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Did you hear, you're losing patience with 10 hour campaigns...

Jul 27, 2011#1

@Li3n

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6324422/are-aaa-games-too-long

Develop 2011: "Gamers are losing patience" with 10-hour-plus games, say developers, while casual games have lowered gamers' expectations.

Who Was There: The session was made up of a five-person panel of designers and story writers: Charles Cecil, famous for his work on Broken Sword; Adrian Hon, chief creative officer of story developer Six to Start; Alexis Kennedy, chief narrative officer at Fail Better games; Patrick O'Luanaigh, CEO of indie developer nDreams; and writer David Varela.
What They Talked About: The panel discussed the relevance of narrative-based gameplay in today's world of casual and social games. Looking at recent AAA releases L.A. Noire and Heavy Rain--both heavily story-led--they debated whether their long length was still enticing for today's gamer. "Gamers are losing patience," said Kennedy, when asked about his own experiences with Heavy Rain, "so many people don't reach the end and lose the full impact of the story." He wasn't complimentary of its narrative either, questioning the benefit of basing a game on long-form narrative such as film, resulting in a "bastardised" storyline that doesn't quite work.
The panel was positive about other aspects of the game, though, praising its unique take on the adventure genre and not relying on traditional twitch- and skill-based gameplay mechanics. As to why gamers might not want a skill-based experience, Cecil weighed in, using examples from the adventure genre to show that "the way people play games has changed dramatically." Rather than the difficult or "contrived" puzzles of games like Broken Sword, the likes of Professor Layton showed that gamers wanted straightforward puzzles with a clear route of progression.
The panel also discussed how developers can incorporate narrative into casual and social games. The consensus was on implementing micro-narratives; that is, smaller bite-size storylines that can be consumed in the five-minute chunks that casual and social gamers play. While the point that social games might not necessarily have a definite end point was raised, the panel cited soap operas as an example of how ongoing storylines could work within a game environment. This could be aided by utilising social media to directly influence narrative and by implementing role-playing elements to further engage the player.
Quote: "There are people who role-play zero percent; they're dull f***ers. The people who role-play 100 percent; they're mental." Alexis Kennedy on how role-playing can influence a player's experience of narrative.
Takeaway: The likes of social and casual games, particularly the cheap games available on mobile, have changed the expectations of gamers, the panel concluded. By gamers are paying less money, there's less need to create 10-hour-plus gaming experiences, because consumers no longer feel shortchanged. This could be particularly beneficial for self-publishing indie developers, they said, who could charge less but gain a larger percentage of sales. As for the role of storylines, the panel was less conclusive, but all agreed that there's room for more in-depth narratives than the current crop of social and casual games are currently providing.

New Modern Warfare each month please... 60$ each, of course.

Jul 27, 2011#2

PatrThom

No, one Modern Warfare each year...with $60 worth of DLC each month. That sounds more realistic.

--Patrick

Jul 27, 2011#3

Jay

These people are delusional.

Jul 27, 2011#4

Ravenpoe

Wait, heavy rain was "too long?" I beat it in a day!

It was an awesome day, though.

Jul 27, 2011#5

Chibibar

10 hour plus is too long?? what???

If it is going to be less than 10 hour, I want a lower price then!

Jul 27, 2011#6

Dave

I fracking LOVE huge games.

Jul 27, 2011#7

Fun Size

Yeah, this is wrong, but then it's the standard "There's a trend so it must mean it applies to everyone" silliness that's always in the news.

Jul 27, 2011#8

MindDetective

My first thought was: Maybe it's not the length but the pacing of your game. Ever been to a 90 minute movie that drags on and on? That might be your game.

Jul 27, 2011#9

@Li3n

PatrThom said:
No, one Modern Warfare each year...
--Patrick

No see, i was kinda going for something that hasn't happened yet...

Jul 27, 2011#10

Gusto

It depends. I loved Portal 2 and beat the single player in aroud 7-8 hours, maybe 4-5 for the co-op.

On the other hand, I've played through Mass Effect 2 (about 35-40 hours total) three times now.

