During the creation of aquatic masterpiece, BioShock, Irrational Studios couldn't figure out how long their game was going to be. Creepy little girls? Check. Violent oafs in diving suits? Check. The number of gameplay hours? Um...
Developers find it easy to predict the length of a shooter, as the genre's linear. But BioShock's more open nature was far more troublesome.
"When we started focus testing, there was a huge time variance from one player to another," says Bill Gardner, lead level designer on the game. "Our concerns mostly came from people who were taking too long rather than people ploughing through, so we had to find ways to guide players along without holding their hands too much. This scared the shit out of us at first."
BioShock ended up with around 15+ hours of gameplay - at least, it did for people who ogled the Art Deco eye candy and rifled through the pockets of cadavers - but some players were pissed off with its brevity.
BioShock represents a wider trend in PC games, as 30+ hour extravaganzas appear to have become things of the past. Condemned clocked in at around seven hours, F.E.A.R. was a couple more, and Call of Duty 4 and BlackSite are shorter than Danny DeVito.
Then there are RPGs: sprawling goliaths of gaming, historically. And yet, Fable took less than 15 hours to complete, Morrowind was way longer than Oblivion, and Fallout 3's main quest will last a mere 20 hours. Are we being short-changed?
Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series and new third-person shooter MMO Tabula Rasa, says not: "The average game may have shortened a bit, but in the old days, few ever saw the latter half of a game's content, which was a waste, so investing in the quality of a shorter experience is often a good investment."
Garriott, who's taking a rocket into space in October 2008 (no joke, he's becoming the sixth space tourist), estimates that his early Ultima games had from 40 to 100 hours of content. But in the '80s, when PC games were made from volcanic rock and buffalo hide, developers didn't even discuss lengths. They had a 'we'll see how long it is when we're done' attitude. "Now we plan our initial play time early in the process," says Garriott.
The length of a game gives the developer insight into its requirements, from soundtrack to level assets, voice-acting to script. According to Joe Falke, game designer behind Clive Barker's Jericho, different factors came into play when deciding on Jericho's length - team size, development time, and budget.
"We measured those factors against Clive's original vision for the game," he says. "Another contributing factor was how much story we could pack into 45 minutes of cutscenes. After making all these projections, we sat down with Clive and plotted out the story with these constraints in mind." The finished result: seven hours, or so, of content.
But there are unsavoury reasons for shorter games. Explorations into new technologies, cross-platform constraints, and tight deadlines, can all reduce a game from a giant haystack to a weeping willow. Cost counts too, says Falke. "Every extra 10 minutes you throw into a game costs more money, man hours and design. Someone has to sit and generate the assets for a new section of level. Subsidiary costs also rise: every extra 10 minutes must also be sent through QA."
On the whole shorter games are less a product of tight-fisted accountants, and more due to consumer demand. These days, games are considered much like movies or books - most people don't want to spend three months toiling over a shooter. Valve released stats showing that only half of players finished Episode One, and that's only five hours long.
"It's the basic ideology that modern gamers would rather have five hours of a Hollywood blockbuster, than 10 hours of pretty good content," says Falke. Like a flamboyant guest at a house party, sometimes games are better when they don't outstay their welcome.
Portal's three hours seemed just right, and there's an argument to be made that the first Half-Life trailed off around the Xen levels, while HL2 was bang on the money. If a game ends without leaving you feeling frustrated and unsatisfied, then perhaps it's done a good job. Conversely, a game that lasts hundreds of hours can be a massive turn-off.
Ultimately, content should determine length, rather than the other way around. This was a mantra that the BioShock team kept in mind.
"We did not arbitrarily add content to inflate our game's length," says Gardner. "It's a sin to create a generic, repetitive experience just so you can write 'Over 40 hours of gameplay' on the box."
Despite a few miffed punters, who wanted more Bio-bang for their buck, it is worth remembering that the game dwarfed System Shock 2 in content.
"Putting aside all the polish and custom events, the sheer size of BioShock's maps are probably twice the size of SS2," continues Gardner. "We knew early on that we wanted to make a much faster, more intense experience than SS2. This meant that the spaces had to be much larger to support the combats. To put it simply, the fights with the Big Daddies would not have been possible on the Von Braun."
Perhaps the biggest concern over shrinking games surrounds RPGs. Where are the 100-hour RPGs of yore? MMOs come to the rescue here: "Tabula Rasa has a couple of hundred hours of baseline content if you are just running to reach the initial level cap of level 50," says Garriott. "Plus every few weeks we add more content, more missions, more maps, more features, so it is growing all the time."
Ultimately, we should get what we expect from a game, according to its genre. From a puzzle, racing or sports game: unlimited replayability. From a shooter: multiple hours of rip-roaring action.
