I agree, while I do have large amounts of time to game, especially during the summer (teacher) they are sessions with constant interuptions. Its pretty much required for me to play a game that it has the function to Pause the game ANYWHERE at ANYTIME, cutscenes, battles, walking around, anytime. I was able to play all the way through the RPG Eternal Sonata because at every interuption I could always just pause and come back 10 mins later or 5 mins later.

I'm glad that my email generated so much discussion. I'm not trying to start an argument or anything, but I'd like to elaborate on some of the points which have come up in some of the responses.

Some of the responses have touched on my "six months to complete a game" comment. Allow me to explain. My concern about some games is that over that much time, I start to lose touch with the narrative flow of a game. This can be especially problematic with RPGs featuing numerous characters and plot threads. Maybe it's just me, but experiencing a lengthy game in short bursts divided by days and weeks and months can lead to a disjointed, unsatisfying experience.

In my opinion, evaluating the relative value of a game's length goes hand in hand with weighing the offline and online components. Short action/adventure games are often offline, self contained and enjoyable. Many FPS games have short offline campaigns because it seems they expect many players will spend more time playing online. Perhaps some developers will refute that assertion, but it is a commonly-held belief among gamers I know.  

Don't get me wrong. I love shooters. However, in the future I won't be buying Halo or Call of Duty or any other FPS at full retail price because I feel like I won't using all of the game's features. If I play it at all,  I'll wait until a used copy shows up at my local gaming shop.  

The bottom line is, I hope game developers are taking notice of these topics because no matter what your particular point of view is, there seems to be some agreement that there is an underserved segment of the market out there.

While I do agree with Darren's points on save design and making sure short sessions are possible, I'm going to have to disagree with him on the length of games nowadays.  As others have said, many top-level games coming out nowadays are a dozen hours or less.  The reason reviewers focus on the negative aspect of a short game is the fact that many people don't just look at the price of a game, they look at the price-per-hour.  If I buy a 50 hour game for 50 dollars, then I got my entertainment at a rate of 1 dollar per hour.  If I bought a game for the same price and it only lasted ten hours, each hour cost five times as much.  In most cases, the shorter game was not five times as enjoyable as the longer one, so those who want value for their dollar feel ripped off.

While a different pricing system would be wonderful, where shorter games cost less money, this simply isn't viable from a game design standpoint.  Most of the programming in a game is focused on creating the graphics, sounds, controls, etc.  In other words, the 'foundation' of the game.  Once the foundation is created, adding on another level or cutscene becomes less of an issue.  It is far easier to make one 40 hour game than two completely different 20 hour games.

Others have commented on 'excess content' of a game increasing the length for those who want to lengthen their experience.  While I personally despite sidequests, they are a good compromise between those who just want to finish the game, and those who want hours upon hours of gameplay.  This is why so many longer games nowadays have 'sidequests', which are completely optional.  Just look at Final Fantasy X.  When you reached the end of the game, you had the option of going back and getting the 'ultimate weapons', or going through a number of difficult dungeons and optional bosses/sidequests for stronger equipment.  Those who just wanted to beat the game could do so without their playtime reaching obscene levels.

It seems to me that Darren wants shorter games because he still wants the exhilaration of completing a game, without having so spend 6 months on it.  Does he play games only for the endings?  Does he spend his playtime chasing the carrot on a stick, and gets frustrated when the stick is too long?  While the ending is a nice reward, you can enjoy a game without ever completing it.

Also, there's nothing saying you can't come back to a game later to complete it.  I recently did this with Grandia III: I played the game to the second disc, got tired of the game, and then came back 6 months later when the battle system was all fresh and new again.  Granted, this can be confusing if you forget what you were doing in a game, but you could always write things down, assuming the game doesn't do it for you (I love how some games like Rogue Galaxy have started implementing loading screens that give a quick recap of what you're up to at the moment.)

In the end, I'm mostly baffled that Darren doesn't like it when a game takes him 6 months to complete.  You just paid 50 bucks for a piece of entertainment that lasted you SIX MONTHS.  What movie or book could possibly accomplish such a feat?

Where does this continuing obsession with the save point model come from?

I'm a long term PC gamer used to Half-Life and it's brethern. Having moved onto using a Wii I'm really struggling to deal with the save point style of Gaming.

Half-Life 2 on the x-box had free saving throughout. Why can't other developers get their head round this?

I am in exactly the same position.  I've been playing 3D action games since the advent of Doom, but now I have a young family and don't have anywhere near the same amount of time to play.  Additionally, I don't really want my 3-year old son to see me blasting somebody to pieces.

I never play games with "save points" because it just doesn't fit in with the way I play.  For this reason, I only play games on my PC - they almost always have save/restore at any point.

