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Editorial: Is A Longer Game Really A Better Game?
By Pete Haas: 2008-08-26 00:48:28
You may have heard the rumors by now that the first batch of GTAIV DLC will have fifteen hours of additional content. Assuming this is true, the next question that should be asked is, "How good will those hours be?" Game studios have been puffing up the estimated lengths of their games ever since they realized how obsessed gamers are with time-consuming titles.
While it's possible the GTAIV DLC will add a new island and/or new mission chains, I fully expect most of those fifteen new hours to come in the form of repeatable tasks (like taxicab missions, courier runs, etc.) or hidden collectibles. After all, GTAIV was estimated to have a hundred hours of gameplay - and the campaign only took maybe thirty hours. It wouldn't be outlandish to expect five hours of new missions from the downloadable content and then "ten hours" of repetitive tasks. Not that GTAIV is the only game that uses simple tricks to pad their gameplay hours. Remember being told that Assassin's Creed would take you 40+ hours? Though the main campaign took maybe half that long, they weren't lying. The extra hours came from finding the dozens and dozens of flags hidden throughout the cities and countryside of the game. Why is this sort of repetition included in games? Sure, it makes the game sound more impressive if it has more hypothetical gameplay hours, but I think, for the most part, developers mean well. They're trying to give us additional time with a game we enjoyed. But how is, say, collecting hidden flags considered a proper continuation of the Assassin's Creed gameplay experience? It only passes a faint resemblance to the actual game. Spending hours collecting hidden flags/package/clams after you've finished a game is like sniffing your mitt after a baseball game. What exactly, is the challenge in finding hidden flags? "Oh man, the flag might be behind the wagon - or it may be behind that well! Or there might be flags in both places! I'll have to walk over there and check!" Just because it's happening in a video game and it takes time, it doesn't mean it's actually "gameplay." Developers wouldn't include these mindless grinds if someone didn't play them - a surprising number of gamers do, in fact. I remember watching a friend trying to collect every last star in Mario 64 just so he could get onto the roof of the castle and see Yoshi. At the time I thought, "This is the most ridiculous waste of time I've ever seen." However, other games offer even less incentive to finish their mindless side tasks. The best you can usually hope for is an extra 30 points or so on your Gamerscore. So why do we do these extra missions, long after the game stopped being fun? To fill time. No matter how completely dull these side tasks are or how little of an in-game reward they provide, they fill time. Gamers always pride themselves on their hobby being so much more active and engaging than watching television or reading books but it's amazing how tolerant we are of dull, passive, repetitious gameplay that we may as well not need buttons for.
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