From RPGs: weeks of glazy-eyed keyboard tapping. From The Sims: the usual load of bollocks. It's all about quality of content, as Bill Gardner says. And a £25 PC game should rightfully have more quality content than any other medium out there.
I recently finished STALKER & Steam reliably informed me that I clocked up 38 hours on that (and I had to cheat right at the end, which probably docked off an hour or two). That's a pretty meaty experience imo.
As far as I'm concerned, any shooter worth its salt should last about a week, where you play it for 3 or 4 hours a day. That's what I'm used to and that's what I expect, unless I'm fore-warned that it'll be a lot shorter like Portal etc.
There's a very real danger of a spreadsheet culture emerging in development. Devs may lose touch with their instincts and stop creating games that THEY think are good, instead relying solely on data from their spreadsheets to create a derivative and contrived game. Stats are useful, but don't rely on them. Trust your instincts and experience, both as a gamer and a developer. If you & all your dev team think you've made a great game, chances are most gamers will too.
i agree that some games do feel a little bereft of content but ea can and do make great games cod4 is exceptional yes the end can come a bit to soon but in that case crank up the difficulty and it will take a lot longer.when i had all the time in the world to play games i could happily sit and play games like ff7 for the six months that it took me to finish now with a family to look after i would forget what i had done if a game was that long.just enjoy the experience
The problem isn't the length of games and people not having the staying power to see them through. The question is why aren't game holding peoples attention for more than 10 hours? Final fantasy 7 took me 70 plus hours to complete the first time and there was dozens more hours of content. The fact that the game world and story were so brilliantly constructed kept me playing till the end and going back to it. Incidently FF7 is the biggest selling game in the series. Why don't devs want to make these game any more when people are crying out for them.
The problem isn't the length of games and people not having the staying power to see them through. The question is why aren't game holding peoples attention for more than 10 hours? Final fantasy 7 took me 70 plus hours to complete the first time and there was dozens more hours of content. The fact that the game world and story were so brilliantly constructed kept me playing till the end and going back to it. Incidently FF7 is the biggest selling game in the series. Why don't devs want to make these game any more when people are crying out for them.
As your posting on a games forum, I would have thought that you aren't the average gamer now days. Most people wouldn't put that much time into a game, just as they wouldn't put that much time into watching a film. The gaming market has changed and developers are trying to appeal to a much wider demographic of people, who want to just dip in and out of a game and not have to dedicate vast amounts of time to them. The fact that a huge number of people couldn't even play Episode 2 to the end is an incredible statistic that demonstrates this.
Personally, I will always go for quality over quantity. A well made game with variety that only lasts 5 hours is more worthy of my attention than a game that lasts 50 hours but is repetitive/dull/bugged/etc.
Its getting really bad of late, games are being churned out for your average gamer with a short attention span.
CoD4 was wayyyyy too short, but at least it has MP, Bioshock was terribly short, its replay value is non existent because the combat isint that interesting
I got 65 hours out of FF10, havnt finished FF12( cos my PS2 died ), but i hope they dont destroy RPG's in the same way, at least Mass Effect will have 32hours+, i found Jade Empire to be very very short also( never completed it yet, stupid last guy, grrr )
Bioshock didn't feel short to me - but I think that may be down to a clever illusion on the part of the developers with the 'fake' climax in the middle. I thought I was near the end when I got to Ryan, but obviously not. It was a true stroke of genius to set the level before meeting him in the reactor core (a common ending place for FPS games) - very clever misdirection.
A well made game with variety that only lasts 5 hours is more worthy of my attention than a game that lasts 50 hours but is repetitive/dull/bugged/etc.
I think no-one questions that point. Still, STALKER was brilliant, a bit bugged but even then it remained a very interesting experience during that long trip in the Zone.
HL²: Episode 2 though really didn't offer that much variety. The cinematic physics thing was awesome for those two or three moments you saw it in action, the Hunter was very cool and so was the new throwable object/"weapon" but that was about it. All recycling for the rest (and the same could be said for Episode 1). A regular FPS expansion which would take as long to complete would have had more new "content" than that, only Valve doesn't seem to realise that.
The reason for shorter games is simple: creating exciting new content takes longer in the advanced 3D engine era we're in. If a behemoth like Baldur's Gate II would be released now, I think no-one would object to taking that 150+ hour trip since it delivers a great experience during every hour you're playing. Don't have time? For a great game you will always make time, really. It's just that such a title won't be released anymore since nowadays it has to be in 3D/in first person and has to have physics and all that jazz.
Trying to squeeze every genre into the FPS mindset (gorgeous first person details and interactions first, interesting story and game mechanics later) will always lead to a shorter game length. It might be beneficial for some type of games but for RPG's it most certainly is not imo.