And tallying up the time I've spent in open-ended games like WoW or The Sims would probably make me cry.

Jul 27, 2011#11

Chibibar

Gusto said:
It depends. I loved Portal 2 and beat the single player in aroud 7-8 hours, maybe 4-5 for the co-op.

On the other hand, I've played through Mass Effect 2 (about 35-40 hours total) three times now.

And tallying up the time I've spent in open-ended games like WoW or The Sims would probably make me cry.

Ah. The Sims

good time. (bought the expansion)

Jul 27, 2011#12

Gusto

I've got all the goddamned expansion for the Sims 3. It would also make me cry if I stopped to count up how much money I've spent on this game.

Jul 27, 2011#13

Chibibar

Gusto said:
I've got all the goddamned expansion for the Sims 3. It would also make me cry if I stopped to count up how much money I've spent on this game.

heh. My wife got it early (collector's edition and all) I got all mine from Steam sales. So did my wife again so we don't have to dig for all the CDs for it.

Yea..... lots of money goes into Sims (more than WoW for us) also we BOTH play Sims online for a while (about a year) with my sister and her husband.

Jul 27, 2011#14

R

Raemon777

Yeah. The main issue is with the phrase "losing patience." Nobody's losing patience. But the target demographic is bigger, and the patient people now make up a smaller proportion of it.

Jul 27, 2011#15

Chibibar

Tinwhistler said:
You see, you guys are all looking at it from the perspective of someone who grew up on big games. This panel is looking at it from the perspective of newer entries into the gaming market.

Just the other day, my stepson was bitching about how Total War:Shogun 2 pissed him off because he'd been playing it for 3 or 4 straight days and hadn't beaten the main storyline with his first clan yet.

From where I can see, these guys are spot on: The market's trending toward more casual games.

I see what you mean. I don't like the trend that it is leading. I understand that the demographic is larger (people who want shorter games) but coming from playing games that takes weeks to finish if not months, I like my value of my money.

Now games starting cost from 50-70$ depending on the system you are getting for and play only for 10 or less hours? bleh!

Jul 27, 2011#16

Dave

By this logic we should not have games like Fallout, any of the Ultima games, Elder Scrolls, etc. Hell, might as well scrap Skyrim! MMOs? Fuck 'em! People want Angry Birds and Farmville!

Civilization? Nope. We need to cater to the casual gamer! They don't want big sprawling strategy games.

Can I be done with sarcasm now?

Jul 27, 2011#17

@Li3n

Tinwhistler said:
From where I can see, these guys are spot on: The market's trending toward more casual games.

I assumed everyone understood i was raging against that...

But lets face it, it's also the developers fault for going for the easy bucks at the expense of actually making games... i mean we're talking abut a industry that got started because of guys who wanted to make games for fun...
Added at: 20:08

Dave said:
People want Angry Birds and Farmville!
. We need to cater to the casual gamer! They don't want big sprawling strategy games.

The funny thing is that those games probably make them play more then 10 hours a week (hell, i play Angry Birds an hour a day just going to and coming from work - gods, public transport is the worst, hell is other people indeed) while doing the same few things over and over...

Jul 27, 2011#18

Chibibar

Dave said:
By this logic we should not have games like Fallout, any of the Ultima games, Elder Scrolls, etc. Hell, might as well scrap Skyrim! MMOs? Fuck 'em! People want Angry Birds and Farmville!

Civilization? Nope. We need to cater to the casual gamer! They don't want big sprawling strategy games.

Can I be done with sarcasm now?

Wasn't there a thread that game like Civ is dying

I don't think we may not see anything new, but may see less of them compare to "new game release" line up.

Jul 27, 2011#19

phil

I can kind of see what they're saying. If I go back and think of all the games I tend to play and replay it's probably shorter ones or at least mission based ones. I can go into Goldeneye or Call of duty and play a mission or two in under an hour. Sometimes that's all the time I really have to put into a game. That's harder to do in other games like, let's say, final fantasy.

I'm playing oblivion right now, for the first time, and honestly the thought of going back and having to do the first dungeon again but this time focusing more on being a Mage is a little unappealing.

