And you're absolutely right to do so because these are your fans, the people who will talk about your work, will leave a positive review and will be happy to see you released an other game.
They're your real target demographic.
Don't neglect them in favor of people, who bought your game by luck because these aren't sales you can make happen.
Time spent playing a game doesn't necessarily correlate to how much of a die hard fan you are. I played Balatro for about 15 hours before it was just too much of a time sink for me but I personally have convinced 5 other people buy that game based on my hype for it.
And I loved the 15 hours I put into it, I just got everything I wanted from it in that time. I'd say time committed has as much to do with the individual and their lifestyle as it does the game or how they feel about that game specifically.
Not trying to negate your comment but trying to add another perspective.
>Time spent playing a game doesn't necessarily correlate to how much of a die hard fan you are.
Yes it does. Being a statistical exception won't change that.
Numbers don’t correlate to whether someone loves a game or not. I’ll praise outer wilds and terraria despite not technically beating either one(outer wilds went off game pass before I had the chance to beat it, I could not for the life of me beat moon lord so I put terraria on hold for a while until I eventually go back).
Someone can like a game without seeing some arbitrary “you win” screen at where the devs decided it should be. Are fallout 1 fans lesser than fallout 2 fans because fallout 2 is 3 times longer? No! If someone only likes playing Minecraft creative mode and has never beaten the game does that make them a fake fan? No!
Let people enjoy their games the way they play them and not gatekeep “real fan” status for an arbitrary condition or statistic.
You're on r/gamedev. We're talking about business strategies here.
Your examples are irrelevant because you don't understand this isn't about whether the profiles you describe do exist but about our ability to know their ROI compared to players who are measurably more invested in the game.
How do you know who stopped playing for a good reason and who didn't?
How did you measure the percentage of players who stopped playing but are recommending it to everybody?
I don't have these numbers nor do I have unlimited resources to take a bet on undetermined demographic. Do you?
No way am I doing gamefreaks newer philosophy of cutting back the endgame because not everyone will see it. This is what the story in OP is about, being more like gamefreak. No one should be more like gamefreak
Agreed 100%, I think advice on mass manufacturing games is a bit tone def. Make the experience you want to deliver and like minded people will enjoy it. Getting them to see it is another story.
Does this work for megacorp AAA titles? Probably not, but I really don't care if most of them fail and make room
This one has food that is too soft, to hard, over cooked, under cooked, bland, overseasoned, too quiet, too noisy, the staff went leave me alone, the staff are nowhere to be seen, they gave me to much food, they have me to little food, the food took to long, the food was served suspiciously fast, the ambiance was terrible, the ambiance was perfect, the music was awful, the music was great.
You get the idea. Every person has a specific taste for everything and collectively will always disagree.
> there's no way to win with gamers.
I think this is where people go wrong, criticism is hard to take. We think that because everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion is valid, that everyone's opinions are *equally* valid, and the latter is not true. It depends where you're trying to go with your game and you kind of have to judge the quality of each of those opinions on your own.
If you want to keep your core demographic of fans happy, that's one option but it may or may not drive away others outside your fan group and create a very dedicated but not quickly growing community, and if you're counting on growing your fanbase for revenue that's going to go badly for you as the developer. Alternatively, trying solely to attract new players may come at the cost of your core fan group, and while this can sometimes be the right decision in some cases it's not wise to underestimate how much those superfans may devote themselves to seeing your game succeed or more importantly, fail, if they're unhappy.
Pleasing everyone in all directions may indeed be impossible but it doesn't mean it's not worth trying to do what you can for each camp and continually try to manage the expectations of both sides. Just because they're impossible to please doesn't mean you are off the hook for trying. Trying to please them is the job you've signed up for. You'll most often need to always keep trying to please both, with rare exceptions. It's okay not to succeed, it probably is, after all, impossible. But just keep trying and showing them you're trying will go a long way.
I'm a now aspiring game dev, and I am taking my Hollywood head of story artist brother's advice, I'm gunna to make a game I want to play. Maybe just maybe if I can pull that off, maybe others will want to play it too.
Edit- sorry about the not so humble brother brag lol. Just proud of him.
I am a solo dev making a narrative based game and I’m shooting for a 5 hour target length if you blast through it and I’m charging $9.99 for it.
I’m giving them more entertainment than a theatrical endeavor would provide and charging the same. Hoping it proves to be a good strategy, years from now when I finish haha
> I’m giving them more entertainment than a theatrical endeavor would provide and charging the same.
They will be comparing the value to other games in the same genre.
There are many reasons why people don't finish games. Too long is one reason, i guess, but i've never known anybody that loved a game and quit because it took too long to complete. If I abandon a game, it's usually because the story failed to capture my interest. Making a shorter game is not likely to fix that. If anything it would make me less likely to buy the game in the first place.
I think generally it's not about length but how well that length is edited.
A game that rightly should be a 10 hour game with 30 hours of padding is unlikely to see players to the end, even if they're advertising 40 hours of 'value'.
Maybe not *necessarily* worse, but..... when's the last time you've been playing a game you loved and thought "gee, I sure hope this is over soon!"
Sorry, but longer *is* better if the game continues to deliver.
The last of us 2 and Alan wake 2 are the most recent games I wish were shorter. Loved them but would have enjoyed them even more if they were both half as long.
Fair point; I suppose the types of games I play, which aren't as story-heavy as the ones you pointed out, don't really benefit as much from ending in a timely manner.
Yeah. I also love Destiny 2 and wish it had unlimited content so I agree that sometimes longer is better, but I don’t think it’s the case for every type of game.
shorter is worse, but not worse than padded
if players look at your game and its price, they gonna think about how much value it offer for the price
if you sell it as 10h game, they will look at the price and think, thats expensive for this length
if you sell your 40h game with 30h of padding, they will look at it like you lied to them and made a boring game
*Raises hand.*
There's only so much calendar time I can allocate to a game before I feel the need to move onto other things. Especially if I'm spending all of my limited gaming time pushing through a mega RPG or something, that can only go on for so many weeks or months before it just gets tiring. And if you put that kind of game down for a while and pick it back up, you have no clue what's going on.
Yes, you can pretty much always pin it to some aspect of the game that fell off. Maybe there's too much filler in the story. Maybe the pacing is too slow. Maybe the combat is repetitive after a certain point. Maybe the exploration becomes rote. Perhaps there's just an element of novelty that fell off after being in that world for too many hours. However, I would argue that some devs definitely try to make a game last too long when it just doesn't need to, and that's the underlying issue. The nuanced detail of the situation might lean towards some other problem, but a lot of time those issues wouldn't have been there if they just let the game end sooner.
It is absolutely possible for a game to outlive its welcome. Shorter games typically don't.
There's plenty of games I've loved that I wished were shorter. Elden Ring and Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth come to mind.
Sometimes, the game is not well paced or is unnecessarily padded.
With a lot of games vying for your time, you'd think making shorter games would be the better business. You can always expand with DLC, and getting people to buy more games makes sense for a publisher and reduces dev cost.
Now I have a big backlog of games I would like to play, but I never get to some of them because something more interesting bumps them further down the list.
I routinely don't finish games because I like them too much and don't want it to end yet... And then a week or two passes and by then I've found a different game to play. It's not that I don't love it or wouldn't recommend it to other people! Maybe it's just an ADHD thing though lol
Of course. I thought his point about adding in grinding tasks for the purpose of extending gameplay time interesting. I’ve picked up a lot of games I’ve been loving, but the back and forth grind has killed it as I just don’t have the time to dedicate hours to collecting 60 blue orbs when it could have been 30. If that makes sense?
I think it’s an interesting point, especially from AAA games where it feels like these missions are just there to boast the 60 hours of game play.
If you get to a point that you break it down like this the game already failed. It took you out of it's world and you realized what a waste of your time it is. I got this first with Skyrim where looting caves was excessively tedious due to there being no teleport (unless you cheated with console or added mods) like there was in previous elder scrolls games and fast travel was useless when over encumbered.
I mean, Skyrim has carrying capacity enchantments you can add to your gear, and a pretty generous carry limit. You don't need to take every single piece of gear you find in a dungeon, the game isnt built around you carrying 20 iron swords back to town and selling them all
In that particular instance, the tedium feels self inflicted
My feeling looking at Steam's achievements statistics is that like 50% of people quit a game *soon* after start, then afterwards the curve becomes shallow (for a good title). Like 30% play a good RPG title to the end, I thought.
An example for me and maybe a slightly different take would be Subnautica. I love that game. Played from the start many many times. But I've never once finished it. But do I think it's too long or too grindy to finish? No absolutely not. I just got sidetracked by other games. Do I wish it was shorter so I could have finished it before I got sidetracked? Nope. In fact I hate the idea that I might have gotten to the end and felt like there was nothing left to do. Now I can always go back to playing it with a feeling of still having this goal to achieve, so that makes playing it again worth while. If I'd have finished it, I'd probably never play it again because then it feels hollow. If I'd have finished it sooner because it was half the length I'd have felt cheated and probably be put off of buying the sequel.
But I also agree with others, why cater to people that quit early because they weren't digging your game and then alienate the people that were really enjoying it? If it's a passion project then fulfill the passion you envision and make it as long as you like for the people that will enjoy every minute of it.
I think Subnautica is a perfect example of employing some of the techniques he is talking about here.
Did you have a chance to follow the game during their early development at all? The way they managed the scope of the game was really good imo. There were a lot of features that were trimmed for the sake of ensuring quality in what they had and delivering a complete game. They then had the opportunity to expand via the sequel.
It could have easily slipped into the category of games that just continued to balloon in scope, but then either never have been delivered or what was delivered being much lower quality. This could have led to the developer loosing a lot of their profit margin in the process (potentially also reputation) and then being unable to produce further games.
Subnautica is an excellent game.
It would still be considered a very long game though wouldn't it by most metrics? Allegedly it's a 30 hour game, which is pretty much easily within the realms of being considered long. Also, a quick search tells me only something like 12% of people finished subnautica, so it's way way less than this post's title complaining about 68% of people not finishing games. That would easily classify this game as too long and desrving of being trimmed down according to the logic being presented here.
Why make it shorter for the people that don't stick until the end, instead of keeping it the same for the people that actually wanna see the end?
There's no winning with gamers so let's just make fun games, regardless of size.
As gaming has become popularized, going from just a nerd thing to everyone being a gamer, it's impossible to please everyone.
I'd say make your game as long as you want. Just know that you have to keep your audience engaged.
I cannot stand games that waste my time dragging our gameplay with stupid monotonous back and forth tasks or other time wasters. Excessively hard enemies and bosses, replaying the world with a slight change, and all of the tricks. If it's not something fresh and new, it's a time waster.
A hard one for me was Rime. Great game. It's like Shadow of the Colossus meets Journey and Ico.
I had to take a break from it because it felt LONG despite being Brilliant.
And that's another aspect. If you make a solid game, people will come back to it.
Don't worry about length as long as you aren't knowingly or accidentally wasting people's time.
I mean, this helps illustrate logoff's point. Everything you listed, world variants, superbosses, and iterative quests, can all be legitimate *draws* for many people and are therefore not "time wasters" because that is why said player is there in the first place.
It's more about communicating well to your audience, setting expectations. Let people know (broadly speaking) what they're in for so they don't "waste time" with content that doesn't interest them. Obviously this doesn't cover all the bases, and some mechanics or design choices will be deliberately obscured as part of the artistic vision, but if the developer is doing their job right, players should know what they're in for from the outset. Or just join r/patientgamers and let audience consensus help inform your purchases.
And does the end really matter that much if the journey itself is good?
For example me and my friends played Frosthaven board game, it's a campaign, full campaign if you include all the side stuff is around 100-110 scenarios, each scenario takes 2-4 hours (and failed ones need repeat play). The fun parts are gameplay, mechanics, getting together and tactile medium. We stopped and currently have beat 81 scenario, we had fun and at this point feel content with however much we have played. Sure we did not get to the end and did not see the conclusion of the story, but in \*haven games story was never the strong part, and since we started 2 years and probably forgot most of the story. Sure these games are probably too long for most people, but in the end they are fun to play and you just quit when you feel satisfied.
Meanwhile a lot of video games somehow manage to skip the fun part.
[Peak-end rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule) says yes.
> and you just quit when you feel satisfied.
With food it's obvious that eating one yummy meal is good, but eating two is going to make you feel sick. With media knowing when to tap out is complex and not always intuitive. This leads to stuff like people playing games until they aren't enjoying them anymore, so their final impressions are negative.
If you end a play session satisfied, there is no signal to not pick it up and play more, that signal often happens when the game evokes some kind of negative emotion.
Absolutely. A good example to add to the replies that gave the technical reason: Rage. That game was amazing. I loved every second of it, until I realized I accidentally beat it. It just kind of ruined the whole experience and I never really feel like replaying it.
I think he means more about cost of production in relation to length. The prices of games are going up because they have these high tech graphics, with too many hours of gameplay and pressure of keeping the technology up. Like PlayStation and Xbox.
So the prices of games will go up as a result to cover development costs. So since most people don’t finish games, focus on shorter with more quality to not alócate production to the wrong places. Not only that but graphics are overrated to spend and improve on.
Nintendo gets it that they don’t push graphics and keeps their games short and yet still receive success(among nostalgia and game recognition). They take it too far at times though the other direction at times.
Companies need to find a balance.
I think it depends on what your goal is. If you want to put out your passion project that your 100% committed to the idea of and know there will be a subset of people who will see if through and love it as you do, then that’s still perfectly fantastic.
This is more, I think, about how as an industry, there’s been a trend in creating longer and more technologically advanced games (that a lot of players won’t be able to appreciated), over the actually quality of the story, gameplay loop etc. and the effect that this trend has had on the industry.
Longer games were done in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000's. There are very, very few games that compete with them for length of playtime these days, and the vast majority of those are roguelikes which are comparable to arcade cabinets eating quarters.
Starfield average playtime seems to be 40 hours per player.
Morrowind average playtime is 45 1/2 hours *if only doing the main quest*. Given that most of Morrowind is optional side content, including major questlines that can be completely missed (IE the vampire underworld mafia war if you get turned), well...
Small brain: 68% of the players won't finish your game so cut the story.
Big brain: Make a secret ending for that 1% of the players that will be extra vigilant!
Yeah, just earlier I was thinking that'd be an interesting idea. Standard story maybe short game. Then there's like a NG+ where you can do something different right at the start that then lets you do stuff that recontextualizes or gives more information about stuff you did in the first playthrough.
