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Games Entertainment

Dust To Dust - The Plight Of The Unplayed Game 122

Posted by simoniker from the stacks-of-discs dept.
Thanks to Eurogamer for its editorial discussing the phenomenon of having too many videogames and too little time. The author starts by suggesting: "Take a look at your own shelves. Look closely. Spot any shrink-wrapped games you definitely will get around to playing some day?" He continues: "Let's have a look at this writer's personal 'to play' pile: MGS: The Twin Snakes, Super Mario Sunshine, Knights of the Old Republic, Full Spectrum Warrior, True Crime, Deus Ex 2", before concluding: "Games. We love them. We could fill about 47 lifetimes playing them. But we hate them too. Most are overblown, bloated, and chaotic in their design. If they were movies, most of the footage would be on the cutting room floor. Few games designers seem to know how to edit, and weigh down the production process in the belief that we need bigger games."
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Dust To Dust - The Plight Of The Unplayed Game More

Dust To Dust - The Plight Of The Unplayed Game

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  • It is just a matter of time... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LincolnX ( 700433 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:20PM (#10019706) Journal
    It is just a matter of time until the length of time in certain game genres becomes nearly standardized. Such as the "average" movie length of 75 minutes.
    • I doubt it. A movie must be consumed in one sitting, while games can be played in chunks, saving inbetween. The need that drives movie length just doesn't exist in games.

      However, the rising cost of producing content will probably continue to drive down game length. Since this can only asymptotically approach 0, in that sense you are right that there is some standardization going on.

      • I mentioned it because amongst the game industry people there is alot of comparison with the movie industry. For good reason in most cases. As for game length, it is starting to happen in some cases. Usually single player RPGs are typically 40 hours long. Or that is what many developers aim for. Sometimes they aim for less.
      • "However, the rising cost of producing content will probably continue to drive down game length."

        Overtime, the gamedevelopers are able to build up a solid library of assets, once a the new technology gets adapted (for instance, the incorporating of bumpmapping/normalmapping in about every new game getting on the market right now).

        IIRC, id software has allready build themselves a nice library of assets with Doom3 ; I read in some interview that they wanted to keep in mind that the assets they made for D3,

  • Plight? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bottlerocket ( 605232 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:22PM (#10019714) Homepage
    "The Plight Of The Unplayed Game"? Hell, this article should be retitled "The Plight of the Guy With More Money Than He Knows What to Do With". He goes on and on about the games he's bought and never played, and I'm sitting here thinking of how I'm going to make this month's rent.

    • Rent (Score:5, Funny)

      by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:38PM (#10019790) Homepage Journal
      Get you to Sam's and get the case of Ramen: US$0.04/each. That's $0.12/day (just make sure you splurge once a week and get a lemon to prevent scurvy).

      As for getting the money for rent: you'd be suprised what a bounty the human body can provide! Why, selling your blood, hair and teeth alone should supply you with the necessary funds. If you have a woman, you can milk her and sell the milk, or make cheese and peddle that at the local farmer's market.

      • Don't forget the eggs. You get a buttpile of money for eggs. As soon as we develop sex-change pills that work the right way, I'm totally going to take them just so I can go sell my eggs.

        • Re:Rent (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Selling male reproductive material is, shall we say, somewhat more enjoyable than selling eggs.

          • I read in a Rolling Stone about some donor's life, and how crappy it was. When you become a sperm donor, you aren't allowed to have sex or masturbate except at the facility. You only go to the facility every other day or something like that. They also are very particular about your diet.

            If you're thinking that sperm donation is enjoyable, don't be thinking about the women.

      • Re:Rent (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tickenest ( 544722 )

        If you have a woman, you can milk her and sell the milk, or make cheese and peddle that at the local farmer's market.

        No, I'm afraid that if you have a woman, then you will have no money for games.


      • doesn't actually work. Not enough milkfat to make a decent cheese that people will willingly consume. (Yes, it's been tried, but not by me.)

        How do I know this? I have friends with a net connection and way too much free time at work. Also, a deep and abiding love of dairy products ensures that any cheese-related trivia they send me will stick in my mind.

      • Yuk. I have tried to live off of Ramen noodles (called Romulen noodles around these parts) and after a week or so it is really difficult to force the stuff down. You get hungry as hell but you just stay hungry because the thought of eating more of those nasty noodles makes you want to vomit.

    • Re:Plight? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Captain Splendid ( 673276 ) <`capsplendid' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:41PM (#10019801) Homepage Journal
      Amen.

      Step 1. New games come out.

      Step 2. Wait 6 months for reviews and game to come down in price.

      Step 3. Cherry-pick only the best, buying 3 or more games for the price of 1

      Step 4. Profit!

