Games have been getting longer, there’s no doubt about that. The Last of Us: Part II, which launched last week, is a great example of this: while its predecessor could be completed in around 15 hours, its successor can take upwards of 30 hours – depending how you play. God of War followed a similar trajectory, moving from tight 10 hour campaigns to a gigantic 30 hour epic.
There’s no doubt that the demands of the wider gaming public have led to this change. But former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden, who departed the company last year, believes that the model is simply not sustainable – particularly as production costs continue to snowball. Speaking as part of GameLab Live, the likeable lead pointed to the fact costs have generally doubled each generation.
“It's hard for every adventure game to shoot for the 50 to 60 hour gameplay milestone, because that's gonna be so much more expensive to achieve,” he explained. “And in the end you may close some interesting creators and their stories out of the market if that's the kind of threshold they have to meet. We have to re-evaluate that.”
Layden continued that despite ballooning budgets, the cost of buying games has not increased. “It's been $59.99 since I started in this business, but the cost of games have gone up ten times. If you don't have elasticity on the price-point, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation is going to see those two imperatives collide.”
According to the executive, one solution may be to simply make smaller titles. “Instead of spending five years making an 80 hour game, what does three years and a 15 hour game look like? What would be the cost around that? Is that a full-throated experience? Personally, as an older gamer, I would welcome a return to the 12 to 15 hour [AAA] game.”
He continued: “I would finish more games, first of all, and just like a well edited piece of literature or a movie, looking at the discipline around that could give us tighter, more compelling content. It's something I'd like to see a return to in this business.” But would you be willing to fork out $59.99 for dozen or so hours of top-notch entertainment? Or would you be waiting for a price drop?
[source gamelab.es, via gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 103
If its fully polished game without day i would gladly pay €40. If you look at AC if you remove the boring filler stuff you probably wont even make it for 15 hours.
personally i like the current formula.
but on the other hand i would not realy have a problem with full priced 15 hour games since i got into the exclusive love with uncharted wich for the most part can be beaten in less than that. however i don't think that 12 hour AAA exclusives are gonna cut it anymore. atleast not from the big sony studios.
I grew up in the cartridge days of the 2600, coleco and commodore. It’s much better to play a hit series game as long as it keeps your interest.
Besides, we have phone games for short n sweet breaks. Indie games galore on Steam and Switch.
This reasoning is deeply flawed.
@Michael0719 No Mobile will give me the same experience as Heavenly Sword. 😆
I would rather have a game that takes 5 years to make but has infinite replayability like Monster Hunter World or some other MMOs, especially MMORPGs of high quality that is constantly being expanded.
No, I think hes going backward. I thought they were getting better at shipping great experiences (GOW, Days Gone etc) that make you feel you enjoyed every minute but still required quite some time.
There's no right or wrong answer to this really. Some single player games are great at 12 hours. Some are brilliant at just 3-4, others 30+. It all comes down to the game.
Count me in! I miss old type games that you don't need half of your life to finish them.
The combination of a rich interactive open world with a tight story would be perfect so YOU can adjust your playtime after main campaign.
I forked out £54.99 for Resi evil 2 and for Resi evil 3 remake.
Took me 12hrs to get through Resi 2 (A&B playthoughs) and under 5 hours for Resi 3.
For me money well spent on Resi 2 but in hindsight I wish I waited for Resi 3 to come down in price.
Recent purchases of Days Gone and Dying Light for lower than £15 are a steal. If I purchased at full price at release I wouldn't of minded. Great value.
I love resident evil but this in hindsight I wish I waited till a price drop.
Costs will get even more higher because of the way technology gets better for more graphics and people want bigger games. Even if games went to £70 each it wouldn't cover the costs but people would pay £70 a game if they were getting a game a full game that's not bugged on launch patched day 1 or split off so content can be then sold as DLC for extra cash income.
I would prefer a game that had that amount of time as well because I just don't have the time to complete games like Horizon ZD will long sessions
"Layden continued that despite ballooning budgets, the cost of buying games has not increased."
A very US-centric viewpoint. For a huge chunk of the world, games jumped £10/$10/€10 from PS3 to PS4. And we don't know yet that it won't go up again for PS5.
This year I have paid 60$ for Resident Evil3, which is 5 hours long.
I would not like to do that again, honestly.
10-15h long AAA in my opinion worth nothing more than 35$ at launch.
