Miyamoto doesn't feel like playing games anymore

A

Apossum

Guest
from cnn:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – This might come as something of a shock to the gaming world, but Shigeru Miyamoto – the man who created Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda – really doesn't feel like playing games these days.

"There's not a lot I want to play now," he told me recently. "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."

What he misses, he said, are games you can pick up and play – something the company hopes to accomplish with its next generation home console, currently code-named "Revolution".

Nintendo deliberately avoided giving too many details about the Revolution at the E3 conference this year, frustrating some fans who felt the company did not fight back against the PR onslaught of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Miyamoto didn't offer any firm details either, though he did offer a few more vague hints about how the system would be different.

"The Revolution will use cutting edge technology, but it's ultimately about how that technology is used," he said. "We asked ourselves 'why would a family need or want to have a gaming console?' The answer is what's driving development of the Revolution."

While Miyamoto insists the Revolution will have advanced graphics and features, he doesn't want that to be the focus of the machine.

Instead, he's trying to encourage developers to think outside of the genres that have become so well known in the industry. In other words, there's more to gaming than role playing, simulation, strategy and action.

"Rather than thinking we have a new console, let's make epic games, I want [developers] to make more unique products," he said.

That's the school of thought behind some of the upcoming games for the Nintendo DS. "Nintendogs," a Tamigachi-like canine simulator lets you experience the joy of raising a pup with none of the house-training. Whether U.S. audiences will embrace it is a mystery, but Japan has gone crazy for the game, buying more than 400,000 copies, according to Nintendo. "ElectroPlankton," meanwhile, blends music and art, letting owners mix their own tunes.

Less likely to make it to Western shores is "Touch Dic". (Really, that's the name.) This dictionary application for the DS is a bit different than standard electronic dictionaries, turning learning a new language into a game. For example, one person, using the DS' stylus, can draw Kanji characters onto their Picto-chat screen while others try to guess their meaning.

There have even been whispers of a PDA application for the DS in the works, though Nintendo declined to comment on that.

Of course, the Revolution and the DS will continue to primarily be game machines. (Nintendo's not straying that far from its roots.) And company president Satoru Iwata has indicated established franchises, such as "Super Smash Bros." and "Metroid" will be ready at or near launch.

How much support Nintendo will get from third-party publishers remains to be seen. Though they used a lot of smoke and mirrors, Sony and Microsoft both turned heads at E3. Nintendo's next-gen device was barely an afterthought for most developers.

If Miyamoto is concerned, though, he didn't show it. He said he wasn't overly impressed with what he saw from Sony (Research) and Microsoft (Research) at the show – particularly in their pre-show press conferences.

"Most of what you're seeing are not even the first projections of games," he said. "They're just shiny computer graphics. They're things anyone using a computer can do. ... It's how we're going to use the technology that separates us. What we want to do is different – and we're happy with the road we're taking. When you have a Revolution, you're not going to have the same experience as you would with the other home consoles."
 
I can understand where he is coming from about games being too long. I like my RPG's and all but I like games that you can just pick up and play for a quick gaming fix.
 
[quote name='GuilewasNK']I can understand where he is coming from about games being too long. I like my RPG's and all but I like games that you can just pick up and play for a quick gaming fix.[/QUOTE]

*cough*2d fighters*cough* ;)
 
fucking CNN is twisting words. He said that he doesn't feel like playing these big-ass 50 hour games. He very clearly, however, expressed his love of pick-up-and play games, the way that most games used to be. He just has his preferences. Jeez.
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']fucking CNN is twisting words. He said that he doesn't feel like playing these big-ass 50 hour games. He very clearly, however, expressed his love of pick-up-and play games, the way that most games used to be. He just has his preferences. Jeez.[/QUOTE]

I thought they said what you just said. Maybe my thread title is a bit misleading, sorry :)

Anyway, I like the idea of Nintendo returning to it's roots while taking a step forward, technology wise. Just as long as they keep those nice, long Zelda games coming to keep the gamers happy :)
 
[quote name='Apossum']
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – This might come as something of a shock to the gaming world, but Shigeru Miyamoto – the man who created Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda – really doesn't feel like playing games these days.
[/QUOTE]
Haha. This was really taken out of context.
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']fucking CNN is twisting words. He said that he doesn't feel like playing these big-ass 50 hour games. He very clearly, however, expressed his love of pick-up-and play games, the way that most games used to be. He just has his preferences. Jeez.[/QUOTE]

I didn't think CNN twisted any words around. The first sentence of any news article is always ambiguous and even seemingly contradictive or untrue. I took "these days" to mean "these days when games require a huge time committment", which I agree with.
 
Heres a better quote about not wanting to play games. "The PlayStation 3 is not a game machine. We've never once called it a game machine,"
 
I don't care if the game is long or short, I just want a good game. I'll play my RPGs and then go mess with Viewtiful Joe for a weekend or something.
 
[quote name='The VGM']*cough*2d fighters*cough* ;)[/QUOTE]

hell yes, 2ds and NHL Hitz 20-02 (possibly the best party game ever)
 
Kind of odd coming from the Zelda guy. I would think his own experience with projects across the spectrum would tell him there is always a market for everything. The game has to be good within its intended play style and level of involvement. I've played lousy puzzle games and great puzzle games but also lousy and great RPGs. My mood and current interest determined the type of game chosen at that moment. It was up to the developer to make it good enough to merit my purchase.
 