      • Re:Plight? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AdamPiotrZochowski ( 736869 ) <apz@nofate.com> on Friday August 20, 2004 @12:36AM (#10020036) Homepage
        bullshit

        its a story about a guy who now:
        1) has a job that takes 8hrs a day plus 1hr of driving
        2) has a wife (husband) / kids that require time and attention
        3) has a house / shopping / food / cleaning to take care of

        and finds it hard to play recent games.

        assume you have 2hrs a day of free time, of that you can dedicate
        1.5hr to games (the rest is to catch up with news/read book).

        this means a game like baldurs gate will take you 53 days to play
        (assuming that you can pass it within 80hrs of gameplay). This is
        almost two months. In those two months of play there will be
        atleast two games released that will be added to your to play
        list and out of a sudden you notice that the only games you can
        play are ones that take 20hrs to pass. Max Payne albeit short
        had the advantage of being short, people could start and finish
        it without wondering where the time was lost.

        Thats what the complaint is all about. That games should have
        'easy' mode that limits the scope of all of the quests, rather
        than making the enemies easier to kill.

        When I was at university I had tons of hours to play games, climb
        ladders, read on the web strategies, howtos, faqs, guides, etc.
        Now with work one cannot put that much effort to game playing
        any more.

        Even cherry picking games is hard. I am currently 4years worth
        of gaming lag. There are some games that take too long to pass
        and should have options:
        - 'Core Gameplay (75% of quests removed, easier bosses)'
        - 'Complete Gameplay (80hr of game play minimum)'

        My current list of games to finish, or atleast try to:
        - fallout brother hood of steel : Tactics
        - planescape torment
        - arcanum
        - lionheart : legacy of the crusader
        - baldurs gate 1 + addons
        - baldurs gate 2 + addons
        - ice wind dale 1 + addons
        - ice wind dale 2 + addons
        - deus ex
        - max payne 2
        - kotor
        - halo
        - etherlords
        - age of wonders
        - majestic
        - c&c generals + condition zero
        - Disciples 2
        - HOMM4
        - Thorgal : Odin's Quest
        - Serious Sam 1 / 2
        - Silent Hill 2
        - Lemmings 3d Revolutions
        - no one lives forever 1/2
        - Sheep

        blah, am lagging in games way too much...

        --
        /apz, only if life were as customizable as games.

        • Re:Plight? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:18AM (#10020338) Journal
          This is surely just a case of a serious PC gamer devolving down the evolutionary ladder of quality to a console gamer.

          Console games, as console gamers continually remind me, are more "fun" than PC games because they are simpler and you can just pick them up and play right away. They're also shorter and have considerably less replayability than a PC game - this is a good marketing strategy, similar to car manufacturers. If you make a car that lasts 20 years - you won't see that customer for 20 years. If you make a car that lasts 2 years, over a 20 year period you'll see that customer 10 times.

          PC gamers tend to be more discerning, where playability and the quality of investment are much more important, as well as modability and improvements to the game via patches over a longer time period. This is great if you're a dedicated gamer.

          What gets me is that the writer is trying to tell us we need shorter, lower quality games which are more simple, just because *he* doesn't have time to play games like he used to. I'm not sure why we should suffer because he's shifted lower than the lowest common denominator, though.
          • [i]What gets me is that the writer is trying to tell us we need shorter, lower quality games which are more simple, just because *he* doesn't have time to play games like he used to. I'm not sure why we should suffer because he's shifted lower than the lowest common denominator, though.[/i]

            No, he is saying that there should be an OPTION. He doesnt want games to be soley tailored to gamers like him (and me) but there should be an option available.

            Everyone else just doesnt take that option, and they are not
        • You can do either of the serious sam games in a weekend if you've a reasonably serious FPS past. Bloody good games too, I had a lot of (short lived) fun on them.

          Dave
          • > You can do either of the serious sam games in a weekend

            I'll second that. Get a buddy or two over, and play it co-op!

            > Bloody good games too,

            Yeap. Can't wait to see the features in their 2nd engine.
        • My, thats some list.

          I have HOMM4, and it took me about 5 hours to do the very first level. The very first. Its a great game but takes far too long.

          I have a few games I dip into for a brief hit, mainly online shooters like Unreal Tournament 2004. However, that kind of game seems to the the polar opposite of the kind you like.

          One game I play frequently that fits in with this kind of lifestyle is Laser Squad Nemesis, its wquick, yet still had depth. (Check my sig for a link)

          Other than LSN and UT I dont fe
        • I watched the arachnorox videos and had a great time.
          It's very well edited, has an interresting plot (for a game), originality (the old super hero for instance) and have some nice twists near the end. I even bought the game after watching it, but still havent had time to play it.
          Baldur's gates games could be nice to watch too if nicely edited of the long walks, especially the "let's go to the shop sell some loots and get some gold and then back to finish this place" boring trips and of course all the unnec

        • Make it Planescape Torment. Best RPG I've played in about 10 years. The setting is marvelous, really catching the steampunk-noir feel of the planescape setting, the dialog options actually enjoyable and fit the theme, the characters are truley memorable and often quite amusing, AND it can be finished without devoting months of your life to it. You can hold real sometimes philisophical! conversations with your companion NPCs.