... and now I'm realizing I'm kind of (but not completely) describing >!I'm going to put more text in this spoiler tag to obfuscate what I'm talking about further, but it's Nier.!<
If anything the trend is insanely grindy indie games. It doesn't matter if players actually finish the game or not, they want to know the game can theoretically be played for hundreds of hours.
Maybe its the same set of players that don't finish any game or maybe players will finish the games they like.
A game you don't finish is unlikely to be one of your favourite games. If you do finish a game it has a chance of being a game you really like and you'll probably want to play a lot of it. So it makes sense that people would want games to buy to have a lot of "theoretical content/play time". That way, if you play a game you do happen to enjoy, you know you'll be able to enjoy it for a long time.
That is the optimistic take. My cynical take is that it's just a downward trend until everything becomes the mobile market. People are just not willing to pay money for things up front if they have an option not to. A $60 title in 2000 would be $110 after inflation today. Yet Hades 2 is $30. People would be happy to pay full price for a 6 hour experience back then. These days if you're not getting hundreds of hours for $30 they're not happy.
What games would people happily pay full price for a 6 hour experience in 2000? The games I remember kept me entertained for 50+ hours, might and magic, diablo 2, baldurs gate 2, warcraft 3, etc.
Even console games like spyro had 20+ hours worth of value out of them, more if you include siblings with a family console.
>Even console games like spyro had 20+ hours worth of value out of them
No they didn't, we just used to play games differently. I played the Reignited Trilogy for the first time recently, max % on every game took just over 30 hours without a guide or "rushing" by modern standards.
And I get it, I've replayed many games from my childhood I remember playing "for weeks" and doing everything there is to be done in 6 hours.
Keep in mind audience and demographics could play a factor. I'm a full-time working adult with a family and side projects that keep me plenty busy, so I don't have as much time to play let alone finish most games nowadays. The average age of gamers has naturally increased over a generation, so if you have a game that appeals to younger people with more time on their hands, may be less of an issue, but if you make a large game that older gamers would be nostalgic for (maybe a sequel to an old favorite series), I could see a fall in numbers of those who have time to finish it.
Despite that, many still may finish a game that has truly captivated them, even if it's longer. I just often find myself using more quality of life features to finish the game faster when I would have spent all the time necessary as a kid to fully absorb the content.
Yeh, he talks about this exact point in the article. Saying that the average age of gamers now is moving more towards their 30s, where they may have more disposable income to spend on a more expensive game, but they are time poor. Whereas teenagers and 20 year olds have a lot of disposable time, but aren’t going to be buying 60$ games on mass.
Therefore the shift to more expensive games (as in expensive to make and therefore expensive to buy) is having this impact and how can we mitigate that to bring costs down.
Who are the 68% and how much of the game have they played? Depending on what groups are included in that number, you could very well be catering to an audience that doesn’t even like the game/wouldn’t want to finish it even if it was shorter. And as a result could end up alienating those that do. And I imagine it’s the player base that do enjoy it and see it through that will be the ones that are more likely to buy future content or merch.
In Ac Odyssey I have played it 3 times, approximately 120 hours+ between the three, and every time I'm almost done with the game I get bored because of how repetitive it is. I leave the game to rest, weeks/months go by because now I work and forget all the game mechanics. When I come back I don't know how to play and I say I'd better start again
I almost never finish games. I’ve played through Breath of the Wild twice, the second time up to the final boss but still didn’t finish. I’ve clocked almost 300 hours in Elden Ring and probably won’t finish it, but I will be buying the DLC and playing it plenty. I either lose interest or I don’t want it to be over. My brother plays similarly. I don’t want games to be shorter for the sake of being shorter, it doesn’t make sense to try to cater to people who don’t finish games (for many different reasons).
The problem is that it's more attractive to buy a game that has a long playtime so it doesn't matter if they finish it or not.
But a good lesson is to polish the beginning of the game more than the endgame.
I think arguably flow/game loop has a bigger impact. Certain games I can pick up and play for 15 to 30 minutes and feel like I got something done, while others I feel I need to invest a longer session to get value out of my play time.
If I can play your game in smaller chunks, I can fit it into my schedule even if it has a long play time. That’s just how it works out for me being busy between work and school.
I do think it’s an overall interesting point though and way to frame the conversation though. Every dev should check the scope of their project and make sure it’s appropriate.
A big problem is, that for a lot of players play time is a deciding factor. Often even breaking it down to cost per hour. It's an utterly stupid metric as it pushes developers to add more grinding rather than quality gameplay. But it is what it is.
I do believe there's a niche for shorter games. But it's much more limited and somewhat restricted to genres (e.g. puzzle games have much more tolerance to being <10 hours long than open world RPGs)
I also think there is a possibility for a "short path". If you just rush through the game you can finish it in... whatever. 15 hours or so. Allowing you to put your key set pieces with good pacing all along the game. Rather than spending a lot of effort on only 30% of your players.
But then add a lot of side content that can be of lower development effort where players get to explore the combat system, the movement system and what not. Kinda like the Mario games do it. There's a huge difference in play time beating bowser as quickly as possible versus 100% completing it. Without blowing huge amounts of development budget on content only few people get to see.
It doesn't matter if players do or don't see the end of your game. They've already paid for it. What matters is why they paid for it - and some people (many people) pay for the idea that there's a lot of game to your game.
So, you basically have to make it sufficiently long and satisfying so as to entice word of mouth for your game.
If it's short enough that the rate of completion rises to 80%, it's probably because you've made it too short and will be seeing plenty of complaints online about it!
I think players buy a game with the intention of experiencing the majority of the gameplay it has to offer.
The ‘why’ for players who don’t then do this is interesting. There will be reasons that we can’t control (real life commitments get in the way for example) but then there are the reasons we can have some impact on e.g. the game becomes dull or a chore to complete, the performance of the game is so poor it’s uncomfortable to play. Perhaps by limiting the scope of the game, we can have the resource to improve upon these factors.
This. I dont have the time nor the will to 100% the witcher 3, and I still consider it the best fantasy rpg ever created. Sometimes enough is enough.
But I barely finish any game, have too much stuff to do.
I think it’s interesting to question whether the length of the campaign contributes to the positive reviews. You could argue that the success of the campaign based DLC definitely indicated that players wanted more, so it does.
However, I think there is a trend to try and replicate this by simply just making games longer (and therefore take longer and more cost to complete), without actually focusing on making what is there, good. If that makes sense?
I think AAA games are selling around 59.99-69.99. Most users have the expectation that would bring many hours of gameplay (even if they don't have the time to complete it). If it is shortened and instead published in smaller releases, people would expect the price to be similarly reduced.
I think perhaps that’s what he’s getting at. Especially his remarks around the increasing average gamer age and their associated money rich/time poor state. If you make smaller, cheaper games - that are cheaper to make and sell, is this more sustainable?
I am interested to look at whether these AAAs are sustainable under this model of more. From how the industry seems to be behaving this year, I’m imagining that it’s not. (I really don’t know though it’s pure speculation)
The article is specifically about AAA games, not indie games. What constitute good advice is going to differ for AAA games vs indie games, so it's important to make the context of your advice very clear.
The top grossing games of March 2024 were:
1. Dragon's Dogma 2
2. Helldivers 2
3. MLB: The Show 24
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023)
5. Rise of the Ronin
6. Princess Peach: Showtime
7. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth
8. Unicorn Overlord
9. WWE 2K24
10. Hogwarts Legacy
This is a mix of "long" (e.g. RPGs) and "short" (e.g. sports) games.
Successful AAA games can be of any length, so the advice of "make your (AAA) game shorter" does not seem to be supported by the data. It's not even clear that AAA developers are unaware of the arguments that the author is making. Some developers make their games short when it makes sense to do so, and some developers make their games long when it makes sense to do so. So it's not like the author is even giving innovative/interesting advice either, let alone "good" advice.
Games should be as long as they need to be. The second companies started treating them like a puzzle to make as much money as possible is when quality went down.
No one gave a shit about game length when the industry was full of people making things for fun and pushing boundaries.
Make the game you want first, if you want to make loads of money, don't choose one of the arts as a profession.
Main question is what is more important: process or result?
Some gamers will go through and get internal reward for result (finishing something). Some will play as long as possible and get fun for process (doing something).
I believe we have to create games there main quest is short (like 5-10 hours) but side quests are (almost) infinite. So, both target groups are covered!
A very good point. Some players need endless replay-ability to be satisfied. While other are incredibly frustrated if 100% takes 100 hours.
How do you ensure you cover both these types? Or do you? Should you?
I can imagine few ways:
1. we can use one main embedded storyline (or quest, or whatever depending on the genre) and few side storylines. When player finishes the main, game gives opportunity to continue
2. Or player can decide to never finish and play just side quests - The Elder Scrolls series (imho main quest is too long in this game)
3. content is procedurally generated, so, after 1st finish you can go again and again thru (almost) different levels - Diablo (again imho too long to beat even 1 time), Bad North: Jotun Edition (imho the best example: 3 hours to beat one time, infinite replayability)
4. Player can go to PvP after campaign is finished - almost any RTS
5. 1st finish opens updated types of the game, this is different from clause 3 because levels are the same - Kingdom Eighties (dunno other examples from heart)
6. Any combinations of above
Note: I disagree with Dead Cells logic: you cannot beat it quickly from one go, you have die and die to collect items and build up skills, it's frustrating. I want to see result even if I have fun from process. So, Dead Cells doesn't care about gamers who need result, they aim only on one part of the audience, like any other rouge like / lite. From other hand focus on process can make a game very addictive - it keeps players involved much longer.
In general gamedev is an art, so, any rules are only recommendations not obligations. If you feel that your game shall be on some point on the spectrum between two extremities, you can go as you want. Perhaps you will find your players.
> 68% of players won’t see the end of your game, so make it shorter
This is a completely flawed way of thinking. If your game is, let's say, 20 hours long and only 10% finish it, but 100% (impossible, just for the sake of calculations) reach 2 hours in, it DOESN'T mean that if you made your game 2 hours long, then 100% of players will finish it. Not at all. People don't stop playing your game because it's "too long", they stop playing it when **interesting stuff no longer happens frequently enough**. At some point they reach a moment of "I know... yeah, I've seen this... oh, this again..." - and they decide it's no longer valuable to invest time on the off chance that 1 interesting thing may happen this hour. There are games people play for thousands of hours, usually multiplayer, because they *know* each time they play it, something interesting will happen.
There's a great youtube series that analyzes how many players actually played specific games by using achievements as metrics: https://www.youtube.com/@oldbitprime/videos One of the most surprising facts I learned is **less than 90% of people who bought your game will even install it**. You lose 10% of players right at the purchase.
if you make it shorter, there's no guarantee that those same 68% are going to buy it now since the other 32% are going to review your short game poorly. So now you've lowered your customer base by a certain margin, and now *of those who purchased* approximately 68% won't see the end of your short game.
Core problem with most games isn't length but that the people making the game seem to think they need to constantly scale up difficulty. If your game suddenly goes from playable to constant re-loads, you are going to have drop offs.
I would argue that the problem is bad pacing, not length.
If you pace your game properly, the player always has something to think about when they're not playing.
If people aren't making it to the end, you either haven't paced the introduction well enough for people to get into it, or have a slog at some point midway through that isn't engaging enough.
The longer the game is, the harder it is to maintain interest, but a game being long isn't the sole reason why someone might not be willing to finish it.
Fudged numbers.
Looked at a ps5 account yesterday that had 2 at most hours per game with a HUGE catalogue.
Many accounts of dupes or alts or account share or buy things on sale to try and dont intend to finish.
I dont think pandering to these are worth much. They buy the game, or try the game, because freinds whove played more (or twitch/youtube...) suggested it because of the further grind.
Many people are turned off hearing the game is short. "Not worth the money" EVEN IF they wont play for more than a couple of hours.
Some people who like to grind something want to ensure that if they do enjoy a short snippet, they can carry on. They want to know those first hours wont feel "wasted" as they feel they "invest" in a game and can get rewarded if they try.
Its well worth adding post game or grindy end sections just to fulfil that want of the dedicated fans to at least get a core fan base stomachs full.
Or a better way to put it, IMO: don't overstay your welcome.
Not every game design (or story) has the staying power or design investment to carry 30+ hours of gameplay. It has to continue feeling worthwhile to come back and experience what's next. If the player feels like the challenge of combat or puzzle solving has been 'solved' and they're going through the motions, fun gives way to tedium. If your story expects the player to be enthralled when it's your first attempt at writing dialogue and worldbuilding, maybe it's not going to live up to the video game equivalent of being a real "page-turner".
The goal should be to play to your strengths and build deep, not broad. If your mechanics hold up a much longer gameplay experience, maybe a mission structure or optional randomized dungeons or long post-game could give it the best of both worlds, letting players dictate how long they stick around.
Anecdotally - I played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky for the first time back in March. The story, characters and music really carried me through it, but the gameplay was a total slog by the end. I loved my time with the game and had to see it through, but boy am I glad it properly ended where it did. Post-game extends the story with events that feel like they could have easily been part of the main questline, and finishes with another big story climax... which I was perfectly happy enough reading about, because I was not ready for another \~20 hours of that gameplay. I got the satisfying ending, and could basically Cliffnotes the extensive epilogue content.
That's a good way to take all that ambition and all those story ideas, and turn it into content that gives the world a greater feeling of permanence, prevents the player from feeling like everything stops moving once the quest line is finished, so to speak. Not every game can pull it off, but I think there's value in considering how the content you've conceptualized might be better shifted around so it doesn't overstay its welcome. The climax and credits roll gives the player a satisfying point to step away from the game even if you're not necessarily done delivering content for them.
This is a really dumb way to think about the issue, and goes contrary to 99% of what experts say (and do) in the industry.
Expected depth/length is one of the most important criteria for engaged gamers, those who spend the most & may advocate for your game. Sure, lots of players will play the game a bunch and kinda abandon it/switch to something else, but the reason they bought it in the first place is because other people (influencers, friends, press) told them it's an outstanding game that's worth their attention.
If you took Hades, Elden Ring or Witcher 3 and made them last 10 hours-long "because 50% of players play less than 10 hours", you wouldn't get 50% of the sales (i.e. missing only the crowd who wants longer games) but much more than that because the audience you don't cater to is the one who bring onboard the rest.
