Games getting shorter and easier, Not a bad thing.

Games getting shorter and easier, Not a bad thing.

Games getting shorter and easier, Not a bad thing.

Ok, i'm getting quite tired with the constant complaining amongst the "Hardcore" community of gamers that games are made to be finished these days and that they're more like 8 hour roller-coasters when compared to the longer and harder challenging games of old. Look folks, most of the kids from the early 90's and 80's are now grown ass adults that cant justify spending all their free time playing games but still very much love them and want to play them, and as it turns out these people are the biggest purchasers of games, they're the people that keep the industry alive so it makes sense to cater to their needs right?

The average age of the gamer is like, if I'm remembering correctly 32 or something. We're not the same kids who; the second they got home from school would play a game until it was time to go to sleep, getting ready for school the next day. Most people in their 30's have kids, partners and other responsibilities they care about that, I'm not going to say get in the way but, as a responsible adult take more precedent then your want of gaming. Now I'm not saying that huge expansive games don't have a place any more, for example a game like fallout 3. F3 always gets its detractors saying it was ruined and made too easy by going to a first person perspective. While I totally understand where this view is coming from you have to really take a look at what state we live in today as a gamer. Games cost £40 new, you want to be able to put it in and be able to play and finish a quest and have fun, making the game arbitrarily hard either through simple AI number tweeks or sometimes through bad controls or design is kind of unacceptable, all it does is artificially make the game longer because you're spending ages either grinding to be an equal level to the enemy you're facing or retrying it over and over so you can get better, or even worse in some games cases where you're just smashing your head against the wall in hopes of getting lucky and getting the win. If we're going to spend so much money and what little free time we have on games they better damn well be fun and rewarding and not pointlessly punishing because some developer doesn't think you're good enough to deserve to win and have fun or wants to make their game seem longer than it actually is with pointless padding and difficulty in place of actual content.

The real challenge now is in multi-player games, for the folks that want a bit more of a competitive aspect they can always take the game online and play against other people, and no matter what anyone says, beating a real life dudes ass will always be more challenging and rewarding then beating a stupidly tough AI that has all the unfair advantages that being a computer gives.

Massively long and nutbusting games will always have a place in modern gaming (demon's souls), but can we please stop bitching that games aren't as "HARDCORE" as they used to be? our industry is huge and the majority of people who buy games do not want those experiences anymore, to say they don't deserve to play because they don't have the time or want to invest in getting stupidly good so they can pass some needlessly hard part of a game is selfish ass excludatory thing to say and makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags.

to say they don't deserve to play because they don't have the time or want to invest in getting stupidly good so they can pass some needlessly hard part of a game is selfish ass excludatory thing to say and makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags.

I think you're somewhat interpreting the argument, which is generally (in my experience) that my hard earned should buy me more than a 5 hour campaign that offers no challenge, with the 'value' resting at the feet of what is probably a mediocre, barely populated multiplayer.

That's not hardcore

As an adult, I simply don't have the time to play games on Insanity and master everything so I appreciate devs taking that into account. On the other hand a lot of kids play games too and I'm sure their parents enjoy spending money on new games constantly because the old ones are done in 8 hours. It's a double edged blade in a way.
 
 
I occasionally play on "extreme" or whatever if I really like the game (ME2, BIA RTH30, CoD4, etc)

I have never agreed with the argument that games in general have gotten shorter. You can finish Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and tons of older games in less than an hour. The only reason some of those games seemed longer was due to trial and error game play or running out of lives and having to start over from the beginning. Also, a lot of the challenge from earlier games stemmed from bad design, or as you said, just flat out padding and making things tediously drawn out.  Developers have also gotten better at informing the player on what they need to do and what their current objective is. Remember in Castlevania 2 how in that one part you had to go and crouch down in some random corner for a while to open up a pathway? Yeah, that stuff doesn't pop up anymore.
 
Games haven't gotten shorter, they just now require you to spend a lot less time aimlessly wandering around going, "What the fuck do I do now?"

