Game devs are taking the piss ...

afrocentricity

Part of first caf team to complete Destiny raid
Joined
May 12, 2005
Messages
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Am I the only person that thinks that video games are getting extremely short nowadays? When each game cost you £30+ is it really acceptable that it's possible to finish most in a day or two?

Take Crysis for example, I finished it in a weekend ... it's a good game but come on, that takes the biscuit. It took me months to finish FarCry.

Add to this list Bioshock, Jericho, Call of Duty ... etc... the list goes on.



I've been gaming for longer than some of you have been alive so I can remember a time when games would actually be value for money. I guess everyone is content with the current trend, if not then the developers wouldn't be making games so short.

My advice to you all (and this might be a bit controversial for some) is to:

RENT FROM NOW ON!
-OR-
DOWNLOAD FROM THE INTERNET!

Maybe then we'll see value for money :rolleyes:

/rantover
 
For those that are thinking 'Who cares?', your parents probably do ...
 
crysis has an exceptionally bad AI, I've rarely seen as stupid enemies in a computer games, that cuts down on playing time quite a bit (since you just stroll through them).
 
I think more time goes into the development of games nowadays, so I feel the prices are fair.
Plus you might save £5 downloading games from Steam, but if you buy the game you can sell it on after you finish it.
Maybe Bioshock was missing an online feature.
 
FPS tend to be woefully short, especially with the modern trend of going full-tilt for next-gen graphics but not necessarily making the game and story itself any good. Even Half-Life 2, which I adore, was very short. I completed it and Episode One in under four days, playing for three or four hours a day.

If you want a long gaming experience then you have to play an RPG. Out of the modern games which look good (because you can go back a while for better games but then they start to look rather dated), you've got Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2 (plus both of their expansions). Both are great games, both look amazing (Oblivion particularly so), and both are very, very long.

I like some FPS games, but not all. I'm way more of an RPG gamer than a shoot 'em up, and that probably shows.
 
afrocentricity said:
Am I the only person that thinks that video games are getting extremely short nowadays? When each game cost you £30+ is it really acceptable that it's possible to finish most in a day or two?
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I mostly play RPG or strategy these days and these are the only games I pay money for

I've been playing games since the old ZX Spectrum btw
 
BRobson said:
I think more time goes into the development of games nowadays, so I feel the prices are fair.
Plus you might save £5 downloading games from Steam, but if you buy the game you can sell it on after you finish it.
Maybe Bioshock was missing an online feature.
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Eh? You think that its okay that a £30 game (sometimes £50) can be completed in a day? :wenger:
 
Kristjan said:
I mostly play RPG or strategy these days and these are the only games I pay money for

I've been playing games since the old ZX Spectrum btw
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I can agree with you on the RPG thing, still haven't finished Oblivlion and I got it when it came out ...

I had a ZX aswell btw. Those 'kin tapes with the screaching and flashing colours.
 
It's the push for crystal clear graphics. If people weren't so obsessed with graphics then game developers could focus on other areas of the game and their production costs wouldn't run so high.
 
MehdiMahdavikia said:
It's the push for crystal clear graphics. If people weren't so obsessed with graphics then game developers could focus on other areas of the game and their production costs wouldn't run so high.
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It's because many gamers, not all of them or not even most of them, treat gaming as way to go away from their reality and enter a new world. Those gamers want realistic graphics which will take them even further from the world they hate and deeper into this cyber/second-life/perfect world. Or they can be graphics whores who don't know how to play games but like to buy expensive PC parts and use the games as a showcase... Oh and yeah, a game with fantastic graphics is more spectacular and will sell more easily and good graphics need a lot of time like level design so the developers have to choose.
 
MehdiMahdavikia said:
It's the push for crystal clear graphics. If people weren't so obsessed with graphics then game developers could focus on other areas of the game and their production costs wouldn't run so high.
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Don't think that's the case. If it were, RPGs would be woefully short too.

The fact is that you can have an awfully long game with great graphics, like Oblivion. It's more to do with the nature of the game in question that determines its length. In FPSes you don't spend an obscene amount of time levelling up so of course it's shorter. Same with platformers. If the game doesn't have any secret goodies that compel the player to keep playing, it's even shorter. Ultimately a game's strength of multiplayer gives it its replay value.