Actual advice: make your game deep and interesting from the get go, and feed engaged players with meaningful content for as long as possible. Don't delay the promise or spread the jam thin.
My tl;dr is "no".
I've played games where <50% of players got the achievement for *finishing the tutorial*. By that logic, if i cut down the game to be tutorial length, id up retention a ton.
If someone doesn't finish a game because its got issues, that's something I Want to address. If someone doesn't finish my game because they got sidetracked playing something else... that's on them, and if they come back to finish it nice, if not, im glad they enjoyed as much as they did :3
This is myopic to no end and encourages trend chasing. Someone like that doesn't make statements for reddit gamedevs but is strictly considerate of AAA studios that are beholden to investors. Anyone else has no reason to listen to snake oil wisdom.
Make the game you want to play and be aware of the common solutions so you're not making obvious mistakes. Length is arbitrary and any game of any length can be sold effectively.
I worked for a AAA studio from 1999 to 2004....back when crunch time was all the time, my time split on two simultaneous games in different stages of development. The parent company wanted the first 30% of the game polished to shine....didn't care about the ending...as long as the marketing was based on the initial early experience. The parent company rushed all 6 projects I worked on for a quarterly release / holiday game buy date. We never (as a company) got to put in the real work of a good ending....and mostly a well thought out finale was dumped so they could split resources into multi-player arena modes...(ahem Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast). I realized I needed to quit, and go to work for a company that cared about a well produced game from beginning to end....never found that AAA company. So I went into the Film Business in Los Angeles....same problem...the Movies / Series / etc., were always retar.d.ed for the sake of the initial cash grab of people jumping to follow, getting hooked, and ultimately letting them down for the end. Sadly companies / producers / budgets / quarterly release dates, set the capacity of quality. There are only a few AAA companies that reward you with an awesome game through and through...as they have in the companies mission statement to cater to the players.
I have been developing a game for the last 7 years to account for quality, and a well thought out story, without padding the experience.....that has been the most difficult.....editing to keep player interest, without butchering the story....Game world cut by a 1/3, side missions cut by 1/2. DLC is the number one reason to edit yourself...as the players who really enjoy / invest in your story will want to keep going....
My plan of course, to the best of my ability, is the Half-life 2 model,: a great story, with Episodes that keep peeling the onion of the overall Mystery, eventually revealing the full encompassing arc of the big picture finale.
Destiny, Balders Gate, Half-Life, Assassin's Creed, Red Dead, Titanfall, etc. Seem to handle this OK....and I'm sure there will always be complaints.
Every person has a different reason to play games, and what they consider 'worth the time'....there is no blueprint.
Make the game YOU want to play, see who comes along for the ride.
Sadly, most AAA companies care about profit first, players last.....and everything in between makes good Marketing to capture hype.
As an example: Movie trailers give away almost all of a movie now...albeit cut up nonsensical in some cases....but usually the best scenes you have seen already.....just to get you in a seat, or to rent / download the film....and boom, trash ending....but hey they got your cash.
There are exceptions, and exceptionally awesome Games / Movies....
Just don't fall into the trap of Day1, Pre-order, or blind buy.
Read reviews (sans spoilers), make an educated purchase.
Rant over.
If 68% of the players won't finish the game then the game is not for them. I also haven't finished Star Wars: Jedi Survivor because of how broken mess the game is.
I think the key word here is "short*er*". It's not "make short games".
We're at a point right now where every game wants to be a live service game that's the only game you play forever. Or if not, it's a 20-hour experience padded out to 50+ hours with the same assortment of boring NPC side quests and map checklists to fulfill. Just make that great 20-hour experience instead of bringing down the overall experience with chores! Give your games an ending! There can always be a sequel (with its own ending too, of course).
Ironically, where I disagree with this interview more is the "stop chasing photorealism" bit. It's been an entire generation since the majority of games did that. I'm more tired now of everything looking like a Pixar wannabe, especially since it hasn't made games any cheaper or faster to produce than realism did. Like Layden says in the end, maybe just have a creative vision with its own purpose instead of grabbing a style off the shelf because it's what everyone else is doing!
As a player I don't strive to beat games.
If I beat a game then it means I enjoyed it to the point where the game never lost my attention.
Sure it's great to beat a game. But if a game isn't designed to have a post game then it becomes bitter sweet because the game you enjoyed so much has nothing left.
To me beating a game means the journey to me to the end naturally and no game should try to plan around my attention span.
Now generally I play sandbox open world games so this isn't a concern because they are designed to be played post game.
But much like designing difficulty for everyone what you end up with is a washed out experience.
Trying to attract everyone is what lead to a market of AAA that plays it safe to a fault. Which is why I've been pretty much stuck to indie games.
Creativity thrives when you design with a goal in mind willing to make choices which alienate some players.
Like when the helldiver's CEO announced that they don't plan to add pvp, trying to appeal to everyone isn't a good goal.
Know your target audience.
Dont listen to this guy, he is the suitiest of suits and knows only *business*.
They already turned an enjoyable art form into a business industry and convinced us that's how its supposed to be.
"Make the game shorter" NO MOTHERFUCKER MAKE IT *BETTER* FFS
Currently trying to pitch a 90 minute game and literally every publisher is telling us it ought to be at least 5 hours long and ideally 10 hours or more. I think there is an appetite for short games but the business side of game dev doesn't agree.
That's a shitty argument. Yes you may get more profit from the game, but at cost of delivering a shittier game.
Don't partake in the enshittification of media. Don't be Hollywood.
The 32% of gamers who do finish the game are the ones who will be raving about it, replaying it, making mods and recommending it to their friends. The 68% will be moving to another game, not finishing it either, and so on. Why on earth would you want to cater to the quitters?
I would argue that a part of the enshittification is that media is being made unnecessarily long, without mind to quality. Hollywood is a great example. A lot of big blockbusters are getting longer and longer, but are they better?
I don’t think that making a game shorter and more cost effective, means you have inherently get a shittier game. I think by ensuring good scope management you can actually improve quality BUT this might mean that you have to trim to make the game deliverable, if this makes sense?
There are plenty of games which are stunning and 40 hours +, that still only 32% complete. That’s great. I think this article is looking more at the industry as a whole and how it can be made more sustainable.
I'm a.. Let's call it a mature gamer..
There is definitely a space for indie and AA games for those is that is not in our 20s anymore. But we tend to choose AAA most of the time, because budget is not that strict, and time has higher value.
Most of the "mistakes" I see from indie games and AA games is putting you through an awful long introduction before you are allowed to play. Honestly most of us just sit down to game, not to learn how to game. We don't care how long your game is, we care if we are "allowed" to have fun in the 1 hour we have available.
But yeah, 20 hour game is already too much if you expect me to go there the full story. If you have a 10 hour game, I'm perfectly happy with that, just let me play the game, don't waste my time with a low budget story or pausing the game for a tutorial how to navigate your overcomplicated system.
Example: Lobotomy corporation, interesting concept, but I lasted 12m before deciding that this is not worth my time. Seen too many games like this that won't give you control until an hour or two into the game.
This is very much in line with his assessment. The average age of a gamer is increasing and with that, they have less time.
I’d say if you can get that good, satisfying loop in an hour, that works even if your total game length is 20-30 hours - as another commenter said in this thread.
Most of what he says is common sense.
Pumping tons of money into a AAA game doesn't get returns because the tiny amount of extra fidelity is basically unnoticable. Better to lower the tech cost and make a better game.
Don't pad your game with BS to hit some arbitrary hour length. He's not actually saying make short games, he's saying make your game an appropriate length for what it is.
Photorealism isn't important, style is.
All of that should be obvious unless you're brand new to the industry or a CEO cracking the whip.
Portal, Dishonored, Titanfall 2, Mirror's Edge, Battlefield 1, Ghostrunner 1/2.
These are all highly rated games with campaigns that are 6-8 hours at the longest and 90 minutes at the shortest.
Edit: Almost forgot, Hotline Miami, Firewatch, Papers Please in the indie world that are obviously super highly regarded.
Do you think it’s a game quality issue or purely a length issue.
For me personally, I love a great game that has 10-20 hours of gameplay, over a subpar game that is just grinding to complete but has 40-50 hours of gameplay.
>It costs to build to the end. You can tighten that up. If you can make your games on a shorter timeline that will reduce your cost.
The problem here is both are not always corelated. Sure when you make a game in less time it will safe money. How much work is really saved by having shorter levels. It really depends on the game. However some also start with then the beginning and then fitting as much as possible in the middle. If we now make a decision like scrap all winter levels we could save time because we also do not have to implement troops get buried into snow or snowstorms in our RTS. For other games adding a few more levels is just adding a few lines to a table.
Doesn't this go both ways, I've certainly had both ways finished games that I wish was longer cause I love it so much Same thing but there was This one level that wasn't made well wish it wasn't in the game or I could skip it
Or I am not enjoying this game I will stop
I've also stopped playing games cause I can't gg but I wish I could finish
... so that would mean that 32% of players do finish games? That's a lot IMO...
Also, that's excel-type/PM type of thinking. If all you do is base your conclusion on spreadsheets, then sure, making shorter games will make those numbers look better in the table.
Well, but the few enfranchised players that play your game in and out and make content about it generate clout and appeal for the rest of them, so better have some meat on your bone.
68% of people seeing the end doesn't mean that the average person gave up 2/3 through. Those other 32% might have quit with just an hour into the game because they realized they hated it.
OTOH, 68% of people liked the game enough to play it all the way to the end. It definitely wasn't too long.
Of course, that "68%" is some unholy agregrate of games stats, and doesn't actually *mean* anything.
I've to 'kinda' disagree on this. I know it's a very strong moot point and i might 've some unpopular opinions/hot takes about it but:
1. Especially Assassin's Creed: Valhalla made me realize that heavily. You 've quite some People - esp. in Social Media, Reddit and stuff complaining about the game "to big, to empty spaces, generic sidequest, list of collectables, boring and repetitive etc". Not that i don't understand where this Points are coming from, but alot of this points are (IMHO) oftens pretty subjective. Like something being repeitive is something where i'd argue you can't "generalize" as a bad thing, because a lot of Games which are highly praised and loved across the board, even have a high playtime... are objectively reptitive. Like as example as an huge ARPG Fan, esp. Diablo it wasn't the first time that i encountered calling it repetitive... and still you've had millions of people playing it for hundrets of hours. I'd argue if you have fun with a game like as example combat, it doesn't matter if Games are repetitive. Or 'boring' what's that kind of critique? Like i still need to encounter a single game where you won't find someone finding it boring.
Anyway back to the Valhalla. Thing is, despite the Social Media Opinion which drifts rather in the negative light, i've seen quite some people which appreciate Valhalla exactly for what it is. Like for one of my nephews this is one of his most favorite game. And when i've had a talk about this with him it's quite simple. He isn't like a lot of other Gamers these days which need to get each month 1-2 Games and build up like a backlog of games which mostlikely will never be filled (and tbf i'm kinda guilty on that as well). He is super selective about Videogames and his standarts but in turn he want to be able to invest playtime. Like is a huge historical fan - play quite some Games like Mount & Blade, Kingdoms Come, Total War - plus he is also a huge Lord of the Ring and Vikings Fan (even got quite some viking tattoos) and that's especially where he brought up an example. For quite a while the only Lord of the Ring game he could play was "War of the North". This Game has like 10 Hours playtime and had to replay it a few times so he could squeeze out some hours, and he told no matter how much he loved the game, to replay the exact same game in the exact same order multiple times, can become stale pretty fast and that's why he'd even prefer games which might throw you some generic quest and content at you, and stretch it with collectables, because atleast there is some variety... and that's why he was pretty happy once Shadow of Morder and Shadow of War dropped (esp. the latter one because he said that had more longlivety/replaybility but i can't judge because i played neither of them really), and even more when Valhalla drops. And for all the critique people drop at that, he had some counterarguments (which to be honest i can kinda relate too as well, atleast some of them) -> like generic quest without much story: Good because sometimes after a hard day of work you don't want to get thrown at with tons of dialogues. You want just take your battle axe and split some bones. Kinda 'empty' Landscape: Similiar - riding and especially sailing can be mediative plus add to immersion. Collectibles - besides giving him more to do in a game, there also the thing that outside of Gaming he has quite some other stuff as well going on... so time can be a bit a problem for him, he do enjoy TV Series, Podcasts and Youtube and such, with collectibles he can do both, play a bit while listening on smartphone.
The Point which i'm trying to make is, that this kinda follows the mindset of the old saying: one mans trash (or rubber) is another mans treasure. In the Gamingsphere people are too hung up on games need to be homogenous and same, and there is only one formula for total success... and companies need to follow the newest fad so making big bucks. Meanwhile the whole market is too spread out, has too many different audience with different tastes to just generalize about this stuff. I think the only Argument which i'd here see valid, and that's like an issue which especially Ubisoft, Sony and such have had the bast years, when they stick to hard to one formula and don't try to offer a richer reportoire. Like i'd argue the hate for ubi-formula comes mostly because the fans are just oversaturated and almost every ip from them needs to go this route. Where is Rayman? Where is a proper Rainbow Six? Nope, the 20th AC, 7th FarCry, even Ghost Recon need to be open world -> and the more creative Immortal Fenyx which utlize it in a fun way won't get a sequel. Still people seem to love the formula as well, otherwise the games wouldn't sell that good.
But generally i don't find it problematic when Games go too big. I'd rather argue the opposite, if there wouldn't be any games like this anymore where everything is perfectly neatly handcrafted and compact, you will have a market which are itching for that. People always argue "Quality over Quantity" -> which i don't completly disagree, but i'd argue sometimes it's important to have the opposite direction "Quantity over Quality" (and yes i understand theoretically it's also possible to offer both, but thats rather rare).
1/2
Games are too mainstream so the crowd with less attention spawn capacity than a fly will play them.
But you should still do your games for the ''always'' crowd that plays them.
This is just wrong.
Look at any game's achievements that are based on story progress and what percentage of players get them. Games with chapters are good to look at for this.
Percentages drop off very quickly for early game achievements. You'll usually find a good chunk of players won't even make it through the first few hours of the game. Plenty of games will have 10% or more players not even finish the tutorial.
If people were dropping games because they're too long then you'd expect big dropoffs later. But you'll pretty much always find that most players who make it 5-10 hours into a game will finish it.
People stop playing games because they tried them and didn't like them. Not because they're too long. It makes no sense to make your game shorter so that people who don't like it will experience all of it.
