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Games Entertainment

Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long 143

Posted by Zonk from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
CNN Money's Game On column has an interview with legendary designer Miyamoto in which the respected Mario-maker says that today's games are just too long to capture his interest. From the article: "There's not a lot I want to play now...A lot of the games out there are just too long. Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play." Commentary on the column at Press the Buttons.
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Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long More

Miyamoto Says Today's Games Too Long

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  • I guess it's a personal opinion, but I dare disagree. In fact, a lot of the casual games can be finished in about two days. I'd much rather have my games be so immensely large that it can keep me busy, preferrably without dropping variety ("Hi, pick up # of #, enemy # drops them.", multiply by a couple thousand.)
    • Id rather have games which are easy to pick up and play and just drop , but who also offer the depth if you want it .
      You can run through games like Mario 64 in a few hours , but if you want there is a hell of alot of gameplay in there.
      GTA3 is a game like that too , its great fun to play for a few minutes or a few hours
      • Yeah, what I like are games (like Zelda) where you have an ultimate goal, but there are lots and lots of points in the game play where you are rewarded, and not just frustrated over and over again by having to protect some chick for 10 years who continuously gets in trouble or falls in traps and what not (Resident Evil 4).
    • I disagree too. Halo2 I finished the same evening I got it (grr), thats the only game I've thought to be too short.

      On the other hand, the only game I've thought to be too long is Need For Speed Underground 2 - I've been playing on and off for MONTHS now!
    • how about them decent RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Kotor, Fallout, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Ice Wind Dale) or decent RTS (where single level can take you hours to pass)??
      • I do tend to like RPGs. I have Neverwinter Nights for PC, Tales of Symphonia for my GameCube, as well as several other titles (Morrowind, for example. Never get tired of that game and I still recommend it to any who like games like it.) I guess being an RPG nut does put me at a disadvantage when more pick-up-play-and-put-down titles are developed.
      • I assume everyone here has already played Fallout and Arcanum (ideally as a minimum-intelligence half-orc); PLAY PLANESCAPE TORMENT. One great story. One fantastic story with good gameplay, superb characters, interesting universe.... *drool*twitch*

  • Return on investment. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mister_slim ( 537501 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @06:10PM (#12725659)
    I think he means games are too padded. If I spend 40 hours playing a game it better offer more than repetitive gameplay and some poorly edited FMV. Look at Chronicles of Riddick or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. No extra filler, just gameplay and the minimum necessary background and story.

    • Re:Return on investment. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Sunday June 05, 2005 @03:13AM (#12727749)
      No, he was talking about how games take too long for each session. When I fire up RE4 I have to play for roughly half an hour until I reach the next savepoint. Quit any earlier and the progress is lost. Even worse are games with "preparation", e.g. you have to run twenty minutes to the place where you're going to continue with playing or have to gather a group to go into that dungeon.

      Compare that to Tetris, for example. Starts within seconds and takes a few more seconds to get into the standard game situation. Completely unlike an RTs where you have to build a base and an army before the real meat of the game starts.
  • we have an expression for this, which I can translate more or less like - "Arrested for having a dog, and arrested for not having one...".

    I think there's an equivalent expression in English but I don't remember it right now :)
  • This is something I've been saying for a while myself... It sounds real cool as a bullet point to say "over 140 hours of gameplay!!" or whatever, but do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long? It's a lot of work to get the payoff of a completed story. What I would really like to see in the case of huge epic tales is an episodic approach. A game that can actually be played to completion in the same time it takes to watch a movie is actually really appealing.
    • do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long?

      Yes I do. I don't want a game that leaves me with, "What? Thats it?" when I get to the end of it. If I wanted something quick I'd watch TV or rent a movie.
    • "This is something I've been saying for a while myself... It sounds real cool as a bullet point to say "over 140 hours of gameplay!!" or whatever, but do you really want to be locked into the same thing for that long?"

      Ordinarily I'd say "Yes!!". But I've had San Andreas since late February. I'm still only about halfway through it. The reason? I'm a busy guy. I'm really itchin to buy Tempest X for the origional Playstation. That was fun. Throw the disc in, play for about 15 minutes, put it down. May
    • If they are only offering a 2 hour game, then it had better be 1/70th the price of a 140 minute game (assuming similar replayability.) Okay, maybe even 1/7th of the price would be appropriate. Hmm... a series of $10 episodes of a very high quality video game? Might that actually take off? Video rental places would either make a killing off of it or suffer dramatically, depending on if they marketed them the same as regular games.