I love the real long games like TLOU2. But I wish they could change it up a little, so maybe the collectibles aren't around until the 2nd playthrough(but not the ones needed for the story of course). That way you would maybe enjoy the story and flow of the game more and also have good reason for replay.
Unfortunately that's exactly the opposite of what most of the AAA publishers want look at games like Rayman Origins/Legends,(not that I've beaten them!),or the old ps2 era Splinter Cell's or Beyond Good & Evil? Unless Ubisoft can transform it into a live service or semi MMO-esque co-op thing they don't want to know about it!
Yep,I did stretch out games like eg: Suikoden,or the old RE games back on ps1,or the GTA 3D era games,Maximo,or even RDR 1or TLOU 1 or God of War to enjoy them,(or survive them by grinding!).
But a lot of them now want you engaged to either rack up the hours,or mtx you're way ahead,or prep you for the online modes, (GTA/RDR 2).
And with services like gamepass on other platforms rating them by engagement rates rather than sales,I don't see this improving more's the pity.
A 15 hour game is more like 25-30 hours for me if there's exploration involved.
I think the 20 hour mark is the sweet spot for me. Even better if the game has replay ability.
OK boomer.
Things I want -
Free online like PS3
PS+ to have more games and a $50 price like it used to
Complete games for $60, even SSBU is up to $115, before amiibo
Games that aren't horrible broken messes for $60 ie wrestling
This guy is living in his own little world. Maybe he should go into politics?
I like 3 hour games, 8 hour games, 15 hour games, 30 hour games and 100 hour games.
It's called variety.
Me too. These v single player games too long, I lose interest and don't finish. Their great games, i just have a short attention span lol
@Paranoimia
Yet they are still cheaper I believe than Sonic 3 and Streetfighter II on the Mega Drive from 25 years ago, which i am sure were £60 and £80 respectively.
Happy to stand corrected though.
Personally , I loved games like MGS which had a great shortish story, but could be replayed and completed "Better" to get different codenames.
Journey was also a good example on a simpler level
You could enjoy the few hours of story, but the additional game on top was the additional play throughs, or helping others as you were helped on your first play through.
The good thing with 100+ hour games that let you do everything, is that there is no need to play through again because you can do everything in one game. The bad thing is that they can become a grindy slog and you may not finish the story, or the narrative pacing is compromised. Fallout 4, your son is kidnapped but you can just run off and completely ignore that for 100 hours; makes no sense.
I don't know. It's not the 30-hour games that scare me, it's the 100+ hour open world games. 30 hours is absolutely fine IMO. 15 hours is fine as well, but it needs to be high quality all throughout.
@kohiba99 Completely agree. I found GTA 5 perfect because the actual story missions don't take too long but if you want to mess around, do side missions, play golf etc then it can take up as much or little of your time as you want.
I found AC Origins tedious and never even finished it because I wanted to continue the story but was 2 or 3 levels below the next boss so was expected to just level up doing dull fetch quests and such 🙄
Nope i l💖ve long games.the longer the better .i dont have no problem with longer games.word ☝ up son
I don't equate length with value and I personally agree. For story driven narrative games, such as those that Sony specialises in, I think 15 hours is fine for the price. I also think that too many games have filler in them - even in good games. Assassin's Creed Odyseey was a very good game but the amount of really good content was far less than all the busy work. I also feel that some games, like Odyssey use size as a financial opportunity - escape the grind by spending more.
Always exceptions to the rule. The Witcher 3 was huge and the content pretty solid across the board. But I get his point - if it takes 4-5 yrs to make every game and you aren't charging more, you are more likely to look to alternate financial models.
I'd like to see more games of the size of say, A Plague Tale: Innocence. Solid 12-15 hour game that tells a compelling story at a good launch price point.
if the game was completed no extras to purchase I cant see a problem but I can't see that it's how they get your hard earned money and guess they make money for future projects but as ive mentioned I'd rather have a game that no other purchases are required even though it wasn't as long
@JJ2 Is bigger always better the open world craze does not make it much more special. If you take away the time wasters in games especially in AC games you get a game that does not add much more then wasting my time. Look AC Syndicate was a big one with that i played for really long but most of it was copy and paste missions, fetch quests and it made me lose track of the story because i quit the game too play it a year or 2 later and could not be bothered too start over again.
Edit: according to howlongtobeat.com, TLOU2 takes 21 hours to beat, not 30. The 30 mark is only if you go the completionist route and find all the hidden things. That does not count!