          Now if you want Morrowind open-endedness, this aint it. It is basicly a novel t
        • I have a list like you, except my list of not finished but purchased games is small. I never got around to baldurs gate 2, and then told myself I'd buy it when it was 20 bucks in a doublepack with the expansion. Lo and behold, a couple months ago, there it was, so I bought it, even though I didn't really feel like playing it (just cause i waited so long to buy it). I played a night or two, but didn't get very far at all in it. That's ok though, because I didn't plan on playing it.

          I try to budget myself by
        • What's bullshit about my post? It's what I do. Come on over and disprove it if you can.

          Thats what the complaint is all about.

          And the general point I and others are making is still very valid. Maybe for you and him it's a matter of time, but for some of us, it's definitely a matter of money. We're not all super-l33t high-paid hackers here. I probably make in a month what most people here make in a week, and I have better things to spend my money on than 20 games I have yet to play, like food and th

        • - Lemmings 3d Revolutions

          Don't bother... this didn't manage to even come close to being as fun as the original Lemmings games. Cruddy graphics, confusing controls... blech.

          Arcanum was fun, but plan on playing it 2-3 times :-) I went through as a tech dwarf to start with, and someday when I have the time, I want to go back and replay it as an elf, and then maybe again as a pure fighter-type.

        • My solution: I game on the Mac.

          There's a shorter list of available games, and they are usually just the high-quality ones.

          Course, it takes them a lot longer to get down to my acceptable price ($20 - 30).

      • Why wait only six months? I won't purchase a game unless it's been out for at least a year and a half, and is still on the shelves. I also only purchase two or three games a year; this year's games were Escape Velocity: Nova, Morrowind, and Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri.

    • Re:Plight? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:48PM (#10019825) Journal
      I used to buy games and never play them. It was due to being a reasonably well paid sys admin, with geek friends, no girlfriend and an interest in gaming.

      Now I'm a poor student and I really have no desire to buy games anymore, for some reason. Maybe it's just being too tired to play due to the huge workload of being a geology student, but I think I may, and believe me this is difficult to say, I may no longer be entertained by games.

      Excuse me while I go and cry in the corner.

      • Would you like me to call Dr. Kevorkian?

      • Re:Plight? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *

        I used to buy games and never play them. It was due to being a reasonably well paid sys admin, with geek friends, no girlfriend and an interest in gaming.

        Jeez, for a moment there I thought my memory was going. Half of my PS2 game collection hasn't been played for more than 30 minutes. At least half of my secondhand gaming purchases haven't been played at all. At the moment I've got more TV episodes of stuff than I know what to do with. Friends I've been lending books, vidoes and DVDs to have started r

        • Re:Plight? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:27AM (#10020356) Journal
          It's not the having, it's the getting! Looks like you are stuck on an acquisition cycle. I should know, I'm stuck on one, too.

          Just remember, the things you own end up owning you.
          • Uh-oh, the talking book of clichés is loose on Slashdot again!
          • In Soviet Russia?
          • Just remember, the things you own end up owning you.
            Why not attribute your quote, this is from Fight Club. God, I hate people who get their philosophies from movies. Can't you at least come up with another way of phrasing the idea, rather than ripping it off wholesale?
            • Why not attribute your quote, this is from Fight Club. God, I hate people who get their philosophies from movies. Can't you at least come up with another way of phrasing the idea, rather than ripping it off wholesale?

              Okeydokey. The author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (The movie, Fight Club, is a loose adaptation of the book), borrowed most of his assertions from Bhuddism and Taoism, although he did not credit his source - although it is a courtesy to do so, the sources have long since passed into the p

  • KOTOR should be played! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jebiester ( 589234 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:28PM (#10019745)
    I also have some unplayed games on the shelf, but it would be an injustice if Star Wars:Knights of the Old Republic was one of those games. Seriously, try it out!

    Every now and then a game comes along that miles above the rest (especially for RPGs), like Fallout, the original Deus Ex or KOTOR. If you don't have much time, it's a good idea to not buy many games, and just the quality games when they come out. As the article says - be more discerning.
    • Picked it up for a song about a week ago. My System is crap, but the game still plays "reasonably" well, if I don't mind the crashing occasionally. (It's my system, not the game). Awesome game, one I plan on finishing.

      It's amazing what you can run on a overclocked Celeron 366.

