Is it age, or production quality?
- Thread starter T.H.O.R
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Another problem this generation is that people just LOVE gameplay padding, just look at how much people love "Achievements", or games like WoW, The unlockables in CoD4 and R6V2, Assassin's Creed an No More Heroes, we just have to have "open worlds" and unlockables in multiplayer now, no matter how badly executed they are.
btw Khell it's not Crysis' fault that you went prone through the whole game, it's yours. If you didn't want to do that, then you didn't have to, I mean come on everywhere I went there were vehicles and if those weren't around I used the speed boost - if enemies were far off I sniped them (while using "strength" to be more accurate, problem was they could see me since I glow red), etc. etc. - why didn't you use anything else? It seems like Crysis was different for everyone, and I'm the only one who enjoyed it.
Hell Assassin's Creed would be a better example, for every assassination there is a zillion hours of running to a sidequest, pressing "L1" - and then doing another sidequest, or seeing an informant, who would give you a flag collection quest...
btw Khell it's not Crysis' fault that you went prone through the whole game, it's yours. If you didn't want to do that, then you didn't have to, I mean come on everywhere I went there were vehicles and if those weren't around I used the speed boost - if enemies were far off I sniped them (while using "strength" to be more accurate, problem was they could see me since I glow red), etc. etc. - why didn't you use anything else? It seems like Crysis was different for everyone, and I'm the only one who enjoyed it.
Hell Assassin's Creed would be a better example, for every assassination there is a zillion hours of running to a sidequest, pressing "L1" - and then doing another sidequest, or seeing an informant, who would give you a flag collection quest...
I think it might be your gaming philosophy. If main aim in a game is to complete it then it ceases to be a game. Fun should be the most important factor, not a rush to complete the game in x hours. Its why im not a fan of most MMOG's, people play to level up rather than to have fun. remember friends grinding is not gaming! If a game becomes a chore put it down.
Since the 8-bit days, games have (for the most part) technically gotten longer. Take Super Mario Bros 1. If you just went straight through it with no mistakes, you could beat it in under an hour. Now think of Mario Galaxy.
Now, most people played Mario 1 for far longer than Mario Galaxy, just because Mario 1 was challenging and fairly unforgiving, whereas it was nearly impossible to lose in Mario Galaxy, and it was more about making it through the whole thing.
Even relatively short titles like Gears of War or Halo 3 are still far longer than games like Karate Kid or the original Ninja Gaiden, it's just that you didn't have to keep playing the same level of Halo 3 over and over every time one of those scroll-respawning death birds knocked you into yet another pit.
I'm with you, I miss the challenge. It made beating a game feel like you'd accomplished something other than successfully holding the controller for a few hours. But that's business. You make more money by making games easy than by making them hard, so that's the way it goes.
- J
Now, most people played Mario 1 for far longer than Mario Galaxy, just because Mario 1 was challenging and fairly unforgiving, whereas it was nearly impossible to lose in Mario Galaxy, and it was more about making it through the whole thing.
Even relatively short titles like Gears of War or Halo 3 are still far longer than games like Karate Kid or the original Ninja Gaiden, it's just that you didn't have to keep playing the same level of Halo 3 over and over every time one of those scroll-respawning death birds knocked you into yet another pit.
I'm with you, I miss the challenge. It made beating a game feel like you'd accomplished something other than successfully holding the controller for a few hours. But that's business. You make more money by making games easy than by making them hard, so that's the way it goes.
- J
Ever consider that leveling up is fun?TrevorOfCrete post=9.68276.624028 said:
Anyway I believe the length of games is mostly reduced by the large production costs it takes to make games nowadays. Many MMOs solve this problem with a steady income from monthly fees and whatever extra costs they tack on (FFXI for example charges an additional dollar per character.)
The corollary of stating games are in a steady decline of fun-factor and replayability is that you're not only defining the worth of games soley on those two aspects (which completely neglects that games may be worthwhile without being 'fun' or 'replayable'), but you also give priority to your own perspective rather than however many gamers may approach a game.
Replayability is only worthwhile for as long as gamers recognize elements they wish to experience again. It's not uncommon to find linear, 8 or 10 hour games whose players repeat them time and again, and 30 to 40 hour games - such as role-playing titles - which illicit no further attempts at going through them.
I once found myself in an argument where a fellow gamer was exposing the virtues of Planescape: Torment's strong narrative to a group of gaming acquaintances, claiming that he would go on replaying the game once a year, and that no matter how many times he'd played it he would always relish in the extensive dialogue and give thought to the issues the game presented. While I could empatize with him, everyone else in the group could not see the 'fun' in wading through walls of text displayed in shoddy video resolutions. That's the point - to him (and to me, to a certain degree) I am not always interested in whether a game has this intangible quality of being 'fun' but am certainly drawn to a game that presents meaningful interaction.
Replayability is only worthwhile for as long as gamers recognize elements they wish to experience again. It's not uncommon to find linear, 8 or 10 hour games whose players repeat them time and again, and 30 to 40 hour games - such as role-playing titles - which illicit no further attempts at going through them.
