine if something did’nt get in the way of your playtime the day after…and the day after…and so on. After you have’nt played the game for a week or two, you try to pick up where you made your last save…only to find out you have no f…… idea where to go to next, since you forgotten what you did before in the game.
I think the worse game I’ve ever played was Omikron the Nomad Soul. Up until a certain point I was really progressing through the game and then I accidently deleted a crucial item in my inventory and thereafter screwed myself of ever passing the game.
I now use it as a drink coaster.
Stew: I think Io’s policy is more or less (as much as can be in a constantly changing marketplace), demonstrated rather well in Hitman and Freedom Fighters. I’m personally not the kind of gamer that Hitman appeals to, but I happen to think Freedom Fighters is a really good game, though juuuust slightly long, but not by much.
Yeah I enjoyed Freedom Fighters.
I had thought Hitman would be fun but when I found it wasn’t as open as I had percieved, the whole run-and-gun or sneak around thing of choosing, then it kinda fell flat for me.
I still can’t pull off being a convincing cook in Hitman 2. I think in the training it says to play it cool when you’re carousing the premises, but I’m always eager to go in there guns a-blazing, which gets me killed every time.
Hitman isn’t really my style either. I played through all of Hitman 2 as mass-murderer, choosing assault rifles whenever possible :)