I do agree that the drive for ever better graphics is taking away time and effort from other parts of the game development process though. Things like AI, a compelling story and good level design don't get their fair time because they're not apparent from a cursory glance at the game, but if they are neglected it does impact on the player's perception of the game.

Thing is, as long as a media exists, constantly baying for new releases/demos/videos/screenshots, game development is going to be geared towards graphics. It's just the way things are. People do judge books by their cover, after all.
 
I've found that RPGs are the most enjoyable. I still can't get enough of the Final Fantasy series. I was actually playing through 8 again yesterday. 12 was a real let down though and i'm hoping that they learn from this, ensuring that they don't feck up 13 and Versus.
 
afrocentricity said:
Eh? You think that its okay that a £30 game (sometimes £50) can be completed in a day? :wenger:
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It depends on what you mean by a day (24hours?) and what game? The Orange box cost me £27 and you get loads for your money.
Games which come with an online feature may not have much of a single player game, but thats okay imo if the online play is good.

The total cost to Microsoft for "Halo 3": a little more than $60 million. Development costs will probably be just above $30 million, given an elite team of 300 full-time artists and programmers working for three years on the game at Bungie, the internal Microsoft studio that created the games
http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...p24,0,701643.story?coll=la-home-entertainment
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I think the cost of a PC game is fair, and if you think about a dvd costing around £17 and lasts about 2 hours i don't mind the price for something more entertaining, interactive and lasts at least twice as long.
 
When I had a PS1 there wasn't a game I had that I could finish in a day, as for FPS being short as standard.

FarCry, HalfLife, Unreal, Deus Ex, Doom3, Quake, MoH, etc... were not short games, this is a recent thing ... trust me.

But if nobody thinks anything of it then thats the way it will be.
 
James Parkin said:
this is why they are taking the piss

if no cnut pays for the game, they end up getting no money.

If you owned a shop and got robbed of your stock every day, would you keep stacking the shelves?
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This isn't true either ... I'm considering doing this now BECAUSE games are so expensive (and short). It is a well known fact that most downloaders are people that were never going to buy the said game in the first place, so they do not impact on the distributors numbers.
 
BRobson said:
It depends on what you mean by a day (24hours?) and what game? The Orange box cost me £27 and you get loads for your money.
Games which come with an online feature may not have much of a single player game, but thats okay imo if the online play is good.



I think the cost of a PC game is fair, and if you think about a dvd costing around £17 and lasts about 2 hours i don't mind the price for something more entertaining, interactive and lasts at least twice as long.
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The Orange box stands out on its own for value for money, name a few others?

A DVD doesn't last 2 hours, if that was the case you'd rent it. A DVD is like a book, you watch it, then put it on your shelf and did it out when somebody asks you to or if you feel like watching it again. I watched Menace II Society for the 78678675 time last week ... that £5 was value for money.
 
afrocentricity said:
The Orange box stands out on its own for value for money, name a few others?

A DVD doesn't last 2 hours, if that was the case you'd rent it. A DVD is like a book, you watch it, then put it on your shelf and did it out when somebody asks you to or if you feel like watching it again. I watched Menace II Society for the 78678675 time last week ... that £5 was value for money.
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Why can't you reply the game like you rewatch a dvd? Same principle really.

Also if you're completing the game why not complete it then bang the level up a notch? I'm usually playing online rather then solo anyhow so it takes me a lot longer, every game i have nearly I play on a regular basis.
 
I think that they do it wrong nowadays, when people say they finished it in a weekend, it means they got killed and went back to the last "checkpoint" and carried on. Games used to give you a finite number of lives (which you could collect more of if you did a special thing). Once you lost all the lives, you went back to the beginning of the game, not back to a spot five minutes ago (this only happened if you had some lives left). The downward spiral then came with level codes, and games saves, to now "checkpoints". It makes the games far easier to get through. I cannot remember any game in history that took more than 15 hours to play start to finish. Many classic Amiga games could be done in 4 hours if you knew what you were doing, but a week or more of intense play from the day you first bought it, because once dead, you started from the beginning. Nowadays you don't.
 