I actually prefer long games though.  If it takes me 6 months to finish, that's fine.  Saves me a fortune, and by the time I get around to playing some games, they're in the bargain basement bin.

Another family guy here with 30+ years of gaming. I play WoW and would echo these comments. Having reached the ceiling level, I now hardly play as to get any of the better rewards I *have* to be in large multi-hour PUGs or join a guild, the majority of which demand regular scheduled multi-hour sessions. So, no progress and I disengage from the game until the next expansion pack. Bear in mind that I have not only bought the game, I am also paying a monthly fee to keep it going.

What's missing is the old arcade design. That's what the industry has gotten away from.  That easy to pick up and play singularly focused game experience that is completely and utterly polished to a hilt.   That doesn't mean Bejeweled or Peggle.  And it doesn't mean having 3000 options to configure in Madden.

Nintendo is about the only company that seems to do this type of game any more.

EA pretty much just keeps piling on the features in many of their games particularly the sports games.  

And most games like a MP3 or Halo etc aren't that easy to pick up and play.  You may think Halo is big, but games back in the day like Pac-man were huge!!!!!!!  

We're missing those games.  

WiiSports is something that brings that back.  It does more with less.  Guitar Hero is a game that brings this back as well.  

I'm talking Golden Tee instead of Tiger Woods.  MarioKart instead of Forza2.  

No I don't want 200 more types of vehicles with 3000 more ways to configure them.  I just want your best handful or two of cars popped into a highly tuned gameplay experience that I can play in shorts bursts and come back to for a long time.   And I want to play with friends.  I don't need 3000 ways to play the game.  I know alot of folks have fun in just going through all these options, but I don't have the time and don't enjoy that stuff that much.

Developers have focused on adding more, but not necessarily better.  Many games have grown to become product that one just adds and subtracts features from and stamps those changes on the box and out they come from the vending machine when you pop in $50.  

I don't want all these mini-career games to go away, but surely the industry is missing a bit middle ground here.   And could do more to service it.  That's why the Wii has struck a chord.  It's not just soccer Moms playing it.  It's folks that like games and just want to have fun, but don't have the time to play through franchise mode in Madden.  

Also along with the features the controls in games have grown so complicated.  Today's games aren't as hard as games from back in the day, but they sure take alot longer to get into because of the controls.  

The solution in my mind.  The audience that isn't being served as well as it should be.  IT all points to the Arcade experience.  The notion that frame rates have to be 60 fps.  That games have to immediately appeal to player.  That the experience has to be a few minute type of experience.   That you have to have content and a challenge to keep the player coming back.  Hopefully we see more of that.  Nintendo can't do it all.  There's many opportunities for western developers to step in and adopt Nintendo's way of creating games, but apply it to other genres and images Nintendo doesn't cover.

Like many other posters here, I agree with Darren that his situation is potentially an issue and that developers should consider that style of play when designing their games... I just disagree with him that this "trend" he sees is really there.

Yeah, there have been a FEW games lately with bad save systems, but generally-speaking most titles today, particularly the "AAA" titles, save every few minutes at the very least.

Game length has been DRASTICALLY shrinking the past year or so.  With every generation of console development resources increase exponentially.  For the most part, it now costs too much to create some epic "40-hour" title.  You would be hard-pressed to name a AAA title from the past year that required more than 12-15 hours to beat, and a large number in the past few months take LESS THAN 10.  Is the goal to drop the time under 5 hours now, or what?  Maybe get it down to how long it takes to watch your average Hollywood movie?

Going down the list of top-rated games as of late (I'm going to assume 360 as anyone talking about "save points" isn't talking about PCs and there's not enough of the PS3 to lament about anything except not a lot of games and/or they're the same ones as the 360)...

BioShock -- 10-12 hours

Orange Box -- (Episode 2 -- 6-7 hours, Portal -- 3-4 hours)

Halo 3 -- 6-8 hours

Call of Duty 4 -- 6-7 hours (going off initial reviews, haven't played this one myself)

PGR4 -- 10-12 hours

Ace Combat 6 -- 8-10 hours

Gears of War -- 8-10  hours (considerably less if co-op)

Rainbow Six: Vegas -- 10-12 hours

Simpsons -- (not AAA, but I just finished it and it's remarkably short) 6-7 hours and can actually be beat in less than 3 if you really try

Even those games that DO have the "40 hours of gameplay" have it in voluntary content.  You could spend literally hundreds of hours playing Oblivion, but I believe the main story can be played in something in the 20-30 hours.  Mass Effect has something like 40 hours of content,  but will take less than 20 hours to beat.  And I think that's the best way of balancing out the different markets.

I ran into the exact issue of lack of playtime when my daughter was born. While I kept playing some games, I looked for something I could play in 5 to 15 minute sessions... The answer was in the past, WAY in the past. I got MAME and started playing rounds of Robotron and Donkey Kong.

