Sean Murray When I was a student I ate a lot of shit pizza. I should probably have eaten better and gone out less. I shouldn't have played Metal Gear to see the different ending with Otacon, and I certainly shouldn't have collected every Chocobo in Final Fantasy.
I definitely should have gone to more lectures and not put in 40 hours a week of solid gaming instead. I remember weighing up every purchase in terms of nights-out and food-in. I cared deeply whether a game was “good value”. It forced me to complete that last level on Driver, to collect every single letter in Tony Hawks and I loved every minute of it.
After university, I got a job and everything changed.
I started eating a better quality of pizza for a start. I even ordered side salad once.
My gaming taste changed too. As a kid I bought two games a year (Christmas and birthday). Both were painstaking decisions, and pretty much defined that year. 1993 was the Sonic year, for instance. Hearing that sound of a ring being collected, I can smell Bourbon biscuits and the wallpaper in our sitting room. Quake filled my every spare hour as a teenager; having now written that I won’t be able to get Nine Inch Nails out of my head for the rest of the day. I don’t see it as time misspent.
Then I joined the industry. Suddenly I got games for free, and everyone I knew had a massive back catalogue. Initially I splurged, but slowly became more discerning. Then I stopped completing games.
When I quit my job to become an indie developer, I went back to eating shit pizza, but time became even more precious. Often, I just put aside a weekend and play the first hour of ten games until something grabs me. I cram in as many new mechanics, art styles and experiences as possible.
Most developers I talk to are the same, but I notice it in my other friends too. As they get older they seem to move from that habitual gaming bracket to a recreational one. Time to properly play games becomes a rare treat, and one that now has time limits. Forty hours of gameplay has become a negative.
That was a familiar theme in a recent discussion among a few of us indies. In particular the focus was on how games journalists arbitrarily mark games down for being "short", a word which is irrelevant to gaming as a medium. Videogames should be meaningful experiences, and length of that experience is valueless. The only people who actually care about game length are just the “forum occupying vocal minority”.
It’s a sentiment that had universal agreement, so much so that yesterday everyone hosted a blog day. If you missed it, please take the time to check it out - you can read some really interesting posts on the matter here, here, here and here.
I’m a bit of a shit though, so I’ve decided to disagree.
For me, gaming is its own medium. Playing a game I can feel a gameplay arc, similar to a story arc in a film, and just as important. But it has much more than a beginning, middle and end. It’s about experiences: learning new skills, exploring, challenges and competition. The longer those last, the deeper the experience.
Almost every blog post yesterday referenced Portal and Limbo (three to five hours each) as examples of short games that were awesome, and proof that a game shouldn’t be arbitrarily marked down for their length.
Except, hardly anyone did when reviewing Limbo and Portal. Both were pretty much universally critically acclaimed. They completed their gameplay arcs beautifully; I could feel the end coming and welcomed it. On the other hand, Halo: ODST was about the same length, but ended just as it was getting started. It felt… short?
Perhaps we need a better vocabulary, but if a game feels “short”, even if it’s of the highest quality, then it’s a fair criticism. It’s complicated, but I want a review to mention it and I don’t think I’m in some vocal minority.
Most posts also mention using collecting or achievements to pointlessly lengthen gameplay, “filler content”. Geometry Wars has infinite gameplay, but without its clever achievements and highscores, I’d have stopped playing much sooner. It would have felt short without them, but with them it was amazing.
Even putting aside that gameplay arc, a game which constantly amazes and delights over weeks of play is surely better than a two-hour game that does the same for just a single evening. We don’t have the same restrictions on length that books and films do, and that gives us power to resonate more deeply over an extended time.
The argument goes that most people don’t complete long games, it’s wasted content anyway. Only about 10 per cent of people who bought Joe Danger have completed it (their average play time is well over 20 hours). Most journalists didn’t get past the halfway mark. Was it a wasted effort to add those last few levels that most people don’t see though? Is it valueless?
For me it’s the finest part of the game, we’ve spent 20 hours building to that final level. Those 10 per cent are our most valued players: most have mailed us afterwards or sent us levels of their own. They understand the controls and mechanics of Joe Danger on almost the same level we do. We love them.
Super Mario 64, Sonic, Quake, Tony Hawks, Final Fantasy, Bomberman, Civilization, Tetris and Oblivion aren’t just great games, they are experiences I’ll carry with me forever. I've just got every star on Super Mario Galaxy 2, and the game has maintained stunningly high quality and variety throughout. There’s skill in creating something so lasting and varied, and I admire the effort and art involved. As a developer, I aspire to it.
Hello Games is a small, new independent game developer based in southern England. Its first game, Joe Danger, is available on PSN right now. You can read other entries in the series here.