      I think the industry would end up losing out if it went to this. Basica
    • 140h of "You have to play that long to see the end"-gameplay really sound awefull, they simply would mean for many players that they never ever finish the game and that always leaves a fishy feeling, I for one wouldn't buy such a game. On the other side its of course not wrong to offer a game thats deep enough to be played for hundreds of hours without getting repetitive, that however works best with free-form games, where you arn't locked to tightly by a story.

  • I think he refers to length of typical play. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @06:22PM (#12725720)
    I dont think that he is so much against games that have 20 hours of linear play. I think he is against games that pretty much require you to dump two hours into a single play session.

    With a game like Final Fantasy, if your going to play it, your probably going to try to clear at least an hour of your time to play it, probably more. Halo probably takes what, about 30 mins for each level?

    Compare this to Wario Ware. You can pick it up, play for 15 mins, and walk away. Your not going to beat the entire game in 15 mins, but you are going to play a decent chunk of it. Animal Crossing is much the same way, you play it for short bursts of time, but you will likley pick it up more often in a given day.

    I personally think the sweet spot is about 5 to 15 mins for a single level, and expect the player to play for 30 to 35 minutes. If you give a player the opportunity to safely put the game away every 15 minutes without losing progress, you will prevent a great deal of frustration from very casual gamers.

    As for the overall duration of a game and playing it to the end, that is another debate, and is determined more by the kind of game and intended audience. Miyamoto is known for making games where 40% or so are secrets or optional. You dont strictly need every heard container in a Zelda game. You dont need every single star / shine in a Mario game. You can finish the game pretty quickly if you stick only to the essentials.

    As for my prefrence, I think that a game should not outlast its enjoyability. If a new user gets bored without finishing the game, you need to cut down on the elements that are taking up the extra time and make them optional.

    END COMMUNICATION
    • I agree with you. I think Miyamoto picked a bad example with GTA. Going through all of the missions could certainly take a while, but it's a game where you don't have to do that. I probably only played through five or six missions, even though I put hours a day into that game for weeks. I never "finished" the game proper, but i still had a whole lot of fun with it after I gave up on the mission structure. I stopped playing with it because I got bored, not because I got frustrated and gave up. nothing wrong
    • >>I dont think that he is so much against games that have 20 hours of linear play. I think he is against games that pretty much require you to dump two hours into a single play session.

      OK. But does not the savegame feature take care of this? So if I kick off a 2 hour mission and decide that after 20 minutes I'd rather do X, I just save the game and go off and do X. Later, when I am done with X, she gives me a beer and I am back at the game, where I left off.

      wbs.
      • OK. But does not the savegame feature take care of this? So if I kick off a 2 hour mission and decide that after 20 minutes I'd rather do X, I just save the game and go off and do X. Later, when I am done with X, she gives me a beer and I am back at the game, where I left off.

        In many console games, particularly RPGs (strategy and otherwise), you can't just save wherever you want - you may have to traverse a dungeon to a certain point, finish a long battle, or similar before being allowed to save again.

        • In many console games, particularly RPGs (strategy and otherwise), you can't just save wherever you want - you may have to traverse a dungeon to a certain point, finish a long battle, or similar before being allowed to save again.

          Some games are (slowly) addressing this. Although more could do with adopting this approach:

          They have two types of game-save. The persistent save, only available at actual save points. These are your standard "revert to last known backup" save points common to many RPGs and

      • Actually, Halo does this rather well. Both Halo and Halo 2, unless you're playing on Legendary, probably require WAY less than 15 mins between checkpoints. But then, I don't really know, I've never timed it and sometimes I think it was just 15 minutes, but it's dark out. Or light.
      • ### But does not the savegame feature take care of this?

        The length you have to play between savepoints certainly is an important issue, if the time you can spend in a game is 20min, but the next savepoint is 30min away, you are lost, you will make zero progress no matter how often you try and sooner or later dumb the game (almost happen with MetroidPrime for me). But things like 'Quest logs' are at least equally important, ie. if I don't play a game for a while, a week or a month, I might have totally forg
      • Sit down, power on the game and play it for exactly 15 minutes. How much fun did you have?

        Probably not much. You probably managed to walk around a bit, get into one, maybe two fights. Or go to a town and bought some stuff, and watched most of one cutscene sequence.

        Lets try that with Metal Gear Solid. In that case, you probably wandered around a bit, maybe hid from some enemies, and maybe got a key.