      Sean D.
    • I was kind of bummed that KOTOR was so traditionally RPG-y. I found the # of character creation options at the outset pretty intimidating, I was worried about doing the "wrong thing", and then I got ticked at the combat, that LOOKS like it should be Zelda-esque action, but really is just a pretty-ized version of traditional turnbased dicerolls. (The combat really annoyed me -- look, I'll duck behind this couch! no wait, it just reset my "time 'til fire"...)

  • Required time investment is too great. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thracky ( 601756 ) <thracky@@@gmail...com> on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:36PM (#10019780) Journal

    The big problem with games these days, is they take far too much time to really get into the *good* parts of a game. Much like a book that starts off slow and doesn't get exciting until halfway through. Games however, cost a lot more, and frankly are much more repetitive and leave much less to the imagination than a book.

    Your average, casual gamer, does not have a whole crapload of time in one sitting to spend getting into a game. In my opinion if a game cannot draw a person in within the first hour, that person probably will not be anywhere near as motivated to play it again.

    My solution to this, keep games short, sweet, unique, and appropriately priced. Development times would probably be shorter, development *costs* would probably be shorter, and hell, people might actually get a decent variety of games that they can actually finish in one hour spurts throughout their hectic lives.

    • People want long play times from their games (I know I do), so your solution may not be all encompassing. I've heard more people crying that their latest $50 adventure game only gave them 10hrs of enjoyment, than complaints that they got bored half way through. There are dozens of games I would love to play, but I don't have the money or time for. That doesn't mean I would want the games I do play crippled by some length limitation requirement by publishers.

      • Hence why I said "appropriately priced" ;-)

        Cut down on the length and price of games, and maybe up the fun factor and uniqueness of the gameplay and such. (The unique gameplay is a bit more intangible than length, but hey, humans have been coming up with crazy ideas like flying and going to outer space and robots and stuff for eons. Maybe we can figure out some new ways to entertain ourselves!)

    • That's a negative (Score:3, Insightful)

      by UCSCTek ( 806902 )
      "Your average, casual gamer, does not have a whole crapload of time in one sitting to spend getting into a game" There are games for these types and there are games for hardcore gamers. Don't try to shoehorn the industry into serving one demographic. Take me for example: my PC tells me when I am allowed to eat, sleep, or do something fancy like go to school. I probably wouldn't like your short and sweet games nearly as much as my epic and complex games. Coincidentally, I also love really long books (w

      • Re:That's a negative (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thracky ( 601756 ) <thracky@@@gmail...com> on Friday August 20, 2004 @12:27AM (#10020004) Journal

        How many companies that cater exclusively to hardcore gamers have done themselves in financially in recent times? Quite a few as far as I can remember. SSI, which made quite a few war games as well as some others. (OK SSI isn't that recent) Looking Glass studios made some pretty hardcore and long games, but frankly was set to be one of the more promising game developer studios around. And I'm sure there are others I'm failing to mention here.

        The proof, unfortunately for hardcore gamers, is in the numbers. Where games like The Sims, Grand Theft Auto (Which was a long game, but it was a game that had action right from the get go and could be played in short spurts) and games that cater to broader crowds such as sports games, are king. And unfortunately, developers and publishers need money to keep going.

        This is not to say that games intended for the hardcore crowds cannot survive at all, epic games like Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy series games sell like hotcakes, but when every game tries to be a huge epic like the aforementioned RPG's, people run out of time, and start to lose interest because an epic game is no longer a special thing.

        So essentially developers and publishers need to focus mainly on games that can be enjoyed in short action packed or intriguing spurts (The actual length of the game may not matter now that I think of it, but the minimum length of time needed to fully enjoy a playing session.) but occasionally develop a huge epic wonderful game that the hardcore gamers and the occasional casual gamer will eat up, because frankly, not every game can be an epic sort of game.

        • You are more on the mark this time, thank you. All we can hope for is game genre density to match the corresponding density in consumers.
        • The proof, unfortunately for hardcore gamers, is in the numbers. Where games like The Sims, Grand Theft Auto (Which was a long game, but it was a game that had action right from the get go and could be played in short spurts) and games that cater to broader crowds such as sports games, are king. And unfortunately, developers and publishers need money to keep going.

          Unfortunately for the publishers, though, the people that go out and buy Madden every year, and maybe buy the occasional blockbuster like GTA:V
    • Except books cost about $10 for 2 hours of enjoyment whereas I wait till a game is normally $20-$30 before getting it and then making sure to get only decent games with normally at least 20 hours of gameplay and in some in the hundreds.

      Plus I find most games are much more replayable than books where I find if I've read it within the last decade or so I can remember it way too well (quite annoying).

      Then again I'm unusual in my reading speed and memory storage of books.

  • Who'd be (Score:4, Funny)

    by stimpy ( 11763 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:37PM (#10019786) Homepage
    stupid enough to buy games that you have no intention of playing immediately? That'd be as stupid as saving downloaded porn that you're never going to look at again...Ohhhhhhh! I get it now. Never mind.