—
Not played TLOU2 yet but GoW was heavily padded in time via backtracking, exploration and rpg-ish mechanics that heavily increase time between story segments.
I’m cool with 15 hour adventures so long the backtracking and exploration added to games these days don’t count towards that.
IMO the sweet spot tends to be:
8 hour campaign for multiplayer focused game that still offer story modes.
15 hour campaign for single player RPGs
60+ for RPGs and open world games that really heavily on exploration and grinding to even be able to progress.
If you add optional side content like collectibles, and all the stuff UBsoft tends to adds up to games, that’s cool but don’t shorten the story for that!
@rjejr
Things I want:
To go back to simpler times like with the Wii Mini
Reggie still at the helm of Nintendo of America.
Metroid Prime 4
I agree. It is the experience, not the length of play that matters. Currently playing TLOU2. 18 hours in, just started the second half Seattle day 1. Enjoyed it so far but I prefer tlou 1. And games like Detroit become human, heavy rain are all short but I really enjoyed them too.
Hear, hear! I’ve been advocating more solid, high quality, focused games in the 15-20 hour playtime. There’s certainly a place for 100 hour epics, but sometimes the extra time is bloat that can be trimmed. AAA publishers seem to feel the pressure to make their games longer to justify cost. I’ll gladly pay $60 for a 15 hour game if it is of high quality and I enjoy every one of those 15 hours. I’ve certainly played 30 hour games that I only enjoyed 15 hours of.
Indie developers have filled in the void of shorter games, to be sure, but I’d like to see a AAA one every now and then — a la Lost Legacy, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, etc, etc.
@Paranoimia did your prices also go up that amount from PS2/Xbox to PS3/360? Because that was the generation that increased American prices from the then usual $50 to $60 in the US.
Just curious if prices were bumped on the rest of the world later, or twice.
@RPE83 That's because they were on cartridge and the memory was expensive; nothing to do with the length or quality of the games.
I never had any Sega or Nintendo consoles as a kid as they weren't that big here. I had Commodore computers, where the games were cheaper and often (in my opinion) better... even if they did originally take an age to load.
But as others have said, variety is everything. I'm not much of an RPG fan, but I enjoyed Fallout 3 and I've been through Horizon twice. Both are very long games. I'm currently playing TLOU2 and that seems to have been a very long game, but I've loved every minute. But then I also enjoy shorter games.
The problem is that, particularly with triple-A games, the price doesn't scale with the content. Sure, a 100+ hour game may be very expensive to produce and sell for $60... but then you can get a game with an 8-hour campaign and no replayability (outside of your own personal enjoyment) and they want the same price. So you're either under-paying for a few, or over-paying for the many.
I get his point, but I'm not sure they've really gone away.
That's pretty much what the smash hits Uncharted 4 and Resident Evil 2 remake were, so there's clearly still a market for them.
I'd also put the likes of Control and Doom Eternal into that category, ignoring the optional side missions & collectibles.
I definitely prefer the above to the beautifully made, but utterly bloated AC Odyssey for example.
Pricing of games is a difficult issue. You can Subscribe to more games you can play for a year for less than the price of a full game with services like game pass PlayStation now and Nintendo is online’s NES app. What you’re paying for when you buy a game it’s an experience better than those services. Length isn’t really what’s important. It’s added value that is important . But if the game runs for really short period of time it’s unlikely to add a huge amount of value. They need to be aware of what their games are worth to people and price them accordingly.
@rjejr I think you are barking up the wrong tree with these firstparty from you get bang for buck. The are polished and quite complete and they run quite great too be fair.
The triple A you are talking about is from Bethesda, Activision, 2K sports games, EA, Ubisoft live service packed too the brim with adds for MT, DLC, And even XP boosters. God i hate the Mobile and free to play market. 🤮
I 100% agree with the man. The Last of Us: Part II and Final Fantasy VII Remake are my recent examples of terrific games that could have had at least 5 hours of content shaved off to be more efficiently paced.
In UK ps1 to ps2 games went up £5-£10. ps2 to ps3 £10, ps3 to ps4 £10. best value game i have played is MHW + IB well over 500 hours. I tend to wait for a sale unless its a game im desperate for.
@Paranoimia
Apologies, I read your initial post as a complaint about the rising cost.
Your reply implies that you are ok with an increase of £10/$10/€10 because 150 hours of Assassins Creed is so much more value than 10 hours tops of Sonic 3?
