How Long Should an RPG Be?
I ran into this tech article on classic RPGs on tablet PCs last week which got me to thinkin' a little bit (I don't do it often, so it's worthy of note). The article is geared more towards discussing hardware, but in the context of playing older games such as Baldur's Gate. The author comments on the length of games of an earlier era versus today:

"The minute that I figured out that there's more than enough fan-made material out to give these classics a new lease on life, I started picking up used copies of them and making plans to play them, some of them for the first time. But then I ran into a problem: these games are long. For today's games, 30 hours of play time is epic; but old-school RPGs, could run well over 100 hours. In fact, I spent one summer working 15 hours a week as a computer lab monitor, and pretty much all I did was play once through the Mac ports of Fallout 1 and 2 for the whole summer."

But I don't think he's wrong. I do remember how the old games of yesteryear really weren't the kinds of games you beat in a week or four so you could move on to the next game. They required some measure of devotion. Though Oblivion and the latest Persona games aren't really all that old-school, and they sure took some serious time out of my life.

When I was at Infogrammes (now Atari) , the company head Bruno Bonnell told us that a study had shown what many of us suspected - the majority of players never "finish" their games. They would eventually give up and move on to the next game. Bonnell's contention was that we were wasting half our development efforts if the players were only playing half the game. I don't think the math necessarily applies - you reuse a LOT of code and content in later levels that is needed throughout the game.

While he wasn't speaking specifically of RPGs at the time, but I've little doubt that most copies of RPGs in the 1990s never accessed the "ending sequence" file on the hard drive. Players tend to play until they grow bored or frustrated, and then quit. Those aren't reactions any developer wants to his or her game. But even the most sadistic game designer really wants and expects players to actually see the endgame.

(As a side note, speaking of sadistic game designers: If anybody actually played through the final boss fight of Outwars to see the ending, I want to personally apologize. I was young, inexperienced, and I needed the money. And we'd lost half our team and most publisher support by then...)

Now, I do love my epic, sprawling RPGs that I can just lose myself in for a long time. In spite of its flaws, I had a blast playing Oblivion - if for no other reason than I was constantly finding something interesting to do, or a new quest line to follow up on. It's all well and good to say, "It got pretty old after a while," but when "while" is measured with three digits I think it is pretty forgivable.

But - let's get real here. A lot of these old RPGs which could consume multiple full 24-hour days of time to complete did not do so by providing second-upon-second of extremely high-quality, engaging content. And yes, Oblivion's fill-in-the-blank dungeon populations is included here. And Persona's random dungeons, too.

I think most players would really rather play a 20-hour game full of extremely awesome, high-quality, engaging content than a 100-hour game made up primarily of "meh." But I do wonder if there isn't a target value of an optimum average number of hours in an RPG before players start growing weary of even the most well-crafted storyline. I think the law of diminishing returns does apply somewhere where even the most devoted players may waver in their attention.

I remember a note in a game design lecture at GDC one year that the Japanese RPGs (which were just gaining some strong mainstream popularity at the time) were designed to have a boss battle about every two hours. The games were designed to hit a nice climax and stopping point every couple of hours - which was the average amount of time per day that their customers could play their games. I thought this was a brilliant concept.

It's hard to force the issue in a non-linear game, and less of an issue where games offer the option to save anywhere. But it's not a big deal to make sure that any significant segment of the game has reasonable stopping points with fairly satisfying conclusions and a promise of new developments to come at frequent, regular intervals.

Can this be extended on a larger level? Can it be extended to plots as well as gameplay? Should we a significant plot reversal / twist approximately every eight hours, so that players don't grow too tired of making baby-steps towards the goal? Is 25 - 40 hours an "optimum length" for any major RPG, beyond which tedium is likely to set in?

Is there such a thing as an RPG being "too short?" As short stories coexist with novels, is there a place in the market for a "small" RPGs of 4-8 hours' length alongside their big brothers of 24+ hours length? Is that long enough to have a satisfying RPG experience and sink your teeth into the characters and world? Or would they only work as part of a larger series? Or not at all?

Let us pretend that bang-for-the-buck price differences weren't an issue - you'd be paying about $1.50 per hour regardless of the size of any single game. You could play one huge 100-hour game, or five short 20-hour games for the same price. Let us make another huge assumption, too, that quality would be the same - the 100-hour RPG wouldn't be padded with tons of "filler." Under these ideal conditions, everything else being equal, would you prefer to reach a conclusion relatively quickly and move on to the next game, or play a single "epic-length" RPG which can pull you in for weeks and weeks?

So fess up: How much does size really matter to you?

Labels: Biz, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:12 AM (Permalink)