    Brian
    • I do it frequently, if I find it cheap.

      For example, I recently bought True Crime: Streets of LA, because I found it on sale for $10. Right now, I'm pretty well backlogged in games, and I know I won't be playing it for at least a few months. But, I know I'll play it eventually, it's available cheap, and this way I'll have it when I'm ready for it.

      I'm always on the lookout for cheap good games.

  • Who has time for games?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by numLocked ( 801188 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:41PM (#10019800) Homepage Journal
    Great jumpin-jehosephat; I have tons of shrink-wrapped DVDs sitting on my shelf waiting to be watched! Cripes, the only chance I've had to play Doom III was at a Circuit City, with a small Japanese child behind me screaming helpful hints. I don't have time to go buy games, let alone play them. You want to talk about a genre where there's too much stuff to deal with? Talk about books! People have written books for millenia and they don't ever go out of date. Hell, almost every medium out there comes out faster than one person can deal with. Magazines, TV, movies, books, radio, newspapers, internet sites - video games probably come out at the most REASONABLE pace of all, simply because you only play up-to-date games. You never have to retroactively play a game because your friends can't believe you missed that classic. I haven't seen Scarface - I get bothered about it daily. No one ever yells at me for not playing Contra enough.

  • I wonder about the ages involved (Score:5, Insightful)

    by babasyzygy ( 786926 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @11:49PM (#10019834)
    I have to wonder how age correlates with the people who can't afford many games, vs. those of us who collect more games than we can play.

    I find that as I age, I have less and less time for game playing, more and more disposable income, and as much of a desire as ever to play the great games that come out every year.

    The people who are, say, under 30 and are saying "you have too much money" are missing the point: this is the plight of the aging gamer. I'm 34, and it's only the last few years that I've found myself to have more games than time.
    • I would be perfectly willing to take some of that "disposable income" off of your hands, or if you like you could just buy my games for me. heck ill even give em back to you when im done with em so they can gather duct on your shelf instead of mine.
    • I'm 26, but my income tends to be higher than anyone I know the same age. I don't buy a lot of games that get left unplayed, but it does happen occasionally, especially when I find out there's an older game out there that was supposed to be really good that I missed (and I can pick up for $10-20). Otherwise, I usually catch up with a lot of my unplayed games in the summer, when fewer good titles come out.

      I've also found myself playing more games that have long play-time, but can be played in short bursts.
    • I'm 14, and I don't fit into either category. I have 32 Gamecube games (two brothers), but the only ones I've never played are the Sims and Rebel Strike - and that's through lack of desire rather than lack of time. I don't spend long on some games but again, that's because I either don't like them or get bored quickly, rarely because of a great new purchase. And since I get 10-15 pounds a week thanks to my two paper rounds, and games are only 35, I don't find myself short of cash when a new game I want come
  • That is completely not me nor any other RPG fan.

    I remember playing Shining Force I or II many many times over, happening to find the special characters without really trying to do so.

    I remember playing FFT till I fell asleep, and then woke up sometime later before dawn, and continued on.

    I remember playing FF Legend(s) on the original ugly-ass yellow green LCD game boy, restarting an innunmerable amount of times, trying to kill that cactus looking 'Seven' character.

    I remember re-playing the Fallout games

    • I remember playing Dungeon Master (anyone remember that game), and trying every damn spell combination to see if there were other 'unknown' spells besides zo-kath-ra.

      I did that too! I still have a sheet of paper somewhere where I logged the results of that experiment. DM was one of the best games I ever played.

      Fortunately there weren't really that many combinations.

  • This guy obviously lives in a different world (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bskin ( 35954 ) <bentomb@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Friday August 20, 2004 @12:18AM (#10019973)
    I'm a college student. I have very little income, but lots of free time. (Well, not really lots of free time, but more than most employed adults.) When I buy a game, the *very first thing* I consider is the 'time i'm gonna get out of this game'/price ratio. I won't buy a game that's only gonna give me ten hours of playtime. A game that's 20 hours would have to come down in price a lot before I'd buy it. Even massive rpgs that promise 70+ hours of gameplay...I still think, 'yeah, but is it worth 50 bucks?' Cause let's face it, 50 bucks is a lot of fucking money for a toy.

    Basically...fuck short and sweet. I hate playing a game for a little bit and then tossing it aside never to played again. Maybe it's such a huge factor for me these days because games have virtually zero replay value anymore. I personally think this can be blamed squarely on systems with memory cards. Wonderful idea...but the problem is, when even your favorite dumb action game has savepoints, it just makes it so that when you beat the last level, you're done. I mean, looking back to when I was a kid...I probably put about 200 hours into something like contra, and probably 150 of those were the first few levels. I'm not saying memory cards are bad, cause they're great, but they've really changed the way we play games and how much enjoyment we get out of them (in terms of hours) for the worse.