I recall Street Fighter 2 and Sonic having some reason along those lines why they were more expensive relative to other cartridge games, (SF2 needing more memory) but I can't remember if SuperFx games like Starfox were more expensive on the SNES compared to other SNES games, I don't believe they were.
I'll make a proper post latter adding to this. But this sounds to more as a business thought, less time, less risks, less quality maximum rewards. Take TLOU2 the illusion of a much bigger game and a more open one, it's both a illusion clever level design, and probably can be finished in under 15hours. 7 years to make to make TLOU2, The Whitcher3 around 5-6 years to make, vastly bigger and is a open world with 100hours play time. A quality game will always take longer to develop, these companies need to make smart business decisions. Make a quality big game like Uncharted, Spiderman, your next game smaller but still quality "Lost Legacy" that has reused assets. This example can be used to both bigger 100hours and smaller 15hours game.
@Paranoimia That is a solid argument i think with Heavenly Sword if it was priced lower it would have sold so much more copies still dont regret buying it at €60 but i can i agree. But games are so much more now look at the high quality of PS4 games now the good ones. And i do believe the teams are so much bigger now we want polished and perfect games and fast. If they give me a 15 hours game at €40 i wont mind that easier workload for the developers too and much more manageble.
I agree, less is often more. Lots of games nowadays are way too bloated.
I like a mix of game lengths, play a big open world game then do a smaller indie title.
by the time i completed heavenly sword i though it was nothing bur a impressive tech demo not worth the selling price. should have been cheaper.
I'm down for this.
Maybe would help bring down production times as well.
For as great as TLOU 2 is in its scope, I can't help but feel they could've made a shorter game and had it released a while ago, and right now we could be anticipating a third part or something new from ND
I think the doorstoppers in the little 50-hour club Don't Like Company, if you catch my drift.
Sony also needs smaller studio's besides the big hitters. How about these small great titles which they dont market. Gravity Rush, Concrete Genie i think they need too make more small games at a reduced price.
@roe They could have cut up the game too i guess so its way less pressure.
I hate the argument for tightening the belt be it.. Upping the cost of a game or making games shorter and that games cost the same as they did 20 years ago when games regularly beat previous sales and make record profits. Certainly in the AAA space.
No one says a AAA game needs to be 60 hours long.. See most Nintendo games for case and point.. You can easily rattle through most of their AAA games in 15 hours and no one cares.. Simply because they're very good.
The simple fact is, if games companies can't sell enough copies to break even or make profit then the development costs were far exceeding the scope of the game or the game simply isn't very good in the first place.
Publishers like ubisoft justify their games being 60 hour + slogs simply because they're padded out to high heaven.
A good game is a good game regardless of the length of it.
When compared to other forms of entertainment; £10 for a trip to the cinema, £15 for a bluray, £25 for a football ticket, £40+ for a music concert, spending £50 on a 15 hour game seems like a bargain.
I'd rather get a 10 hour long Uncharted sequel every 3 year, than a 25 hours one 5 years apart.
I too struggle through longer games, I've got Control, Spiderman, God of War and HZD unfinished because they seem to drag quite a bit.
That said, I did just complete TLOU2 in a weekend. Worth every penny.
@Flaming_Kaiser
No, bigger isnt always better. That's why I said they were getting better lately with the games I quoted. Days Gone in particular. More of those yes, please.
Now if we go back to The Order 1886 type that's going backwards (we r talking about PlayStation exclusives)
If its enjoyable then yes, long is good.
I don’t really think they should have a formula at all. That in itself is counter intuitive to creative freedom. If you want to make a 10 hour long game, make it. If you want to make a 50 hour game, make it.
@nessisonett We dont want another Ubisoft copy and paste developer thats for sure. 😆 👍
@rjejr Can someone give this guy a lesson in how economics work?
@nessisonett This. If the developers want to make a long game and have the personnel and budget for it, I say go for it. If they don't have the employees and budget? Then a shorter, tighter experience may be better suited.
I like it how it is. but if you want to make that shorter game make it no one is stopping you.
@thebakerswife Sounds like you are fed up with games in general.
Take a break for a while and come back refreshed.
@JJ2 1886 was ok but its no Heavenly Sword that game was short and brilliant but they should have sold it at a lower price im sure that would have boosted the sales. And Concrete Genie is brilliant too have not started Days Gone if its AC with Zombies then i probably wont be impressed.