To me the best solution is to instead focus more on content that can appeal to both the casual gamer and the "hardcore" by providing games that are still long but broken up into easier to swallow segments.

Jul 27, 2011#20

PatrThom

Dave said:
We need to cater to the casual gamer! They don't want big sprawling strategy games.

Coming soon to a platform near you...the Hanoi simulator!

It's kinda like Sudoku, only without the mind-numbing difficulty.

--Patrick

Jul 28, 2011#21

Baerdog

MindDetective said:
My first thought was: Maybe it's not the length but the pacing of your game. Ever been to a 90 minute movie that drags on and on? That might be your game.

Yeah, Clerks.

Seriously, it's the longest 92 minute movie ever.

Jul 28, 2011#22

@Li3n

phil said:
I can kind of see what they're saying. If I go back and think of all the games I tend to play and replay it's probably shorter ones or at least mission based ones. I can go into Goldeneye or Call of duty and play a mission or two in under an hour. Sometimes that's all the time I really have to put into a game. That's harder to do in other games like, let's say, final fantasy.

I'm playing oblivion right now, for the first time, and honestly the thought of going back and having to do the first dungeon again but this time focusing more on being a Mage is a little unappealing.

To me the best solution is to instead focus more on content that can appeal to both the casual gamer and the "hardcore" by providing games that are still long but broken up into easier to swallow segments.

*writes down phil's name...

Waits for teh revolution to come...

Jul 28, 2011#23

@Li3n

Tinwhistler said:
You know how many copies of Angry Birds have been sold? Over 12 million.

WRONG!!!

It's free on Android! Sure, there are adds, but they go away if you turn off the internet connection... and if you want your battery to last you keep it off while not using it.

So it's not 12 million sold... and that's not even taking into account the price difference (the dev costs don't really come in if you're just comparing sale numbers).

Jul 28, 2011#24

drifter

No, that 12 million is the actual iPhone sales figures. It's probably on the low side, given that those numbers are from several months ago. Total downloads for Angry Birds topped 250 million last month.

Jul 28, 2011#25

@Li3n

I'm guessing that includes all 3 different versions... (the 250).

And not all iPhone d/l where actually paid for:
Since release, the free, limited version of Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 11 million times for Apple's iOS, and the full-featured paid version has been downloaded nearly 7 million times as of September 2010.
....

In December 2010, in honor of the one-year anniversary of the release of Angry Birds, Rovio Mobile announced that the game had been downloaded 50 million times, with more than 12 million on iOS devices[3] and 10 million on Android.[46] By June 2011, the game had reached 250 million downloads, including Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio.[47]

Of course if Oblivion was 0.99 i'm guessing it would have sold a lot more too (too bad it costs way more to make).

Jul 28, 2011#26

@Li3n

Well i remembered reading something by Rovio a while back where they where using "downloaded" for all their their numbers... and as noted there is a free version on the iPhone too... and the gaming press isn't really using the word sold as they should sometimes: http://www.gamingunion.net/news/angry-birds-sales-top-100-million--4337.html

But i guess it could easily be 12 mil sold if the other numbers are accurate...

Jul 28, 2011#27

phil

@Li3n said:
*writes down phil's name...

Waits for teh revolution to come...

Wut?

Jul 28, 2011#28

Frankie Williamson

Eff companies like Rovio, Zynga and Gameloft. Making boatloads of money knocking off other people's ideas utterly wholesale (Gameloft especially, what a despicable company).

Jul 28, 2011#29

Hailey Knight

I see this more as "We're saying this to excuse selling short games for $60."

They can see my middle finger as an invitation to fuck themselves.

I buy shorter games... when they hit $20 resale at Gamestop. It amazes me that a 55-hour game like Dragon Age: Origins can go for the same price as 8-hour God of War 3.

Jul 28, 2011#30

Chibibar

Quotemander Prime said:
I see this more as "We're saying this to excuse selling short games for $60."

They can see my middle finger as an invitation to fuck themselves.

I buy shorter games... when they hit $20 resale at Gamestop. It amazes me that a 55-hour game like Dragon Age: Origins can go for the same price as 8-hour God of War 3.