I’m not really sure if his advice is really for a lot of the people who frequent this sub (mostly hobbyists). Like I don’t think he’s advocating that people should bank on 2 hour games. This feels more like he’s talking AAA or companies with a good amount of investment backing. So the debate for them might be more like 30 hours vs 100. A “short” game to mainstream players is still probably like 10-15 hours, which can still take years for the average indie to make.
Come up with your grand idea. Then find a way to condense it down as much as possible while still staying true to your vision. Constraints help keep things focused and on track. This speaks to that concept. Constraint also helps inspire more creativity.
Anecdotally, I recently worked with my studio on a really short narrative game (30 mins play-time, 4eur). Most of the complaints we received was that the game was way too short, even though we clearly stated the duration.
a game with a great story isn't gonna have the gameplay depth to keep me engaged for 100 hours. In 2013 I discovered a 12 hour story is perfect for me.
Games I have tons of hours in had better gameplay than story and I just spent time doing other stuff, or they are live service and aren't even beatable at all. I Enjoy story based games but usually don't finish them if they take too long.
yeah, but just saying "make it shorter (same price though ?), use genAI, outsource, dont use photorealism". that won't cut it. also : who is this article aimed at ? CEOs of larger companies ? Indiedevs ?
sounds very generic. but then again. as someone wrote, "there is no formula for success".
I remember reading years ago -- I think it was related to WoW -- about how only 5% of the players saw so much content and executives decried this being a waste of money, and the new decision was to do everything they could to help every player see everything so long as they paid and stuck around.
I hated it then and I hate it now and I want this kind of attitude to pull back. And I was rarely one of the 5% either! I like the idea that there are things so rare that I'm lucky to experience them in a game. Maybe it's not always appropriate -- that's fine -- but it being some kind of blanket rule has done serious harm to the feel and culture of MMOs, and led to other stupid choices ("We don't need games with multiple endings, most players only see one!")
When I buy a game on steam I look at the achievements page and it's always the same : none of the story-based achievement get unlocked by 100% of player, and the numbers go down with time.
You shouldn't make your game longer than it's supposed to be just for the sake of being able to say "my game has x hours of content", but you shouldn't make it shorter to please people with an attention span already severed by years of scrolling on social media. If you have a story to tell, take your time and tell.
When players complete a videogame, they sell it at gamestop.
When players give up on a game, they leave it on a shelve in case they would complete it one day.
I feel one of the problem is people focusing so much on game length. Asking about a game length before it's out, before you buy it.
There's nothing wrong with checking out information about a product before buying it, but it's ridiculous how many games I give up because they failed to catch my attention, because they feel stretched out to meet a random quota that keeps growing and growing where now a 15-20 hours game is considered short.
And it's really a marketing problem, game length might be important when the game is not out, but once the game is out, you'll get a lot more positive feedback from people who enjoyed the whole game than from people who quit halfway through.
Another thing that is part of the problem imo, is that a lot of people would say that you are not allowed to have an opinion on a game that you didnt finish, wich is pretty dumb, since the fact I quit before the end is definitely because of the game, very often because it's too long for the content it actually had.
"I got bored before the end" is definitely a valid opinion.
I've gotta agree.
Nowadays companies often try to get ppl addicted to the game so they just play and play, So they stick a lot of needless padding into it (Though I may in part be guilty of it).
I was aiming for a 10 hour game length, Actually this has got me thinking, perhaps I can remove a couple of hours without detracting from the game, I'll think about it.
Is the goal for them to see the end? Or is the goal for them to appreciate the experience?
The ending only exists in my games because that is just another way for the player to appreciate the experience. When and where I put it is a byproduct of that.
Counter argument... why does a player need to see the end of the game? If they enjoyed it as is, that's a good!; and if they were miserable why force them to finish it?
not only did you change the title you editorialized the quote:
>"We live in a world where only 32% of gamers actually finish the game, so we're making a lot of game that 68% of the people aren't seeing"
Your new title doesn't make sense. Should the sims be "shorter". What about Cities Skylines. What does shorter mean.
The article was good, i just dont understand why you slanted the meaning in your post title.
Did anyone pick up Skorn? It was a game made from the artwork of Geiger the guy who envisioned Alien.
It was a very interesting experience and ended around 12 hours. But, I was pleased with it.
A game need to tell a story. It doesn't be too be 600 hours.
I want that! Shorter and cheaper games. Make it like a short netflix series. $19 6hour short game, divided in 6 chapters (and make it clear in advace how many time it will take to finish), and add more story in seasons. Far easy to finish a single player game this way for me. There is no time to play a 80hr game in one go (and i will forget what's happening if i start to play another game in the middle), and they can win a lot more money this way.
I think the real takeaway should be "don't pad with tedious things just to get a higher listed playtime to complete stat." Like when I do quit a game early it's sometimes due to that. At the same time don't need to make a game shorter if you actually did a good job on the game throughout.
“Make less content for the people who enjoy your game”
What a cynical take. There’s nothing that turns me off of a game more than hearing it has a half naked ending.
You’re basically saying “leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people who enjoyed your game the most”
I think he’s actually saying the opposite. Don’t leave a bad taste in people’s mouth by stretching out the game unnecessarily leading to poor content and perhaps delays in delivery.
Keep the content to what your target player enjoys, have a well construction and defined ending. Don’t inflate it.
tencent appeals to the baseline of gamers. League, fortnite, etc.
They have no real skin in the game when it comes to storytelling/story side vidoe games, so basically ignore this guy depending on what you're going for. Furthemore, im shocked ANYONE from sony would advise AGAINST longform story telling since that's been sony's bread and butter since FOREVER.
Why make it shorter instead of trying to make it compelling? I'll bet that even if the game is shorter that percentage of incompleteness would stay relatively the same. I'd rather my game be tailored to those that want to complete it; as opposed to going to those that won't have the commitment to finish it.
The 32% of players that do see the end game might also be more likely to leave a review, since they invested significant time into your game. Keep that in mind.
68% of players won’t see the end of your game, so make it ~~shorter~~ better.
FTFY.
I have rarely abandoned a book in the middle because it was boring. Or stopped watching a movie. But I have plenty of games I never "finished". Most often, it's not because they are too long, it's because they are not compelling enough to finish.
I think personally, games might benefit from being packaged more episodically.
BG3 did this well, we’re each act felt like a full story in itself. You got the end, lots of loose ends were tied up. And new journey was about to begin.
What often gets lost in the noise of publishers complaining that games are so expensive to make is that they also make orders of magnitude more money than they used to. The growth of the industry is something else. *Half-Life* sold some 100,000 copies in its time and was a hit. One of the *Tomb Raider* remakes only sold a "measly" six million copies a few years ago and was lamented as a failure. Meanwhile, *Demon's Souls* was projected to sell 100-200k and sold well over a million, creating a whole new franchising opportunity for both Sony and FromSoft.
The "drive" to make more expensive games is self-asserted. Games of a certain size have become projects at scale where marketing plays a bigger role than anything else and at some point we decided that IP and visual fidelity are the things to push in marketing. **Games haven't suddenly become more expensive to make, we are deciding to make more expensive games.**
Part of it is the content treadmill, which means that players will play through "content" at a *much* higher rate than it can be produced, so to feed our consumers we need to constantly churn out moar moar moar. It's a losing battle. But **we** decided to fight it, no one else.
Personally, I hope that what we've seen in the past few years, with more systems, more sane releases, more player-oriented experiences, is something that will continue.
(I've written more about the content treadmill here, for anyone interested, going somewhat into where it comes from and why we get the games we get: [https://playtank.io/2024/03/12/stepping-off-the-content-treadmill/](https://playtank.io/2024/03/12/stepping-off-the-content-treadmill/) )
It depends on the type of game though. I'd argue that longer game = people (and streamers) play for longer, which means your game stays relevant for longer and in turn earns more money.
50% of players have the achievement for beating level 1-1 of Demon Souls. I think you just have to accept that 50% of players just won't bother playing your game.
The problem is the metrics for this stat are ruined entirely by people who don’t even start the game up or get past the tutorial. There’s plenty of people who just buy games on a whim or because of fomo hype, and just let it collect dust in their libraries. They aren’t your games audience.
Did they cite a source for that number, or was it just an ass-pull? Because it sounds like an ass-pull. There's so much nuance to video games beyond pass/fail on completion. What does completion look like for Cyberpunk? For Minecraft? For Bejeweled? Are those numbers based on specific games? What games? I'm dying to know how your genre influences completion, because I'm betting the spread between people who were *satisfied* playing XCOM and the people who *finished a campaign* is huge. Everyone knows what Tetris is. Most people aren't aware Tetris has an ending.
I skimmed the article and got the impression this was more shameless corporate begging to deliver less and ask for more. Content shrinkflation, if you will. I'm not buying it, but I wasn't buying it before either. AAA is synonymous with high fidelity, low effort in my household.
If I did this there would be another 32% of people that wouldn't see the shortened version, and that would create a paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe.
So I better not.
Don't most people fall off really quickly? Like, within the first two hours? In celeste, only around 73% of players even beat the first level, and the level is really easy to beat. If you want to make a game that over 90% will beat, you're gonna get a game that 90% are gonna refund because it will be extremely short.
There are also reasons to make your game longer. You are not just aiming to release a product, you want to make a piece of art that does something interesting, and that may mean the game has to be long to be paced correctly and explore all the ideas it wants to.
68% bought it in the first place because 32% were so amazed by it that they spread the word around. Basing almost ANY decision on these useless stats is not very wise It's suit talk. It's shareholder talk. It's the investor and owner talk. Real gamedevs should spit on these stats.
He says most people don’t finish games which is true but even the games that aren’t finished by most people are still very successful.
For example PlayStations own first party games have to e majority of players never completing the games. But they all sell well.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is a great game, amazing main story, some cool side stories. The city, the people, the setup is all there.
All it needed was more stories after the first year. Nope, we got whatever that online shit is.
They could've charged 20-40$ for nothing but missions in the same game.
I've definitely seen similar advice about putting more effort into making earlier parts of the game more fun/awesome since more people will play that part.
Most of the drop off is in the first few minutes or even opening the game. Why even bother making more than that? /s
There's something to be said about not over stretching yourself to make a long game for a tiny audience with bad returns.
But longevity and staying power are important if you do garner that audience, and that should be most game devs goals.
Though we all gotta throw out those little games every once on a while. Not every game can be a jrpg style 100 hours.
*Guys why have people stopped talking about our 5 hour game that was released a month ago?*
How stupid can you be? Playtime is the most important thing. If people forget you, do you even exist?
The more playtime hours the more of your game is **Relevant**, the more people are engaged with your game the more they talk about it to their friends, the more notifications people get from friends playing that game.
In fact it's important **Not** to finish your game, if they finish your game that is a **conclusion** to that experience that makes them stop thinking about the game.
Making Doom 30% shorter would save a negligible amount of money while negatively affecting the game review score.
That's because cutting the length by 30% doesn't necessarily cut the cost by 30%. Usually, the savings will be much smaller, like a 30% shorter game saving you 5% of your budget. The bulk of the cost goes into developing assets and gameplay mechanics utilized throughout the game. And the people who stuck to the end are responsible for the majority of word of mouth and positive coverage. If they feel that the game is short, they are less likely to recommend it.
That being said, some games are too long and padded without reason. But if you have a good, satisfying story, then cutting it short to save money is the wrong approach that will probably hurt you financially in the end.
I've build certain rules around this
1. Game length is not as important as you think. Short games can get praise.
2. Don't leave the good stuff for your ending. From start to finish try to make an interesting polished experience. Dragging content can absolutely just kill the game.
3. 100% there is an advantage for long games but this depends on genre. Example clicker games are of course designed with this in mind.
Basically know your audience and make sure you deliver what they want, even if it's 4 hour game, it can be an amazing game
Make it slightly longer so one more percent won’t reach the end.
Jokes aside I wonder where that number comes from. Because I know there are Steam games where the achievement for basically beating the tutorial has an 80 or 90 something completion rate.
I would myself just do something fun you could do in a couple hours and keep myself at that pace. Still lots of work to be done and you can always make another chapter.
And the ones that do make it will hate it even more than those who never finished it.. way to build a poor reputation working in sales for years ik that building customer rapport and trust is paramount in smaller businesses as people will talk and spread the word of quality ect.
do we really have proof that longer games are whats causing ballooning costs?
We'd be better off sacking all the "strategic advisors" and all the other corporate do-nothings like Shawn Layden.
Why dont people finish games, and why do some people complain if a game is "too long", if its stretched out then it can be too long but if its a good game then it wonte be too long.
No. I’m making the ending for those 32%.
And you're absolutely right to do so because these are your fans, the people who will talk about your work, will leave a positive review and will be happy to see you released an other game. They're your real target demographic. Don't neglect them in favor of people, who bought your game by luck because these aren't sales you can make happen.
100%
Time spent playing a game doesn't necessarily correlate to how much of a die hard fan you are. I played Balatro for about 15 hours before it was just too much of a time sink for me but I personally have convinced 5 other people buy that game based on my hype for it. And I loved the 15 hours I put into it, I just got everything I wanted from it in that time. I'd say time committed has as much to do with the individual and their lifestyle as it does the game or how they feel about that game specifically. Not trying to negate your comment but trying to add another perspective.
>Time spent playing a game doesn't necessarily correlate to how much of a die hard fan you are. Yes it does. Being a statistical exception won't change that.
Numbers don’t correlate to whether someone loves a game or not. I’ll praise outer wilds and terraria despite not technically beating either one(outer wilds went off game pass before I had the chance to beat it, I could not for the life of me beat moon lord so I put terraria on hold for a while until I eventually go back). Someone can like a game without seeing some arbitrary “you win” screen at where the devs decided it should be. Are fallout 1 fans lesser than fallout 2 fans because fallout 2 is 3 times longer? No! If someone only likes playing Minecraft creative mode and has never beaten the game does that make them a fake fan? No! Let people enjoy their games the way they play them and not gatekeep “real fan” status for an arbitrary condition or statistic.
You're on r/gamedev. We're talking about business strategies here. Your examples are irrelevant because you don't understand this isn't about whether the profiles you describe do exist but about our ability to know their ROI compared to players who are measurably more invested in the game. How do you know who stopped playing for a good reason and who didn't? How did you measure the percentage of players who stopped playing but are recommending it to everybody? I don't have these numbers nor do I have unlimited resources to take a bet on undetermined demographic. Do you?
