When buying a game does the length of the game really factor into it your decision or is it all based on the quality of the title? A game like Call of Duty 4 shows that a game does not have to be long to be great (although the short single player was made up for with some awesome online play), then again something massive like Oblivion was also a strong seller.

According to some of the top Independent Game Developers at the Game Developers Conference 2008 which runs from February 18-22, including Kellee Santiago from thatgamecompany (flOw), Jon Mak from Queasy Games (Everyday Shooter), and Pekko Koskinen from Finnish, the indusrty should stop grading games on their length and look at the quality.

"Now games are for the most part experienced and--more importantly--measured linearly," said Santiago. "Game X is better than game Y because game X is 20 hours, while game Y is pretty good but it's only 10 hours long. Sandbox games have a sense of increased value, because they last 'forever.' An example is Katamari Damacy, which was a value at $20. The reviews for it qualified that it was a short game, but I don't think I'm alone when I say I logged more hours on Katamari Damacy than I did on God of War II, which I finished. I'm not saying God of War II is better or worse than Katamari Damacy--I really like God of War II, actually--but what I'm saying is I don't think this is an appropriate ruler anymore to measure the quality or the value of a game."

Santiago continued about the problems caused focusing on the games story length rather than its depth "Instead of focusing on small moment-to-moment details and more intrinsic rewards systems, we're trying to stuff all of this content in to make it long enough," she complained. "More than anything, I want linear gameplay to not be a topic of discussion because to say that something that spends more of your time is better assumes we have loads of time to get rid of--that there aren't other things we should be doing. What about the quality of the time spent on something, and how about making that the focus?"

In the end all gamers want their games to be quality but are they really going to fork out $100 for a game they'll have finished in a matter of hours?

Submitted by ICC_06 19/02/2008 12 2

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Source URL:

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6186203.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;1

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