Except, you never had to make 60 hour story games. Minecraft or Terraria or Animal Crossing are prime examples of that. Sure it's going to be hard to make another "Minecraft" per say but it's not very hard to make a fun game, developers just don't want to.
60 bucks for a game has always been too expensive. I'd rather get what I pay for even if that means more content in a game. No problem paying that for open world games with a small story where you can keep exploring once you beat it
@nessisonett I agree. There really is enough variety in gaming as it is, plenty of Indies and FPS games and RPGs etc.
I guess it doesn't hurt to increase the variety and I'm not against shorter AAA titles BUT I also like to get lost in a game even if it takes months to complete. Also, you don't have to finish a game before moving onto the next, sometimes it's good to mix things up.
@Alex_Bevan Spider-Man isn't really that long though.
Can't really argue with his point, whilst games have probably got a little bit more expensive we were still paying £50 for Street Fighter 2 on the SNES but the majority of games were £40 where as now it is fair to say PS4 games are about £45 - £50 at launch so a £5 - £10 increase over 25 years is no where near the increase in costs to studios. So were they ripping us off back in the day!?!?
My frustration is how digital purchases are never any cheaper than retail and in Sony's case can sometimes be more expensive which I just don't understand 🙄
Completely agree, would be quite happy with lesser completion times for AAA titles. obviously it doesn't make sense for something like the Witcher or Persona 5, but more games like Uncharted and Hellblade? Yes, please.
I would love to see them return. In fact, I prefer them to huge open-world games. I was in tears at the end of Red Dead Redemption 2 for all the wrong reasons.
I've never fully understood this fixation on how long a game lasts. What's important is how ultimately satisfying a game is as an experience, and the length should feed into that.
@AnthonyStark86
I remember starting the epilogue with a feeling akin to that "one last plate" at an all you can eat buffet.
Yeah! Bring back 12-15 hour singleplayer games!
#NOMOREFILLER #NOMOREBUSYWORK
I didn't read all the comment (most) but Layden failed to mention a contiuously growing player base, so games may take longer and more money to make, but they can sell many more copies.
Also a 15 hour game, would be cheaper to make and would probably sell more at £40 instead of £55, but would people not see it as AAA because of the price?
Surely it's about quality and not quantity, but also you can pack extra hours in additional, optional content. There is a trend for developers to want to include 100% of their game in the main plot but it weighs down a game unnecessarily when it could be there for those who want to find it. Look at Celeste. That game is between 10 and 100 hours depending on what you want to get from it, without losing the narrative.
Nah, I disagree. Dragon quest XI has more content than 99% of games and it launched at 60$ with a 100h campaing with 0 dlc. And obviously gorgeous graphics. FF7r is also like that. If square enix (which has better business practices than CD projekt red) can do it, then why can't sony. Besides, let's take god of war, if it sells 5 million the first at the 60$ mark, it makes at least 200m$ (if we remove tax and such). Don't tell me god of war costs more than 100m$, that's just bull**** coming out from layden.
i agree with him.. big studios making AAA games are making fewer of them with less new IPs than before. it's why i've found this gen to be largely a disappointment compared with the last.. from the launch of PS4 to launch of PS5, guerrilla games has managed to make one (admittedly great) game. apart from milking GTA V to death, did rockstar release anything other than red dead redemption 2?. i'm sure it took 5+ years to make.. but if 100hr open world westerns aren't your thing (and personally it has no appeal at all for me), then essentially rockstar has released nothing new of interest for a whole gen. ubisoft's made their games packed full of fluff and so big that they have 5 or 6 of the studios working on parts of the same game. then use the same template in all of their IPs. so instead of having different modest games from their studios that take a couple of years to develop, it's mostly a bunch of identi-kit open world crap.. there are so many really good 10-15 hour campaign games from last gen that probably wouldn't get made nowadays.
In some ways I'd like games I can complete more quickly but the quid pro quo should be enhancing replay value - e.g. providing extra content such as extra characters, costumes etc as unlockables instead of trying to monetise everything as paid and often overpriced (DOA I'm looking at you) DLC.
No thanks, I imagine alot of people would have finished this in one weekend sitting id rather not longer is better just due to the value of buying the game.
@leucocyte made two games, killzone and horizon.
@Ryno All you kids with your Metroid Prime 4 talk, next thing you'll want is Mother 3.😉
@hoffa007 - i meant since launch.. considering KZ was released on day 1, that's 1 game in the 7 years since. i'm pretty sure shadowfall would probably have released earlier on PS3, if PS4 had released in 2014.