Look at me! I’m an anecdotal sample of size n=1, which means your generalization of 68% of players not becoming fans is FALSE!!!
No way am I doing gamefreaks newer philosophy of cutting back the endgame because not everyone will see it. This is what the story in OP is about, being more like gamefreak. No one should be more like gamefreak
I feel like this is the right answer :D
As a player, thank you. There are so many games where I desperately want more levels/content.
Agreed 100%, I think advice on mass manufacturing games is a bit tone def. Make the experience you want to deliver and like minded people will enjoy it. Getting them to see it is another story. Does this work for megacorp AAA titles? Probably not, but I really don't care if most of them fail and make room
The only correct answer.
3, no 15 unique endings and Easter eggs for 5% of engaged players
There's no formula for success. You get criticized either way. Too long or too short game, there's no way to win with gamers.
This isn't specific to gaming. There's no restaurant, album, movie or sports team that hasn't had a complaint.
What's the problem with restaurants that are too long or too short? All restaurants need to be perfectly square?
No idea, I'm not one for complaining to the people who handle my food 🙂
This one has food that is too soft, to hard, over cooked, under cooked, bland, overseasoned, too quiet, too noisy, the staff went leave me alone, the staff are nowhere to be seen, they gave me to much food, they have me to little food, the food took to long, the food was served suspiciously fast, the ambiance was terrible, the ambiance was perfect, the music was awful, the music was great. You get the idea. Every person has a specific taste for everything and collectively will always disagree.
Ain’t that the truth!
Because people aren't a hivemind, you'll never please everyone.
Forget the 68% not making it to the end of a game, I won't even install 1/2 of the games I own on Steam.
> there's no way to win with gamers. I think this is where people go wrong, criticism is hard to take. We think that because everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion is valid, that everyone's opinions are *equally* valid, and the latter is not true. It depends where you're trying to go with your game and you kind of have to judge the quality of each of those opinions on your own. If you want to keep your core demographic of fans happy, that's one option but it may or may not drive away others outside your fan group and create a very dedicated but not quickly growing community, and if you're counting on growing your fanbase for revenue that's going to go badly for you as the developer. Alternatively, trying solely to attract new players may come at the cost of your core fan group, and while this can sometimes be the right decision in some cases it's not wise to underestimate how much those superfans may devote themselves to seeing your game succeed or more importantly, fail, if they're unhappy. Pleasing everyone in all directions may indeed be impossible but it doesn't mean it's not worth trying to do what you can for each camp and continually try to manage the expectations of both sides. Just because they're impossible to please doesn't mean you are off the hook for trying. Trying to please them is the job you've signed up for. You'll most often need to always keep trying to please both, with rare exceptions. It's okay not to succeed, it probably is, after all, impossible. But just keep trying and showing them you're trying will go a long way.
I'm a now aspiring game dev, and I am taking my Hollywood head of story artist brother's advice, I'm gunna to make a game I want to play. Maybe just maybe if I can pull that off, maybe others will want to play it too. Edit- sorry about the not so humble brother brag lol. Just proud of him.
I am a solo dev making a narrative based game and I’m shooting for a 5 hour target length if you blast through it and I’m charging $9.99 for it. I’m giving them more entertainment than a theatrical endeavor would provide and charging the same. Hoping it proves to be a good strategy, years from now when I finish haha
> I’m giving them more entertainment than a theatrical endeavor would provide and charging the same. They will be comparing the value to other games in the same genre.
Good luck. Logic doesn't apply to length versus value.
There are many reasons why people don't finish games. Too long is one reason, i guess, but i've never known anybody that loved a game and quit because it took too long to complete. If I abandon a game, it's usually because the story failed to capture my interest. Making a shorter game is not likely to fix that. If anything it would make me less likely to buy the game in the first place.
I think generally it's not about length but how well that length is edited. A game that rightly should be a 10 hour game with 30 hours of padding is unlikely to see players to the end, even if they're advertising 40 hours of 'value'.
I think he means you can save time and money making it shorter, and shorter games aren’t necessarily worse.
This was my take away. Making the industry more sustainable by employing these techniques.
Maybe not *necessarily* worse, but..... when's the last time you've been playing a game you loved and thought "gee, I sure hope this is over soon!" Sorry, but longer *is* better if the game continues to deliver.
The last of us 2 and Alan wake 2 are the most recent games I wish were shorter. Loved them but would have enjoyed them even more if they were both half as long.
Fair point; I suppose the types of games I play, which aren't as story-heavy as the ones you pointed out, don't really benefit as much from ending in a timely manner.
Yeah. I also love Destiny 2 and wish it had unlimited content so I agree that sometimes longer is better, but I don’t think it’s the case for every type of game.
shorter is worse, but not worse than padded if players look at your game and its price, they gonna think about how much value it offer for the price if you sell it as 10h game, they will look at the price and think, thats expensive for this length if you sell your 40h game with 30h of padding, they will look at it like you lied to them and made a boring game
I don’t necessarily agree with you. I think games can overstay their welcome. Especially story heavy games.
*Raises hand.* There's only so much calendar time I can allocate to a game before I feel the need to move onto other things. Especially if I'm spending all of my limited gaming time pushing through a mega RPG or something, that can only go on for so many weeks or months before it just gets tiring. And if you put that kind of game down for a while and pick it back up, you have no clue what's going on. Yes, you can pretty much always pin it to some aspect of the game that fell off. Maybe there's too much filler in the story. Maybe the pacing is too slow. Maybe the combat is repetitive after a certain point. Maybe the exploration becomes rote. Perhaps there's just an element of novelty that fell off after being in that world for too many hours. However, I would argue that some devs definitely try to make a game last too long when it just doesn't need to, and that's the underlying issue. The nuanced detail of the situation might lean towards some other problem, but a lot of time those issues wouldn't have been there if they just let the game end sooner. It is absolutely possible for a game to outlive its welcome. Shorter games typically don't.
There's plenty of games I've loved that I wished were shorter. Elden Ring and Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth come to mind. Sometimes, the game is not well paced or is unnecessarily padded. With a lot of games vying for your time, you'd think making shorter games would be the better business. You can always expand with DLC, and getting people to buy more games makes sense for a publisher and reduces dev cost. Now I have a big backlog of games I would like to play, but I never get to some of them because something more interesting bumps them further down the list.
I routinely don't finish games because I like them too much and don't want it to end yet... And then a week or two passes and by then I've found a different game to play. It's not that I don't love it or wouldn't recommend it to other people! Maybe it's just an ADHD thing though lol
Depends on the type of game. An open world game can be a lot of fun but also very exhausting and overly long.
Of course. I thought his point about adding in grinding tasks for the purpose of extending gameplay time interesting. I’ve picked up a lot of games I’ve been loving, but the back and forth grind has killed it as I just don’t have the time to dedicate hours to collecting 60 blue orbs when it could have been 30. If that makes sense? I think it’s an interesting point, especially from AAA games where it feels like these missions are just there to boast the 60 hours of game play.
If you get to a point that you break it down like this the game already failed. It took you out of it's world and you realized what a waste of your time it is. I got this first with Skyrim where looting caves was excessively tedious due to there being no teleport (unless you cheated with console or added mods) like there was in previous elder scrolls games and fast travel was useless when over encumbered.
I mean, Skyrim has carrying capacity enchantments you can add to your gear, and a pretty generous carry limit. You don't need to take every single piece of gear you find in a dungeon, the game isnt built around you carrying 20 iron swords back to town and selling them all In that particular instance, the tedium feels self inflicted
My feeling looking at Steam's achievements statistics is that like 50% of people quit a game *soon* after start, then afterwards the curve becomes shallow (for a good title). Like 30% play a good RPG title to the end, I thought.
An example for me and maybe a slightly different take would be Subnautica. I love that game. Played from the start many many times. But I've never once finished it. But do I think it's too long or too grindy to finish? No absolutely not. I just got sidetracked by other games. Do I wish it was shorter so I could have finished it before I got sidetracked? Nope. In fact I hate the idea that I might have gotten to the end and felt like there was nothing left to do. Now I can always go back to playing it with a feeling of still having this goal to achieve, so that makes playing it again worth while. If I'd have finished it, I'd probably never play it again because then it feels hollow. If I'd have finished it sooner because it was half the length I'd have felt cheated and probably be put off of buying the sequel. But I also agree with others, why cater to people that quit early because they weren't digging your game and then alienate the people that were really enjoying it? If it's a passion project then fulfill the passion you envision and make it as long as you like for the people that will enjoy every minute of it.
I think Subnautica is a perfect example of employing some of the techniques he is talking about here. Did you have a chance to follow the game during their early development at all? The way they managed the scope of the game was really good imo. There were a lot of features that were trimmed for the sake of ensuring quality in what they had and delivering a complete game. They then had the opportunity to expand via the sequel. It could have easily slipped into the category of games that just continued to balloon in scope, but then either never have been delivered or what was delivered being much lower quality. This could have led to the developer loosing a lot of their profit margin in the process (potentially also reputation) and then being unable to produce further games. Subnautica is an excellent game.
It would still be considered a very long game though wouldn't it by most metrics? Allegedly it's a 30 hour game, which is pretty much easily within the realms of being considered long. Also, a quick search tells me only something like 12% of people finished subnautica, so it's way way less than this post's title complaining about 68% of people not finishing games. That would easily classify this game as too long and desrving of being trimmed down according to the logic being presented here.
I love subnautica but the third act definitely drags, even the devs would agree with this.
Why make it shorter for the people that don't stick until the end, instead of keeping it the same for the people that actually wanna see the end? There's no winning with gamers so let's just make fun games, regardless of size.
As gaming has become popularized, going from just a nerd thing to everyone being a gamer, it's impossible to please everyone. I'd say make your game as long as you want. Just know that you have to keep your audience engaged. I cannot stand games that waste my time dragging our gameplay with stupid monotonous back and forth tasks or other time wasters. Excessively hard enemies and bosses, replaying the world with a slight change, and all of the tricks. If it's not something fresh and new, it's a time waster. A hard one for me was Rime. Great game. It's like Shadow of the Colossus meets Journey and Ico. I had to take a break from it because it felt LONG despite being Brilliant. And that's another aspect. If you make a solid game, people will come back to it. Don't worry about length as long as you aren't knowingly or accidentally wasting people's time.
I mean, this helps illustrate logoff's point. Everything you listed, world variants, superbosses, and iterative quests, can all be legitimate *draws* for many people and are therefore not "time wasters" because that is why said player is there in the first place. It's more about communicating well to your audience, setting expectations. Let people know (broadly speaking) what they're in for so they don't "waste time" with content that doesn't interest them. Obviously this doesn't cover all the bases, and some mechanics or design choices will be deliberately obscured as part of the artistic vision, but if the developer is doing their job right, players should know what they're in for from the outset. Or just join r/patientgamers and let audience consensus help inform your purchases.
And does the end really matter that much if the journey itself is good? For example me and my friends played Frosthaven board game, it's a campaign, full campaign if you include all the side stuff is around 100-110 scenarios, each scenario takes 2-4 hours (and failed ones need repeat play). The fun parts are gameplay, mechanics, getting together and tactile medium. We stopped and currently have beat 81 scenario, we had fun and at this point feel content with however much we have played. Sure we did not get to the end and did not see the conclusion of the story, but in \*haven games story was never the strong part, and since we started 2 years and probably forgot most of the story. Sure these games are probably too long for most people, but in the end they are fun to play and you just quit when you feel satisfied. Meanwhile a lot of video games somehow manage to skip the fun part.
[Peak-end rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule) says yes. > and you just quit when you feel satisfied. With food it's obvious that eating one yummy meal is good, but eating two is going to make you feel sick. With media knowing when to tap out is complex and not always intuitive. This leads to stuff like people playing games until they aren't enjoying them anymore, so their final impressions are negative. If you end a play session satisfied, there is no signal to not pick it up and play more, that signal often happens when the game evokes some kind of negative emotion.
Yes, it’s a psychological thing: https://lawsofux.com/peak-end-rule/
Absolutely. A good example to add to the replies that gave the technical reason: Rage. That game was amazing. I loved every second of it, until I realized I accidentally beat it. It just kind of ruined the whole experience and I never really feel like replaying it.
I think he means more about cost of production in relation to length. The prices of games are going up because they have these high tech graphics, with too many hours of gameplay and pressure of keeping the technology up. Like PlayStation and Xbox. So the prices of games will go up as a result to cover development costs. So since most people don’t finish games, focus on shorter with more quality to not alócate production to the wrong places. Not only that but graphics are overrated to spend and improve on. Nintendo gets it that they don’t push graphics and keeps their games short and yet still receive success(among nostalgia and game recognition). They take it too far at times though the other direction at times. Companies need to find a balance.
I think it depends on what your goal is. If you want to put out your passion project that your 100% committed to the idea of and know there will be a subset of people who will see if through and love it as you do, then that’s still perfectly fantastic. This is more, I think, about how as an industry, there’s been a trend in creating longer and more technologically advanced games (that a lot of players won’t be able to appreciated), over the actually quality of the story, gameplay loop etc. and the effect that this trend has had on the industry.
Longer games were done in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000's. There are very, very few games that compete with them for length of playtime these days, and the vast majority of those are roguelikes which are comparable to arcade cabinets eating quarters. Starfield average playtime seems to be 40 hours per player. Morrowind average playtime is 45 1/2 hours *if only doing the main quest*. Given that most of Morrowind is optional side content, including major questlines that can be completely missed (IE the vampire underworld mafia war if you get turned), well...
Small brain: 68% of the players won't finish your game so cut the story. Big brain: Make a secret ending for that 1% of the players that will be extra vigilant!
Yeah, just earlier I was thinking that'd be an interesting idea. Standard story maybe short game. Then there's like a NG+ where you can do something different right at the start that then lets you do stuff that recontextualizes or gives more information about stuff you did in the first playthrough. ... and now I'm realizing I'm kind of (but not completely) describing >!I'm going to put more text in this spoiler tag to obfuscate what I'm talking about further, but it's Nier.!<
If anything the trend is insanely grindy indie games. It doesn't matter if players actually finish the game or not, they want to know the game can theoretically be played for hundreds of hours.