Sure theres always a market for everything. But certainly he doesnt have to like everything. Its just his own personal preference showing. And its probably not absolute, I'm sure he'll play the next Zelda. Another thing which he has always disliked, is RPGs.
 
[quote name='Apossum']from cnn:
Less likely to make it to Western shores is "Touch Dic". (Really, that's the name.) This dictionary application for the DS is a bit different than standard electronic dictionaries, turning learning a new language into a game. For example, one person, using the DS' stylus, can draw Kanji characters onto their Picto-chat screen while others try to guess their meaning.[/QUOTE]

:rofl: Wow. Just, wow. I can see it now. "Hey man, you wan tot play some Touch Dic?" That would make for some odd looks in public.
 
[quote name='epobirs']Kind of odd coming from the Zelda guy. I would think his own experience with projects across the spectrum would tell him there is always a market for everything. The game has to be good within its intended play style and level of involvement. I've played lousy puzzle games and great puzzle games but also lousy and great RPGs. My mood and current interest determined the type of game chosen at that moment. It was up to the developer to make it good enough to merit my purchase.[/QUOTE]

Now epobirs, you know that is not what he is saying. It's just like what most people are echoing in here. There are some good quality games out there that you can really get into. But some games are long just to be able to say they are long. And sometimes even the long quality games are not something that one might be in the mood for or have time for. So it's good to have other options. And aside from games like Nintendogs or electroplankton that are new "games" altogether, there are other options. Just look at how Super Mario 64 was designed. It was a quite long game if you accomplished everything. And it was quite sort if you wanted to zip through. And inbetween, you could go through the entire game in depth, but you could even do it in spurts quite easily if you so desired. There are many options for a solution, but it is very apparent that he is not saying that long games are dull or inadequate. He is just saying that there should be a variety - it should not be a requirement these days to make every single game an epic experience. (i.e. I have been playing LOTR:TTA recently and have enjoyed it more than I thought it wuold. But I find it painful and annoying to try and get through Helm's Deep. The end takes over an hour of just straight battles that are each twenty plus minutes and you get no chance to save. And it is tough enough that you have to play through it four or five times until you can get everything down and not have a Game Over. It is not fun.)

Anyway, he was not saying that long games should not be created. But there is a time and a place for everything.
 
I'm for short, pick up and play games... as long as they are priced below the norm.

Don't give me a 2-3 hour game and then charge me $60 (next-gen bias), for it. You can go to hell and die if you do that.

If you are charging $50 it better be at least 10 hours. Period.
 
[quote name='MorPhiend']Now epobirs, you know that is not what he is saying. It's just like what most people are echoing in here. There are some good quality games out there that you can really get into. But some games are long just to be able to say they are long. And sometimes even the long quality games are not something that one might be in the mood for or have time for. So it's good to have other options. And aside from games like Nintendogs or electroplankton that are new "games" altogether, there are other options. Just look at how Super Mario 64 was designed. It was a quite long game if you accomplished everything. And it was quite sort if you wanted to zip through. And inbetween, you could go through the entire game in depth, but you could even do it in spurts quite easily if you so desired. There are many options for a solution, but it is very apparent that he is not saying that long games are dull or inadequate. He is just saying that there should be a variety - it should not be a requirement these days to make every single game an epic experience. (i.e. I have been playing LOTR:TTA recently and have enjoyed it more than I thought it wuold. But I find it painful and annoying to try and get through Helm's Deep. The end takes over an hour of just straight battles that are each twenty plus minutes and you get no chance to save. And it is tough enough that you have to play through it four or five times until you can get everything down and not have a Game Over. It is not fun.)

Anyway, he was not saying that long games should not be created. But there is a time and a place for everything.[/QUOTE]

I would have to disagree. He appears to be throwing out bait for the whole casual gamer push all three console companies are going on about in various ways right now. Growth is peaking and even declining in Japan due to demographic shifts, and this has the platform makers concerned about their next move beyond more of the same. It's getting a bit tedious.

Miyamoto's own work have gotten steadily more complex over the years. The difference between SMB 1 and SMB 3 (what the US got as SMB 2 wasn't a Miyamoto game) was quite major, taking advantage of the increases in ROM capacity and supplemental chips in the carts. Mario 64 added a major learning curve for those not already accustomed to 3D platformers, which at the time meant nearly everybody. The DS version blatantly forces players through a no-risk training level where the player must learn to control Yoshi before they can start the real game. Which was completely fine and an improvement over the original. Then we come to Mario Sunshine which adds to the range of Mario's capabilities and then throws in the FLUDD on top of that. It takes every bit as long to get going in that game as it does in either of the two bestselling but absent from Nintendo consoles franchise he mentions by name. Need we go into the learning curve of Pikmin?

Wanting to play a 'moments to learn, lifetime to master' game is all well and good but Miyamoto is making a blatantly false suggestion that those items have ceased to exist due to the blockbusters productions with massive PR campaigns. This is like suggesting that megabusget action -adventure movies had eliminated the existence of new romantic comedies or tragedies. It just ain't so. They don't generate the same amount of buzz on the boards but they still remain very profitable in relation to their cost. when someone complains of a situation that doesn't exist, they are either delusional or making a bid for attention.