Yes it is, I don't have a lot of time to play, maybe 2 hours per day if that (a little more on weekends of course) but I still want my games deep, long and challenging all the same, of course I don't mind the occasional mindless 6 hour action game once in a while, but saying that it's ok to have all games be turned into that is just downright stupid.

@Zabant said:

making the game arbitrarily hard either through simple AI number tweeks or sometimes through bad controls or design is kind of unacceptable

@rebgav said:

the multiplayer aspect of most games is a theoretical feature at best, given that the vast majority of games have no real player-base a few weeks after release.

While that is true for one or two specific genres, this is a fault of the developers more than multiplayer as an unworkable idea itself. MOBAs are a good example of how to take even a small aspect of a game and turn it into its own thing that people will end up playing more than the thing it was derived from. Look at RPG's, who would have thought making a role playing game into a multiplayer game (mmorpg) would have worked as well as it does? There is no reason something like mass effect and its universe, or any of the deep and complex games you want cant be just as deep and complex but as a multiplayer game, its just developers would rather slap some kind of deathmatch or throw away mode in there that nobody will ever care about instead of putting any real thought or effort into it.

Again for examples, look at horde mode and zombies mode from gears and cod. Two kinda new multiplayer ideas that could be spun off into their own game at this point from how well received they were.

This can also be flipped on its head, for a proto example think of the create a boxer mode in fight night champion, taking your boxer from a rank ass amateur to the best in the world introducing mechanics though the pretext of story and training with a deep world that has extra things to do (for example an underground fight club) that add bonus incentive but still keeping it entirely optional. Now imagine that but in say something like a street fighter game. Keep everything about core mechanics of street fighter as we know it, multiplayer and arcade also for the fans that just want that. But have it so you can go through the origins of your character in a deep and meaningful way that is fun and does not just feel like a tacked on extra. For example we pick zangief and through his story progression we find how he got started, have him wrestling bears and show how he got his scarrs and have a visible and tangible feel of progress with him that isn't "We just took all his moves away and after each fight you unlock a new one". I'm not a game designer so these ideas arent great but for example, have it so the more you land the spinning piledriver within a set of challenges (do it against your opponent in the last round when you're at 20% or less health to win the match) you power that move up to eventually having it do the damage it does in the standard multiplayer mode.

@onarum said:

Agreed, but that's the sign of a bad game, not a hard game. one other thing that is unacceptable, for example, is when they take a great franchise like XCOM, that had base, equipment, research, personnel, budget management and turn based combat and turn it into yet another effin FPS with absolutely NOTHING of what made the game so good in the first place, is the fact that it's a FPS what makes it so horrid? no, that would not be a problem at all had they kept at least 50% of the original mechanics intact. That's the sort of thing that gets us "hardcore" gamers pist.

Have you read anything about the new XCOM? It does have quite a few of the things you describe from the original, it seems most people don't realize this.

As for this whole conversation, no I don't want my games shorter and easier, mostly the shorter, I can't stand games that are completely awesome yet suffer from a 4-6 hour length, it leaves you wanting more and feeling cheated at the price point.

I honestly don't see my view on this ever changing, regardless of age or time I allocate towards gaming.

I don't tend to rant about how "easy" games these days are, but I do have a problem with *some* of them being so short. Latest example being Resistance 3, even when I forced myself to limit my playing time to a hour or few per day, it was still over too soon. I did enjoy the ride 'till the end and I got the game with a laughable price in exchange to few used games, but I still felt dissapointed. Same thing with few other games this year.

...and at the same time, I do feel a bit silly myself, when I complain about games being short, yet there's a handful of ones I haven't finished. But, eh...then again, those games were "only" fun, not games that made me go "OHMYGOD, I rather starve to death than stop playing this for one second!" thus I didn't feel all too dissapointed with abandoning them and never looking back.

Conclusion: I'm...probably too old to enjoy games with a 'tough' challenge and rather take a rollercoaster ride! But I still would like that ride to last longer than they tend to these days...

Your argument is so bad.

