how short is too short?

[Judge Hades]

Not really. I think that it was a mistake in buying a X Box in the first place. I am just going to stick to the PC and the PC only. Make it the center piece of my entertainment center.

[Krookie]

You mean like putting it between your TV and microwave?

[Judge Hades]

Actually I am thinking of ditching the TV to. I don't use it at all anymore.

[Dark_Raven]

Not really.  I think that it was a mistake in buying a X Box in the first place.  I am just going to stick to the PC and the PC only.  Make it the center piece of my entertainment center.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sounds like pc worship.

[Judge Hades]

That's funny coming from you.

[Dark_Raven]

It's not the center piece of my living room. I do have one in the living room though, off to the side and one in the dining/kitchen area.

[Judge Hades]

I listen to my music on the computer. I play my games on the computer. I watch my television shows on the computer. I play my DVDs on the computer. I do all my work on my computer. All I need is my computer.

[Llyranor]

And food.

[Gromnir]

well, first thing tomorrow Gromnir is gonna send off emails to every internet gaming magazine we can gets an email addy for... asks them if they know the truth behind the rumors that the nwn2 oc will only be 20 hours long... reference the german gaming magazine article.

 

emails is wasteful to get developers or publishers to do something, but perhaps we can puts the people at gamespot and ign to good use for a change.

 

please join Gromnir in his reasonable efforts to shed a teeny-weeny bit o' light on this issue.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Llyranor]

Erm, yeah... I'll provide moral support.

[Cantousent]

well, first thing tomorrow Gromnir is gonna send off emails to every internet gaming magazine we can gets an email addy for... asks them if they know the truth behind the rumors that the nwn2 oc will only be 20 hours long... reference the german gaming magazine article. 

 

emails is wasteful to get developers or publishers to do something, but perhaps we can puts the people at gamespot and ign to good use for a change.

 

please join Gromnir in his reasonable efforts to shed a teeny-weeny bit o' light on this issue.

 

HA! Good Fun!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's not a bad idea. We'll write to the gaming magazines. If it comes to nothing, so be it. It might actually get other folks looking into the issue.

 

Post the list of email addresses here, Gromnir, and I'll write tomorrow when I get the chance. I'm out of town tomorrow, but I'll check in periodically.

 

Also, just in case this thread happens to disappear, my email is c r a t e r e u s [atsign] a o l [dot] c o m, just in case. Maybe we can get some folks to write. *shrug* Waste of time? Who knows? I'm still game.

[Llyranor]

I didn't just sign you up for a bunch of junk mail, so don't worry.

[Cantousent]

I will hunt you down, Llyr. Then I'll sick Hades on you.

 

EDIT: Cratereus is my junk mail address. You should know that. It's the one I gave you guys for my online campaign. bwahahaha

Edited April 26, 2006 by Eldar

[Colrom]

Many things are needed to make a good CRPG.

 

Some of these things are:

 

A good PC centered story;

 

Challenging PC choices and interesting consequences;

 

Some good NPC stories;

 

Explorations and discoverys;

 

Entertaining riddles and puzzles;

 

And about 40 hours of gameplay.

 

There are many things that need to be in an RPG if it is to be good and a game which includes those things will inevitably take longer than 20 hours to play. 40 hours seems about right.

 

Aside from the aesthetic issues of quality there are other considerations as well -less gameplay may lead to fewer buyers - although perhaps more players - they the are not the same after all.

 

Few folks pay for a good joke. They just take it and pass it on. But many folks pay for a good comedy routine.

 

[Atreides]

I will hunt you down, Llyr.  Then I'll sick Hades on you.

 

EDIT:  Cratereus is my junk mail address.  You should know that.  It's the one I gave you guys for my online campaign.  bwahahaha

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I always imagined Hades as a mostly feral halfling that the master has on chains like an animal. A crazy unpredictable one like a wild animal. Obviously he's a rogue/fighter variant that does most of the scouting, trap setting and picking etc.

 

The special attack would be to release the chains after Hades is straining to attack something. Hades would then hunt down the fleeing victim or something.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Replay value is a nice bonus. But it is just that. It shouldnt be used to make a short game appear longer than it is.

 

Less people replay games, than play games for more than 20 hours.

 

I just finished a particularly taxing sidequest and now we are kicking back in the casino

[Tigranes]

The thing is, the first playthrough has to be compelling enough to make you go through the motions again for the 'alternative ending'. It's something I definitely will not do with JE - partly because I did not like the game much and felt it was too railroaded for replay anyway, and partly because by then Bio's Good/Evil stuff was way too predictable. Hell, I actually guessed who the big baddie was as soon as he starts talking in the first 15 mins of the game - then after the 'important conversation' deduced that you would run around doing quests to shut down the evil guy, only to find HE's the evil guy, and then have an epic showdown. I think the only thing in the plot I didn't count on was the whole "dead world" thing.

 

Whereas PS:T, I would replay, and I did. Others did not. It is a difficult game to replay even if you like it and want to see more things, just because it's so linear and a dialogue-based experience is usually not as circumstancial as combat or exploration or AI.

 

But then again, I play TES mostly for sense of wanderer and discovery, and the rest of it can't hold me for a second playthrough.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Tigranes

[Llyranor]

I'm not big on replaying CRPGs, actually. Other genres I'm more inclined to, but that may just have to do with their being driven by gameplay, whereas CRPG gameplay tends to be... lacking. Given the painfully linear stories for the most part, there's little incentive. A failing of the genre in its current state, if anything.