Not exactly cutting edge stuff, but I got hooked back into it hard enough to build a game cabinet around it. The time burgling offspring just turned 3, and is showing a huge interest in Frogger.

I'm just now at the point where I can play "regular" stuff for a couple hours at night again. I feel for ya.

You don't have to be a dad to appreciate short-form video games. I'm a college student who goes to school full-time and works half-time. While I thoroughly enjoy 40-hour epics (I'm eagerly anticipating Mass Effect), I can generally agree that my time is becoming more and more limited as I'm making my way out of an academic setting and into the "real world." Darren's right; just because a game is short, doesn't mean it's got to be a mini-game compilation. And just because a game clocks in at 100 hours of gameplay doesn't mean it's going to be a good game. These days it seems more likely it's bloated and/or full of cut scenes (I'm looking at you FFXII, Xensaga). Effective use of checkpoints and pacing could corner an entirely new sub-segment of the hardcore gamer market.

PS: Please don't turn my comment into a flame-war because I said FFXII and Xenosaga were bloated and full of cut scenes.

I think it's important for the industry to being looking at producing great titles for a lower price point.  The magnitude of so called "AAA titles" requires the investment of millions and a price tag of $60.  I think we would be well served by games that cost around $30 and deliver that 10 to 15 hour experience.  Offer another 10 to 15 hours as DLC if you must.

That sure would beat the current model of offering less for $60 and tacking the remainder on for microtransactions.  The game industry would like more revenue, but they are slowly turning themselves into a blockbuster only industry.

Absolutely agreed.

I fall directly into that category. I love my PSP, and I'm migrating naturally from the PS2 up to...  Xbox 360 - about to embrace Xbox live.

As a teen, I was a hardcore gamer during the Streetfighter II era. The issue that I have nowadays is that I'm a busy professional, and the PSP's missing features leave a gap in my gaming diet.

I don't tend to have 40+hours to play these games, and I have even less time or patience to spend backtracking and replaying sections of games which lack a decent save structure.

Therefore, I have a growing list of unfinished PS2 games, with broken online functions, that I've played so far into until I'm spending too much time repeating the same task or mission.

Unnecessary - and I really hope that newer titles such as Assassin's Creed and GTA IV help to recfify this with well thought out designs and decent save systems. GTA especially, is renowned for being abandoned due to a poor save system and too much back-tracking when the difficulty level suddenly spikes.

It wastes my money when I decide to abandon a game, and once I get a mortgage, I wont bother if I feel I'm not getting value for money.

As much as I agree with Darren on most everything he's written, where are the 40 hrs games?? Please, I want to know?!? Because Halo 3 is about 8 hours long and I hear that CoD 4 is about 6 to 7 hours long. BioShock was very good, but how long was it? 10-12 hours? Now, as more games provide a AAA experience, there has been a decided trend in games becoming shorter. Half Life is splitting its sequel into Episodes and many very popular games like Guitar Hero III are as long as a song is. The only refuge of the lengthy, engrossing video/computer game seems to be RTS's, RPG's, and MMORPG's. And the RPG's have been somewhat in decline for a while now, though here's hoping Mass Effect kicks it back up a notch.

Darren has excellent points on saving and especially on offline vs. online which, often times, is hidden in the game's description so people expecting offline play gets a fairly mediocre package. But honestly, the length of games these days is not an issue when out of all the AAA games being released, your lucky to get an offline gaming experience that lasts up to or past 10 hours.

Hoh brah, you need to check out Ratchet and Clank since it sounds like you have a PS3.  I also have a 2 year-old who is currently enamored with any and all Pixar movies, and R&C is like playing one of those movies.  He'll sit on my lap and watch me blow robots up for a good long while, and, just like you require, it has auto-save points in addition to being able to save at any time.  The planets (levels) are usually pretty small but there are also a couple big ones to run around in.  It's also ridiculously funny and a flat-out good time.

I've had to modify my gaming diet since I became a husband/father, too, but it's still possible to find games you love to play, so don't give up hope.  Heck, my personal favorite game of 2006 was Final Fantasy XII and that took me something like 45 hours to get through.

The industry is still limited by the old perception that there are two types of game: 'kiddy' and 'adult'. Except that the 'adult' games are really designed around 'teenagers', which means they're pretty time intensive. Darren may ultimately need to adjust his taste in games: more handheld stuff, more fighters, more games that are broken up into very short sections. Even Halo 3 has a pretty humane set of checkpoints.

But I also see no problem with taking half a year to finish a 40 hour RPG. It took me 2 years of on and off reading to finish Ulysses.