Game lengths are fine, what is really missing nowadays is replay value. I remember when I was a kid just a new costume or gun would be enough to make me replay a game and get my monies worth. A short game with lots of shit to play around with and unlock is a perfect compromise for the time vs money crowds. Hell, even cheats would add substantial playtime to games for me.

So basically, fuck stupid ass dlc.

well i'm ok with games getting easier i don't seek challenge in games but shorter? no just no. i play 80$ (in my country) for new console games and i expect them to last MINIMUM 12 hours that's why i just buy mainly j-RPGs because i love them and single player can be played trough usually in 30-70 hours and that's why i'm not buying shooters like CoD and BF, 5-6 hours of single player for 80$ sorry but this looks like shitty deal to me and i don't play online.

There's plenty of blue sky between being forced to trial and error your way through a game and being able to sleep walk through it, as you can with many modern games. Games are an interactive medium and should at least be challenging enough to demand your mental engagement. You shouldn't be expected to fail repeatedly before you are able to progress, but once a game allows you to complete it without really requiring any effort from you, then it has stopped being a gaming experience and become a passive experience more akin to watching a movie imo. That's fine if that's what people want, but I don't consider it gaming.

I still don't really understand why so many people who apparently want a passive experience have chosen to get that from 'cinematic' 'gaming', rather than from movies and TV, which are much better suited to delivering that experience and much better at it. Is it because the games industry has perfected the 'pat on the head' and traditional media haven't? Maybe TV needs an Achievement system too: Congratulations, you have spent more time watching TV than all of your friends! You're the best at TV!

Edit: Also games, are MUCH cheaper in real terms than they used to be. Maybe that should change.

@crusader8463 said:

@Zabant said:

to say they don't deserve to play because they don't have the time or want to invest in getting stupidly good so they can pass some needlessly hard part of a game is selfish ass excludatory thing to say and makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags.

How is that any less selfish than telling the people that like that kind of game, and are not having that desire met, to fuck off and deal with it any less douchebagy?

I was thinking the same thing.

Just wanted to clear something up. My main point with this blog was to say give the people who enjoy the way the top selling games are right now a break. The gears of war team (for example) are great at making gears, that game might be an 8 hour campaign but to expect more from them and complain about it is silly.

I have been kind of playing the devils advocate with this blog post as I used to spend all days every day at a pc or a console up until a year ago, but recently I can understand why short and fast games like MW and Uncharted are the best sellers among normal 9/5 men and women. It is our prerogative to push for more niche indepth games from developers that enjoy making those games, like the witcher guys. But expecting guys like infinity ward who have made a super polished 8 hour long campaign game with good multiplayer to make a 40 hour epic gets us nowhere, and bitching about people that like those games and saying its ruining the industry gets us nowhere. As they are the majority of games getting made these days "games" on a whole from a wide view are getting shorter and easier, and as I said that is not a bad thing. The industry didnt get too where it is now by accident.

What is bad is people who have shown they can make the games we want, only to throw that to the wind in favor of trying to hit it big and make more money, lying about the new game being just as indepth and great as the previous title only of course to fail horribly as NOBODY liked the new one and go out of business.

I value my time, I don't grade a game's value by how much time it consumes. Only losers do that. I don't look at a movie's length to determine if it should be worth the money, I look at a review. Don't know why gaming is so different. I'll take Portal 2 over any given 60 hour RPG grind any day of the week because more time and effort went into making each minute enjoyable instead of making each experience last longest.

@ZeForgotten: @ZeForgotten said:

@crusader8463 said:

@Zabant said:

to say they don't deserve to play because they don't have the time or want to invest in getting stupidly good so they can pass some needlessly hard part of a game is selfish ass excludatory thing to say and makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags.

How is that any less selfish than telling the people that like that kind of game, and are not having that desire met, to fuck off and deal with it any less douchebagy?

I was thinking the same thing.