        Both of those are fine games. But neither is one your likely to sit down and play if you only have 15 m
        • Yes, but at the same time, knowing AHEAD of time that to get anywhere in a game I have to play for at least an hour till I hit the next save can deter me from playing. I love games, I'm not a casual gamer per se (got all 3 consoles and a rigged up PC to boot), but I can't ensure that I have the next hour available to play a game. I can get a call and have to go out, might remember that I have some school work to be done, my cat may require my attention. If i start playing and any of those situations come up
  • The great thing about games like GTA: If you dont want to follow the story and engage yourself in the whole big expansive thing, you dont need to dedicate any time at all to that. You can get into a car and drive. The best description of GTA is: "It's Pac-Man, except the dots are people." This is completely, 100% accurate. The police even make the same "Woo-woo" sound. GTA is Pac-man that people who like big expansive games that require dedication can ALSO play. But they are certainly not the only people wh
    • " If you dont want to follow the story and engage yourself in the whole big expansive thing, you dont need to dedicate any time at all to that. You can get into a car and drive."

      Erm. I hate to tell you this, but that's not all that exciting. You can drive around, but you're not really going anywhere. It's like being stuck on the same level of Pacman.

      Anyway, that isn't Miyamoto's point. His point is that games are losing their innovation. It's less and less like picking up the controller and doing so
      • > San Andreas, for example, is really only better than Vice City because of the big long story.

        Right, because having 4+ times the real estate, controllable planes, casino games, gang control, fence hopping, movement while crouching, stealth kills, train hijacking, parachuting, alpine bike racing, rural areas, vehicle hitching (tractor train, anyone?), body and car modification, bicycles, etc. has absolutely zero impact on gameplay...

        • "Right, because having 4+ times the real estate, controllable planes, casino games, gang control, fence hopping, movement while crouching, stealth kills, train hijacking, parachuting, alpine bike racing, rural areas, vehicle hitching (tractor train, anyone?), body and car modification, bicycles, etc. has absolutely zero impact on gameplay..."

          They're nice features, but the core of the game is still unchanged from GTAIII. Read the sentence immediately following the one you quoted.

          Don't get me wrong, I'm e
          • Well, from that perspective, the core of the Super Mario games has always been "jump on the heads of the bad guys and pick up coins". That didn't change in 2 or 3 -- they just made it so you could pull turnips out of the ground or put on raccoon ears in addition to the core game mechanic. The point is, the so-called "nice features" added in both game series did fundamentally change the overall experience.

            You'd have a better case if you were comparing GTA:VC to GTA3 -- but GTA:SA is so far down the road

            • "Well, from that perspective, the core of the Super Mario games has always been "jump on the heads of the bad guys and pick up coins"."

              That would be simplifying it down too much. Look at it this way:

              SMB1: Jump on heads, throw turtle shells, or fire flaming fire balls.

              SMB2: Pick up items and throw them at bad guys. Jumping on heads does not kill them.

              SMB3: Some you jump on and ride, some you jump on and kill, some you avoid altogether via the various suits you wear.

              GTAIII: Take cars. Drive cars.
              • That would be simplifying it down too much. Look at it this way: [...]

                GTAIII: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race.

                GTAVC: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a story.

                GTASA: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a richer story with a few added elements that break up some of the monotony.

                * * *

                And how is that not a gross oversimplification? Gimme a break. If GTA is just "taking cars and shooting people", then SMB is just "jumping on

                • "And how is that not a gross oversimplification?"

                  Play GTA 3, then Vice City, then San Andreas. It takes a while to find the differences. Play SMB1, then 2, then 3, you find yourself playing an entirely different way. This is not an insult to the GTA games, no need to take it as such.
      • "stuck on the same level of Pacman" you say?
        Have you ever actually played Pac-man? It's all the same level. It is a simple, fun game. With only one level.

        Yes, the story in San Andreas was much better than the story in Vice City. But the improvements to the game itself, ignoring the story (and side-missions), were such that I can't even stand to play Vice City anymore. Sure, it's like playing GTA III version 1.3-11 Alpha, but that doesnt make it a bad game. Grand Theft Auto is progressing in exactly the dir

        • You need to try some interactive fiction. You get mysteries, romance, collect the treasures, solve the word puzzle, and more. Normally in combination. Most IF is all about story these days, so there often is no puzzle as in the old days.

          Despite advancements in GPUs, games from the 1970's played on a vt52 still have better graphics than anything else.