Your right, having myself moved from a teenager into a "career" person with a 9-5 job, alot of my peers are finding less and less time for *extended* periods of gaming. We get plenty of time to play games, just not for those 5 hour or all-nighter sessions.

"However, it seems Nintendo are the only company that has _any_ games that fit this particular problem. Take Super Mario Galaxy for example, that's a AAA title, the game is split into 120 stars not all of which are required to complete the game, each star, or level, is split into a nice bitesize chunk of action and after every star, a save point. Perfect for the "hardcasual" gamer." from <a href="http://www.nintendolife.com/articles/2007/11/05/the_hardcasual_gamer">my article on NintendoLife.com</a>

Maybe I'm biased, being editor of a Nintendo based website... but I do believe Nintendo are the only ones even close to a solution.

I agree with Darren wholeheartedly.  I don't have any children yet, but I'm a full-time law student.  I play games as a stress relief and a way to take a break from studying.  I don't have the time or the inclination to dedicate the kind of hours I used to to playing games.  While I enjoy my DS games like Picross, and play Scrabble and WordJong on the PC, I really get the most enjoyment out of the hardcore FPS action games I fell in love with in and after college, games like Wolfenstein and Doom and Quake and Half-Life and Rainbow Six.  In order to get that same kind of enjoyable gaming experience in small chunks of time I absolutely must play games that allow for unliimited quicksaves (not unlimited slots, just unlimited number of times you can hit save).  Most recently I got a tremendous thrill out of Bioshock and the Orange Box.  Those games allowed me to play at my pace and provided really short intense moments that I could enjoy at my own pace.  I was also able to complete them in a relatively short time because the story line was not 40 hours long.  If I wanted to spend 40 hours in Rapture I suppose I could, but I didn't need to in order to finish the game.  Same with Half-Life 2 and it's progeny.  

An alternative to this style of gameplay that I'm about to jump into for the first time on the console is online play.  I'm eagerly awaiting a call from GameStop that tells me my COD4 pre-order has arrived.  I'm not sure what kind of quick-save mechanism it has available for the single player campaign because I'm really focused on playing that online.  I'm hoping that I can get some brief, intense gaming moments in time chunks that I can deal with.  If I can't quicksave the single player it'll probably have to wait until the Christmas break to be played, but I hope to be playing lots of multiplayer until then.

So, similar to Darren's suggestions, I think the solution is partly to have some sort of gameplay mechanism that allows for saving whenever you want but still providing enough challenging gameplay to make the game difficult regardless of how much you save.  The overall game should be completable in less than 15 hours, ideally 8-12, but there should be a compelling multiplayer option or lots of re-play value to enhance the value of the game.  Or basically the game should be Portal 2 with guns.  I'd be happy with that.

Hey everyone,

generally I agree with Darren, I too think that too often structures of " hardcore" games nowadays keep people from finishing, or even enjoying them. I still think of the 96 levels of Super Mario World as one of gaming´s finest examples to compose a game: a lot of extremely deep gameplay, but also with the possibility to easily drop and pick up again, a game that can be immediately enjoyed for hours or if you want, just for the 30 seconds it takes some levels to complete.

I think that in the last generations of consoles, the industry, in its arms race for superior hardware power and especially Hollywood-like Blockbusters, developed in a kind of unhealthy way, becoming more and more Hardcore with every new offspring of hardware. Of course, the recent, publicly acknowledged success of the so-called "casual" games in a way ended this "vicious cycle", and will ultimately lead to more variety; but at the moment I think we are still at the beginning of a development that began with a sudden shock, that left a market, torn apart, with the casual and the hardcore gamers amassing at the extreme opposite ends of a spectrum of games, with gamers like Darren or me, in fact, left in the blank middle.

But as I said, I believe that in the end this gap (which is IMO overrated in gaming media anyway) will be filled, and thus also more games for people like Darren will not only be made, but also sold and marketed.

In this context I believe that the real achievement of the Wii and DS are not (only) their new types of gameplay they offer, but that their success actually brought an industry and an art form off a dangerous oneway track, and offer the possibility for a more varied and thus more healthy market. So yeah, there is still hope for the hardcasual.

greetings

tralalu (who hasn´t touched his Bioshock in weeks)

PS: My first post here, I really like this blog: one of the few playes where a gamer can feel like a kid again without the need to behave like one. :D

I agree with Darren 100%. Although i don't have kids i also have a time issue problem. Right now i am playing Metroid Prime 3 and i am thinking of just giving up because of all the backtracking and the saving system.

I don't understand why reviewers only see the negative side of a game which is around say 10hours. I also want short games like Farhenheit (Indigo Prophecy). Although it does not seem like a great value for money  i would still prefer such a game to a 40hour RPG any day.

We definitely need more high quality games which are of a shorter length.