I'm not telling anyone "to fuck off and deal with it" though. All i'm saying is these games are not for you, don't give people who do like them a hard time. Just because you inferr that through your dislike of these games does not give people the right to be dickasses

@ryanwho said:

I value my time, I don't grade a game's value by how much time it consumes. Only losers do that. I don't look at a movie's length to determine if it should be worth the money, I look at a review. Don't know why gaming is so different. I'll take Portal 2 over any given 60 hour RPG grind any day of the week because more time and effort went into making each minute enjoyable instead of making each experience last longest.

I think there is so much belly aching in gaming as opposed to film because of the whole $60 thing and back when games used to be cheap to produce they were on the whole (due to reasons in my op) longer. I agree with you fully 100% on the length does not equal value issue. the market will bear, people are willing to pay what they will for an experience they deem worth it. You couldn't for example PAY me to play any of those japanese dating sims, no matter how long or hard *Tee hee* the game is. Hell, here's another example, I would pay upwards of £200 for a fully remade FF8 with some 2011 polish on it due to my memories of that game, and who I played it with as a teen. I fully know that game has some shit in it and some terrible story points (GF MADE ME FORGET MY CHILDHOOD) But that experience would be worth alot of money to me personally if I could get it remade.

@ZeForgotten: @ZeForgotten said:

@crusader8463 said:

@Zabant said:

to say they don't deserve to play because they don't have the time or want to invest in getting stupidly good so they can pass some needlessly hard part of a game is selfish ass excludatory thing to say and makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags.

How is that any less selfish than telling the people that like that kind of game, and are not having that desire met, to fuck off and deal with it any less douchebagy?

I was thinking the same thing.

I'm not telling anyone "to fuck off and deal with it" though. All i'm saying is these games are not for you, don't give people who do like them a hard time. Just because you inferr that through your dislike of these games does not give people the right to be dickasses

Even at 21 years old I can't finish my games on the hardest difficulty anymore, and I'm not even especially busy during evenings. It's mostly 'game-fatigue', I guess.

@ViciousReiven said:

Have you read anything about the new XCOM? It does have quite a few of the things you describe from the original, it seems most people don't realize this.

And that right there is a big part of why people are complaining. It's now something to be cheered when a remake/sequel/prequel comes close in terms of features to a 17 year old game, but that's not something that should be cheered, that's something that should be meet with disdain. Almost two decades later I expect games to blow away their predecessor in what they offered, not just merely play catch up. As much as graphics and sound have advanced, the underlying game rules really haven't and sometimes that is just a little depressing.

Anyway, back to topic. The whole argument has two core problems. Games getting shorter is often taken as fact, while it really isn't true. It is only some specific sequels or genres that have gotten shorter and simpler and that is what people are complaining about, gaming as a whole really hasn't. A Call of Duty might only be four hours long, but a Mass Effect still can keep you busy for 35h without problems. Long games do still exist, just as do shorter ones. The second issue is that gamers, most of them anyway, are not complaining about length, that's what they say, but that's not what they mean. What bothers them is that games these days often feel incomplete. Nothing sucks more getting sucks into a world, fighting the good fight and then getting an inconclusive cliffhanger ending that just doesn't give any sense of closure. Especially with the big blockbuster titles, it really gets hard these days to even find some that tell a whole story from start to end.

As for the whole gamers getting older: Just because the old gamers are getting old, doesn't mean that there isn't a steady supply of younger ones.

And to those valuing the worth of a game by "dolar per hour": If you are that poor, don't buy $60 games, you can get hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay on Steamsales, GoG or used games or whatever. Getting a ton of game for a tiny amount of money is these days easier then it ever was.

It's a bad thing for me who appreciates length, value for money, and a challenge, and is frustrated by wasted money and easy, challenge-less games.

I think you're somewhat interpreting the argument, which is generally (in my experience) that my hard earned should buy me more than a 5 hour campaign that offers no challenge, with the 'value' resting at the feet of what is probably a mediocre, barely populated multiplayer.