 

Someday, I might replay PST, or KOTOR2. Those are the only two, I think. You couldn't pay me to replay the BG saga.

[Tigranes]

Well, I replay BG series because I like the tactical combat as well as the game in general. +20 times, probably. But I'm someone that enjoys reading books again and again as well.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I think I played it 3 times. IWD I found more replayable since you could tailor your party from the start.

 

Six specialist mages play quite differently to 2 clerics and 4 paladins.

 

It does depend on a lot of things though. Like what other games are wating, or due out. What else is going on like do I have a lot of free time.

 

Unlikely I would play a game just to see a couple of different dialogue options (or endings).

[Volourn]

"IWD I found more replayable since you could tailor your party from the start."

 

You can do this for the BG series as well.

[Stephen Amber]

20 hours maybe a barely acceptable figure. The original Freedom Force was, I think, around that amount or slightly less, though it seemed longer for some reason(maybe it was the monotonous droning on of the costumed crusaders with their cheesy one liners). In terms of brevity, JE and company have a history of that, if you remember the embarrassingly short Heart of Winter with it's 10 hours.

[Azarkon]

To answer the original question: 40 hours on average is about where I'd put my bottom line. However, these days I seldom buy a game based on its OC alone.

 

Ultimately, this question comes down to a judgment of worth. Forgetting the economics on the producer side for a moment, it seems to me that entertainment value is very diverse across different mediums.

 

Example:

 

Thirty minutes of dining in a high class restaurant: > $100.

 

Two hour movies: $10.

 

Hundreds of hours of gameplay: < $50.

 

I have no doubt that "worth" is determined by the medium; what's up in the air is a consistent way of categorizing the mediums. What makes a movie tolerable at $5/hour while a game, at $2.5/hour, is heavily criticized?

 

I see some arguing that it has to do with the "completeness" of the experience: a movie can provide a complete cinematic experience in two hours, and can therefore charge more for it. That's fine, but says very little about what aspect of an experience makes it worth more or less from our point of view. Can there ever be an hour long game worth $50? If not, why can high class restaurants charge you that much for a meal, which at the end of the day is simply another form of entertainment?

 

Some possible approaches: maybe the worth of an experience is based on the level of bodily stimulation - hence, because games are less stimulating than films (arguable), their hours are worth less. Maybe it's based on rarity: a high-class restaurant can't be easily replicated, whereas a game, being software, can be. Maybe it's simply a matter of expectations: we've grown attached to long-lasting games and refuse change. Or maybe it's a internal value scale: we pay what we think the developers deserve, which would explain why games with crappy graphics are often expected to be cheaper than those with start-of-the-art rendering.

[alanschu]

They'd do it "better" because there'd be less content.  If there's less content, they can spend more time on other areas to find the bugs.  They do not have an unlimited amount of time to test the game.

 

See previous post

 

I did. And it only makes me even more convinced you have no idea what you are talking about. If you can't recognize that having less content to verify in the same amount of time would mean a greater chance of finding bugs, then it's because you're being obtuse.

 

They're trying to fit things within schedule, and not release a buggy game.  The time is finite.  Less content, means more bug testing per section of game.

 

So if that IS the problem what stops them of hiring some more people as backup?

 

Little things like money?

 

Which still means that additional time is required, since the tools aren't finite and may introduce new problems.  It's the joy of creating new tools.

 

LOL, no it's not.

 

Ofcourse that can happen, but that is why they are also tested... long before the actual testing of the content... that is being made around the same time

 

It doesn't matter. If your tools are evolving, it's possible that the content created in parallel no longer matches the spec of the tool, causing errors.

 

Because it was still the Source engine.  And they didn't have to make their tools.  The burden of proof is on you, since there's no reason why you or I should assume that they did significantly alter anything.  They certainly did not rewrite the graphics engine.

 

Do you know in what state they got it. Did it function correctly? How many issues and leaks and whatever did they ironed out themselves? Did it actually already looked like Vampire now did when they got it?

 

I suspect that, like most engine licensees (including those that work with Epic, as well as idSoftware back in the days), many engine "tweaks" involve the company that developed the software. Companies don't just buy the engine and not receive any support. Epic provides fantastic support for their engine issues, as does id. I'd be very surprised if Valve, who could use Source as another revenue stream, just left Troika to their own devices.

 

I also question people that say they had an "early" build of Source. Daikatana for instance, received the updated versions of their engines....from both id when they were using the Quake engine and Epic when they were using the Unreal engine.

[Morgoth]

I also question people that say they had an "early" build of Source.  Daikatana for instance, received the updated versions of their engines....from both id when they were using the Quake engine and Epic when they were using the Unreal engine.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

From what I gather, Troika had early contact and a HL2 presentation with Valve back to the days when Arcanum was just released. I think most of the core features of Source were just completed in Summer 2002, and Troika received that version. From there, I didn't get the impression Valve offered updates or support of any kind....(as opposed to now, which is great).

Anyways, from interviews it was suddenly told that it is actually Activisions job to maintain contact and engine updates with Valve, not Troika. Whatever. It's like a circus merry-go-around, and nobody knows who actually is responsible to release the game with a 2002 tech.