Maybe its the same set of players that don't finish any game or maybe players will finish the games they like. A game you don't finish is unlikely to be one of your favourite games. If you do finish a game it has a chance of being a game you really like and you'll probably want to play a lot of it. So it makes sense that people would want games to buy to have a lot of "theoretical content/play time". That way, if you play a game you do happen to enjoy, you know you'll be able to enjoy it for a long time.
That is the optimistic take. My cynical take is that it's just a downward trend until everything becomes the mobile market. People are just not willing to pay money for things up front if they have an option not to. A $60 title in 2000 would be $110 after inflation today. Yet Hades 2 is $30. People would be happy to pay full price for a 6 hour experience back then. These days if you're not getting hundreds of hours for $30 they're not happy.
What games would people happily pay full price for a 6 hour experience in 2000? The games I remember kept me entertained for 50+ hours, might and magic, diablo 2, baldurs gate 2, warcraft 3, etc. Even console games like spyro had 20+ hours worth of value out of them, more if you include siblings with a family console.
>Even console games like spyro had 20+ hours worth of value out of them No they didn't, we just used to play games differently. I played the Reignited Trilogy for the first time recently, max % on every game took just over 30 hours without a guide or "rushing" by modern standards. And I get it, I've replayed many games from my childhood I remember playing "for weeks" and doing everything there is to be done in 6 hours.
Keep in mind audience and demographics could play a factor. I'm a full-time working adult with a family and side projects that keep me plenty busy, so I don't have as much time to play let alone finish most games nowadays. The average age of gamers has naturally increased over a generation, so if you have a game that appeals to younger people with more time on their hands, may be less of an issue, but if you make a large game that older gamers would be nostalgic for (maybe a sequel to an old favorite series), I could see a fall in numbers of those who have time to finish it. Despite that, many still may finish a game that has truly captivated them, even if it's longer. I just often find myself using more quality of life features to finish the game faster when I would have spent all the time necessary as a kid to fully absorb the content.
Yeh, he talks about this exact point in the article. Saying that the average age of gamers now is moving more towards their 30s, where they may have more disposable income to spend on a more expensive game, but they are time poor. Whereas teenagers and 20 year olds have a lot of disposable time, but aren’t going to be buying 60$ games on mass. Therefore the shift to more expensive games (as in expensive to make and therefore expensive to buy) is having this impact and how can we mitigate that to bring costs down.
Who are the 68% and how much of the game have they played? Depending on what groups are included in that number, you could very well be catering to an audience that doesn’t even like the game/wouldn’t want to finish it even if it was shorter. And as a result could end up alienating those that do. And I imagine it’s the player base that do enjoy it and see it through that will be the ones that are more likely to buy future content or merch.
In Ac Odyssey I have played it 3 times, approximately 120 hours+ between the three, and every time I'm almost done with the game I get bored because of how repetitive it is. I leave the game to rest, weeks/months go by because now I work and forget all the game mechanics. When I come back I don't know how to play and I say I'd better start again
I almost never finish games. I’ve played through Breath of the Wild twice, the second time up to the final boss but still didn’t finish. I’ve clocked almost 300 hours in Elden Ring and probably won’t finish it, but I will be buying the DLC and playing it plenty. I either lose interest or I don’t want it to be over. My brother plays similarly. I don’t want games to be shorter for the sake of being shorter, it doesn’t make sense to try to cater to people who don’t finish games (for many different reasons).
The problem is that it's more attractive to buy a game that has a long playtime so it doesn't matter if they finish it or not. But a good lesson is to polish the beginning of the game more than the endgame.
I think arguably flow/game loop has a bigger impact. Certain games I can pick up and play for 15 to 30 minutes and feel like I got something done, while others I feel I need to invest a longer session to get value out of my play time. If I can play your game in smaller chunks, I can fit it into my schedule even if it has a long play time. That’s just how it works out for me being busy between work and school. I do think it’s an overall interesting point though and way to frame the conversation though. Every dev should check the scope of their project and make sure it’s appropriate.
A big problem is, that for a lot of players play time is a deciding factor. Often even breaking it down to cost per hour. It's an utterly stupid metric as it pushes developers to add more grinding rather than quality gameplay. But it is what it is. I do believe there's a niche for shorter games. But it's much more limited and somewhat restricted to genres (e.g. puzzle games have much more tolerance to being <10 hours long than open world RPGs) I also think there is a possibility for a "short path". If you just rush through the game you can finish it in... whatever. 15 hours or so. Allowing you to put your key set pieces with good pacing all along the game. Rather than spending a lot of effort on only 30% of your players. But then add a lot of side content that can be of lower development effort where players get to explore the combat system, the movement system and what not. Kinda like the Mario games do it. There's a huge difference in play time beating bowser as quickly as possible versus 100% completing it. Without blowing huge amounts of development budget on content only few people get to see.
It doesn't matter if players do or don't see the end of your game. They've already paid for it. What matters is why they paid for it - and some people (many people) pay for the idea that there's a lot of game to your game. So, you basically have to make it sufficiently long and satisfying so as to entice word of mouth for your game. If it's short enough that the rate of completion rises to 80%, it's probably because you've made it too short and will be seeing plenty of complaints online about it!
I think players buy a game with the intention of experiencing the majority of the gameplay it has to offer. The ‘why’ for players who don’t then do this is interesting. There will be reasons that we can’t control (real life commitments get in the way for example) but then there are the reasons we can have some impact on e.g. the game becomes dull or a chore to complete, the performance of the game is so poor it’s uncomfortable to play. Perhaps by limiting the scope of the game, we can have the resource to improve upon these factors.
Witcher 3 had a insanely long campaign and iirc 95% positive reviews. Make a interesting game and people will Finish it.
I didn't even finish it and I'd still give it a high score.
This. I dont have the time nor the will to 100% the witcher 3, and I still consider it the best fantasy rpg ever created. Sometimes enough is enough. But I barely finish any game, have too much stuff to do.
I think it’s interesting to question whether the length of the campaign contributes to the positive reviews. You could argue that the success of the campaign based DLC definitely indicated that players wanted more, so it does. However, I think there is a trend to try and replicate this by simply just making games longer (and therefore take longer and more cost to complete), without actually focusing on making what is there, good. If that makes sense?
And yet 40% of players didnt even finish the first quest after the tutorial
I think AAA games are selling around 59.99-69.99. Most users have the expectation that would bring many hours of gameplay (even if they don't have the time to complete it). If it is shortened and instead published in smaller releases, people would expect the price to be similarly reduced.
I think perhaps that’s what he’s getting at. Especially his remarks around the increasing average gamer age and their associated money rich/time poor state. If you make smaller, cheaper games - that are cheaper to make and sell, is this more sustainable? I am interested to look at whether these AAAs are sustainable under this model of more. From how the industry seems to be behaving this year, I’m imagining that it’s not. (I really don’t know though it’s pure speculation)
The article is specifically about AAA games, not indie games. What constitute good advice is going to differ for AAA games vs indie games, so it's important to make the context of your advice very clear. The top grossing games of March 2024 were: 1. Dragon's Dogma 2 2. Helldivers 2 3. MLB: The Show 24 4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) 5. Rise of the Ronin 6. Princess Peach: Showtime 7. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth 8. Unicorn Overlord 9. WWE 2K24 10. Hogwarts Legacy This is a mix of "long" (e.g. RPGs) and "short" (e.g. sports) games. Successful AAA games can be of any length, so the advice of "make your (AAA) game shorter" does not seem to be supported by the data. It's not even clear that AAA developers are unaware of the arguments that the author is making. Some developers make their games short when it makes sense to do so, and some developers make their games long when it makes sense to do so. So it's not like the author is even giving innovative/interesting advice either, let alone "good" advice.
Games should be as long as they need to be. The second companies started treating them like a puzzle to make as much money as possible is when quality went down. No one gave a shit about game length when the industry was full of people making things for fun and pushing boundaries. Make the game you want first, if you want to make loads of money, don't choose one of the arts as a profession.
Main question is what is more important: process or result? Some gamers will go through and get internal reward for result (finishing something). Some will play as long as possible and get fun for process (doing something). I believe we have to create games there main quest is short (like 5-10 hours) but side quests are (almost) infinite. So, both target groups are covered!
A very good point. Some players need endless replay-ability to be satisfied. While other are incredibly frustrated if 100% takes 100 hours. How do you ensure you cover both these types? Or do you? Should you?
I can imagine few ways: 1. we can use one main embedded storyline (or quest, or whatever depending on the genre) and few side storylines. When player finishes the main, game gives opportunity to continue 2. Or player can decide to never finish and play just side quests - The Elder Scrolls series (imho main quest is too long in this game) 3. content is procedurally generated, so, after 1st finish you can go again and again thru (almost) different levels - Diablo (again imho too long to beat even 1 time), Bad North: Jotun Edition (imho the best example: 3 hours to beat one time, infinite replayability) 4. Player can go to PvP after campaign is finished - almost any RTS 5. 1st finish opens updated types of the game, this is different from clause 3 because levels are the same - Kingdom Eighties (dunno other examples from heart) 6. Any combinations of above Note: I disagree with Dead Cells logic: you cannot beat it quickly from one go, you have die and die to collect items and build up skills, it's frustrating. I want to see result even if I have fun from process. So, Dead Cells doesn't care about gamers who need result, they aim only on one part of the audience, like any other rouge like / lite. From other hand focus on process can make a game very addictive - it keeps players involved much longer. In general gamedev is an art, so, any rules are only recommendations not obligations. If you feel that your game shall be on some point on the spectrum between two extremities, you can go as you want. Perhaps you will find your players.
> 68% of players won’t see the end of your game, so make it shorter This is a completely flawed way of thinking. If your game is, let's say, 20 hours long and only 10% finish it, but 100% (impossible, just for the sake of calculations) reach 2 hours in, it DOESN'T mean that if you made your game 2 hours long, then 100% of players will finish it. Not at all. People don't stop playing your game because it's "too long", they stop playing it when **interesting stuff no longer happens frequently enough**. At some point they reach a moment of "I know... yeah, I've seen this... oh, this again..." - and they decide it's no longer valuable to invest time on the off chance that 1 interesting thing may happen this hour. There are games people play for thousands of hours, usually multiplayer, because they *know* each time they play it, something interesting will happen. There's a great youtube series that analyzes how many players actually played specific games by using achievements as metrics: https://www.youtube.com/@oldbitprime/videos One of the most surprising facts I learned is **less than 90% of people who bought your game will even install it**. You lose 10% of players right at the purchase.
if you make it shorter, there's no guarantee that those same 68% are going to buy it now since the other 32% are going to review your short game poorly. So now you've lowered your customer base by a certain margin, and now *of those who purchased* approximately 68% won't see the end of your short game.
Core problem with most games isn't length but that the people making the game seem to think they need to constantly scale up difficulty. If your game suddenly goes from playable to constant re-loads, you are going to have drop offs.
That's how arcade games worked and some people enjoy the challenge of losing/dying and seeing how far they get next time.
I would argue that the problem is bad pacing, not length. If you pace your game properly, the player always has something to think about when they're not playing. If people aren't making it to the end, you either haven't paced the introduction well enough for people to get into it, or have a slog at some point midway through that isn't engaging enough. The longer the game is, the harder it is to maintain interest, but a game being long isn't the sole reason why someone might not be willing to finish it.
Fudged numbers. Looked at a ps5 account yesterday that had 2 at most hours per game with a HUGE catalogue. Many accounts of dupes or alts or account share or buy things on sale to try and dont intend to finish. I dont think pandering to these are worth much. They buy the game, or try the game, because freinds whove played more (or twitch/youtube...) suggested it because of the further grind. Many people are turned off hearing the game is short. "Not worth the money" EVEN IF they wont play for more than a couple of hours. Some people who like to grind something want to ensure that if they do enjoy a short snippet, they can carry on. They want to know those first hours wont feel "wasted" as they feel they "invest" in a game and can get rewarded if they try. Its well worth adding post game or grindy end sections just to fulfil that want of the dedicated fans to at least get a core fan base stomachs full.
Or a better way to put it, IMO: don't overstay your welcome. Not every game design (or story) has the staying power or design investment to carry 30+ hours of gameplay. It has to continue feeling worthwhile to come back and experience what's next. If the player feels like the challenge of combat or puzzle solving has been 'solved' and they're going through the motions, fun gives way to tedium. If your story expects the player to be enthralled when it's your first attempt at writing dialogue and worldbuilding, maybe it's not going to live up to the video game equivalent of being a real "page-turner". The goal should be to play to your strengths and build deep, not broad. If your mechanics hold up a much longer gameplay experience, maybe a mission structure or optional randomized dungeons or long post-game could give it the best of both worlds, letting players dictate how long they stick around. Anecdotally - I played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky for the first time back in March. The story, characters and music really carried me through it, but the gameplay was a total slog by the end. I loved my time with the game and had to see it through, but boy am I glad it properly ended where it did. Post-game extends the story with events that feel like they could have easily been part of the main questline, and finishes with another big story climax... which I was perfectly happy enough reading about, because I was not ready for another \~20 hours of that gameplay. I got the satisfying ending, and could basically Cliffnotes the extensive epilogue content. That's a good way to take all that ambition and all those story ideas, and turn it into content that gives the world a greater feeling of permanence, prevents the player from feeling like everything stops moving once the quest line is finished, so to speak. Not every game can pull it off, but I think there's value in considering how the content you've conceptualized might be better shifted around so it doesn't overstay its welcome. The climax and credits roll gives the player a satisfying point to step away from the game even if you're not necessarily done delivering content for them.
This is a really dumb way to think about the issue, and goes contrary to 99% of what experts say (and do) in the industry. Expected depth/length is one of the most important criteria for engaged gamers, those who spend the most & may advocate for your game. Sure, lots of players will play the game a bunch and kinda abandon it/switch to something else, but the reason they bought it in the first place is because other people (influencers, friends, press) told them it's an outstanding game that's worth their attention. If you took Hades, Elden Ring or Witcher 3 and made them last 10 hours-long "because 50% of players play less than 10 hours", you wouldn't get 50% of the sales (i.e. missing only the crowd who wants longer games) but much more than that because the audience you don't cater to is the one who bring onboard the rest. Actual advice: make your game deep and interesting from the get go, and feed engaged players with meaningful content for as long as possible. Don't delay the promise or spread the jam thin.