That's not hardcore

Anyone that grew up in the 80's and 90's grew up playing games that were "hard" because of the technical limitations of that period. So it makes perfect sense for those kind of people to think that modern games are easier and shorter; because of the games they grew up playing they're going to find more modern games easier because they don't have any of those limitations.  
 
Food for thought, imagine the hardest game you've played since say 2005, now imagine not being able to save your progress at all. One sitting was all you got when playing something like Alexx Kid or golden axe, which is largely why those games are considered difficult. Of course this isn't the case across the board, but it's a good example. 

I disagree

I like games I can actually finish (when story-based). So yeah, I think it is a good thing too.

I'll play a game on hard only if it offers a different experience (like forcing me to strategize in ME2 which is really fun in Insanity).

@onarum said:

Agreed, but that's the sign of a bad game, not a hard game. one other thing that is unacceptable, for example, is when they take a great franchise like XCOM, that had base, equipment, research, personnel, budget management and turn based combat and turn it into yet another effin FPS with absolutely NOTHING of what made the game so good in the first place, is the fact that it's a FPS what makes it so horrid? no, that would not be a problem at all had they kept at least 50% of the original mechanics intact. That's the sort of thing that gets us "hardcore" gamers pist.

From the minimal information actually available for you to base your nerd rage on, it seems to have quite A LOT of what made the original games enjoyable, merely changing the genre and stream-lining game play for the modern crowd. And as has been pointed out soooo many times previously it aint exactly the first time X-COM left the TBS format behind, and this time it actually might be good.

This trend of shorter game-length is a greedy, capitalistic ruse created by the video game industry to reduce developmental costs and reel in a bigger profit. They are slowly and gradually weakening the singleplayer standard and at the same time steadily charging more for games and DLC.

A game that should have been 20 hours in the first place is now cut to 12 hours in the released copy and its DLC to be released later on for extra profits.

It's a war between the gamers and the video game distributors. Who's winning? They are. We gamers have been losing.

Why? Because the demand for downloadable content is crazy, even though many times the material should have been released with the game or it was over priced. Many gamers are blindsighted and unaware about what these companies are actually doing and continue to support them in their endeavors.

Your money is your vote and giants like Activision are fully loaded with wads of cash from our pockets.

If games getting shorter and easier is the way to explain the gameplay of Hard Reset then fuck games getting shorter and easier.

@ryanwho said:

I value my time, I don't grade a game's value by how much time it consumes. Only losers do that. I don't look at a movie's length to determine if it should be worth the money, I look at a review. Don't know why gaming is so different. I'll take Portal 2 over any given 60 hour RPG grind any day of the week because more time and effort went into making each minute enjoyable instead of making each experience last longest.

Don't wish to just post "This" and lazily not come up with my own response but this does quite succinctly sum up my feelings.

I'm tired of long books. I want a book I can finish in one or two sittings. I dont' have the free and easy life I did as a teenager, so I can't be expected to read a whole book over a period of days or weeks! Gosh, guys!

The average age of a gamer is 37 and I can tell you I would rather get more entertainment for my $60 than less. What the fuck does how much free time I have equate into how long a game is any more than it does a book? If you have less free time, spend more days or weeks finishing the game (or book). Hey, you're getting more bang for your buck, even!

That doesn't justify padding games with meaningless "collect 800 flags" bullshit. They should be packed with great content and be as long as they need to be. $60 for a four hour Bourne Identity game -- just because someone else has four shitty kids and a nagging wife and no free time -- doesn't fly, with me. Why should the entertainment I consume be limited by the restrictions in your life?

Hey, if games were only two hours long, imagine how many more you could play! Ooh, or if they were only an hour! OMG. I am completely on to something. In fact, since you have so little free time and you can't be bothered to play a game over a month instead of a week, then why not let the game play itself? THAT WOULD BE SOME AWESOME GUYZ!!!11!!

My point being that saying games are too long, because you have a busy life is at least as stupid as saying that every game should be at least 100 hours, just because.

i enjoy my long games. i don't know how people say that they have no time to play something. i worked 7 hours today, and here i am sitting on my computer watching tv.

i like long games lol