          • I was grouping interactive fiction into the pac-man catagory. (collect the dots)

            I am a fan, though not as much as I was before graphics. (now when I want to read a bunch of text, I use a book. When I want a good story with a couple game elements thrown in every now and then, I play an RPG). Most of my IF fandom is just nostalgia.

            Unless H-games count ;)

  • They are too long. (Score:3)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @06:23PM (#12725728) Homepage
    I don't have the time that all these high school kids seem to have. That is, between my significant other, managing my house, and work, I've got myself a 60-80 hour week.

    If I pick up a game that brags of over 40 hours of gameplay, I put that fucker right back down. I don't have time for more than 8 hours of gaming a week, tops. WoW is nice in that I can have a WoW session that lasts an evening, and not be penalized (thanks to their rest system). Or I can spend a week and some change beat a 10-12 hour game. A 40 hour game usually takes more than a month to beat, especially if it requires that I level characters in repetitive, stupid, RPG combat.
    • Good luck when you get to Level 60. About the only thing you have left when you get there are the hours-long raids. And Battlegrounds, if you like PvP where you can't even talk to your enemy.
  • ... because most of them are boring rehashes of previous games. Where is the Elite of today? Why don't we see more well-done hybrid games like the original Deus Ex? What about the old 'innovative' games that fell through the cracks (witness: "Hardwar")?

    Generally speaking, companies like making money. Now, there's nothing wrong with making money, but when it's almost a proven fact that people will buy due to the eye-candy over gameplay, then it's easy to see why so many of today's games are just... mediocre

  • "Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."

    But Miyamoto is the one who created The Legend of Zelda, a game which for its time was the biggest, most expansive game out there (which I remember taking a lot of time to beat when I was younger). You would think he'd be excited about having the capability to make larger, more rich in-game worlds. It's pretty apparent fro

    • Legend of Zelda games never made it so you had to play for 2 hours straight, like a FF game. You could play for a half hour and go back later and not be confused and wondering where you were, or lose your progress because you were still an hour away from a save point.
      • ### You could play for a half hour and go back later and not be confused and wondering where you were, or lose your progress because you were still an hour away from a save point.

        Aehm, the Zelda games have IMHO *exactly* that problem. If you are half way through a dungeon and have to stop playing for some reason, you have to restart the dungeon again since your position is not saved, but only the number of keys you gathered. Its also very easy to get lost if you havn't played for a way, since the map doesn
  • I don't play games, and that's why. When I was a kid, you'd drop a quarter in a tempest machine, and you could play without making much of a committment. Now you have to buy expensive hardware and dedicate 40 hours to learning how to play.

    The other side of the argument, though, is that there are obviously plenty of people who like games the way they are -- they're certainly making a ton of money.
  • Most people who develop games no longer have the time to play through them. If you're working 10 hours a day at a job, then come home to spend some time with your wife or husband and kids, you just don't have more than a few minutes to pick up a game between the time that you put the potroast in the oven and the time to pick up kids from soccer practice. Game development makes this even harder, as you're surrounded by them all day long anyway. Your need to game is at least somewhat satisfied, but your ne

  • Real games don't ever end (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @06:45PM (#12725842) Homepage Journal
    Real video games don't have ends. They just keep on getting harder, and faster, and more brutal, until either you call it quits, or your score overflows 2^16 and wraps around.

    Power-ups are for sissies. Health bars are for sissies. Just give me 3 lives and an extra at 10,000. A true test of skill is a game like Asteroids or Centipede or Ms Pac Man or Joust.

    If a game has an end, then it is a rip-off.
    • Today class, we'll learn what an "opinion" is.

      I don't know where the hell you're getting that definition of a video game from, but I hope you don't seriously believe what you say.

      Real video games come in infinite varieties. It just so happens you prefer a certain type, which someone else like myself would find to be pointless and never-ending and most likely very frustrating.

    • go tell it the mountain brother! it was all about score and getting your name up in the good old days. warioware is kind of like that. the touched version is easy to play through but then you play the real game playing the mini-games for higher scores when they go faster and faster.

  • I'm not sure that current games are longer, but one thing that is certain is that they are often less interesting. For example, I think, overall, I had more fun with early Final Fantasy games than the later ones, but I'm not sure the early ones were really shorter. There are a few modern games that are really good, like Deus Ex, but most just lose my interest in striving for realism. It's almost as if there's so much time in making it real, that it just isn't real at all.
  • I love the guy, his games are my favorite, but...