Consider what the Battle of Helm's Deep represented in the book/movie. It would be ridiculous if the game version didn't include an element of testing the player's endurance. But was that the sole game in the store when you bought it or did you pass up less epic titles for that very experience? Is there anything stopping you from having some cheap puzzle games on hand for shorter sessions? Or just visiting Popcap.com, which is another reason console publishers aren't making big investments for those sorts of games.

There are plenty of quick to start and restart games out there in the budget sections. For quite a long time they were mostly PS1 titles as they didn't need the PS2's additional power and could reach a far wider combined audience. Two years from now, if I had such a title in mind for the Revolution I'd ask myself if the GameCube would be adequate and allow it to reach those millions of Gamecube owners who hadn't thus far bought a Revolution. The same could be said for the relationship between the DS and GBA. If it doesn't require the DS' strengths a GBA game will still reach the DS market quite well.
 
I'm for short, pick up and play games... as long as they are priced below the norm.

Don't give me a 2-3 hour game and then charge me $60 (next-gen bias), for it. You can go to hell and die if you do that.

If you are charging $50 it better be at least 10 hours. Period.

That's absurd. You're saying you wouldn't pay full price for a short game? How long have you been playing games? NES games were $50 and you can get through most of them in a few hours, if that.

Look, Jade Empire is $50. It's about 10 hours long. I beat it, had fun, but have no desire to play through it again. It's a bit time commitment, as has been said.

Contra on the NES is about a half hour long. I've played through it a 100 times and that's not an exagerration. A short, great gaming experince could give you far more play time in the end. Replay value is important, and that shouldn't come from having to unlock pointless content or characters.

We're spoiled and rip on games that aren't 10 hours long, and that's stupid. A games length should have no effect on your enjoyment. A great game is a great game, period.
 
[quote name='gamereviewgod']I'm for short, pick up and play games... as long as they are priced below the norm.

Don't give me a 2-3 hour game and then charge me $60 (next-gen bias), for it. You can go to hell and die if you do that.

If you are charging $50 it better be at least 10 hours. Period.

That's absurd. You're saying you wouldn't pay full price for a short game? How long have you been playing games? NES games were $50 and you can get through most of them in a few hours, if that.

Look, Jade Empire is $50. It's about 10 hours long. I beat it, had fun, but have no desire to play through it again. It's a bit time commitment, as has been said.

Contra on the NES is about a half hour long. I've played through it a 100 times and that's not an exagerration. A short, great gaming experince could give you far more play time in the end. Replay value is important, and that shouldn't come from having to unlock pointless content or characters.

We're spoiled and rip on games that aren't 10 hours long, and that's stupid. A games length should have no effect on your enjoyment. A great game is a great game, period.[/QUOTE]


Do you even buy your own games?

Games cost money - the value of which I didn't know as a kid. Now that I know the value of a dollar I'm not throwing away $50 on a 4 hour game. I'm not one of you idiots who only see how "great" a game is and will pay anything for it. The cost of a game is just as much a part of its enjoyment (when mommy isn't paying for it, that is), as anything else.

It's common sense that the more money you spend the more you should expect and with great games that last 50 hours you have to ask yourself "why should I spend the same for this measly 3 hour game?" You shouldn't!!

And to say that expecting a good amount of playtime is being "spoiled" is ridiculous. You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Game prices are set to go up next-gen so is expecting some fucking value out of my games being spoiled? :roll:

Not to mention that as a kid old nes games seemed to last forever. It's easy, as an adult, to say "The old games weren't very long", but I guarantee that no one was saying that as a kid. Now as an adult who pays for his games its not as easy as that. There comes a time when you have to make decisions based on how far your money is going, and $50 for a 4 hour game isn't very far in the sea of decent sized 10-20 hour games.

By your thinking anyone can make a 20 minute game and be justified in charging $50, and because of people like you that may be the case one day.
 
[quote name='Scrubking']Do you even buy your own games?

Games cost money - the value of which I didn't know as a kid. Now that I know the value of a dollar I'm not throwing away $50 on a 4 hour game. I'm not one of you idiots who only see how "great" a game is and will pay anything for it. The cost of a game is just as much a part of its enjoyment (when mommy isn't paying for it, that is), as anything else.

It's common sense that the more money you spend the more you should expect and with great games that last 50 hours you have to ask yourself "why should I spend the same for this measly 3 hour game?" You shouldn't!!

And to say that expecting a good amount of playtime is being "spoiled" is ridiculous. You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Game prices are set to go up next-gen so is expecting some fucking value out of my games being spoiled? :roll:

Not to mention that as a kid old nes games seemed to last forever. It's easy, as an adult, to say "The old games weren't very long", but I guarantee that no one was saying that as a kid. Now as an adult who pays for his games its not as easy as that. There comes a time when you have to make decisions based on how far your money is going, and $50 for a 4 hour game isn't very far in the sea of decent sized 10-20 hour games.

By your thinking anyone can make a 20 minute game and be justified in charging $50, and because of people like you that may be the case one day.[/QUOTE]

I think whenever we have the recurring thread, "What games will you buy at full price' or preorder, which often means the same thing, we see a lot more votes for the lengthy epics than the little timewasters appropiate for short doses. Most CAGs are only going to shell out the big bucks for the big experiences.

