Lord Phoebus wrote...
It's opinion not fact.
No it's not an opinion, it IS a fact. Trust me. I'm a game-design student. I can speak from experience that we all find it harder to create a long game with a high quality than a short game with a high quality, mainly because it's just so much more work and as I said, it's already hard to come up with 20 different unique puzzels, imagine how hard it is to come up with 40 different unique puzzels.
A longer game = more content = more work for the game designer = more factors and variables to keep in mind = harder to keep track of everything and keep everything balanced = harder to make a good game.
Lord Phoebus wrote...
With a shorter game you're under the constraint of brevity, a larger portion of your game has to serve as a tutorial unless you simplify the gameplay.
Rule no.1: Tutorials are BAD and should be avoided if possible, or kept really short.
The best thing is to intergrate the "tutorial" with the gameplay itself, so that the player learns while actually playing the game and not by going through a tutorial. Tutorials are generally boring and not fun. Tutorials feel forced on the player and it breaks down the suspense of disbelief. Most players just skip through a tutorial as fast as possible, and this is true.
Better to keep the tutorial as short and simple as possible and if you think the game can go without an tutorial, avoid the tutorial alltogether.
Tutorials should only be in a game if they are REALLY needed.
So, that makes your statement false. Unless you were actually talking about the learning-curve of the game in general. But learning-curve =/= tutorial.
Lord Phoebus wrote...
If you simplify the gameplay you have to hope that you simplified the right thing and it really hooks the player.
Rule no. 2: Depending on the genre, simplified gameplay, or more accurately, simplified game-mechanics, are a GOOD thing. Most genres actually benefit from simplification, so we as designers can put more emphasis on those few mechanics that actually make the game really awesome.
Look at Super Mario Bros for example. That game is really extremely simple gameplay-wise. It doesn't need a tutorial and everyone can play it almost right away. Yet the game is incredibly fun, addictive and it's super popular and for good reasons!
Lord Phoebus wrote...
When you remove options from the player, you have to work harder so that the player doesn't miss the options.
Your characters and plot have to be particularly pithy to stand out and be memorable, and you have edit and precis your work. From a fundamental game design perspective, creating a short game that a player will enjoy is very difficult. There are challenges associated with a short game, just as there are challenges associated with a long one, don't pretend otherwise.
As a game-designer, I design my games not by removing options, but by only adding options that are needed and/or wanted. What I use is the MoSCoW style of designing. MoSCoW stands for: Must, Should, Could, Would.
I start with the most fundamental mechanics. Those are "Must". They come first because without them, the game won't work.
Then I do "Should", those are options and/or mechanics that should be in the game to make it fun. Without them, the game most likely isn't fun.
Then I do "Could". Could are extra options that can be intergrated in the game if there is time left. Everything in "could" is something we as designers can try out and actually run playtests for to find out if the option actually adds anything to the gameplay.
Finally, there is "Would". Everything in "Would" are options and mechanics that we would have intergrated in the game, if it didn't make the game worse. Options that are in "Would" are often options that can be left out and won't be missed, or options that we think can't be intergrated in the game.
If you design a game with a MoSCoW list, there are hardly options removed. At most, we left out options on purpose because they were on the "Would" list.
Lord Phoebus wrote...
Each additional hour of gameplay is cheaper for the developer to produce than the previous hour, because they've already developed the engine, art resources, etc. that speed up the development process. Sometimes it's easier to write an AI system that generates random encounters, than it is to write a short impactful quest and the former adds more gameplay hours than the latter and doesn't always come off as padding. With a rich setting it can be easy to come up with ideas for new quests. With a small game, telling the story you want can be difficult.
In a small game, it's much easier for the writers. In a large game, you have to write extra narrative for the extra content, which is more work and it's actually hard if the story already has everything it needs.
A small game is also much easier for the programmers. It means less programming, less bug-testing and less keeping track of everything. It's true that you can develop a random enemy-encounter or a random quest-generator or stuff like that, but does that really add to the game? Does that really make the game better? If anything, it makes the game worse. There is nothing artistic or special about a random enemy-encounter or a random-generated quest. Maybe Skyrim will prove me wrong, but so far I believe this is true.
The keyword is pacing. Games are all about proper pacing, gameplay-wise and narrative-wise. If you write a story that can be told in 12 hours of gameplay, then you shouldn't try to make a 24-hours long game out of it. Players will feel as if the progression in the game is going too slow.
How long a game should be, depends on the genre, the gameplay and the story/script. The length of the story/script depends on what you try to tell with the story/script and how important the story/script is for the video-game. As I said, if the story can be told in 12 hours, you shouldn't try to add 12 hour of extra content to the story to stretch it up.
The narrative (e.g. story) should also be properly paced and it should be well balanced with the gameplay. Sadly it's true that for the most games, the narrative (story) and the gameplay are 2 seperate parts and the game switches between borth parts (the narrative part and the actual gameplay part).
This is not true for every single game, but this is true for MOST games. That means that balance between story and gameplay is important. If the gameplay-part between each story-part is too long, the game becomes boring.
For example, 1 hour of narrative and 100 hours of gameplay is not a good balance. This was true for GTA4. The story progressed too slowly because there was too much gameplay between each narrative segment. The gameplay eventually became repetitive and it was driving in a car from 'A' to 'B' 90% of the time. That is not fun.
In my opinion, GTA4 would have been better if the gameplay segments were shorter.
Lord Phoebus wrote...
Portal had to be short because it was built around gimmick, and if it was longer people would have seen through the gimmick.
A gimmick? Are you serious? Portal is a PUZZLE game. Each level of Portal was a PUZZLE. Unless you think puzzels are gimmicks in their own right, your argument is totally invalid.
Portal managed to keep me interested from start to finish and the puzzels never became repetitive. Each and every single level in Portal was challenging when you play it for the first time. That is NOT a gimmick, it's GOOD GAME DESIGN.
Lord Phoebus wrote...
I never saw the game as anything more than a gimmick which is why I didn't enjoy it.
That's your problem. But don't act as if it's a fact that Portal is a gimmick, because it's not. If portal is a gimmick, then a jigsaw puzzel (or any kind of puzzel) is also a gimmick (which it's not).
Lord Phoebus wrote...
That said the gimmick was the portal cannon. If another developer wanted to create a portal like success they would have to come up with a gimmick that was just as enjoyable as the portal cannon (but not the portal cannon or any other gimmick that was previously used in a game), that kind of innovation is at best pure luck and most of the time very hard to come by.
If you think innovation is pure luck then you are sadly mistaken. The portal-gun was a gameplay mechanic that Valve came up with to intergrate with Half-Life 2. The game Portal was originally just meant to be a playtest to test the portal-gun and the complex portal mechanics. But when playtesters tried Portal out, they liked it so much that they didn't want it to be part of Half-Life 2, they wanted Portal to be a puzzle-game on it's own.
And so, Valve created a stand-alone puzzle-game with the portal-cannon, and named it Portal. And so, Portal became a huge succes.
That kind of innovation and succes does not come from pure luck, that kind of innovation and succes comes from a great mind of an experienced game-designer.
Modifié par Luc0s, 19 août 2011 - 06:42 .
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