Living in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Matt Defles is a father of two and has an entire shelf of games that have been bought but not yet played. "It's the first time I've seen so many games coming out in a bunch of sales when I'm growing up." Defles, 40, said, "In the entire Super Nintendo era, I've only played 10 games, and now I have a much larger number of games than that number." ”
Video games are in the golden age. In 2021, even according to incomplete statistics, there are as many as thousands of games entering the market, but many people simply can't find time to play. Defles, who works for a federal agency, likes to spend hours playing games like Ricky & Tinker Bell: Time Jump after the kids go to bed. However, playing games often takes a lot of time, and some single-player games have a main-line campaign playthrough process that takes more than 40 hours.
As they get older, many players take on more family responsibilities and have less and less free time, which makes it increasingly difficult for them to get through games they've already bought. "There are several that will be released this month." "But I know it won't be until at least a few months before I have a chance to play," Defles said. ”
Some real statistics
Horizon 2: Desperate West is an open-world mega game that came out this year, and according to the HowLongToBeat website, players have an average of more than 27 hours to complete the main storyline. In the fantasy action RPG Eldon's Ring of Law, it takes 46.5 hours to complete the main line process, and it takes 107 hours to complete all the tasks in it.
If you count the side quests, the official recommended "Horizon 2: Desperate Situation of the West" is about 40 hours, but in fact it will be far more than this number
There are many more examples. Many media outlets have voted the best video games of 2021, and generally they have at least 10 games or more, and players need to invest at least about 200 hours to complete these games. If you can play for 8 hours a day, it will take about a month.
In fact, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2020, the average American spends 5.5 hours a day on recreational activities — such as exercising, reading, watching TV, or playing games. If the person decides to spend all of their free time on games, it will still take 36 days to reach 200 hours of playtime.
Statistics show that many large games take at least a month or so to get through the main line, and it takes much longer to be perfect
"The demand for time in video games is growing dramatically." Matt Piscatra, a game industry consultant at market research firm NPD Group, said, "In addition to the growth in the number of games and the volume of game content, services are also becoming more and more numerous. ”
A flood of new titles floods the market every year, and subscription services like Xbox Game Pass give players access to a vast digital library of old and new games. Plus, for smaller development teams, the barrier to entry has become even lower for creating a game that's loved by players.
Nowadays, people don't even have to spend money on games, and popular blockbusters such as Fortnite and Protos are free to play, and there is a steady stream of content for players to collect, buy, or explore. Unlike arcades of the 1980s, they have become more like arcade halls in the virtual world, allowing players to hang out with friends.
Following Microsoft XGP, Sony has also launched a new membership subscription service, which also means more options
In a modern open-world single-player adventure game, players can explore a variety of vast venues in their spare time, such as Washington, D.C. after the end of the world, or the Wild West of the United States. Chris Plant, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Polygon, believes that many studios originally aimed to create "vibrant" immersive worlds, but that's changed. "From a creative standpoint, they're like, 'As a game company, how can we control your time?'" ”
Time is money
Brydon Kiege, a researcher at queensland University of Technology in Australia, points out that this is because the longer players spend in the game world, the more likely they are to spend money. Like entertainment empires like Disney and Netflix, the big publishers aren't just looking to sell more games, they're also interested in grabbing players' attention.
"Today, the most important business model of the entire industry is to retain players for a long time with game services." Kiger said, "You want players to hang out in the game for as long as possible, not to play with something else." ”
French publisher Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed" series could also be used as an example. In the new 2020 series Assassin's Creed: Temple of Heroes, players need to play an average of 135 hours to complete all missions, which is conservatively estimated to be more than 4 times that of the original Assassin's Creed in 2007.
Ubisoft declined to answer questions about the growing size of the Assassin's Creed game world, but in a recent investor report, Ubisoft said that the "overall activity" of Assassin's Creed: Valiant players had increased compared to the previous game in the series. Ubisoft also noted that players spent more money on the game's DLC. Assassin's Creed: Valiant's latest DLC, Dawn of Doom, went on sale on March 10, and the official documentation says it offers at least 35 hours of explorable content, with a process that even exceeds the length of some full games that cost $70. For comparison, Doomsday is priced at $40.