The definition of the big experience has changed over the years. The gap has grown wider as things like optical media lets developers put far more into a game without high media cost but things like puzzlers just aren't big consumers of disc space unless they go utterly berserk on congratulatory videos or other frills. It's hard to imagine any game like that selling for the same price as major adventure titles as Tetris did way back when.
 
[quote name='epobirs']I think whenever we have the recurring thread, "What games will you buy at full price' or preorder, which often means the same thing, we see a lot more votes for the lengthy epics than the little timewasters appropiate for short doses. Most CAGs are only going to shell out the big bucks for the big experiences.

The definition of the big experience has changed over the years. The gap has grown wider as things like optical media lets developers put far more into a game without high media cost but things like puzzlers just aren't big consumers of disc space unless they go utterly berserk on congratulatory videos or other frills. It's hard to imagine any game like that selling for the same price as major adventure titles as Tetris did way back when.[/QUOTE]

Since you're the technical guy around here let me ask your opinion:

How would making a 20-50 hour game back in the nes, atari days compare to today as far as difficulty, creativity, repetition and technology?
 
[quote name='Apossum'] And company president Satoru Iwata has indicated established franchises, such as "blah blah" and "METROID" will be ready at or near launch.

[/QUOTE]

SOLD.

Dave
 
Long game or not, I was seriously bummed when I beat the Sonic game that was packed in with my Genesis in one night (in this case, the night I got my system). If I recall correctly, I didn't have the money (or gift-receiving occasion) to get another game for months. You better believe I nabbed those chaos emeralds right quick. (I can only imagine what earlier owners felt after beating Altered Beast in a few quick play-throughs.) After paying full price for Madden '92 with my own money, I finally came to the realization that I was denying my true identity as a cheap... er, gamer. If time equals money, then value certainly has something (though not everything) to do with playtime. Kids (and adults) shouldn't end up paying $50 for just a few hours of gameplay. (A comparison to the value of movies would be very fitting here.)
 
[quote name='Scrubking']If you are charging $50 it better be at least 10 hours. Period.[/QUOTE]

I also strongly disagree with the above. You have to define length better. More than 10 hours to finish once? Or more than 10 hours that you will actually play the game? If I would rather play Metal Slug 20 times at an hour a pop, that's actually more game for my money than some tepid action/adventure game that lasts 15 hours.

I bought the PS2 Metal Slug 4&5 pack, which is $40 MSRP (I got it for $30 at Fry's - I'm a CAG! But for the sake of argument, we'll use standard MSRP numbers). I will probably get at least 10 hours out of each game. That's 20 hours for $40 - $2 per hour, and the whole time I'm actually playing and not watching movie scenes or dealing with menus. On the other hand, I bought Onimusha 3 ($50 MSRP at launch, like most new adventure games) and took 10 or so hours to finish it. I might play it a second time (likely taking a couple hours less), but definitely not a third. Heck, I'll add a couple hours for mucking around in mini-games. So that's maybe 20 hours of gameplay for $50 . $2.50 per hour, that's $.50 per hour MORE than Metal Slug 4/5!!! And people are trashing MS 4&5 for being "too short", but when Onimusha 3 came out it was said to have a typical and acceptable length for an adventure game (which it does) and will almost certainly get me less gaming time for my money than the Metal Slug pack. Insanity.

You can "finish" many fighting games in less than 30 minutes. That doesn't mean there is only 30 minutes of gameplay there. You're not including repeated play with other characters, versus play, play to learn new techniques, and play just because it's FUN. I've put easily over 100 hours into Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. So which is a "longer" game - SF3:TS, or the 70 hours I played Final Fantasy X?

The other problem today is that most games are long just to be long. Whiny reviewers say things like "it's ONLY 20 hours!". I have ZERO desire to play almost all 10+ hour games more than once. In fact, while I'm playing the first time I usually think there is unnecessary (and boring) padding just to give it artificial length. On the other hand, I still go back to Metal Slug, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Super Mario World, Super Smash Bros Melee, etc - to this very day! The only 10+ hour games that I'll replay are a VERY small number of games per generation (this is a single digit number for sure, and probably something like 2-3 games per system) that are the best of the best - and even those I won't want to play more than twice.

Games these days tend to put a couple of gameplay mechanics into a 20 hour bore-fest. Using a few unique gameplay mechanics over a couple hours can be fun. It's just plain tedious when we see games stretched to many times that. The only excuse for length is RPGs with long stories, and that genre doesn't stop with what is necessary to tell the story - there are usually constant random battles that serve only to prolong the "fun" and lots of backtracking and fetch quests. Not exactly stimulating gaming, if you ask me.

Occassionally, a long game is actually not full of padding. Lots of strategy-RPGs tend to be that way for me - it truly takes a long time to go through the battles, and it's actual gameplay the whole way (and not just selecting attack to pulverize random battle foes that are no match for you). Does a 3D action/adventure type game need to be 20+ hours long? HELL NO! 90 percent of the time I just want the damn things to end after about hour 8.

I've got to agree, I think Miyamoto is absolutely right here...
 
[quote name='Scrubking']Do you even buy your own games?

Games cost money - the value of which I didn't know as a kid. Now that I know the value of a dollar I'm not throwing away $50 on a 4 hour game. I'm not one of you idiots who only see how "great" a game is and will pay anything for it. The cost of a game is just as much a part of its enjoyment (when mommy isn't paying for it, that is), as anything else.