That is how I see it. If it is too expensive (IMO) then I'll wait for a sale. I got tons of game to play in the mean time.

Jul 28, 2011#31

Frankie Williamson

Quotemander Prime said:
I see this more as "We're saying this to excuse selling short games for $60."

They can see my middle finger as an invitation to fuck themselves.

I buy shorter games... when they hit $20 resale at Gamestop. It amazes me that a 55-hour game like Dragon Age: Origins can go for the same price as 8-hour God of War 3.

I don't know the budget to DA:O but I know the budget for GoW3 was 44 million. It may not be as long, but should game length be the only factor in determining what a game is worth?

I sure as shit would rather watch a well paced enjoyable film of 100 minutes in length than say, something like Titanic.

Jul 29, 2011#32

Necronic

Look at all these old folks bitter that the ADD youg 'uns are defining game developer trends.

You mad bro?

But yeah I don't think there's any real argument that ventures like Popcap are more profitable than Bethesda. But that doesn't mean there's not a place for both.

Jul 29, 2011#33

@Li3n

Frankie Williamson said:
I don't know the budget to DA:O but I know the budget for GoW3 was 44 million. It may not be as long, but should game length be the only factor in determining what a game is worth?

The consumer should not give a rats ass how much something costs to make, just how much enjoyment he/she gets out of the product... otherwise the whole price balancing system capitalism uses (sorry, i don't remember the english term) won't work as well as it should...

Frankie Williamson said:
I sure as shit would rather watch a well paced enjoyable film of 100 minutes in length than say, something like Titanic.

But would you enjoy one that's 45 minutes? Coz that's more accurate of an analogy.

Jul 29, 2011#34

Hailey Knight

Necronic said:
Look at all these old folks bitter that the ADD youg 'uns are defining game developer trends.

You mad bro?

But yeah I don't think there's any real argument that ventures like Popcap are more profitable than Bethesda. But that doesn't mean there's not a place for both.

I really don't think the market is turning that way aside from "it's cheaper to make a shorter game." I doubt anyone is saying they want less for their money.

Jul 30, 2011#35

Tress

I never thought I would see the day when patience is considered some old, out-of-touch trait while being impatient was seen as a perfectly accepted norm. That's fucking sad.

Jul 30, 2011#36

Hailey Knight

That's how kids are these days. Unless we're in a movie theater, my cousins typically can't sit through a 70-minute film without whipping out their iPod Touch and playing with an app that zombifies people's faces while watching. But if you start to shut the movie, it's a problem. I feel like a dick making them pick one or the other, but hell, one of these things is clearly not fulfilling your stimulus requirements.

I wonder when books will disappear.

Jul 30, 2011#37

Zappit

Why should your ADD-riddled brains have to stand this "patience" and "dedication" stuff? "Replay?" - that sounds like some used games sales crap to us. We lose more money to people NOT buying tons of games each MONTH to...uh...ourselves!!!

Yeah, that was some royal, condescending bs right there.

Jul 30, 2011#38

Hailey Knight

"I want games worth spending $60 for."
"Pretty colors."
"So I won't be done with it after 5 hours."
"We're shortening the games."
"But--"
"Another word and they'll be even shorter."

You know what this is a great promotion for?
Game rental.

Jul 30, 2011#39

Zappit

Quotemander Prime said:
"I want games worth spending $60 for."
"Pretty colors."
"So I won't be done with it after 5 hours."
"We're shortening the games."
"But--"
"Another word and they'll be even shorter."

You know what this is a great promotion for?
Game rental.

And they're feeling so threatened by Redbox's new game rental service smashing their profits - they would go and do EXACTLY the wrong thing? Eh - this means more security keys on most games to prevent that. They do it for used game sales, they'll just make it standard practice.

Jul 30, 2011#40

Hailey Knight

So... we can't rent them or buy them used.

I just won't buy them--I wonder how many people will just be pirates though.

Jul 30, 2011#41

figmentPez

I'd say "Hooray for indie games!" except I'm kind of pissed that Magicka is trying to nickel & dime their customers with really crappy expansions.