    This explains why Luigi's Mansion, Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker and Minish Cap are pretty short compared to their ancesotrs. The Twilight Princess had better not suffer shortness due to this.
    • Aonuma, the director of Windwaker and Twilight Princess, has said TP will have 70 hours of gameplay. Lots of sidequests and exploration, I think. I can't wait for the 'Nintendo ripped of GTA' comments.
    • While Luigi's Mansion was short, it was the right length for what it was. They would've need to expand a lot on what Luigi could do to make the game longer. I always felt the game should've been released for $30 or so rather than $50, at which point the length wouldn't such an issue.

      Wind Waker was rushed to release in time for the Christmas season in Japan. It's pretty clear it was intended to be longer - I think I heard 2 dungeons were cut. The obvious place for one of them is when you are looking for Jab
    • I think the Zelda game deserves a write off. Ocarina of Time was hands down the biggest game of that generation, and potentially ever. Three young link dungeons, and like eight adult link temples plus shitloads of side quests add up to a hell of a lot. Honestly, it's no wonder the game came late, and that both Wind Waker and Majora's Mask seem smaller. Even though a link to the past was roughly the same size, it had the advantage of being 2d instead of 3d. And I think the dungeons themselves weren't as comp
  • What he actually means is "we have to convince people that shorter games are better so that we can spend less time and money in development and still charge the same amount for them."

  • I kinda see what he means (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Saturday June 04, 2005 @09:28PM (#12726637) Homepage
    I never finished Skies of Arcadia. I lost interest shortly after the point where the player had to search Deep Sky for that stuff, I forget what they were.

    I almost never finished Grandia. After I finished the first disk, I didn't continue far into the second before something else came up, and by the time I had time for Grandia again, I had forgotten most of what I was doing. While recently I went back, started over, and finished the whole thing, it strikes me as odd that it took me so long to do so -- Grandia has great writing, head and shoulders above most other games, and is usually a joy to play.

    This has only been getting worse over time. I've actually yet to finish Zelda: Minish Cap. The problem, as I see it, is that if I get interested in something else, maybe a project or a book or another game, then my chances of going back to the original game decrease dramatically.

    I think the best way to handle this, however, might not be to make games shorter, but provide more continuity links to player who stop playing for a while. Maybe recaps of the story at periodic intervals, that kind of thing.
    • I'm the same way. I a still chugging through Minish Cap, and embarrassingly enough, Wind Waker. Now, I have REALLY enjoyed both of these games. My problem is that I will play for a while, fairly regularly, and get about halfway through. Then something comes up, like you said. A project at work, or a book, or a trip, etc.

      Now I come back to the game and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is I am supposed to be doing there. I can't remember where I am headed, where I have already been, etc. So I just

      • Now I come back to the game and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is I am supposed to be doing there. I can't remember where I am headed, where I have already been, etc. So I just spend my first session back at the game running around being lost, not having any fun, and I just quit and don't go back.

        I definitely agree with that point. In the past I have found that the difference between a game I pick up after a break and a game I give up after a break is whether I can remember what I was up

    • Maybe you're just not mean to be an RPG player?
      • Considering that I've completed many RPGs, I sincerely doubt that. In any case, games cannot afford to be so elitist in their audience these days.

        • The only drawback to that is that then you end up with only shorter RPGs, as companies will then focus on the general audience rather than the fringes.

          I like the long-haul RPGs. I like a game that I know is going to take me weeks to complete the first time around and ages to unlock every last secret. Those are the games that make me feel like my money was well-spent. I definitely like something that I can switch on after work to and sink my mind into to escape from the daily grind.

          On the flip-side I lik

          • If a long-and-involved RPG is implemented well enough, it'll entice casual gamers into playing it. And don't misunderstand me -- what I was pleading for wasn't reducing all games to a lowest common denominator, but rather that games stop being so insular and impossible to understand and enjoy unless you're already steeped in a genre's contexts.

            This is one of the reasons I'm not so interested in playing FPSes, or sports games, or fighting games; who but each genre's adherents will really understand eve

            • I suppose that's one of the main drawbacks about any gaming genre. The complexity that puts some people off certain game genres is often what attracts others to the same genres.
              I don't play FPS games, or sports games or many fighting games for the same reasons you stated above. I don't want to have to know loads about the genre just to play a game.

              The related problem is that I enjoy RPGs because of the contexts. The ones that are more open to casual gamers often feel like they have something missing. The

  • Life's too short (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Canthros ( 5769 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @09:29PM (#12726643)
    to put 40 hours into a videogame while you're trying to carry on any sort of semblance of a normal adult life. Hell, by the time I account for my commute, my lunch, and my eight hours work in a given day, I've lost at least nine, if not ten, hours of my day to my job.