@leucocyte ah right well thats fair enough, was only commenting by what you said not making any assumptions if they had released it earlier. But I do agree they could have made another game, but then likewise with rockstsr multiple games on previous gens
As long as it's not a 6 hour game with a tacked on multiplayer like Re3 remake I don't mind a 15 hour game.
Not every game needs to be a 25+ hour epic. One of the reasons I enjoyed The Order: 1886 was because it's nice to sit down and play a short, single player game every now and then. I bought that at full price on the day it was released and I didn't regret it.
I like longer RPGs, but in all honesty, 15-25 hours is a sweet spot. Less time to complete games is a reality for me. As for cost, $60 for 15 hours isn’t too bad.. people spend $10-$15 to watch a 2 hour movie in a theater, so by that rationale I think gaming is a pretty fair priced hobby for its AAA titles.
Shorter games are not necessarily a bad thing. That said, that shouldn't be the goal. If your game comes in at 15hrs and you'd have to add pointless fetch quests to inflate it, leave it as a 15hr game. If you're game is 15hrs and the team is still churning out great ideas and has the time to implement them, do it.
We hear this same bs every new generation. Gaming is still growing at an insane rate. Games might still be $60, but console exclusives are making $60mil before a game is even released. AAA games are frequently still profitable even if the game flops, unlike other sources of media. Games are consistently breaking the companies earnings records, even when they completely lack dlc.
Its also past time to stop pretending games are 'only' $60. When you lock content behind a pay wall which is ready before the game ever ships, you're not getting the whole game for that $60. Some games story isn't even complete without post-release dlc.
What's more, game engines aren't being built from the ground up every generation as they were in the past. They're getting a larger cut of profits due to digital sales. They have specialist contractors who come in, work for a few weeks or months and then they're off the payroll. Where in the past they had to keep them on staff full time, even if they weren't actively working on a specific project.
The reason pricing has stagnated is bc its still ludicrously profitable at its current price point. Developers aren't going under bc they need to charge more. They're going under bc they keep expanding and spread themselves too thin. Or they get bought up and their new owners force them to do the opposite of what made them successful in the first place. Though some times a studio is simply bought up to gain access to the companies IPs and then gutted.
The goal is obviously to make ever more money. It hasn't been necessity that has led to the various profit schemes. It's been the desire for management and investors to make larger and larger profits, regardless of its impact on the actual developers, product or customers.
@rjejr SSBU is complete with the DLC. Same with a lot of $60 games that have had dlc. Same with Spider-Man,TLoU, Witcher 3, etc. Not all games do it right, but just bc a game has DLC doesn't meannit somehow isn't complete without it.
Here here, Shawn, here here.
Give us 15-20 AND don't do any extra DLC stories and whatnot. Stuff the game with everything from the start.
I'm not sure if he is trying to push for most games to be approximately 15 hours in length but if he is, I'm not in agreement. Games that last long are what keep me playing. I don't want to buy a game on Friday when it's released and have it completed by Sunday evening. This 'ex-boss' explains “I would finish more games, first of all". Well, news flash sir, we aren't all high flying earners like you who is fortunate enough to have been part of such a major corporation at 'boss status'. What makes you think we can afford a new title every week to keep our already expensive console from gathering dust? A gaming standard has been set with storyline lengths on par with that of high quality TV shows. I'll support the idea of a variation in single player playthrough lengths (Man of Medan vs RDR2 for example) but it'll be disappointing if developers adhere to this concept as the future of gaming.
Fully agree with him. I'm happy to pay full price for a shorter game, especially if its replayable.
While I like shorter games as long as epics, I'm a "middlecore" gamer in that I love hardcore games and softcore games (no innuendo intended).
I can play Downwell or Binding of Isaac for hours or even just a few minutes; and I can spend weeks on Soulsborne games or even short bursts at 15 minutes at a time to grind.
Still, games like Minnit have their appeal just as much as Witcher 3, but yeah, for some gamers, it might be a barrier since not all of us have equal time to game a lot or interest that is held--I've played 200 hours of Breath of the Wild and still haven't finished the last part, so epic fatigue is real.
Most longer games are made longer by side quests and things you don’t necessarily have to complete. I think many games are only 30 hours if you play then this way.
