this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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Yeah, games take time to make. It's good that they have more content now. Do you not remember how short campaigns used to be?
I do, and I miss it. I'm far more likely to feel these days like they made too much game to its own detriment than to make it a length that felt better for the game's pacing. Baldur's Gate 3 was phenomenal from start to finish, but games frequently come in at a third of its length and feel like they were longer than they should have been. Lots of games transitioned to open world that used to be linear, and the open world is little more than a menu that makes it take longer to select your mission, because you have to travel there. They create checklists of busy work to keep you playing worse content between the moments that you actually want to do, like the side missions that litter modern Assassin's Creed games with progression gates. I didn't know how good we had it when we got FPS campaigns between 8 and 12 hours in the years following Half-Life 1, because they've been so rare since Titanfall 2 came out 8 years ago. Games being longer now is not solving a problem that I had, and I'd argue it's often creating problems.
Maybe you prefer your games longer, and good on you if you do, but it's most definitely not due to developers getting more efficient with their content. For one reason or another, because you're demanding it as the customer or because modern asset pipelines make it make the most fiscal sense, they're just spending more time making the content.
You can still get short games, you just won't find them from AAA developers anymore because publishers want big games with bigger profits. Titanfall 2 was a great campaign even if short, but Halo 5 was the last short game we had and people threw a shit storm (rightly, it wasn't near the quality of TF2 and had other issues).
If you want short games, the indie space has you covered. Always small games out there releasing.
And game devs have certainly not become inefficient, it's just the standards of quality are higher. People still want more complex, better looking games. And I don't mean just graphics; unique art styles are all the rage. Games like Balatro and Cruelty Squad prove graphics aren't everything as long as you keep a cohesive style and have good gameplay to back it up.
Personally though I avoid small games. I've had my fill of them growing up, I'd rather play big games with open worlds and all that jazz. I want to be invested in these worlds not play and forget.
I agree that AAA developers are the ones typically not making short games, and I agree that I am well-covered by indies. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. FPS games are about the only genre I feel like I used to be well-served in that indies haven't quite picked up yet, so I can't really just "go elsewhere" these days to scratch that itch (but games like Mouse: P.I. for Hire may be the start). But I was really just arguing against the efficiency part. I don't think they've become less efficient at making content, but they've seemingly stayed exactly as efficient and just spent much longer doing it. I don't find that a big open world makes a game any more memorable, especially when it exhibits the negative trends of filler and bloat I mentioned already.