    So maybe it's just because I don't buy into the whole 'video games are art, they're great storytelling!' thing. I call bullshit on that. Video game storytelling is as awful and childish as ever, by and large. No, if I'm going to throw down a large chunk of money on a game, I want to spend the largest amount of time possible enjoying it. I don't want some supposed masterpiece that's short and sweet but tells a great story. I want something that'll literally kill hours and hours and hours. Because video games are, and always have been, a timekiller. Forget whatever else.
    • Have to agree on the memory card bit. I likely spent more time playing ghosts n goblins for the NES than I have any 5 PS2 games combined. Anyone wanting some cheap games with high replay value should go buy some old nintendo games. I still go back and play some of the classics just because they are fun and often to this day more challanging than most new games.

    • Re:This guy obviously lives in a different world (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Agree entirely with the point about not liking "short and sweet" games, but I do take issue with some of the other stuff you say. "Short and sweet" has been the inspiration behind too many games lately, particularly PC fpses. Medal of Honour and Call of Duty were perhaps the worst offenders; that the latter should have received so many "Game of the Year" awards is a damning indictment of the state of PC gaming in 2003; it was one of the shortest and most derivative titles I've played.

      On the topic of saves,

    • A proposal (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @05:26AM (#10020950) Homepage
      Personally I'm on the side of the "make games shorter" argument. However, shouldn't it be possible to satisfy everyone? I'm proposing, in a similar vein to the "easy-medium-difficult" setting, a "distilled-medium-dilute" setting which specifies the approximate size of the game.

      I'm currently playing Doom 3 and it'll probably be weeks before I get a chance to finish it. If I could play it through in, say, 7 hours, just being exposed to the most interesting parts, and skipping some of the endless corridors and mindless fighting, I'd be happy.
      • That's where cheat codes come in. I use cheats to skip the stupid, boring or repetitive parts, and get back to the experiencing new stuff and exploring.
  • When I was unemployed I had lots of time to play games but little money to buy them. Now that I'm gainfully employed I have money to buy lots of games but no time to play them.

    Same with this stack of books I'm going to get around to reading when I have the time.

    The only solution I've discovered is winning the lottery, but that hasn't happened yet. But some day!
  • I know this situation all too well. I think it's connected with the fact I started work just over a year ago. Since then, I've had a cash-flow I could only dream of during my student days, but a pronounced lack of free time. My "to play" pile includes Full Spectrum Warrior (beyond the first 2 missions), Forbidden Siren, Soulcalibur II and Metroid Prime. I think the fact that I now play Final Fantasy XI also doesn't help; MMORPGs tend to edge out other games quite brutally.
    • I know this situation all too well. I think it's connected with the fact I started work just over a year ago.

      Don't worry, Bush'll soon solve that problem.

      Oh, and for the love of Eris take "Metroid Prime" off the pile and play it. Best damn 3D action adventure game I have ever, ever played. The bit on the space ship is quite short and dull, get past it and down to the planet and you'll love it.

      • Bush won't affect me too much, as I live in the UK. And don't assume that everybody outside the UK hates him; I think he's done a pretty good job.

        Metroid Prime is the game on my list that I'm least enthused about. I played 2 hours or so and the control system seemed hideous. The Gamecube controller, with its stunted right analogue stick, just doesn't work for fpses.

  • A Different Twist. . . (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MistaE ( 776169 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @12:39AM (#10020043) Homepage
    I can sort of relate to the article author in regards to having a lot of games that I haven't finished yet. For me, I really blame the fact that the video game industry seems to have a "good game season" in which a crapload of good games will come out weeks within each other, which then forces the gamer (that has enough dough to buy all the good games) to pick and choose the ones to work on. Eventually, games are bound to be lost in the cracks.

    This is just, and its kind of weird, but sometimes I don't like to keep playing RPGs because I don't want them to end. There are a few games I've played that had great stories and the battle system and graphics were decent, but I just didn't want to continue playing. Just like how some readers fear finishing a book because when the ending is made clear the suspense and fun is gone, that's how I treat a good RPG sometimes.

  • A simple rule of thumb (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pat_trick ( 218868 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:15AM (#10020332)
    I won't buy a game until I've finished one of the games that I already own. Somewhere along the line I ended up with a few games that I still haven't played yet. So, I won't let myself buy a new game until I finish an older one.

    Sure, I don't play newer games right away, but that allows for the price to drop down about $10-20, and I'm still enjoying the games that I already have.
    • That's what I do. I almost never have more than two games on the go at once. I recently finished two, so I bought True Crime off eBay for £8. I could have bought it when it came out (and spent £30 on it), but I have been playing other games that had a higher priority to me. I knew I was going to get it eventually, but what's the point in getting it if I am playing other games already and I won't get round to that one for a few months? I might as well finish one I am playing and by then it w

  • Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @02:48AM (#10020398) Journal
    Will money get you through times of no games better than games will get you through times of no money?