Retirantmobs said:
Why can't you reply the game like you rewatch a dvd? Same principle really.

Also if you're completing the game why not complete it then bang the level up a notch? I'm usually playing online rather then solo anyhow so it takes me a lot longer, every game i have nearly I play on a regular basis.
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Yes, even back in the days of the Amiga and C64, if a game was fun it was simply just that, fun to play. If you completed a good game, it didn't mean it went into the cassette/disk box never to be touched again. There were always other ways to go, other things to find, scores to beat, etc. Depends on the game type though.
 
Retirantmobs said:
Why can't you reply the game like you rewatch a dvd? Same principle really.

Also if you're completing the game why not complete it then bang the level up a notch? I'm usually playing online rather then solo anyhow so it takes me a lot longer, every game i have nearly I play on a regular basis.
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Games aren't like movies, and there are only a few games that are really replayable fo me. I reckon I've played more games in my life than most on here. I could probably have bought a handful of high class mail order brides for my money.

Instead I have a wall of videogames that I can't be asked to sell for whatever reason other than I cant get rid of things. I still have my ZX, SNes, N64, Dreamcast and Playstations around somewhere. (I'd probably get a fiver fo the lot from cash convertors the cnuts)

Games and movies are different too. Movies have actors, actresses, directors you may follow, character developement, stories, messages ... you can just kick back and be entertained or informed.

The average game is the equivalent of a popcorn flick like AVP, take the story from Crysis ... if that was a film it would star Vin Diesel and would be directed by Uwe Boll.
 
Did any of you cnuts play Farenheit? I was well impressed with that up until it got silly ... thats a game comparable with a movie.
 
WeasteDevil said:
I think that they do it wrong nowadays, when people say they finished it in a weekend, it means they got killed and went back to the last "checkpoint" and carried on. Games used to give you a finite number of lives (which you could collect more of if you did a special thing). Once you lost all the lives, you went back to the beginning of the game, not back to a spot five minutes ago (this only happened if you had some lives left). The downward spiral then came with level codes, and games saves, to now "checkpoints". It makes the games far easier to get through. I cannot remember any game in history that took more than 15 hours to play start to finish. Many classic Amiga games could be done in 4 hours if you knew what you were doing, but a week or more of intense play from the day you first bought it, because once dead, you started from the beginning. Nowadays you don't.
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I remember that, I used to get so pissed off at certain games that they would get put on 'the shelf', took me years to see the ends of some games, some never. Elite for example... 'kinell and Robocop :mad:
 
There was one Amiga game, I think it was called EPIC from Ocean, that was dreadful in this regard. It got high reviews, and cost 30 quid, yet I completed it in 4 hours from the first time the first disk was slotted into the disk drive. Terrible rip off.
 
afrocentricity said:
Games aren't like movies, and there are only a few games that are really replayable fo me. I reckon I've played more games in my life than most on here. I could probably have bought a handful of high class mail order brides for my money.

Instead I have a wall of videogames that I can't be asked to sell for whatever reason other than I cant get rid of things. I still have my ZX, SNes, N64, Dreamcast and Playstations around somewhere. (I'd probably get a fiver fo the lot from cash convertors the cnuts)

Games and movies are different too. Movies have actors, actresses, directors you may follow, character developement, stories, messages ... you can just kick back and be entertained or informed.

The average game is the equivalent of a popcorn flick like AVP, take the story from Crysis ... if that was a film it would star Vin Diesel and would be directed by Uwe Boll.
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So why not do what someone else suggested and rent them if you don't replay them. If you find a game you would replay then go out and buy it.

I do miss games where you started from scratch if you died to many times, probably wind me up something rotten if it happened now though.
 
WeasteDevil said:
There was one Amiga game, I think it was called EPIC from Ocean, that was dreadful in this regard. It got high reviews, and cost 30 quid, yet I completed it in 4 hours from the first time the first disk was slotted into the disk drive. Terrible rip off.
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That was very impressive game in that time. 3d vector graphic. :drool:

...but yeah, rip off.
 
Retirantmobs said:
So why not do what someone else suggested and rent them if you don't replay them. If you find a game you would replay then go out and buy it.

