Adventure Gamers - Forums

you know, i would love to say that replies like these come from old-timer adventure gamers are disappointing -due to the fact that we were the ones who enjoyed 30-40 hours of gameplaying back then, whether if that length (as Tomimt) says is an illusion or abstraction (to be precise)-, but i will not say it! , but instead i am wondering ‘heavy wondering’ if there are statistics for adventure gamers age all around the globe (from hardcore/classic ags to interactive ones) ??? 

anyone gets my drift?

I want games that I classify as good. How long it takes to play through them aren’t among my criterias. I rarely use a stopwatch when I play games anyway. Making speedruns are not my thing. 

I agree with those who says that the best game length differs between each individual game. The story and gameplay mechanics are what decides how long it should last.

chrissie - 14 April 2015 11:54 AM

Before having the internet I relied on magazines for info & could only really buy what was stocked by a bricks & mortar store for what now seems like exorbitant prices.

yeaa, those were the days, when even adventure games were on the main stream (hardcopies) magazines cover !

Plus that there were no chance (or very just a little) of pirating; due to the trouble of copying the disks or diskettes (also the manuals+the copy rights protections) so the financial outcome to developers was more like 80-90% certain, now the table had turned, and not more than 10-20% of this income is certain, as the case with Machinarium was; 89% of the game’s copies reaching players were pirated. Brings to my mind that The Dream Machine developer had made a nice approach toward this matter, by demanding playing it online, a great approach that holds many cons towards consumers, but no one can blame a small indie developer when trying to protect it’s interests, maybe if its adapted (technically) more wisely, could impact the whole gaming scene, oneday, who knows!

Here’s some other suggestions:

4) Non-linear story design

Story branches into multiple paths and every choice you make (significantly) matters, thus giving you strong reason to replay the game and see all the possible outcomes.

5) Non-linear puzzle design

One word: Stacking

6) MMO

Two words: Cloud Chamber

It would be great if more developers had the audacity to design massively multiplayer online puzzles, whether they take the form of complex mystery story or procedurally generated quests (I’m thinking online Cluedo, but with engaging, emotional story).

Or, something in the veil of Journey. Online components make this game’s playthrough different each time.

lucebend - 14 April 2015 02:34 PM

Here’s some other suggestions:

4) Non-linear story design

Story branches into multiple paths and every choice you make (significantly) matters, thus giving you strong reason to replay the game and see all the possible outcomes.

5) Non-linear puzzle design

One word: Stacking

6) MMO

Two words: Cloud Chamber

It would be great if more developers had the audacity to design massively multiplayer online puzzles, whether they take the form of complex mystery story or procedurally generated quests (I’m thinking online Cluedo, but with engaging, emotional story).

Or, something in the veil of Journey. Online components make this game’s playthrough different each time.

These are all great ideas. I’ve actually been experimenting with all of them. Great minds think alike.   They are very tricky to implement though.

Im a fan of much tighter - shorter play experiences. I’ve heard that ALIEN: Isolation is something like 20 hours long…I honestly don’t think I could play a game like that for 20 hours.
Dead Space clocked in at 7 - 8 hours for me…it was perfect. I think the COD single player campaigns are around that same length - and they are awesome to play through.

As for the ‘why’ - all of the points mentioned here are pretty much it.

Older AG’s were the AAA games of the time, selling for the equivalent of $60 - $100. Nowadays you rarely get an AG that’s more than $25 - with the amounts of people that buy them being around the same (about 500 000 people are active AG players).

There is also the fact that peoples attention spans HAVE shortened, and you have to keep them moving through a story at a much brisker pace than older games. This is the same in ALL entertainment. The average song these days is around 3 minutes. I have records (oh dammit Im old…) where you had to flip them to get to the next song. It wasnt unheard of to have a 7 minute long song - or even longer.

A television series used to run for most of the year - now the push is to release much shorter seasons (12 episodes) at once. This results in the stories themselves moving MUCH faster.

In an AG every screen and asset takes a massive amount of time. You sort of have to sit with the idea that A) Having your game move too slowly will turn away a HUGE amount of players, or B) To lengthen the experience you need more screens and assets. Both options will cost you.

We submitted Stasis to the IGF. The feedback we got was that the game was well made, atmospheric, and beautiful…but every judge said that it was too slow. And Stasis moves at a relatively ‘brisk’ pace for an AG (you spend on average 5 minutes per screen).

There is a thread here about the evolution of the Adventure Game…this is it folks.

subbi - 15 April 2015 07:52 AM

Fortunately the narrative of RDR is loose and fragmented, so you can actually spend this long completing this game. With a real adventure game, the narrative can be much tighter and impactful, so you don’t have the luxury of spreading the experience over the bigger part of a year.

I think that’s also an excellent point. Creating an engaging 50 hour narrative with todays expectations of games would be INCREDIBLY difficult. Each Game Of Thrones season is around 8/9 hours of story and entertainment….that gives a pretty good idea on just how difficult it is to create a single 6 - 8 hour interactive experience - let alone one that spans 50 hours.