Good point Togra, but we shouldn't shy away from increasing the realism/immersion in games. What needs to happen is for the methods of generating these worlds to become much more efficient. That's a task for the engine and tools designers as the current trend of throwing more & more manpower at development is unsustainable and really bad for the industry as it feeds this corporate takeover climate & cripples independent studios..
Game companies are saying this so they can spend less time on development, push more games out and make more money.
Stalker, Oblivion etc show games with more content sell. Gamers like to get lost in a game and has an experience.
Game that only have 5-10 hours of play lose their immersion and just as your getting into the game it ends. Crysis !!!
No wonder more people are piratting games for the PC, who the hell want's to pay full price for a games that last 5 hours and then get's shevled. Attaching a quickly knocked together to accompany that 5 hour game does not justiy it either.
Bring on more games like Stalker, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2.
"We did not arbitrarily add content to inflate our game's length," says Gardner. "It's a sin to create a generic, repetitive experience just so you can write 'Over 40 hours of gameplay' on the box."
Then that's the developers fault for not using there skill and experience to make it less repetitive.
Our game get's repetitive and boring, lets cut it in half then !!!
I don't want to wait 3-5 years for a game and then for it to be finished and shelved in a weekend.
I want to come back for a few weekends at least and continue my journey.
Sorry tripple post. Really winds me up this topic.
I am glad Nintendo do not have this stupid mentality.
Nintendo Wii is the best selling nex generation console and the best selling games on it are Super Mario Galaxy and Zelda, how many hours of gameplay do they have !!!
Do not believe the game companies putting forward these point of views, ram there disscusion boards with your objections and that you want a more immersive experience.
Valve started this with episodic content and we need to stop it. All beacuse gabe has got too old and fat to handle the stress of producing a 5 years game.
Call of Duty 4 was completely unaceptable at 4-5 hours.
Can anyone see Duke Nukem Forever being 5-10 hours?
To anyone who says that Bioshock is short, you completely missed the point of playing the game. I spent at least 20 hours on it, and I didn't even look in every area I spotted.
I do think that games are getting too short. But I also agree that barely anyone gets to the end of games anyway.
I have to disagree with your open statement, BioShock was not a masterpiece, it was a watered down FPS.
I still remember playing System Shock 2 for around 30 hours, that was the last time I really got sucked into a game. Mind you I an currently sitting at 40+ hours on Lego Star Wars TCS on the 360 and only 88% of the way through.
It does seem to be since this generation of consoles have came out that PC games are getting shorter and shorter (especially games developed on multiple platforms). Stalker took me into the 15+ hours easily, but BioShock took me less than 10, and that was when I could be bothered playing it.
chainsawbunny - in agreement with your first post. Do we really think that 5 hour and 10 hour and 15 hour games are helping PC gaming? And all the negativity about 40 hour plus games being 'repetitive', please explain why, in the highest selling PC game years of 1995-2000, PC games that did not have at least 35 hours of gameplay were marked down by reviewer for 'lack of entertainment value'! And magazines like Ace and others had a graph that showed how interest rose and fell over a week's period and scored higher for those that had the long term interest?
Just look at how many genres there were in 1995-2000, how many PC titles were released and how the vast majority would run on very average PC's, then, finally, look at the much more mature attitude of PC gaming magazines of the time and their willingness to go after the publishers, big or small and support the gamer. That's your template. And yet, look ho far we are from that template. And that's why PC gaming is struggling....!
Did you not read my posts?
I completely agree. 5-10 hours games are 100% not helping.
PC game is dying because there are no quality game coming out, maybe 6 a year.
If a game of last a weekend to play (5-10 hours) and then you have nothing else to play you are going to start looking elsewhere i.e consoles.
'Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series and new third-person shooter MMO Tabula Rasa, says not: "The average game may have shortened a bit, but in the old days, few ever saw the latter half of a game's content, which was a waste, so investing in the quality of a shorter experience is often a good investment."'
Nintendo said a similar thing back in the GameCube days regarding the likes of Luigi's Mansion and Wind Waker. Sure, they were a bit too short, but Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy got the length about right, I'd say. But even TP takes around 20 - 40 hours depending on whether you take in the sights or just breeze through. I was a bit annoyed at the length of Gears Of War, but would people prefer developers to put in some half-bottomd filler that's rubbish to play? Better to be short and sharp than long and dull. All depends on the individual game. I for one was glad Oblivion was shorter than Morrowind -- clocked up 118 hours on Oblivion so far, though finished the story after about 50.
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i agree that some games do feel a little bereft of content but ea can and do make great games cod4 is exceptional yes the end can come a bit to soon but in that case crank up the difficulty and it will take a lot longer.when i had all the time in the world to play games i could happily sit and play games like ff7 for the six months that it took me to finish now with a family to look after i would forget what i had done if a game was that long.just enjoy the experience