It's common sense that the more money you spend the more you should expect and with great games that last 50 hours you have to ask yourself "why should I spend the same for this measly 3 hour game?" You shouldn't!!

And to say that expecting a good amount of playtime is being "spoiled" is ridiculous. You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Game prices are set to go up next-gen so is expecting some fucking value out of my games being spoiled? :roll:

Not to mention that as a kid old nes games seemed to last forever. It's easy, as an adult, to say "The old games weren't very long", but I guarantee that no one was saying that as a kid. Now as an adult who pays for his games its not as easy as that. There comes a time when you have to make decisions based on how far your money is going, and $50 for a 4 hour game isn't very far in the sea of decent sized 10-20 hour games.

By your thinking anyone can make a 20 minute game and be justified in charging $50, and because of people like you that may be the case one day.[/QUOTE]

Um, yeah, I pay for all of them. I have for 15 years. You obviously haven't played that long and I probably own more games then you've ever played. Value is the gameplay, not length. That's like saying the graphics matter, you know, like your signature, which you obviously don't practice.

If a game is 10 hours long, you're happy even if it sucks? You want 10 hours of misery instead of three hours of gaming bliss? Length has absolutely nothing to do with quality. Besides, when it comes down to it, most games aren't that long in the first place, sending you on ridiculous side missions as you're required to level up. I didn't even finish Untold Legends on the PSP simply because it dragged on so long. They could have cut it down four hours and it would have been perfect.

If a game is good enough, I'll play through it again. I'm more willing to do that at three hours than 10. It's a big commitment to play through a game now. I paid $40 for Metal Slug 3 on the Xbox. I beat it in a day. I also beat it again. And again. And again. Why? It's a great game. I'm stupid because I bought one of the greatest side-scrolling action games of all time and it's short for $40? Think about that.

Do you feel you're ripped off at a theater if you pay $12 for a movie that's 90 minutes? I mean, why should we pay $12 for that when we can go see one that's four hours. God forbid if we actually stop to think about quality for a minute.

Edit: Well, that was answered even better before me....
 
[quote name='Scrubking']
Now as an adult who pays for his games its not as easy as that. There comes a time when you have to make decisions based on how far your money is going, and $50 for a 4 hour game isn't very far in the sea of decent sized 10-20 hour games.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, here's the problem - there are plenty of "decent sized" 10-20 hour games. But most of them to me are also only "decent" in quality. I'd much rather play a great 4 hour game than a mediocre 15 hour game. If I have 4 hours of great gameplay vs. 10 hours of truly great gameplay, I'll go with the longer one. But that isn't usually the case in my opinion. Creating 10 hours of truly compelling entertainment is a pretty tough task without leading to boredom, tedium, and "filler". The truly great 10+ hour games are rare indeed.

Editing is important - that's why we don't have too many 5 hour movies, even though directors often want to cram 5 hours worth of material in. They are forced to cut all but the best parts to have good pacing. Same thing with books, editors are constantly fighting authors to make them cut some of the less compelling parts of their novels. Game producers haven't caught on to that idea for the most part - they want to cram everything in and water down the whole experience. I think it's one reason that games aren't taken as seriously as other media in an artistic sense.

Even though I LIKE Devil May Cry 3, I've got to admit that after doing the same sword and gun combos for 10 hours it gets awfully tedious. I think adventure games for the most part need some streamlining. We have decent 12 hour games now that could be GREAT 8 hour games. Dilutes the whole experience, if you ask me.

[edit] and now Gamereviewgod slipped my thoughts in just before I posted my last one - you got me back! Seems we think alike on this topic...
 
[quote name='Scrubking']Do you even buy your own games?

Games cost money - the value of which I didn't know as a kid. Now that I know the value of a dollar I'm not throwing away $50 on a 4 hour game. I'm not one of you idiots who only see how "great" a game is and will pay anything for it. The cost of a game is just as much a part of its enjoyment (when mommy isn't paying for it, that is), as anything else.

It's common sense that the more money you spend the more you should expect and with great games that last 50 hours you have to ask yourself "why should I spend the same for this measly 3 hour game?" You shouldn't!!

And to say that expecting a good amount of playtime is being "spoiled" is ridiculous. You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Game prices are set to go up next-gen so is expecting some fucking value out of my games being spoiled? :roll:

Not to mention that as a kid old nes games seemed to last forever. It's easy, as an adult, to say "The old games weren't very long", but I guarantee that no one was saying that as a kid. Now as an adult who pays for his games its not as easy as that. There comes a time when you have to make decisions based on how far your money is going, and $50 for a 4 hour game isn't very far in the sea of decent sized 10-20 hour games.

By your thinking anyone can make a 20 minute game and be justified in charging $50, and because of people like you that may be the case one day.[/QUOTE]


Good gameplay is what makes games great - not story or graphics
Click to expand...

hey chief-- even though I utterly despise the condescending tone of your post, I couldn't pass up the chance to use your own quote against you. if that 20 minutes is good enough to play 500 times, then it's worth it. If that 20 minutes is only good for 20 minutes, but it somehow blows your mind, then it's worth it.
I like to keep my games seperate from my prostitutes, I'm not paying for time, I'm paying for quality :p I think a lot of gamers concur.
 