The older AG’s had extended play times because you didn’t have access to walkthroughs or forums. You would have to buy hint books or phone hint lines - or wait until a magazine came out with some clues or hints.
I would hazard to guess that the stories in those older AG’s are no more involved or complex than modern games. Their playtimes comes from the fact that you had no choice but to spend 50 hours on them!

Now you CAN artificially extend playtimes…which is what the older games DID do - but the ways that they did those are largely regarded nowadays as bad game design practice.
Adding in ‘dead man walking’ puzzles forces you to replay the game. Adding in mazes can add a good 2 hours onto something that doesn’t actually advance the story. Adding in super obtuse puzzles extends game time at the expense of frustration for the player.

If you took a game like Gemini Rue, littered it with mazes, obtuse puzzles and dead ends you could very easily double the play time…but it certainly wouldn’t be a better game for it!

Creating a more fragmented narrative with points of conversion is a decent idea to play around with…but then you start moving away from the ‘adventure game’ and into something closer to an RPG (which has specific gameplay elements designed to extend playtime. Leveling up through grinding is a perfect example of this. It constantly forces the player to dick around until they are powerful enough to move the story forward).

Adventure Games are very different to those games. Games like TLOU can have artificially extended game play through tweaking the difficulty of the areas. The fact that play times on those games varies so much depending on the difficulty levels played shows that.

I watch a LOT of Lets Plays of games - but I love watching the ones where they strip out all of the ‘combat’ pieces of the games and just re-cut them as a story. TLOU’s story focused pieces come to around 10 hours. Alien: Isolation is about 6 hours. Dead Space around 6 - 8 hours. Its those story pieces that would be the adventure game parts.
Even in those 16 - 20 hour games, the story focused areas are still around the same size as an average adventure game. That’s not an accident - that’s because stories can have a certain level of complexity and development before they start getting top heavy and imploding.

Adventure games don’t have that. The only way to extend game-play without resorting to ‘tricks’ (mentioned in the previous post) is to create more content. More content requires higher budgets, which they don’t have. Its a vicious cycle!

Pyke - 15 April 2015 05:34 AM

There is also the fact that peoples attention spans HAVE shortened, and you have to keep them moving through a story at a much brisker pace than older games.

Speak for yourself
I and many others still have plenty of attention span, we might not be the majority but we do exist.

Also if you look at other genres, then there are still plenty of games that give you a 50+ hours experience, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Pillars of Eternity just to mention two new games that I have/am playing myself recently/currently, and neither of those contain any grinding to expand the length. Yes they have combat and exploration and you have to spend time managing you gear and your stats, so it isn’t 50+ hours of story, most of it is what is know as gameplay (with a bit of padding).

But isn’t this really what this thread is all about?
How to expand the gameplay and length of AG’s without making it fell like artificially padding.

Pyke - 15 April 2015 05:34 AM

This is the same in ALL entertainment. The average song these days is around 3 minutes. I have records (oh dammit Im old…) where you had to flip them to get to the next song. It wasnt unheard of to have a 7 minute long song - or even longer.

The 3 minute rule is not something new.
Even back when those long songs were made, they generally weren’t played in the radio!
In order to get radio time and exposure through that, the songs had to be of a certain length, and longer songs were often cut down to shorter radio editions. What has changed since then is not so much the attention span, but more the fact that people don’t buy albums anymore, but instead listen to individual songs on spotify and similar.

Pyke - 15 April 2015 08:12 AM

The older AG’s had extended play times because you didn’t have access to walkthroughs or forums. You would have to buy hint books or phone hint lines - or wait until a magazine came out with some clues or hints.
...
Now you CAN artificially extend playtimes…which is what the older games DID do - but the ways that they did those are largely regarded nowadays as bad game design practice.

That depends on how far back you look.
You don’t have to go back more than 10 years or so, before it was still common with AG’s of 20+ hours of playtime. Walkthroughs were just as common and easily available then as they are now, and the games didn’t contain dead ends, deaths or other kinds of artificial padding or bad game design, they were simply bigger and longer! 

Pyke - 15 April 2015 11:02 AM

I watch a LOT of Lets Plays of games - but I love watching the ones where they strip out all of the ‘combat’ pieces of the games and just re-cut them as a story. TLOU’s story focused pieces come to around 10 hours. Alien: Isolation is about 6 hours. Dead Space around 6 - 8 hours. Its those story pieces that would be the adventure game parts.

Well that is to a large degree the problem as I see it!
If people playing other genres are willing to play a large game, where only a relative small part of it is about telling the story and the rest is gameplay mechanics, then why aren’t people playing adventure games willing to do the same???

IMO AG’s have become too story focused, and have been moving too much towards interactive stories instead of being story heavy games. If not enough people are interest in the gameplay mechanics that should take up 70-90% of the total time of any game, then it is a problem!
The solution is however to find some mechanics that does interest more people, not to simply remove or minimize those mechanics.

Back when I played adventure games on the 3DO, I bought an adventure game for $69.99 that was only 2 hours long and LOVED it. Great game.

Game length means nothing to me. Give me quality anytime.

I say that and I have over sixty hours into playing Persona 4 Golden on my PS VITA - a hybrid Adventure Game, Visual Novel, Dating Sim and JRPG.

So - for long games have a big budget and cover multiple genres works for me.