Completing Eldon's Ring of Law can consume at least 7 days for a streamer, which for the average player can be several months
Not only is this the case with Assassin's Creed: Temple of Heroes, other big games often have a lot of updates, especially those that have been running for a long time. The developers of Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Call of Duty: Warzone offered the game as a service to players, encouraging them to pay for additional content, such as skins, cosmetic items, or full game chapters.
For European and American game companies, this revenue model is inspired by free mobile games such as Clash of Clans and Candy Fun – in most mobile games, players can speed up the game by paying a small fee. In 2018, the tactical competitive game Fortnite generated more than $5 billion in revenue for Epic Games; 74 percent of Activision Blizzard's total revenue last year came from in-game purchases.
This is especially true of the familiar online games that were born in Asia, where their operating models dwarf those of their European and American counterparts. If players can't be held back with various game content and activities, how can they continue to spend money?
Time is also efficiency
At the same time, thanks to advances in software and technology, development teams can more easily build content on top of existing virtual worlds, which further drives the scale of modern games. Piscatra notes that many developers prefer to iterate on existing "foundations" than to make a new game from scratch. For example, during the development of Horizon 2: Desperate For the West, Sony's studio Guerrrilla Games reused some of the material and data from the previous game.
Piscatella said game development costs are growing exponentially. Through sequels and other DLC content, developers can reuse existing assets, saving money and making the game bigger.
"It's obviously a lot cheaper than developing a whole new set of tools or building a different world." "If you add 10 hours of content to a game, the cost is definitely much lower than building the first 10 hours of content for a new game," Piscatella said. ”
Open-world gamers tend to have more goals outside the mainline, and platinum or full achievements are more time-consuming
Over the past 15 years, Ubisoft has released 12 assassin's creed main series. Kiger says that with studios around the world, Ubisoft has enough resources to shape these big adventure games. Over time, Ubisoft is gradually refining a "production line model for game development" that can be applied to other series such as Far Cry.
"Regardless of the series, Ubisoft games have some very typical characteristics. They're clearly constantly improving the model to make it easier to make games on a larger scale. ”
This is not only a problem for Ubisoft, many large manufacturers have similar behavior. It's certainly prone to controversy in critics, but sales are real, and it encourages big players to perpetuate that behavior— an art that balances player patience and curiosity, and no one says that games have to be flawless art.
What exactly do players want?
Alex Hutchinson, co-founder of Montreal studio Raccoon Logic, notes that many players will only buy one or two games and see them as the only source of entertainment. In many ways, developers also want to meet the needs of players by offering the most "value for money" games.
In January, Polish studio Techland, the developer of the zombie-themed action-adventure game Gone With the Wind 2, said on social media that it would take players at least 500 hours to fully complete the game. Not everyone thinks it's a feature worth showing off, and to some, it sounds more like a flaw.
"If I could beat the game in 60 hours, or up to 100 hours, I would be happy... I hate games that take too long. One player wrote directly.
Techland later clarified that it only takes about 20 hours for players to complete the main story of Fading Light 2. The 500 hours include the player's full exploration of the map and the time it takes to find all the in-game items.
After playing all the content of Gone With a Glow 2, players can walk from Warsaw to Madrid
Philip Weber, chief mission designer for CDPR, developer of Cyberpunk 2077, believes that the studios that create open-world games are engaged in "an arms race," but he wants developers to dig deeper into the competition, not just expand the breadth. Weber believes that some games would get better if their story time was shortened by a few hours.
"If the process of just promoting the game is long, it's hard to get people as interested as it used to be. You also have to explain to the player why the game has a long flow and why you should stick with it. ”
Timon Smykotra, chief designer of Gone Wither of Light 2, said many people are no longer excited about the extremely large open world because they have started a family with more disposable income than in the past, but don't have as much free time to play games.
"Honestly, it's not surprising." "On this planet, we have very limited time each day, so we have to plan how to use that time," Smektra said. ”
Interestingly, the finished product of "Fading Light 2" is flooded with a large number of bugs, and the main plot is not impressive due to some design problems; "Cyberpunk 2077" has a large number of in-depth and interesting side quests, but the main line is very short, and many players feel that the story has just entered the play, and the story has come to an abrupt end. What is the length of time that the player is satisfied with? Developers may not be able to give answers easily.
This article is compiled from: washingtonpost.com
原文标题：《Video games keep getting longer. It’s all about time and money》
Original author: Teddy Amenabar