Dungeon Siege 3 - Interview @ RPS

"Hearty' implies rich and flavourful, so of course you'd want more. DS1 and DS2 were wildly different. In my opinion, the first didn't have the content or gameplay to sustain it and could have been much shorter.

My point is, the length needs to be appropriate for the content, not just long for the sake of it. Neither DS1 nor DS2 were non-linear open worlds, so what does that have to do with it?

Dhruin said:

"Hearty' implies rich and flavourful, so of course you'd want more. DS1 and DS2 were wildly different. In my opinion, the first didn't have the content or gameplay to sustain it and could have been much shorter.

My point is, the length needs to be appropriate for the content, not just long for the sake of it. Neither DS1 nor DS2 were non-linear open worlds, so what does that have to do with it?

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I didn't say they were non-linear, that was just an example of where length is important.

DS1 was utter crap, and cutting crap short doesn't make it any better. That's certainly a pretty sad argument.

The length wasn't an issue at all - gameplay was the issue.

Improve gameplay, and the length would have been quite appropriate.

But there's no disagreement here, really.

You like short games, no problem with that. I just don't, that's all.

I liked DS2 a lot. It adressed several of the concerns I had with the first game. It was obviously more inspired by Baldur's Gate than by Diablo, with deeper companions, companion quests, a somewhat non-linear progression, sidequests, a richer background story etc. To bad the expansion went back to the DS1 approach.

DArtagnan said:

You like short games, no problem with that. I just don't, that's all.

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No, I don't "like short games". I'm just not focused on length as a goal in itself.

Dhruin said:

No, I don't "like short games". I'm just not focused on length as a goal in itself.

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I'm very focused on length (please, no penis jokes). Very few short games interest me, and length has A LOT to do with that.

You don't seem to care about length, as long as the game is good.

That's just a matter of taste, and again - there's no disagreement.

DArtagnan said:

I'm very focused on length (please, no penis jokes). Very few short games interest me, and length has A LOT to do with that.

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I rather play Splinter Cell: Conviction (takes a day to finish) than Assassin's Creed 1 (takes a week). The quality of experience is more important than length. If a game is longer due to more quality content, fine, but length doesn't equal good in it's own. If a game is short due to lack of content, then it's still the level of content that is bad.

I don't really care too much, but it needs to contain enough content to be interesting. You just can't present a good story or interesting characters in a few hours.

JemyM said:

I rather play Splinter Cell: Conviction (takes a day to finish) than Assassin's Creed 1 (takes a week). The quality of experience is more important than length. If a game is longer due to more quality content, fine, but length doesn't equal good in it's own. If a game is short due to lack of content, then it's still the level of content that is bad.

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The fact that quality is more important than length, doesn't mean length isn't important. Splinter Cell is an ok game, and I think that last one would be a lot better as a longer game.

Assassin's Creed was a one trick pony, and it was crap after 30 minutes - when I realised that it was just endlessly repeating itself. I don't care how short or long it is, I'd never play it through to the end, regardless.

Length is important to me, and I mean VERY important.

Can I enjoy a short game? Yeah, it's happened - but it's very rare, and I actually stay far away from short games, because I know they're not for me.

Again, it's a matter of taste.

Some people don't mind short games, and they don't need perspective and a sense of being able to enjoy a game for several hours.

Some genres can handle a short length better than others. Something like Dungeon Siege, specifically, could never appeal to me as a short game - no matter how brilliant the gameplay was.

Rather, it might appeal to me - but it would still be a LOT worse as an 8 hour game, than a 30 hour game. I'd rather have content "spread out" for 30 hours, so I can enjoy the gameplay for a longer time. But nothing is that simple, and it depends on your vision as a developer.

When I play "designer", the last thing on my mind would be a short game.

Anyone truly believing the original Dungeon Siege would have been better as an 8 hour game, with all the "content/story" placed in those 8 hours - are not thinking this through. The hack and slash genre doesn't lend itself well to short games.

That game suffered because it had incredibly simplistic gameplay, and a non-existant story. Chris Taylor is a moron as a designer, if his conclusion is that the game was too long.

I think it's reasonable to instead say "the game is too short", say "the game is lacking in content". I have seen attempts by developers to make the game longer, by implementing mechanics that simply take longer to do. The large amount of "do X # times" quests in Assassin's Creed make the game radically longer than neccessary, so did the "guide NPC to LOCATION" quests in Forsaken Gods. Skipping these and radically reducing game length in hours, is acceptable by my standards.

A game rich on content is automatically longer.

JemyM said:

I think it's reasonable to instead say "the game is too short", say "the game is lacking in content". I have seen attempts by developers to make the game longer, by implementing mechanics that simply take longer to do. The large amount of "do X # times" quests in Assassin's Creed make the game radically longer than neccessary, so did the "guide NPC to LOCATION" quests in Forsaken Gods. Skipping these and radically reducing game length in hours, is acceptable by my standards.

A game rich on content is automatically longer.

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We can agree that a game without meat on it, is a boring game. Assassin's Creed is such a game.

Even so, I'd rather have a 30 hour game than an 8 hour game - if there was meat on it.

But I wouldn't want a 100 hour game, with 8 hours worth of meat.

It's a balancing act - and yes, there are exceptions.

I generally don't care for shooters, but I play them occasionally. Shooters are "ok" as short games, but it's still not about length. It's simply about how long I can stand doing the same things over and over, regardless of story.

Strong gameplay and story will carry something for much longer - and again, I'm a huge fan of perspective. That's a gigantic part of the immersion factor for me, that I'm not worrying about ending the game too soon.

When looking over the pile of games still on my list I decided to look up the amount of hours promised by the game. RPG's usually boasted 60-120 hours. The longest actiongames ended up around 15-25. RTS games are an entirely different beast. You will probably do a map at a time which depending on your strategy, skill and general perfectionism can take longer and shorter time.

Personally I tend to save the longest games to summers, but the games that takes a very long time to play tend to grasp me in a way that shorter games do not. The Final Fantasy games took so long to play that when the ending credits began to roll it was like saying goodbye to a family. I enjoy that kind of game, but it's impossible to play during most months of the year.

I prefer the shorter and more packed games during spring/autumn when I study. I want to be able to finish a game during a weekend and if I happen to enjoy a game too much I need to get it done quickly so it doesn't stop me from my studies.