  • Game demo scene (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @03:27AM (#10020491) Journal
    The game demo scene is sadly lacking. This is the movie trailer equiv. Very few trailers i see, and go, I *have* to watch that, but if I do think that, then I see it opening night.

    Usually the trailer only showed the 30 seconds of decent footage, in which case I don't get it on DVD.

    Good trailer + good film = DVD.

    Gaming is different. I am looking forward to the Doom3 demo.

    Why? I will not buy Doom3! But if they release a demo, I get to look at those graphics on my machine.

    Like the article says about bigger games, how you 'weigh' a game is different per game.

    I weigh Doom3 purley on Graphics. Therefore I will play just the demo.

    Just a demo of FF7 (I never really played that game) or a game that is really compelling (GTA [1-4]) can get away with a demo - usually time limited.

    Demos can make cracking easier (see recent /. story), but after playing the XIII demo, I paid for it, and I was glad I did!

    Commandos also had a great demo.

    More demos!
    • Often I don't even have time to play a demo

  • Pick a few, play them forever (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @04:57AM (#10020861)
    I've always wondered about people who seem to be more interesting in collecting games than playing them. Discounting the Atari ST games (which should tell you my age), the shelf with games is about a yard long, and that is counting "re-buying" games of the same kind: Civ went to Civ II went to Call to Power for Linux, Quake went to Quake II to Quake 3, Age of Empires went to Age of Kings, and MOO2 went to MOO3 (and then back to MOO2 very, very quickly). Those are the games that I still play -- Call to Power is a game I expect to be playing for decades. And then of course there is NetHack, which I see more as a life-long quest...nothing comes close to depth of game play.

    So frankly, if you have time for all those games, either you don't have a life (job, house, wife, kids), you are not a player, but a collector, or you are not letting yourself get your money's worth.

    • Quite agree. I do the same thing, I still regularly play the original Age of Empires. May be old, but I still find myself enjoying it immensly because it's just a good game. In line with that I bought AoE 2 (though I think I still prefer the original for some reason) After all, people haven't stopped playing Monopoly or checkers, just because they're old and all. Personally, modern games, though really quite amazing on the graphical level, don't really move me the way they used to. Referring to your A

  • Someone please shoot this guy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @05:06AM (#10020887) Journal
    Just what the gamer needs. More Max Payne. Games that are finished in a couple of hours with no replay. Bleeeeeeh.

    You like Max Payne? Well good for you. There is probably a market for it but that does not mean that every game has to be a Max Payne.

    There is a market for short simple games. There is a market for incredibly hard non-ending games. And there is a market for everything in between.

    Accusing Deus EX 2 of being to long suggest this guy is either a really bad player or just a very bad organizer. If anything version 2 was a lot smaller and was over far too quickly.

    Same with games like Elite Force wich can be completed in a couple of hours. I am expected to pay full price for that? Sorry, I grew up on games that charged full price but gave me weeks of gameplay. Hours is not going to cut it.

    And having unplayed games on the shelf shows that this guy needs to get a grip on his life. He buys games he never plays? Isn't that like those shopaholics?

    If we don't kill this guy then we will soon have an extra edition of the Lord of the Rings. The super cut, 1 hour for the entire trilogy. War and Peace, reader digests version. Baldur's gate, the lets not mess about version, you roll up a god and kill the bad guy on the first map. No need for all that boring endless roleplaying crap.

    If you want a fast game go play tetris. A lot of games by their nature have to be long. You can't simulate a flight between London and New York in 2 minutes. Landing on the beaches of normandy will at least take you as long as walking a few hundred meters of terrain. Telling a complex tale of growing up is going to take more then 5 minutes. Driving around the nurburg ring is not going to be done in a 2 minute game.

    Can't play all the games out there? Cry me a river. BUY only the games you really want and give the rest of the money to charity.

    • ... we will soon have an extra edition of the Lord of the Rings. The super cut, 1 hour for the entire trilogy. War and Peace, reader digests version.

      I'd hit it.

    • funny to see how the /. crowd is split on such issues.

      You can basically feel who are the overworked, busy professionals and the single college people.

      This is a PERFECT example of what i call the student paradox. While a student, you have little money and loads of free time. When employed, you have loads of money, but little free time. It is true and apply for basically all leisure activity (gaming, travelling, shopping...).

      Why do college student look for the best bargains when they buy? Because they can
  • Games. We love them. We could fill about 47 lifetimes playing them.

    I thought it was 42 lifetimes.

  • Anyone else getting green underlined text with hyperlinks to other websites while viewing the eurogamer website with IE?