Jul 30, 2011#42

Ravenpoe

figmentPez said:
I'd say "Hooray for indie games!" except I'm kind of pissed that Magicka is trying to nickel & dime their customers with really crappy expansions.

If you enjoy the core game, couldn't you just play that, and not buy the expansions that you don't like?

Jul 30, 2011#43

figmentPez

Ravenpoe said:
If you enjoy the core game, couldn't you just play that, and not buy the expansions that you don't like?

Well, see, I loved the game so much I bought the Vietnam expansion as soon as it came out, before realizing it's "campaign" was a small fraction of the original, while still costing 50% of what the full game did, with no indication that it was mainly meant to be a couple of challenge maps.

Aug 1, 2011#44

@Li3n

Tinwhistler said:
Hell, even if every single version was free, it in no way invalidates my point.

Pretty sure giving stuff away for free has always been known to boost the number of people that acquire said stuff... so it makes no sense to compare it to something that actually costs money...

Aug 1, 2011#45

Frankie Williamson

It may not have as many as WoW, but going free to play saved the game and now it, as well as many other subscription MMOs that have gone free to play, are making money hand over foot with the micro-transaction model.

Aug 1, 2011#46

Jay

Tinwhistler said:
By that argument, Dungeons and Dragons Online (free) should have way more subscribers than World of Warcraft. Interestingly, it doesn't. there are lots of free games and apps for the android that I have no interest in acquiring.

D&D Online is mediocre as a game at best.

If it was Forgotten Realms...

Aug 1, 2011#47

@Li3n

Tinwhistler said:
By that argument, Dungeons and Dragons Online (free) should have way more subscribers than World of Warcraft. Interestingly, it doesn't. there are lots of free games and apps for the android that I have no interest in acquiring.

No, by that argument becoming free made DDO be played by more people...and that's exactly what happened.

Of course being free/cheap doesn't mean it will also be popular (Angry Birds is hardly the first game like it, is it), but it does have an effect... otherwise no one would care about any sort of pricing strategies...

Aug 1, 2011#48

Mathias

Dave said:
By this logic we should not have games like Fallout, any of the Ultima games, Elder Scrolls, etc. Hell, might as well scrap Skyrim! MMOs? Fuck 'em! People want Angry Birds and Farmville!

Civilization? Nope. We need to cater to the casual gamer! They don't want big sprawling strategy games.

Can I be done with sarcasm now?

Dude, you're a business man aren't you? What's the bigger market? Casual gamers or hardcore ones?

There's a reason why Nintendo Wii and Angry Birds are kicking ass.

Aug 1, 2011#49

Frankie Williamson

Wii isn't anymore. In fact, Wii software sales have become downright abysmal for Nintendo.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/07/29/nintendo-stock-plummets-21-percent/

Aug 1, 2011#50

Tress

Frankie Williamson said:
Wii isn't anymore. In fact, Wii software sales have become downright abysmal for Nintendo.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/07/29/nintendo-stock-plummets-21-percent/

That's due to separate issues, though. Nintendo really stopped supporting it properly, and without any good 1st party games the sales dropped. The financial value of the casual market remains as high as ever.

Aug 1, 2011#51

Shegokigo

I'm sorry, I lost patience with this thread in 10 minutes. What's going on now?

Aug 1, 2011#52

Cheesy1

Nothing really. Wanna buy another addon?

Aug 1, 2011#53

Shegokigo

Buy?

Maybe once I've "tested" out all your content, I'll feel obliged to throw you a "donation".

Aug 2, 2011#54

@Li3n

Mathias said:
Dude, you're a business man aren't you? What's the bigger market? Casual gamers or hardcore ones?

There's a reason why Nintendo Wii and Angry Birds are kicking ass.

But the question is, are you a business man that wants to be in business 20 years from now or not?

The Wii was great sales wise and for 1st party games... but without 3rd party support once the market was saturated Nintendo suddenly had a problem...

Aug 2, 2011#55

Necronic

I'm not too concerned if the "long-game" market looses share, but if they end up like the Flight Sim market.......well I must have to go and get a life.

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