Are shorter games better?

[Andy]

To view the article that these comments correspond to, please visit http://thisismyjoystick.com/editorial/a ... mes-better

[Phil]

It's a difficult question to answer really. I love games that have a story I can get involved in and ultimately see through to the end. I take great pleasure in going through that process and would rather a good story lasting 6-10 hrs than just a game that gives short periods of randomness.

Having said that i'm a big fan of sandbox titles that give you that main story but also give you value for money by opening the world up for you to do as much or as little with your game as you want. Often the side quests can be more fun than the main campaign but they are short lived so you get a bit of everything.

[Andy]

I think a diet of both.

Absolutely nothing wrong with short hits of goodliness, but then there's nothing better than losing yourself for a few weeks in a MASSIVE game.

[mattswindell]

I actually find that I don't fit the right box as far as this question goes - I don't have have a massive amount of time to play games so I should be in the short games bracket. I should be in the "dip in as I have a quick half hour" set.

But I couldn't be more the other way around.

I LOVE a massive game. Something you can sink your teeth into for days if not weeks on end, striving for that 100% achievement. Games such as Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, and Skyrim (its on my Xmas list, am so exctied ) are such examples. Masses of scope, loads of tasks, and millions of chances to wander off spec completely and forget about your main mission and improvise to your heart's content. Brilliant!! Even if it is only an hour or two at a time, or at the expense of a few extra hours kip

And that's what gets me about some of the latest titles such as your Medal of Honor's, Battlefields and Call of Duty's. Great games, but the main campaign takes nearly no time and then it's all reliant on the online game play. I'm still not that bothered about taking on Johnny Bloggs aged 12 from Utah, I like my own challenges.

So it's the longer games for me please....

[Canadian Loony]

It all depends on the game and the mood I am in or the time available. I absolutely love shorter games like Limbo. However a game like Gears of War can be fun it definitely isn't worth the asking price of $60. Not for the single player campaign alone. The real value comes with the online multiplayer. This is where people consume their time. If they sold that by itself for $20 or maybe even $30 then that's fine but to merit a games length needs to consider its worth first.

Lots of older gamers like myself just don't have the time to play games like Skyrim very often. That's not to say shorter games are better, just more convenient.

[Trent]

I reckon there's room for both when they're taken in their respective contexts. We can't expect every game to be as long as Skyrim or as short as MW3. They are different games made for different kinds of gamer and that's what makes gaming so universal. I'm not a big fan of competitive multiplayer so usually neglect to buy the CODs because while I may enjoy the campaign I'm not going to pay 45 fucking quid for it. In fact I'm a pretty anti-social gamer, so a massive, densely-packed world like Skyrim is perfect for me. I can spend endless hours traipsing around on my own without ever feeling the need to shout abuse at another human being sitting across the world (or pond). I think when people moan about COD being short it's pointless. Everyone knows that the COD campaigns have been token since MW2 or possibly even COD4; it's the multiplayer that gets the most playing. So if you want a rich and lengthy campaign just don't buy COD. In the same breath, multiplayer in Skyrim (aside from maybe some sort of co-op) would seem totally out of character and massively tacked-on. If you want to murderise foreign teenagers then you don't buy Skyrim.

I think the difference is story. While Skyrim has a surplus, COD has a deficit. People may say MW3 is the best campaign since COD4 (and they might be right) but that still doesn't stop it from being another 6 hour fireworks display about the Western military fucking shit up to save the world. But that fireworks display is breathlessly exciting and adrenaline-pumping. Skyrim has long, drawn out quests that take you across the length and breadth of the chilly province, but has little in the way of constant drive. Little pangs of adrenaline, such as taking on a dragon or facing a cave of angry vampires, peak in large sweeps of relaxed exploration and joyous adventuring.