    I thought M$ removed the Smart tags feature from IE6?

    Is this spyware, or something eurogamer has done for advertising revenue?

    Thanks for checking.

  • Opposite problem here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Friday August 20, 2004 @06:02AM (#10021036) Homepage Journal
    I have too much time on my hands, and I have a little bit of spare cash to buy new games. But new games just aren't coming out. The last video game I bought was Mega Man Anniversary collection, which is just a re-release of old mega man games. Before that it had been a long time since I got a new game.

    There just aren't a plethora of new good games out. Back in the NES days I would go to toys 'r' us and have trouble picking a game out. Nowadays I read about all the games online and I know exactly which ones I want. When one gets released I go to the store and get it. But quality is severely lacking. One or two good games being released every few months is about the current rate. It's really pretty sad.
  • I'll wager that I have the oldest shrink-wrapped game of anyone.
    I have "Zone of Avoidance" by Casady & Greene,a game from maybe 1991 that requires "Mac Plus or greater". Hey, that means it'll work on my G4, right? I'll get around to playing it someday!

  • Monkey Island 2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Robmonster ( 158873 ) <slashdot.journal2.store@neverbox.com> on Friday August 20, 2004 @06:59AM (#10021186) Journal
    MI2 had this kind of feature. You had a choise at the beginning if you wanted to play Monkey Lite, or the full adventure.

    Taking the Lite option simplified some f the puzzles, and removed some of the locations, making the game far more accesable to people on a tight timescale. It took absolutely nothing away from those who opted for the full thing.

    I completed the long version, then went back and did the short version to see what was missed out. As far as I can remember the many-stage puzzles were usually simplified by removing a few sections, or you automatically found an item lying around that you would otherwise have had to solve a puzzle to obtain.

    I cant see how this kind of choice can be anyhing other than a good thing?

    RM

  • I mostly play games for the storyline. If I find a game with a good storyline but bad gameplay system, I just find the cheats and move on to finish it quickly. That way I don't have a large backlog of games I haven't played. It also allows me to borrow games from my friends because I don't keep them for long. If the gameplay system is good I'll usualy buy it and finish the game in a legit way.

    Now, for some funny reason it is mostly classic games that I end up playing all the way to the end. For most n

  • Here's some advice: Take "MGS: The Twin Snakes" and sell it back. You'll save yourself endless cinema scenes (more time spent in cinema than gameplay) of terrible voice-acting and plot, and numerous rooms of not really engaging gameplay.

    I know someone's going to mod me as troll or flamebait, but I bought this game since everyone raves about the series. I couldn't stand it. I kept playing, thinking that maybe it would get better, but it didn't. After beating Psycho Mantis, I finally came to my senses an

    • I guess that MGS:TTS was mostly created for fans of the original MGS. I liked the original, I really liked TTS as well. Yeah, and I've accepted the fact that there's too damn too much cutscenes, but I don't care much, it's a good enough game. =)

      If you hated TTS you probably won't find original MGS any better, and you'll probably find MGS2 profoundly horrible. (Hint: Even more cutscenes. Same acting quality. Even less gameplay. =)

      You may, however, like the Gameboy Color version of Metal Gear Solid. It's

      • My understanding is that MGS:TTS is just a remix of the original MGS (MGS1 plot with MGS2-style enhancements). My college roommate had the original and it looked like he was having fun. I remember much of it, actually (he beat it like 5 times), and I think the voice tracks are still the same even.

        I still don't really understand... it looked fun! I passively watched a number of sessions of my roommate playing it! But it sucks so hard! I guess I'll just have to write off fans like you as a group of peopl

  • Some game that are often "too short" or not interesting enough can create a fan base to support what everyone wants. When I played Max Payne, i finished pretty quickly, but it didn't get uninstalled for weeks thanks to the countless weapon, level and ultimately the Kung Foo mod allowed me to play MUCH longer for such a "short game." I also started playing Half-Life later than everyone. This game was much longer than any game I played before, and once interest started slowing down on the final Alien levels,
  • If I can't get around to playing a game, it's usually because I'm not really all that interested in it.

    Metroid Fusion sat by my Gamecube Player unfinished for a long time. On the other hand, Metroid Zero Mission got finished the day I got it.

    This isn't really a rant (this time at least) about the declining quality of games. It's a rant about rising expectations and the desire to play something _new_. Grand Theft Auto II was new, something that had never really been done before. Sure it was Zelda-like,
  • ... people! Christ, people with no time can just turn on god mode to go through the game in much less time (in the games that have them). It does not take a genius to figure it out. You still get to experience the content and not waste time at usually 10x the speed of the non-cheater. You want a challenge still you say? Gimme a break, anyone that wants to whip through gamecontent that fast surely does not want the challenge of restarting the same level over and over and dying wasting their precious ti

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