I have no problems paying $60 for a new title if it's something I'm interested even if it's a weekend completion game like Devil May Cry V I'll be honest I have more fun with these than 80hr+ like AC Odyssey where half the time spent is pure exploration with nothing much to do than kill random wild life that attacks. Games like Avengers where it looks average at best and will probably be a short game that'll be one for the sales. Pacing is everything there shouldn't be loads of drops in action for an action focused game.
@jdv95 I don’t think gaming should go down that road again, the days of paying $60 for something and beating the story in 12 hours should be finished. I played Fallen Order recently and it was a fun game but I beat it pretty quick and moved on, it wasn’t open world so there was nowhere to explore and no real side quests to do, just not enough content in the end. It felt like a was playing a ten year old game in some ways.
I bought Spider-Man a week ago and it’s packed with content, it’s not always the most fun but it’s more of a reason to swing around the city and get into fights, it gives you more things to do besides focus on the main story and that’s great.
The better idea would be continue to work on the open world, after playing MGS5 a few years ago I could never go back to linear games.
@Tharsman For triple-A games, if I remember correctly, I used to pay about £35 for PS1 games, £40 for PS2 games, £40 to £45 for PS3 games (Sony's were usually £40, others sometimes around £45)... and when PS4 released, prices jumped £10 to £55. So prices have increased here for every recent generation, but the PS3 to PS4 was the largest.
@Flaming_Kaiser Games are definitely better than they've ever been, but I also feel that - thanks to the blessing/curse of online consoles - we're often given unfinished products. Latest example for me is SnowRunner, which still has many of its launch bugs (some game-breaking) even as we approach two months after release.
The problem is that there isn't really any way to hold them accountable. Refunds can be difficult to obtain; if you bought digital it's tougher than it should be, if you bought physical good luck getting a refund on an opened package... they have your money, and you just have to wait and hope they fix things.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of escrow payment system where you can buy a game, but they don't get the money until the product is up to a reasonable standard... that might give them more encouragement to release a working game, or at least get a move on with the bug fixes!
@RPE83 No, not a complaint as such. Just pointing out that his claim that game prices haven't increased was a slight case of tunnel vision, as it only applies to the US.
Obviously, the individual's perception of value for money depends on their personal preferences and how much they enjoy a game. If you're a person who can enjoy playing a given game over and over, then whatever you paid will be good value for you. If you're the "one and done" type, then it's a different matter... £40 will be better value than £55.
But these comments from Layden don't seem to be taking that into consideration... he seems to be viewing it from the perspective of the amount of content only. In which case, as a customer viewing it the same way, it stands to reason that less content should equal lower cost. With that in mind, yes, I'd say that if games with long campaigns like Assassin's Creed, Horizon, Fallout etc. are £55/$60 titles, then something which can be completed in 10-15 hours should be priced accordingly.
@HammerKirby3 "bc a game has DLC doesn't meannit somehow isn't complete without it."
Actually, that is what it means.
The gaming community really needs to come up with a broader vocabulary. I've been calling it the "base" game, and I see some other people use "base" as well, but we need other names besides just "DLC".
The base game of SSBU and some of those others you mentioned is functional, and it can be played by itself, but if you are ever sitting in a room w/ a bunch of other people and your Switch waiting to play SSBU and people want to play as 1 of the 11 or 12 DLC characters - depending on whether you count piranha plant or not - and you tell them "yes, no problem I have the complete SSBU, you can play as whoever you want", well I think people are going to question your understanding of what the word "complete" means when they can't play as any of the DLC characters.
Likewise, if somebody is ever over your house and asks if you have the complete version of The Witcher 3 b/c they don't, they only bought the game when it released but not any of the DLC but they'd like to try it, and you say, "sure, I have the complete Wither 3 game, knock yourself out", and then they go to play it, and they can't find the DLC, and they look at you and ask "Wait, I thought you said you had the complete Witcher 3?" and then when you reply "I do have the complete Witcher 3, I just don't have any of the DLC", well they are probably going to look at you kinda weird and call you bad names.
Moral of the story, don't go around telling people you have the complete version of the game when you don't have the complete version of the game. You have the base game, the original game, the release version of the game, call it what you will, just don't call it complete, b/c you don't have the complete game. You just don't.
@Paranoimia
Fair point, my basic target is "£1 = 1hr" is what i want to aim for as a return overall, which is still far superior to the cinema and sport.
Some thngs like Life Is Strange 2, I happily paid a premium and lost out rather badly on that ratio to support the developer, purely after I got the first game reduced and it became one of my favourites all time.