    Never mind time spent in the moring before leaving to work (roughly a half hour) or time spent in the evening in various hygiene relate activities (at least a half hour). I'm a painfully single guy, so I really can spend Friday evening and all of Saturday playing games, but I have to do laundry sometime, there's still some TV I do watch, and I have a variety of other errands that have to be run in a given week, not to mention any other entertainment that I might engage in. I'm lucky right now if I get three hours of gaming in during a given week. There's just too much other stuff to do.

    Shorter games that can be picked up for brief periods are a lot more attractive, since I've got to squeeze them in around the rest of schedule.
  • Ah, so THAT's why I never get to see the end sequence of any game I play. The games are too long! (the alternative being that I suck at playing games is thereby ruled out. Thank god for that)
  • When I was saying that Nintendo's game are too short by half these days.

    Yes a short game is fun, and i'd spend a few quarters anyday on Tempest or Pac Man, but I'd spend quarters on Bubble Bobble too, which is a rather long game.

    Wind Waker was too short. I bought a DS and a GBA and there is not 1 Nintendo made game I can't finish in less than 2 hours. The DS is not sitting on the mantle and the GBA is my 16 months old daughter favorite toy now (I bought her Dora The Explorer at the walmart bargain bin
  • I was a huge video game fan when I was a kid. These days, I have a real life, a girlfriend, and a job. I can't sit down and play some of these games because they take too damn long. That's why I don't buy new consoles and I don't buy new games.

    But I still own a gray box, 8-bit NES system and about 50 games, and I love it. Most people do. Because even a guest to my house can come in and play and enjoy it. They don't have to sit down and play for three weeks straight, two hours a day to make progress.
    • there is a market for shorter - play in one session kind of games

      That's what I love about Katamari Damacy. You can play in short sessions easily. Plus the unique gameplay keeps the levels from getting stale very fast.

      A longer game has to be really good to keep my attention without switching to another game before I finish. Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime I & II, and Prince of Persia the sands of time are a few that I won and managed not get distracted from. Countless others didn't fare so well.
  • Just because Miyamoto has a short attention span, my 50 bucks goes to a game too short to even be worth it? I've been complaining about games being far too short and he wants them to be even shorter? Nintendo's being driven into the dirt...
    • The problem is that most games today are both, to long to be really 'pickup and have fun' and at the same time they are also to simple to offer any kind of depth in the length. They are suck somewhere in the middle, which gives you neither.

      I don't mind if a game is only 10 hours long (Ico, Beyond Good&Evil), as long as it fun and provides something exciting, neither do I mind games that I can play for 100s of hours (EF2000, OperationFlashpoint). Games however where I have seen everything after 10 hours
  • Are games where you have to wander forever just to get to the next area where the action will take place. GTA and Zelda: Windwaker are two prime examples. Driving a car in a video game that is not about racing is freaking boring. Driving a boat? Equally boring.

    If I play an RPG, then I can expect a certain amount of grinding (hell, I even beat all the extra dungeons on Star Ocean 3), but one of the reasons I don't play MMORPGs is because of the ridiculous down time between, well, any action. Running f
  • Good games, like good books, are never too long, they are too short. The only thing that is important is that you can stop in between and do some real life, just like putting down the book for a while.

    This, of course, is another reason why the best computer game in the world is the best computer game in the world: Try finishing NetHack in one sitting.

    • Well, consider that any game gets boring at some time. Most games would rather end before they get boring thus leaving a good impression and the desire for more (thus a will to buy the sequel) instead of going on and on until the player is tired of it and making the player remember it as that game that got boring half way through. I think it's good when they end it when they run out of ideas instead of repeating levels or something just to get the minimum playtime up.
  • I wonder how many of these Slashdotters who complain that they don't have enough time to play games, are also ones who purchase the 10+ hour Lord of the Rings boxsets, or occasionally sit through a Star Wars marathon. Excluding RPG's most games will average 10-20 hours. I don't think that is long at all. Why are video games any different than any other form of recreation?
  • With sports games like football or basketball, you can always sit and play for 15 minutes, and actually finish something...the game. You don't need to save and come back later. If you don't like how long the game is, change it to 2 minute quarters, and finish the game in about 10 minutes. I like that I can sit down, finish a game, save my season progress, and then get on with my life, all with about 30 minutes of gaming time.

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