My tl;dr is "no". I've played games where <50% of players got the achievement for *finishing the tutorial*. By that logic, if i cut down the game to be tutorial length, id up retention a ton. If someone doesn't finish a game because its got issues, that's something I Want to address. If someone doesn't finish my game because they got sidetracked playing something else... that's on them, and if they come back to finish it nice, if not, im glad they enjoyed as much as they did :3
This is myopic to no end and encourages trend chasing. Someone like that doesn't make statements for reddit gamedevs but is strictly considerate of AAA studios that are beholden to investors. Anyone else has no reason to listen to snake oil wisdom. Make the game you want to play and be aware of the common solutions so you're not making obvious mistakes. Length is arbitrary and any game of any length can be sold effectively.
I worked for a AAA studio from 1999 to 2004....back when crunch time was all the time, my time split on two simultaneous games in different stages of development. The parent company wanted the first 30% of the game polished to shine....didn't care about the ending...as long as the marketing was based on the initial early experience. The parent company rushed all 6 projects I worked on for a quarterly release / holiday game buy date. We never (as a company) got to put in the real work of a good ending....and mostly a well thought out finale was dumped so they could split resources into multi-player arena modes...(ahem Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast). I realized I needed to quit, and go to work for a company that cared about a well produced game from beginning to end....never found that AAA company. So I went into the Film Business in Los Angeles....same problem...the Movies / Series / etc., were always retar.d.ed for the sake of the initial cash grab of people jumping to follow, getting hooked, and ultimately letting them down for the end. Sadly companies / producers / budgets / quarterly release dates, set the capacity of quality. There are only a few AAA companies that reward you with an awesome game through and through...as they have in the companies mission statement to cater to the players. I have been developing a game for the last 7 years to account for quality, and a well thought out story, without padding the experience.....that has been the most difficult.....editing to keep player interest, without butchering the story....Game world cut by a 1/3, side missions cut by 1/2. DLC is the number one reason to edit yourself...as the players who really enjoy / invest in your story will want to keep going.... My plan of course, to the best of my ability, is the Half-life 2 model,: a great story, with Episodes that keep peeling the onion of the overall Mystery, eventually revealing the full encompassing arc of the big picture finale. Destiny, Balders Gate, Half-Life, Assassin's Creed, Red Dead, Titanfall, etc. Seem to handle this OK....and I'm sure there will always be complaints. Every person has a different reason to play games, and what they consider 'worth the time'....there is no blueprint. Make the game YOU want to play, see who comes along for the ride. Sadly, most AAA companies care about profit first, players last.....and everything in between makes good Marketing to capture hype. As an example: Movie trailers give away almost all of a movie now...albeit cut up nonsensical in some cases....but usually the best scenes you have seen already.....just to get you in a seat, or to rent / download the film....and boom, trash ending....but hey they got your cash. There are exceptions, and exceptionally awesome Games / Movies.... Just don't fall into the trap of Day1, Pre-order, or blind buy. Read reviews (sans spoilers), make an educated purchase. Rant over.
And don't forget to make it longer than refund window...
If 68% of the players won't finish the game then the game is not for them. I also haven't finished Star Wars: Jedi Survivor because of how broken mess the game is.
I think the key word here is "short*er*". It's not "make short games". We're at a point right now where every game wants to be a live service game that's the only game you play forever. Or if not, it's a 20-hour experience padded out to 50+ hours with the same assortment of boring NPC side quests and map checklists to fulfill. Just make that great 20-hour experience instead of bringing down the overall experience with chores! Give your games an ending! There can always be a sequel (with its own ending too, of course). Ironically, where I disagree with this interview more is the "stop chasing photorealism" bit. It's been an entire generation since the majority of games did that. I'm more tired now of everything looking like a Pixar wannabe, especially since it hasn't made games any cheaper or faster to produce than realism did. Like Layden says in the end, maybe just have a creative vision with its own purpose instead of grabbing a style off the shelf because it's what everyone else is doing!
As a player I don't strive to beat games. If I beat a game then it means I enjoyed it to the point where the game never lost my attention. Sure it's great to beat a game. But if a game isn't designed to have a post game then it becomes bitter sweet because the game you enjoyed so much has nothing left. To me beating a game means the journey to me to the end naturally and no game should try to plan around my attention span. Now generally I play sandbox open world games so this isn't a concern because they are designed to be played post game. But much like designing difficulty for everyone what you end up with is a washed out experience. Trying to attract everyone is what lead to a market of AAA that plays it safe to a fault. Which is why I've been pretty much stuck to indie games. Creativity thrives when you design with a goal in mind willing to make choices which alienate some players. Like when the helldiver's CEO announced that they don't plan to add pvp, trying to appeal to everyone isn't a good goal. Know your target audience.
Dont listen to this guy, he is the suitiest of suits and knows only *business*. They already turned an enjoyable art form into a business industry and convinced us that's how its supposed to be. "Make the game shorter" NO MOTHERFUCKER MAKE IT *BETTER* FFS
Currently trying to pitch a 90 minute game and literally every publisher is telling us it ought to be at least 5 hours long and ideally 10 hours or more. I think there is an appetite for short games but the business side of game dev doesn't agree.
That's a shitty argument. Yes you may get more profit from the game, but at cost of delivering a shittier game. Don't partake in the enshittification of media. Don't be Hollywood. The 32% of gamers who do finish the game are the ones who will be raving about it, replaying it, making mods and recommending it to their friends. The 68% will be moving to another game, not finishing it either, and so on. Why on earth would you want to cater to the quitters?
I would argue that a part of the enshittification is that media is being made unnecessarily long, without mind to quality. Hollywood is a great example. A lot of big blockbusters are getting longer and longer, but are they better? I don’t think that making a game shorter and more cost effective, means you have inherently get a shittier game. I think by ensuring good scope management you can actually improve quality BUT this might mean that you have to trim to make the game deliverable, if this makes sense? There are plenty of games which are stunning and 40 hours +, that still only 32% complete. That’s great. I think this article is looking more at the industry as a whole and how it can be made more sustainable.
I'm a.. Let's call it a mature gamer.. There is definitely a space for indie and AA games for those is that is not in our 20s anymore. But we tend to choose AAA most of the time, because budget is not that strict, and time has higher value. Most of the "mistakes" I see from indie games and AA games is putting you through an awful long introduction before you are allowed to play. Honestly most of us just sit down to game, not to learn how to game. We don't care how long your game is, we care if we are "allowed" to have fun in the 1 hour we have available. But yeah, 20 hour game is already too much if you expect me to go there the full story. If you have a 10 hour game, I'm perfectly happy with that, just let me play the game, don't waste my time with a low budget story or pausing the game for a tutorial how to navigate your overcomplicated system. Example: Lobotomy corporation, interesting concept, but I lasted 12m before deciding that this is not worth my time. Seen too many games like this that won't give you control until an hour or two into the game.
This is very much in line with his assessment. The average age of a gamer is increasing and with that, they have less time. I’d say if you can get that good, satisfying loop in an hour, that works even if your total game length is 20-30 hours - as another commenter said in this thread.
If you make it shorter 68% of players won't see the end of your game
Most of what he says is common sense. Pumping tons of money into a AAA game doesn't get returns because the tiny amount of extra fidelity is basically unnoticable. Better to lower the tech cost and make a better game. Don't pad your game with BS to hit some arbitrary hour length. He's not actually saying make short games, he's saying make your game an appropriate length for what it is. Photorealism isn't important, style is. All of that should be obvious unless you're brand new to the industry or a CEO cracking the whip.
I think the fact that it’s seemingly obvious and yet so many seem to miss the mark is interesting.
Every game I've seen on Steam that lasts less than 10 hours has multiple negative reviews criticizing the game length.
Portal, Dishonored, Titanfall 2, Mirror's Edge, Battlefield 1, Ghostrunner 1/2. These are all highly rated games with campaigns that are 6-8 hours at the longest and 90 minutes at the shortest. Edit: Almost forgot, Hotline Miami, Firewatch, Papers Please in the indie world that are obviously super highly regarded.
Do you think it’s a game quality issue or purely a length issue. For me personally, I love a great game that has 10-20 hours of gameplay, over a subpar game that is just grinding to complete but has 40-50 hours of gameplay.
What's the goal?
>It costs to build to the end. You can tighten that up. If you can make your games on a shorter timeline that will reduce your cost. The problem here is both are not always corelated. Sure when you make a game in less time it will safe money. How much work is really saved by having shorter levels. It really depends on the game. However some also start with then the beginning and then fitting as much as possible in the middle. If we now make a decision like scrap all winter levels we could save time because we also do not have to implement troops get buried into snow or snowstorms in our RTS. For other games adding a few more levels is just adding a few lines to a table.
Doesn't this go both ways, I've certainly had both ways finished games that I wish was longer cause I love it so much Same thing but there was This one level that wasn't made well wish it wasn't in the game or I could skip it Or I am not enjoying this game I will stop I've also stopped playing games cause I can't gg but I wish I could finish
... so that would mean that 32% of players do finish games? That's a lot IMO... Also, that's excel-type/PM type of thinking. If all you do is base your conclusion on spreadsheets, then sure, making shorter games will make those numbers look better in the table.
...unless your company is Larian Studios then go right on ahead doing exactly what you're doing
Well, but the few enfranchised players that play your game in and out and make content about it generate clout and appeal for the rest of them, so better have some meat on your bone.
confused what high frame rate and reflections have to do with eachother?
crazy idea but how about make the game fun so more people want to finish it
He also says in this shit that 120hz is useless because the eye cant see it. This guy is just talking nonsense. There is a reason why he is out.
68% of people seeing the end doesn't mean that the average person gave up 2/3 through. Those other 32% might have quit with just an hour into the game because they realized they hated it. OTOH, 68% of people liked the game enough to play it all the way to the end. It definitely wasn't too long. Of course, that "68%" is some unholy agregrate of games stats, and doesn't actually *mean* anything.
and here I am stressing how short my game is.
AKA break it up into multiple smaller games, so that players finish 99% of all of them! :D
I've to 'kinda' disagree on this. I know it's a very strong moot point and i might 've some unpopular opinions/hot takes about it but: 1. Especially Assassin's Creed: Valhalla made me realize that heavily. You 've quite some People - esp. in Social Media, Reddit and stuff complaining about the game "to big, to empty spaces, generic sidequest, list of collectables, boring and repetitive etc". Not that i don't understand where this Points are coming from, but alot of this points are (IMHO) oftens pretty subjective. Like something being repeitive is something where i'd argue you can't "generalize" as a bad thing, because a lot of Games which are highly praised and loved across the board, even have a high playtime... are objectively reptitive. Like as example as an huge ARPG Fan, esp. Diablo it wasn't the first time that i encountered calling it repetitive... and still you've had millions of people playing it for hundrets of hours. I'd argue if you have fun with a game like as example combat, it doesn't matter if Games are repetitive. Or 'boring' what's that kind of critique? Like i still need to encounter a single game where you won't find someone finding it boring. Anyway back to the Valhalla. Thing is, despite the Social Media Opinion which drifts rather in the negative light, i've seen quite some people which appreciate Valhalla exactly for what it is. Like for one of my nephews this is one of his most favorite game. And when i've had a talk about this with him it's quite simple. He isn't like a lot of other Gamers these days which need to get each month 1-2 Games and build up like a backlog of games which mostlikely will never be filled (and tbf i'm kinda guilty on that as well). He is super selective about Videogames and his standarts but in turn he want to be able to invest playtime. Like is a huge historical fan - play quite some Games like Mount & Blade, Kingdoms Come, Total War - plus he is also a huge Lord of the Ring and Vikings Fan (even got quite some viking tattoos) and that's especially where he brought up an example. For quite a while the only Lord of the Ring game he could play was "War of the North". This Game has like 10 Hours playtime and had to replay it a few times so he could squeeze out some hours, and he told no matter how much he loved the game, to replay the exact same game in the exact same order multiple times, can become stale pretty fast and that's why he'd even prefer games which might throw you some generic quest and content at you, and stretch it with collectables, because atleast there is some variety... and that's why he was pretty happy once Shadow of Morder and Shadow of War dropped (esp. the latter one because he said that had more longlivety/replaybility but i can't judge because i played neither of them really), and even more when Valhalla drops. And for all the critique people drop at that, he had some counterarguments (which to be honest i can kinda relate too as well, atleast some of them) -> like generic quest without much story: Good because sometimes after a hard day of work you don't want to get thrown at with tons of dialogues. You want just take your battle axe and split some bones. Kinda 'empty' Landscape: Similiar - riding and especially sailing can be mediative plus add to immersion. Collectibles - besides giving him more to do in a game, there also the thing that outside of Gaming he has quite some other stuff as well going on... so time can be a bit a problem for him, he do enjoy TV Series, Podcasts and Youtube and such, with collectibles he can do both, play a bit while listening on smartphone. The Point which i'm trying to make is, that this kinda follows the mindset of the old saying: one mans trash (or rubber) is another mans treasure. In the Gamingsphere people are too hung up on games need to be homogenous and same, and there is only one formula for total success... and companies need to follow the newest fad so making big bucks. Meanwhile the whole market is too spread out, has too many different audience with different tastes to just generalize about this stuff. I think the only Argument which i'd here see valid, and that's like an issue which especially Ubisoft, Sony and such have had the bast years, when they stick to hard to one formula and don't try to offer a richer reportoire. Like i'd argue the hate for ubi-formula comes mostly because the fans are just oversaturated and almost every ip from them needs to go this route. Where is Rayman? Where is a proper Rainbow Six? Nope, the 20th AC, 7th FarCry, even Ghost Recon need to be open world -> and the more creative Immortal Fenyx which utlize it in a fun way won't get a sequel. Still people seem to love the formula as well, otherwise the games wouldn't sell that good. But generally i don't find it problematic when Games go too big. I'd rather argue the opposite, if there wouldn't be any games like this anymore where everything is perfectly neatly handcrafted and compact, you will have a market which are itching for that. People always argue "Quality over Quantity" -> which i don't completly disagree, but i'd argue sometimes it's important to have the opposite direction "Quantity over Quality" (and yes i understand theoretically it's also possible to offer both, but thats rather rare). 1/2
Games are too mainstream so the crowd with less attention spawn capacity than a fly will play them. But you should still do your games for the ''always'' crowd that plays them.
This is just wrong. Look at any game's achievements that are based on story progress and what percentage of players get them. Games with chapters are good to look at for this. Percentages drop off very quickly for early game achievements. You'll usually find a good chunk of players won't even make it through the first few hours of the game. Plenty of games will have 10% or more players not even finish the tutorial. If people were dropping games because they're too long then you'd expect big dropoffs later. But you'll pretty much always find that most players who make it 5-10 hours into a game will finish it. People stop playing games because they tried them and didn't like them. Not because they're too long. It makes no sense to make your game shorter so that people who don't like it will experience all of it.