I once found myself in an argument where a fellow gamer was exposing the virtues of Planescape: Torment's strong narrative to a group of gaming acquaintances, claiming that he would go on replaying the game once a year, and that no matter how many times he'd played it he would always relish in the extensive dialogue and give thought to the issues the game presented. While I could empatize with him, everyone else in the group could not see the 'fun' in wading through walls of text displayed in shoddy video resolutions. That's the point - to him (and to me, to a certain degree) I am not always interested in whether a game has this intangible quality of being 'fun' but am certainly drawn to a game that presents meaningful interaction.
I always looked at it the other way around.Bowstring post=9.68276.623723 said:
"I've got this great idea for a story. It has a lot of elements to it, so you know it's good!"
"The velociraptors that shoot out of that guy's pistols still just look like 3 dots."
"Even if his giant stick ant steed is hard to make out this are still the best graphics of the day. Come on! Look at his chef hat!"
Luckily these days we still have World of Goo, Katamari Damacy, Killer 7, Portal, LittleBigPlanet, Planetside, EchoChrome, etc.
It's easy to remember the great games of yesteryear, ransoming summers away in River City, avoiding shurikens from ninjas (take your pick here, TMNT, Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi) and pan over the hours spent with Cyberia's awful flight controls or forgetting that Mario went missing once.
You were a kid. Everything seems more exciting when you're a kid. I'm sure you can think of lots of films that seemed fantastic when you watched them as a child that are actually pretty terrible.T.H.O.R post=9.68276.623345 said:
You are also using selective memory: taking the best games of the past 20 years and comparing them to the average of today.
Games have moved away from the arcade-machine style level of difficulty designed to milk you of quarters, yes. Gamers are older these days, and therefore less prone to obsession and (due to having jobs/families/responsibility) not so keen to put up with frustration.
Most NES games had horrible production quality, even major hits like contra, and super mario. If someone tried to make contra today they would be laughed at and the company would go under. The only reason it took so long to "master" NES games is that they were hard, and not in a fair challenge kind of way, but in a "I need to jump on to a platform thats off the screen while being attacked by 10 things that if they hit me I die" kind of way.
The games themselves were very small even by today's standards. Most could be beaten in 1-3 hours one you memorized the timing. and that's all it was , memorizing timing, with no room for variation. Even with games today that are considered short at 6 hours thats 6 hours of unique content not 10 hours of replaying the first 45 seconds of a platformer trying not to die from poorly thought out level design. Another thing as the games didn't save you were forced to replay levels that you beat many times over to get to the levels you still need to win. Mario 3 is an example of this, as the game didn't save you were forced to replay the first map over and over and over not because it was hard, but because you couldn't skip it.
During the SNES there was a large leap in quality, as more developers adopted longer games with saves instead of short games that were an exercise in frustration. With another large boost with the PS1 and the virtually unlimited room of CDs compared to carts.
There are exceptions of corse, early RPG games in general took longer then new ones, but in that same token I can't think of any that came close to oblivion in terms of content, yea you can beat the main story in a couple of days, but its not uncommon for people to have put 500 hours into the same character and still play it.
That said, I think overall quality has gone down a little bit since the last gen; but not in a large amount
The games themselves were very small even by today's standards. Most could be beaten in 1-3 hours one you memorized the timing. and that's all it was , memorizing timing, with no room for variation. Even with games today that are considered short at 6 hours thats 6 hours of unique content not 10 hours of replaying the first 45 seconds of a platformer trying not to die from poorly thought out level design. Another thing as the games didn't save you were forced to replay levels that you beat many times over to get to the levels you still need to win. Mario 3 is an example of this, as the game didn't save you were forced to replay the first map over and over and over not because it was hard, but because you couldn't skip it.
During the SNES there was a large leap in quality, as more developers adopted longer games with saves instead of short games that were an exercise in frustration. With another large boost with the PS1 and the virtually unlimited room of CDs compared to carts.
There are exceptions of corse, early RPG games in general took longer then new ones, but in that same token I can't think of any that came close to oblivion in terms of content, yea you can beat the main story in a couple of days, but its not uncommon for people to have put 500 hours into the same character and still play it.
That said, I think overall quality has gone down a little bit since the last gen; but not in a large amount
I agree that most games are being made for the graphical oohs and aahhhs, but also, I think the problem is the gamers themselves. Games aren't made for kids anymore. They are made for adult gamers who (supposedly) can't spend 8 hours a day playing vidjamagames like kids (with parents who allow that sort of thing)can and most of us have ADD anyway. Also, gamers ALLOW it to happen. We all shout that this sucks or that is great and most of it is geared toward the graphics of a game or the fact that you can blow sh! up.
We need to stand up for ourselves more and NOT buy games that are pretty but short. Since that will never happen, we are stuck in this cycle unless we support smaller companies putting out less graphically intense games. Heck if you all can fork over $15 monthly to play WoW with those graphics and the constant grind, you can spend the occasional $20 every few to support indie game development.
/rant
We need to stand up for ourselves more and NOT buy games that are pretty but short. Since that will never happen, we are stuck in this cycle unless we support smaller companies putting out less graphically intense games. Heck if you all can fork over $15 monthly to play WoW with those graphics and the constant grind, you can spend the occasional $20 every few to support indie game development.
/rant