The games should be as long as they need to be to keep a consistent quality. I hate when games are dragged out and filled with boring missions just to make them long so that can be a selling point
I finding the story driven games a bit hard for a second play through. Playing TLoU2 now and I dont think I'd play a second run, so I'll try do as much as possible and really enjoy the run.
I was the same with GoW and Kingdom Hearts 3.
But Spiderman, it seems like a short game, but there's just so much messing around to do.
So I think I agree with him, as long as that 15 hour game has lots of non-essential stuff to do.
There is a reason I put my money in rpgs you get your moneys worth. I like games with great stories also but I have to know I'll get me full price of admission. I don't dumpster dive if the developer makes something I feel needs support I support if they don't well I get it used or on the cheap.
I love how there's some people saying the price of games needs to drop. You do realize games used to be MORE expensive years ago? Some titles even as late as n64 days were $70-$80 MSRP. A few games on SNES and Sega Genesis reached over $100. Guess what....every single game was riddle with bugs, many of them game-breaking, with zero way of fixing them except to release a new cartridge. Yes, your most-beloved childhood game was in fact rife with bugs from top to bottom, with zero exceptions. Speed runners also complete those old games in MINUTES, not hours. Even if you massively push through modern games and ignore most content, you won't complete them that fast.
QA on games has increased in quality exponentially over the years, with a REDUCTION in price. Accounting for inflation, those $100 games in 1990 today would be almost $196.17. Even assuming the MSRP has never changed (which it has), $60 back in 1990 would be $117.70 today. Your $60 game SHOULD cost almost $120, but it doesn't. Hell most games even with a season pass for the DLC don't reach that price point. The reason for DLC was because $60 is becoming very untenable, very quickly. The margin of profit on games is very small these days. This is why DLC is added, to increase the margin of profit.
Maybe 20-25hrs for some games is the answer, for things like GTA, the bigger the better, 15hrs for full dollar probably doesn't fit the general market expectation anymore, but a 20hr game that really hits the mark, I wouldn't mind paying out.
@Paranoimia Totally agreed you cant launch a game with game breaking bugs its such a joke. If games are too big too ship at once release them in two part at a lower price. They get more time, less pressure on the developer and we get more quality sound like a win win situation.
@ChipBoundary Too be fair i have had one game in total with a game breaking bug in all my games on the older generations. That was DMC3 special edition and i cant remember any other one.
@Flaming_Kaiser and this is the crux of the issue. Everybody bases it on their own personal experience. Not a very large sample size, is it? There'd be so many times where I'd find a bunch of people screaming online about how they're stuck at this one part because this thing happened and I'd gone through the same part of the game with zero issues. Not every single person experiences every single bug. Doesn't mean they don't exist.
Some more modern examples that come to mind for me: I bought a copy of GTA V a little while after it came out, maybe a month or two. The copy I purchased, brand new and sealed, wouldn't even install the game. Millions of people did not experience the issue, but a handful did. I played through FFVII Remake and experienced a glitch towards the end of the game that left me stuck, unable to move, and no way to fix it except load a previous save point from 45 minutes earlier. Warned a friend of the possible issue and he never experienced it, yet when I went online there were a handful of people that had experienced it.
Some older examples, going back to Zelda A Link to the Past, I ran into a glitch occasionally where I'd pick up a pot to chuck it instead of smashing it outright and would get suck in place. Only fix was to reset. I played Shadowrun on Sega Genesis and would run into instances of enemies becoming invincible after they leave the viewable area of the screen and coming back. Only solution would be to die or reset.
Not everyone experiences these bugs, but they do exist. This very often why they weren't fixed in development. Ask any person working in IT, intermittent troubleshooting is the absolute worst. It makes it difficult to diagnose. Another thing to keep in mind is that games today are infinitely more complex than their predecessors.
There's plenty of room in this world for both kinds of titles, and I can't honestly say that "length" is a metric I ever use when it comes to buying games. I normally wait until there's a price cut regardless, so I think for profitability, it makes more sense to churn out some shorter content alongside the big games if it's a whole and complete game. A lot of these AAA titles are just packed with filler anyway.
I mean the video game industry is in a bind. The price of video games literally hasn't changed since the 80s. Which means every year, video games become less and less profitable.
@ChipBoundary Its quite simple you said "Guess what....every single game was riddle with bugs, many of them game-breaking" i had one game of these in SNES, PS1, PS2, PSP, Gamecube, Gameboy so i guess i was extremely lucky then?
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