I do miss games where you started from scratch if you died to many times, probably wind me up something rotten if it happened now though.
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:lol: that was me ...
 
WeasteDevil said:
I think that they do it wrong nowadays, when people say they finished it in a weekend, it means they got killed and went back to the last "checkpoint" and carried on. Games used to give you a finite number of lives (which you could collect more of if you did a special thing). Once you lost all the lives, you went back to the beginning of the game, not back to a spot five minutes ago (this only happened if you had some lives left). The downward spiral then came with level codes, and games saves, to now "checkpoints". It makes the games far easier to get through. I cannot remember any game in history that took more than 15 hours to play start to finish. Many classic Amiga games could be done in 4 hours if you knew what you were doing, but a week or more of intense play from the day you first bought it, because once dead, you started from the beginning. Nowadays you don't.
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Then evidently you've never played a decent RPG...

That's why I stick to roleplaying games. They stories tend to be better, there's actual character development and they WILL last longer than fifteen hours.
 
Count Duckula said:
Then evidently you've never played a decent RPG...

That's why I stick to roleplaying games. They stories tend to be better, there's actual character development and they WILL last longer than fifteen hours.
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Any recent games?
 
Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Morrowind. All of the Final Fantasy games.

Just off the top of my head. I know that a lot of those are by the same studio, but they do exist. RPGs have more gameplay. Fact.

And if you're not interested in a story, per se, and just want replayability and fun, then you can't go wrong with strategy games like Civilization or the Total War series. Football Manager is good for a laugh, too.

Oh, and the most evil game ever invented on the planet ever. It's definitely got more than fifteen hours of gameplay in it, just ask one of the millions of people addicted to it every day. World of Warcraft *shudder*. I poured over one hundred DAYS into that game.
 
I play Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. You can play the arcade version online with kaillera. Amazing game with such great depth. It'll be a long time before I'm a good player (just started a few months ago).
There are a ton of games you can play that will last years; racing sims for example. Just pick a game with real depth and online playability.
Or if you only want single player you can always go for 100% in the GTA games.
 
Count Duckula said:
Then evidently you've never played a decent RPG...

That's why I stick to roleplaying games. They stories tend to be better, there's actual character development and they WILL last longer than fifteen hours.
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Yes I have. Start to finish when you know what you are doing, there is no game that I have come across that is longer than 15 hours.
 
WeasteDevil said:
Yes I have. Start to finish when you know what you are doing, there is no game that I have come across that is longer than 15 hours.
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Play Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii or Ocarina of time on the N64 without looking for help with puzzles/places you're stuck on and there's no chance you'll do it in 15 hours first time
 
Ronaldo07 said:
Play Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii or Ocarina of time on the N64 without looking for help with puzzles/places you're stuck on and there's no chance you'll do it in 15 hours first time
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Ocarina of time was a cool game ... and I know of quite a few games that can't be completed in 15 hours ...
 
Ronaldo07 said:
Play Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii or Ocarina of time on the N64 without looking for help with puzzles/places you're stuck on and there's no chance you'll do it in 15 hours first time
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I never said 15 hours first time.

WeasteDevil said:
I think that they do it wrong nowadays, when people say they finished it in a weekend, it means they got killed and went back to the last "checkpoint" and carried on. Games used to give you a finite number of lives (which you could collect more of if you did a special thing). Once you lost all the lives, you went back to the beginning of the game, not back to a spot five minutes ago (this only happened if you had some lives left). The downward spiral then came with level codes, and games saves, to now "checkpoints". It makes the games far easier to get through. I cannot remember any game in history that took more than 15 hours to play start to finish. Many classic Amiga games could be done in 4 hours if you knew what you were doing, but a week or more of intense play from the day you first bought it, because once dead, you started from the beginning. Nowadays you don't.
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I'm saying that this is not a new thing. If you know what you are doing you can complete most games in 4 hours, but that most games today allow you to go back to "checkpoints" rather than back to the beginning, thus not requiring a week of intense play to be able to complete it in four hours. You can do them in 8-10 hours from the first time the disk touches the drive.

I wish some of you would read before you comment out of context.
 
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