[quote name='Scrubking']Since you're the technical guy around here let me ask your opinion:

How would making a 20-50 hour game back in the nes, atari days compare to today as far as difficulty, creativity, repetition and technology?[/QUOTE]

That is really hard to say. Plenty of old arcade games could fit the bill as they effectively had no end. Just a maximum difficulty level. Those guys who'd do multi-day marathons on games like Defender were able to do so because the design allowed them to rack up so many extra lives in the first few hours they could later take off for chunks of time to eat, eliminate, and nap then return to still have thousands of lives available. Those Williams games were unusual for that era because they allocated twice as many bits for such things. You could have 64K lives instead of only 256.

Memory and overload bugs were the only limit on some games, like Pac-man.

But those were really simple games with all of the difficulty being the exact same levels with just a little more enemy speed, shorter windows of enemy vulnerability, etc. The only limit was what the designers considered fair. Some would speeed up to the point of being beyond human ability or trying to display things so rapidly it turned into an unreadable hash.

As things got more sophisticated with more memory available games could be long without being pure repetition, like Super Mario Bros. If you didn't mind keeping the whole game within one or a very few sets of tiles and using palette swaps as cheap variety, you could get an incredible amount of mileage out of that. As far as ROM goes the levels are stored as rows of text. Numbers really, but if you ever did the same sort of thing on a computer like an Atari 800 those tiles were redefined text characters where the letter D could be a half-broken brick section, for instance. When creating the levels on really old systems it usually meant creating a text file that represented the layout. The editor in Lode Runner was really amazing when it first appeared.

So you could do some seemingly endless levels and endless numbers of them in a small amount of ROM in addition to the tile and sprite sets plus program code. It still added up. The definition for one SMB level was just a few K but that still meant you could put a price on each level in terms of the cartridge cost, so you did have that limit. The other big issue was endurance, by the developer and the user. If the size for the game was set in advance at, say, 48K, chances are the level designer was going to run out of space before ideas but a lot of tuning could be involved to best exploit the space. There was no bonus for having left over space if it wasn't a big enough increment (some multiple of 2KB back in the SMB era) but if it wasn't enough to build a decent level from the designer could spend some long days deciding whether to lengthen existing levels or shorten them to recover enough space for another level. Which could get real tedious when you could edit levels and see them running immediately.

Endurance on the user side came from the designer's attitude towards save games and whether increasing difficulty mattered if the player could come back fresh without having endured everything that came before. Besides, battery saves on consoles were expensive and passwords soon got distributed in magazines and other channels, allowing anyone to see high levels of the game without earning it. So many designers based the length of the games on what they thought was reasonable for a single session or cheated by setting the point of overwhelming difficulty for where they thought most people would already quit voluntarily in a repetitive game.

So, it was definitely doable if you could come up with something that people would willingly stay with that long. (At least after the Atari VCS where the ROM space was so limited they didn't used stored images for graphics but instead drew everything on the fly.) On some of those early RPGs they could get so much out of a single tile set and plaette swapping monsters the game's text might actually be greater than the code and graphic elements. The situation changed a bit over the years. As storage expanded new platforms provided ways to quickly use up that storage. If you invested too much in flashy graphics you might not have much space to left to give those graphics a script of any decent length and interest but if you stinted on the graphics you could find yourself faced with a lot of space to fill. In the cartridge days that had some economic virtue but no longer on consoles or newer portables like the PSP.

(On computers, something like an Infocom text adventure could go on without limit across multiple floppies but creating that would be like the difference between writing a 120 page novella and producing the entire 'Lord of the Rings' in a few months. Or the difference between writing a single episode of a TV series vs. cranking out the entire season's scripts.)

The problem that is really getting critical now, driving the problems of short game durations and high game costs in an era of extremely inexpensive storage, is complexity. The same capability that makes the new platforms interesting is also a big challenge. Now that you can have incredible levels of detail, someone has to define all of that detail. Some things can be automated, like growing a realistic forest of trees based on algorithms that generates each tree with enough variety to make it amazingly real but without sentencing a modeler to a year of nothing but making trees. They've been using that in CGI movies like Shrek for a long time but now it's moving into consumer realtime interactive stuff.

Thats great for objects that can be relatively generic but what about other things that can't? Say you want your game's lead character, a detective, to search through a missing person's home for clues. The problem in games like that so far is the house is always severely lacking in 'live' objects. There are so few things that are more than just background scenery, that can be touched and manipulated, that what is left is obviously what the player is intended to examine. It breaks the mood when the player is being so obviously led to a small number of items. The problem of creating the population of objects that makes the missing character real is terribly labor intensive when so much of it has no bearing beyond that scene.

I think we'll see an extension of the clip art concept. Long before computers there were catalogs of stock photos and illustrations of all sorts of things which were much less costly to license than for the licensee to create their own. This has moved into digital images and now includes 3D models of common things like popular car types that can used to quickly build scenes for things like forensic animation or storyboarding action scenes for film production. This will grow to include a lot of interactive properties, so that a game developer can buy a variety of common clothes that act like cloth and can be customized much more quickly than developing the same objects from scratch. A cotten polo shirt is the same object in a game set in the present or 300 years from now on another planet. Why reinvent the wheel. Just choose the color, put a logo over the pocket and you've quickly dressed your character and now can concentrate on what this character does.

