Slashdot | Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long

Slashdot | Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long

I pulled this from Slashdot games today. It's an interesting issue - there are tons of games made each year, and there are a number of studies that show that only a very small percentage of people actually *finish* games. Which means that there's huge amounts of money being spent on content that never gets seen by anyone - a bit of a waste. But on the other hand, some of the games that people DO finish are great, and the sort of experiences you wish would never end. The question really comes down to the idea of just because we CAN make long experiences, should we?

Part of the question involves how much value people feel they're getting for their money. If you pay $50 for a game, should you get 50 hours of entertainment? Movies are roughly $10+ these days for around 1.5-2 hours of passive entertainment. Should games be closer to offering that rate of return for the entertainment dollar?

Without getting into details, I just finished working on a game with around 40-50 hours of entertainment, and we had a lot of issues offering really compelling experiences during every second of the experience. The pacing was mostly random, rather than being pre-set and planned, and we're taking a lot of heat in the reviews for it now. On the other hand, I'm working on another title now which is probbaly only going to be about 15-20 hours when all is said and done, and although the gameplay is much more focussed, it will probably be sold as more of a 'budget' title just because the player won't get to enjoy it for as long.

The other half of the problem is the rising cost of development and the need to get the most out of development dollars as possible. Making longer games reduces the tech risks and gets more mileage out of the money spent on developing technology, but raises the costs deveoping assets to run within that code. Again, the question arises - where's the best point of balance, this time from the business side?