Comments on: Faster Games

By: Robert Padbury

Robert Padbury — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 01:35:18 +0000

Game Length is (obviously) a double edged sword. The number of people who actually complete a videogame dwindles somewhere at 20%. I think the issue of time should be left to what feels right for the game. Maybe the solution is variable pricing – though I’m against that.

Perhaps the answer for the videogame industry is not neccesarily to shorten game time, but perhaps change the way that games are played. So instead of setting aside 2 hours to play ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, I might set aside 10 minutes to do something in a game. The important thing is that as a player, I should be able to feel rewarded for playing the game for such a short time.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:10:31 +0000

But in a way most traditional games couldn’t really have been published at any point in history? Try marketing chess. How did those old complex & abstract games every become popular?

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:54:35 +0000

Eh… This isn’t a “trend,” this has been market reality in mass-market boardgames for decades. Try to get the buyer from Toys R Us to stock your game if you can’t explain it to him in two sentences.

I have. It doesn’t work.

Monopoly could not be published in the mass-market industry today; it’s too complex, and far too long. (It survives because it has a following–I mean, you couldn’t =launch= such a game today.)

But you probably couldn’t have published it in the 60s, either.