Even with off the shelf objects that can be easily plugged into a game engine, the workload to make a really detailed world will be very high and that in turn limits duration if repetition is to be avoided. I believe we'll start to see more episodic games that like a TV series reuse the same props, characters, sets, etc. to produce short experiences for a low cost that cumulatively add up to a far lengthier work. A season of Stargate SG-1 is a marathon to watch in one sitting but that is only available after all the epsiodes have first been offered as a sequence of small doses.

THat will be for the high end of stuff breaking new ground. That doesn't mean new quick and simple games cannot be made profitably. It just needs a good idea to get started and the right marketing to reach the audience.
 
[quote name='epobirs']
I think we'll see an extension of the clip art concept. Long before computers there were catalogs of stock photos and illustrations of all sorts of things which were much less costly to license than for the licensee to create their own. This has moved into digital images and now includes 3D models of common things like popular car types that can used to quickly build scenes for things like forensic animation or storyboarding action scenes for film production. This will grow to include a lot of interactive properties, so that a game developer can buy a variety of common clothes that act like cloth and can be customized much more quickly than developing the same objects from scratch. A cotten polo shirt is the same object in a game set in the present or 300 years from now on another planet. Why reinvent the wheel. Just choose the color, put a logo over the pocket and you've quickly dressed your character and now can concentrate on what this character does.
[/QUOTE]

I believe there is already at least one company that just creates 3d objects and sells them to other developers, as you say. I forget the name now, but I saw something about it on tv recently (I think - maybe it was in a magazine).

[quote name='epobirs']
Even with off the shelf objects that can be easily plugged into a game engine, the workload to make a really detailed world will be very high and that in turn limits duration if repetition is to be avoided. I believe we'll start to see more episodic games that like a TV series reuse the same props, characters, sets, etc. to produce short experiences for a low cost that cumulatively add up to a far lengthier work. A season of Stargate SG-1 is a marathon to watch in one sitting but that is only available after all the epsiodes have first been offered as a sequence of small doses.
[/QUOTE]

Interesting idea. It should be possible (even today) for a company to spend some time up front to create a good game engine (or license one) and create a good cast and story and sell a game for, say, $40. Then, if it sells decently, they could spend all additional effort towards extending the story line, just like a TV drama, and release a new "episode" for only $5 - $10. If they put out new episodes every quarter or so at a cheap price, fans would buy them and the "more of the same" argument wouldn't be a factor, since that's the whole point and the new games aren't $50 (*cough* Madden *cough*. This is of course dependent on having great storywriters and well-developed characters.
 
[quote name='Miyamoto']"There's not a lot I want to play now," he told me recently. "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." What he misses, he said, are games you can pick up and play – something the company hopes to accomplish with its next generation home console, currently code-named "Revolution".[/QUOTE]
I agree 100%! I am sick-and-tired of playing games that are so s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fill 40 hours that they are boring (example: Wind Waker). Most of the time I don't finish them.

I prefer games that are short, but infinitely replayable. i.e. FUN. Like Beyond Good & Evil. Or Mario 64. Or Rez. Or Monkey Ball.




Those ultra-long 40-hour games are about as much fun as listening to a college lecture. They are stretched too thin.

troy
 
[quote name='Miyamoto']"There's not a lot I want to play now," he told me recently. "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." What he misses, he said, are games you can pick up and play – something the company hopes to accomplish with its next generation home console, currently code-named "Revolution".[/QUOTE]
I agree 100%! I am sick-and-tired of playing games that are so s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fill 40 hours that they are boring (example: Wind Waker). Most of the time I don't finish them. Those ultra-long 40-hour games are about as much fun as listening to a college lecture. They are stretched too thin.



I prefer games that are short, but infinitely replayable. i.e. FUN. Like Mario 64. Or Rez. Or Monkey Ball. My favorite games, that I still remember 20 years later (Pirates, Red Storm Rising, Adventure) only took ~4 hours to beat.

But each time you played, the story was different. You never knew what was going to happen, so you could play hundreds of times. It was always fresh.


I'm not throwing away $50 on a 4 hour game.
Click to expand...
Shortness of a game doesn't matter if you've got infinite replayability. 4 hours * 100 replays = 400 hours of game time.




troy
 
I think they are sending mixed messages...i know they want to captivate the casual/non gaming crowd...but isn't the next zelda 70 hours,
 
[quote name='firenze']I also strongly disagree with the above. You have to define length better. More than 10 hours to finish once? Or more than 10 hours that you will actually play the game? If I would rather play Metal Slug 20 times at an hour a pop, that's actually more game for my money than some tepid action/adventure game that lasts 15 hours.

I bought the PS2 Metal Slug 4&5 pack, which is $40 MSRP (I got it for $30 at Fry's - I'm a CAG! But for the sake of argument, we'll use standard MSRP numbers). I will probably get at least 10 hours out of each game. That's 20 hours for $40 - $2 per hour, and the whole time I'm actually playing and not watching movie scenes or dealing with menus. On the other hand, I bought Onimusha 3 ($50 MSRP at launch, like most new adventure games) and took 10 or so hours to finish it. I might play it a second time (likely taking a couple hours less), but definitely not a third. Heck, I'll add a couple hours for mucking around in mini-games. So that's maybe 20 hours of gameplay for $50 . $2.50 per hour, that's $.50 per hour MORE than Metal Slug 4/5!!! And people are trashing MS 4&5 for being "too short", but when Onimusha 3 came out it was said to have a typical and acceptable length for an adventure game (which it does) and will almost certainly get me less gaming time for my money than the Metal Slug pack. Insanity.