Also, I don't think the point that many people don't have time to play big games doesn't really stand. With something so relentlessly paced like COD, it would break the mood to have to come off mid-way through a mission because you have to be up for work in the morning. However, big games like Fallout, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed (all of them) and even Batman are paced differently. To me they're like really good books. You can read a few chapters before you go to bed, or spend your entire day off work getting lost in the pages. I can hop on Skyrim for a bit, do a few quests and then go to bed, knowing that it'll still be there tomorrow and I can look forward to going back there when I have the time. There's no pressure to finish them, no hasty pacing continually shunting you forward. Games like COD and Gears give you constant objectives and goals and are constantly shouting 'GO THERE AND DO THAT NOW BEFORE ITS ALL OVER!!!!!' whereas games with more relaxed and spread-out campaigns will say 'You can do this if you like, but it can wait.'

I dunno I think it depends on perception really and preference. I love a good book and so massively enjoy spending hours and hours steadily working my way through a hench single-player and drinking in the world around me. I enjoy co-op multiplayer as a side dish, but don't crave it constantly. I dislike the rampant arrogance and attitude that saturates most competitive multiplayer and am about the least competitive person you're likely to meet, so I avoid it like the plague. These preferences shape the game's I choose to play and how I see the lengths of campaigns.

That said though, when you buy a game for 40 quid with no multiplayer and a 6 hour campaign... that's bullshit.

[mattswindell]

Like the idea of the anti-social gamer Trent, that's me to a tee

Also agree with liking to take my time over a game. If, like you say, you've shelled out over £40 in some cases, you expect it to last. I find the CODs, etc fun to blast through, but they're no way as satisfying as games that you can wander round and go "off the beaten track" in, and they are nowhere near worth the money.

I think a lot of it comes down to effort also. I found COD to be way too short, and that makes the developers a little lazy in my view. Creed Revelations, on the other hand, will keep me going until Xmas now and Santa brings me Skyrim (which with my pace of anti-social gaming will probabaly take me until June to complete ).

In terms of the pace of a game, I think I first really spent a lot of time playing the like of the Splinter Cell franchise. I liked the fact that it wasn't just a march in, destroy everything, then get in a tank and boom kind of game. It was slow, methodical, required some grey matter and lasted a hell of a lot longer. Better value for money, you might say. That has changed now in favour of a glossy introduction at the start of the game and then off into multi-player mode and make up your own game which you've just payed a lot of money for the privilege.

The other problem is that some of the shorter games (that in some cases would arguably blow the longer games away) are dwarfed and lost against the media machine of the bigger titles. It has to sell millions of copies and rake in more cash than a Hollywood blockbuster or its a failure in some eyes. Just look at some of the obvious awards that have gone out recently. None of us are really surprised that COD wins industry awards, but I reckon that gamers who regularly play a broader spectrum of games would have picked several others over that this year.

Right, off my soap box now, maybe time for some Angry Birds

[Azer249]

To be honest i wouldn't class shorter games as better, It depends on what the game is, how good the experience of actually playing the game is.

For instance take two of my favourite games of this year, Portal 2 and TES: Skyrim. Both games have a very different overall length and i clocked 5 hours on Portal (main story) and 72 on Skyrim. I wouldn't say that Portal was better because i had more fun exploring everything Skyrim has to offer. That being said i have to appreciate the short yet amazingly compelling story of Portal. I think it comes down to how much your willing to explore the game and what type of game you like. If your one to grind your way and want to explore everything, longer games will be a lot of fun, but if you want a short yet satisfying campaign that dosent drag on you'll like shorter games such as Portal.

[Kokuei]

I prefer shorter games with an amazing ride over a long game with textbooks worth of dialog. I'd like to state Bulletstorm as an example, I enjoyed thoroughly the game from start to finish without thinking twice. Why? Because the game is an absolute roller coaster. They don't have excessive dialog, and they don't have excessive travel; they just go straight to the action. All the way through.

I do still enjoy long action/adventure games though like the Assassin's Creed series. It gets repetitive pretty quick as each game is always more the same from the last. [Haven't played Revelations]. They're still fun and usually last 30-40 hours each game for me.

[ThisOnceWasParadise]

It all depends on the game. Personally, I prefer longer games if there is a good progression of gameplay difficulty and storyline... Feels like I'm getting better value for my buck, plus I love working at a game for a long time. I thought Assassin's Creed was a relatively short game (I wasn't doing a 100% run), but it really dragged after a while because the gameplay mechanics became very repetitive and boring.