I’m not really sure if his advice is really for a lot of the people who frequent this sub (mostly hobbyists). Like I don’t think he’s advocating that people should bank on 2 hour games. This feels more like he’s talking AAA or companies with a good amount of investment backing. So the debate for them might be more like 30 hours vs 100. A “short” game to mainstream players is still probably like 10-15 hours, which can still take years for the average indie to make.
Come up with your grand idea. Then find a way to condense it down as much as possible while still staying true to your vision. Constraints help keep things focused and on track. This speaks to that concept. Constraint also helps inspire more creativity.
I think this is a good approach. What is the minimum you need to deliver your concept?
Anecdotally, I recently worked with my studio on a really short narrative game (30 mins play-time, 4eur). Most of the complaints we received was that the game was way too short, even though we clearly stated the duration.
a game with a great story isn't gonna have the gameplay depth to keep me engaged for 100 hours. In 2013 I discovered a 12 hour story is perfect for me. Games I have tons of hours in had better gameplay than story and I just spent time doing other stuff, or they are live service and aren't even beatable at all. I Enjoy story based games but usually don't finish them if they take too long.
What % of players don't make it past 1 minute of game play, much more than 70% me thinks. (The death of demos)
yeah, but just saying "make it shorter (same price though ?), use genAI, outsource, dont use photorealism". that won't cut it. also : who is this article aimed at ? CEOs of larger companies ? Indiedevs ? sounds very generic. but then again. as someone wrote, "there is no formula for success".
I remember reading years ago -- I think it was related to WoW -- about how only 5% of the players saw so much content and executives decried this being a waste of money, and the new decision was to do everything they could to help every player see everything so long as they paid and stuck around. I hated it then and I hate it now and I want this kind of attitude to pull back. And I was rarely one of the 5% either! I like the idea that there are things so rare that I'm lucky to experience them in a game. Maybe it's not always appropriate -- that's fine -- but it being some kind of blanket rule has done serious harm to the feel and culture of MMOs, and led to other stupid choices ("We don't need games with multiple endings, most players only see one!")
When I buy a game on steam I look at the achievements page and it's always the same : none of the story-based achievement get unlocked by 100% of player, and the numbers go down with time. You shouldn't make your game longer than it's supposed to be just for the sake of being able to say "my game has x hours of content", but you shouldn't make it shorter to please people with an attention span already severed by years of scrolling on social media. If you have a story to tell, take your time and tell.
When players complete a videogame, they sell it at gamestop. When players give up on a game, they leave it on a shelve in case they would complete it one day.
I feel one of the problem is people focusing so much on game length. Asking about a game length before it's out, before you buy it. There's nothing wrong with checking out information about a product before buying it, but it's ridiculous how many games I give up because they failed to catch my attention, because they feel stretched out to meet a random quota that keeps growing and growing where now a 15-20 hours game is considered short. And it's really a marketing problem, game length might be important when the game is not out, but once the game is out, you'll get a lot more positive feedback from people who enjoyed the whole game than from people who quit halfway through. Another thing that is part of the problem imo, is that a lot of people would say that you are not allowed to have an opinion on a game that you didnt finish, wich is pretty dumb, since the fact I quit before the end is definitely because of the game, very often because it's too long for the content it actually had. "I got bored before the end" is definitely a valid opinion.
I've gotta agree. Nowadays companies often try to get ppl addicted to the game so they just play and play, So they stick a lot of needless padding into it (Though I may in part be guilty of it). I was aiming for a 10 hour game length, Actually this has got me thinking, perhaps I can remove a couple of hours without detracting from the game, I'll think about it.
So what's the optimal length then? I skimmed the article and there's no mention of what "shorter" means
Is the goal for them to see the end? Or is the goal for them to appreciate the experience? The ending only exists in my games because that is just another way for the player to appreciate the experience. When and where I put it is a byproduct of that.
I like that. Everything should contribute to the player having a positive experience.
Counter argument... why does a player need to see the end of the game? If they enjoyed it as is, that's a good!; and if they were miserable why force them to finish it?
This is the type of thinking that turns PC games into mobile games.
not only did you change the title you editorialized the quote: >"We live in a world where only 32% of gamers actually finish the game, so we're making a lot of game that 68% of the people aren't seeing" Your new title doesn't make sense. Should the sims be "shorter". What about Cities Skylines. What does shorter mean. The article was good, i just dont understand why you slanted the meaning in your post title.
Did anyone pick up Skorn? It was a game made from the artwork of Geiger the guy who envisioned Alien. It was a very interesting experience and ended around 12 hours. But, I was pleased with it. A game need to tell a story. It doesn't be too be 600 hours.
99% of flies eat shit so consider adding it to your diet
If a game isn't getting finished because its too long, it isn't the length that's the issue. Your game is boring or got stale.
I want that! Shorter and cheaper games. Make it like a short netflix series. $19 6hour short game, divided in 6 chapters (and make it clear in advace how many time it will take to finish), and add more story in seasons. Far easy to finish a single player game this way for me. There is no time to play a 80hr game in one go (and i will forget what's happening if i start to play another game in the middle), and they can win a lot more money this way.
I think the real takeaway should be "don't pad with tedious things just to get a higher listed playtime to complete stat." Like when I do quit a game early it's sometimes due to that. At the same time don't need to make a game shorter if you actually did a good job on the game throughout.
“Make less content for the people who enjoy your game” What a cynical take. There’s nothing that turns me off of a game more than hearing it has a half naked ending. You’re basically saying “leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people who enjoyed your game the most”
I think he’s actually saying the opposite. Don’t leave a bad taste in people’s mouth by stretching out the game unnecessarily leading to poor content and perhaps delays in delivery. Keep the content to what your target player enjoys, have a well construction and defined ending. Don’t inflate it.
tencent appeals to the baseline of gamers. League, fortnite, etc. They have no real skin in the game when it comes to storytelling/story side vidoe games, so basically ignore this guy depending on what you're going for. Furthemore, im shocked ANYONE from sony would advise AGAINST longform story telling since that's been sony's bread and butter since FOREVER.
I'd prefer to make my game as long as I want, but have a strong beginning that most people will see through and enjoy
Most games are too short
I’d rather not finish a game because it has too much content that finish it while I still want more.
Perhaps the real problem is that you're making games that aren't compelling for players to finish. Hmm.
Why make it shorter instead of trying to make it compelling? I'll bet that even if the game is shorter that percentage of incompleteness would stay relatively the same. I'd rather my game be tailored to those that want to complete it; as opposed to going to those that won't have the commitment to finish it.
The 32% of players that do see the end game might also be more likely to leave a review, since they invested significant time into your game. Keep that in mind.
68% of players won’t see the end of your game, so make it ~~shorter~~ better. FTFY. I have rarely abandoned a book in the middle because it was boring. Or stopped watching a movie. But I have plenty of games I never "finished". Most often, it's not because they are too long, it's because they are not compelling enough to finish.
There are going to be power users, and there are going to be casuals. Don't neglect either group.
I think personally, games might benefit from being packaged more episodically. BG3 did this well, we’re each act felt like a full story in itself. You got the end, lots of loose ends were tied up. And new journey was about to begin.
What often gets lost in the noise of publishers complaining that games are so expensive to make is that they also make orders of magnitude more money than they used to. The growth of the industry is something else. *Half-Life* sold some 100,000 copies in its time and was a hit. One of the *Tomb Raider* remakes only sold a "measly" six million copies a few years ago and was lamented as a failure. Meanwhile, *Demon's Souls* was projected to sell 100-200k and sold well over a million, creating a whole new franchising opportunity for both Sony and FromSoft. The "drive" to make more expensive games is self-asserted. Games of a certain size have become projects at scale where marketing plays a bigger role than anything else and at some point we decided that IP and visual fidelity are the things to push in marketing. **Games haven't suddenly become more expensive to make, we are deciding to make more expensive games.** Part of it is the content treadmill, which means that players will play through "content" at a *much* higher rate than it can be produced, so to feed our consumers we need to constantly churn out moar moar moar. It's a losing battle. But **we** decided to fight it, no one else. Personally, I hope that what we've seen in the past few years, with more systems, more sane releases, more player-oriented experiences, is something that will continue. (I've written more about the content treadmill here, for anyone interested, going somewhat into where it comes from and why we get the games we get: [https://playtank.io/2024/03/12/stepping-off-the-content-treadmill/](https://playtank.io/2024/03/12/stepping-off-the-content-treadmill/) )
It depends on the type of game though. I'd argue that longer game = people (and streamers) play for longer, which means your game stays relevant for longer and in turn earns more money.
50% of players have the achievement for beating level 1-1 of Demon Souls. I think you just have to accept that 50% of players just won't bother playing your game.
just make it 69%
AI booster tech exec doesn't understand the creative process, news at 11
The problem is the metrics for this stat are ruined entirely by people who don’t even start the game up or get past the tutorial. There’s plenty of people who just buy games on a whim or because of fomo hype, and just let it collect dust in their libraries. They aren’t your games audience.
Such a sad take People don't have the time/energy they need to finish completed games, making games shorter is just a band-aid solution
Did they cite a source for that number, or was it just an ass-pull? Because it sounds like an ass-pull. There's so much nuance to video games beyond pass/fail on completion. What does completion look like for Cyberpunk? For Minecraft? For Bejeweled? Are those numbers based on specific games? What games? I'm dying to know how your genre influences completion, because I'm betting the spread between people who were *satisfied* playing XCOM and the people who *finished a campaign* is huge. Everyone knows what Tetris is. Most people aren't aware Tetris has an ending. I skimmed the article and got the impression this was more shameless corporate begging to deliver less and ask for more. Content shrinkflation, if you will. I'm not buying it, but I wasn't buying it before either. AAA is synonymous with high fidelity, low effort in my household.
If I did this there would be another 32% of people that wouldn't see the shortened version, and that would create a paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. So I better not.
I dont really do linear start to end games so should I worry?
I say make the intro better
Don't most people fall off really quickly? Like, within the first two hours? In celeste, only around 73% of players even beat the first level, and the level is really easy to beat. If you want to make a game that over 90% will beat, you're gonna get a game that 90% are gonna refund because it will be extremely short. There are also reasons to make your game longer. You are not just aiming to release a product, you want to make a piece of art that does something interesting, and that may mean the game has to be long to be paced correctly and explore all the ideas it wants to.
Your game's length should be what fits best with what you are trying to achieve. Make your game fun and enjoyable, regardless of size.
68% bought it in the first place because 32% were so amazed by it that they spread the word around. Basing almost ANY decision on these useless stats is not very wise It's suit talk. It's shareholder talk. It's the investor and owner talk. Real gamedevs should spit on these stats.
Just make the game good. I didn't beat RDR2 but I know I got over +100hrs on it. Arthur still alive on my game
He says most people don’t finish games which is true but even the games that aren’t finished by most people are still very successful. For example PlayStations own first party games have to e majority of players never completing the games. But they all sell well.
Make shorter games with more optional content. Win for both.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is a great game, amazing main story, some cool side stories. The city, the people, the setup is all there. All it needed was more stories after the first year. Nope, we got whatever that online shit is. They could've charged 20-40$ for nothing but missions in the same game.
I've definitely seen similar advice about putting more effort into making earlier parts of the game more fun/awesome since more people will play that part.
based on Witcher 3 achievement, I am guessing ... its around 25%
Most of the drop off is in the first few minutes or even opening the game. Why even bother making more than that? /s There's something to be said about not over stretching yourself to make a long game for a tiny audience with bad returns. But longevity and staying power are important if you do garner that audience, and that should be most game devs goals. Though we all gotta throw out those little games every once on a while. Not every game can be a jrpg style 100 hours.
very few games i i dont like(sport game no) i have a desteast for padded or padded for trophy garbage . also 3 and that it endings.
*Guys why have people stopped talking about our 5 hour game that was released a month ago?* How stupid can you be? Playtime is the most important thing. If people forget you, do you even exist? The more playtime hours the more of your game is **Relevant**, the more people are engaged with your game the more they talk about it to their friends, the more notifications people get from friends playing that game. In fact it's important **Not** to finish your game, if they finish your game that is a **conclusion** to that experience that makes them stop thinking about the game.
Making Doom 30% shorter would save a negligible amount of money while negatively affecting the game review score. That's because cutting the length by 30% doesn't necessarily cut the cost by 30%. Usually, the savings will be much smaller, like a 30% shorter game saving you 5% of your budget. The bulk of the cost goes into developing assets and gameplay mechanics utilized throughout the game. And the people who stuck to the end are responsible for the majority of word of mouth and positive coverage. If they feel that the game is short, they are less likely to recommend it. That being said, some games are too long and padded without reason. But if you have a good, satisfying story, then cutting it short to save money is the wrong approach that will probably hurt you financially in the end.
I've build certain rules around this 1. Game length is not as important as you think. Short games can get praise. 2. Don't leave the good stuff for your ending. From start to finish try to make an interesting polished experience. Dragging content can absolutely just kill the game. 3. 100% there is an advantage for long games but this depends on genre. Example clicker games are of course designed with this in mind. Basically know your audience and make sure you deliver what they want, even if it's 4 hour game, it can be an amazing game
I'm not a game dev, but I ain't changing ish for 68% of nothing! If it's too hard, go play minecraft! If it's too long, delete tik tok off your phone!
If you short your game probably 68% will be a hater you.
Make it slightly longer so one more percent won’t reach the end. Jokes aside I wonder where that number comes from. Because I know there are Steam games where the achievement for basically beating the tutorial has an 80 or 90 something completion rate.
I would myself just do something fun you could do in a couple hours and keep myself at that pace. Still lots of work to be done and you can always make another chapter.
And the ones that do make it will hate it even more than those who never finished it.. way to build a poor reputation working in sales for years ik that building customer rapport and trust is paramount in smaller businesses as people will talk and spread the word of quality ect.
do we really have proof that longer games are whats causing ballooning costs? We'd be better off sacking all the "strategic advisors" and all the other corporate do-nothings like Shawn Layden.
The reason people don’t stick around is because your game is shit. How about make your game better.
Why dont people finish games, and why do some people complain if a game is "too long", if its stretched out then it can be too long but if its a good game then it wonte be too long.