You can "finish" many fighting games in less than 30 minutes. That doesn't mean there is only 30 minutes of gameplay there. You're not including repeated play with other characters, versus play, play to learn new techniques, and play just because it's FUN. I've put easily over 100 hours into Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. So which is a "longer" game - SF3:TS, or the 70 hours I played Final Fantasy X?

The other problem today is that most games are long just to be long. Whiny reviewers say things like "it's ONLY 20 hours!". I have ZERO desire to play almost all 10+ hour games more than once. In fact, while I'm playing the first time I usually think there is unnecessary (and boring) padding just to give it artificial length. On the other hand, I still go back to Metal Slug, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Super Mario World, Super Smash Bros Melee, etc - to this very day! The only 10+ hour games that I'll replay are a VERY small number of games per generation (this is a single digit number for sure, and probably something like 2-3 games per system) that are the best of the best - and even those I won't want to play more than twice.

Games these days tend to put a couple of gameplay mechanics into a 20 hour bore-fest. Using a few unique gameplay mechanics over a couple hours can be fun. It's just plain tedious when we see games stretched to many times that. The only excuse for length is RPGs with long stories, and that genre doesn't stop with what is necessary to tell the story - there are usually constant random battles that serve only to prolong the "fun" and lots of backtracking and fetch quests. Not exactly stimulating gaming, if you ask me.

Occassionally, a long game is actually not full of padding. Lots of strategy-RPGs tend to be that way for me - it truly takes a long time to go through the battles, and it's actual gameplay the whole way (and not just selecting attack to pulverize random battle foes that are no match for you). Does a 3D action/adventure type game need to be 20+ hours long? HELL NO! 90 percent of the time I just want the damn things to end after about hour 8.

I've got to agree, I think Miyamoto is absolutely right here...[/QUOTE]

I agree with everything this guy said, he stole the thoughts from my brain. I really don't have the urge to learn the controls and intricate hoo-hahs of some new 30 hour adventure game, and then just tossing it aside for the next one. I would much rather have a game bolstered with replay value based on its fun factor.

It's a good thing I have my Warioware: Twisted!
 
A company can't have *both* short and long?

I think Miyamoto is saying, "Here's Zelda for the gamers who enjoy wasting... er, spending 70 hours solving stupid puzzles*........ And here is the new Mario Platformer. Yeah, it only takes 3 hours to play this new Mario, but because each screen is randomized, you can play it over-and-over, and that makes it more fun & more valuable. The new Mario is shorter, but it never wears out."




* (Can you tell I don't like puzzle games?)

troy
 
[quote name='electrictroy'] I agree 100%! I am sick-and-tired of playing games that are so s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fill 40 hours that they are boring (example: Wind Waker). Most of the time I don't finish them. Those ultra-long 40-hour games are about as much fun as listening to a college lecture. They are stretched too thin.

[/QUOTE]

Isn't Wind Waker by Miyamoto? How deliciously ironic!
 
[quote name='Backlash']I believe there is already at least one company that just creates 3d objects and sells them to other developers, as you say. I forget the name now, but I saw something about it on tv recently (I think - maybe it was in a magazine).

[/QUOTE]

Yes, Viewpoint has had a catalog of 3D objects since the mid-90's. http://library.thinkquest.org/28234/no-frames/cc/computer.html
(All the way at the bottom.)

But these tend to be just models with no behaviors encoded since there isn't any game engine with enough market reach to make that a rea business. Creating the behavioral aspects can be more time consuming than the visual appearance. (For instance, Burnout 3's primary appeal isn't its car model but how it deforms them and that is where most of the work went into it.) It's possible the level of complexity in the coming generation will spawn such products for major licensed engines like the Unreal Engine 3.
 
[quote name='Backlash']Isn't Wind Waker by Miyamoto? How deliciously ironic![/QUOTE]
Yeah it is. I guess Miyamoto prefers the original Zeldas, that you can play in
 
Who cares what he says he should stop doing interviews and go finish that damn revolution controller so we can be blown away by it . I dunno but it seems like most of nintendo's head reps are awefully verbale these days makes me wonder why.
 
Aren't ALL the reps verbal? All 3 companies (sony, microsoft, nintendo) are doing a lot of talking lately.



Also Miyamoto is a *manager*. He doesn't actually design anything..... he just delegates the tasks to his underlings. While Miyamoto is talking, some poor sap is sitting in Japan and slaving over the Controller Design.

troy
 
[quote name='electrictroy']Aren't ALL the reps verbal? All 3 companies (sony, microsoft, nintendo) are doing a lot of talking lately.



Also Miyamoto is a *manager*. He doesn't actually design anything..... he just delegates the tasks to his underlings. While Miyamoto is talking, some poor sap is sitting in Japan and slaving over the Controller Design.

troy[/QUOTE]

lol miyamoto the slave driver , what I really meant was that during the N64 and the gamecube period they (nintendo) really never were very vocal about anything now all of a sudden with the next gen coming out they seem to be more vocal Im just wondering why.

Maybe they are tired of getting dissed on by the other 2. Who knows im just being curious because the only other time nintendo was vocal was because of that yamuchi guy . Just curious
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top