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From: Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Oh, Randy (Borderlands 4 edition)
Date: Fri, 23 May 2025 11:17:39 -0500
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On Fri, 23 May 2025 10:12:00 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote: 

>But a smaller game world can provide as intense an experience. It
>costs significantly less too. And since the customary excuse AAA
>studios make for their live-service nonsense is that games are too
>expensive to develop without that added revenue, maybe they should
>consider trimming back their games before reaching into our wallets.

Coccoon comes to mind. Gris as well. I quite enjoyed both. Cave Story is
also excellent, and free. They take less than 10 hours to finish.

As for the 120 hr game... To me, it's a myth. There's usually all sorts
of gimmickry to extend game play, much like the 8-bit extended play we've
been talking about recently.
`````````````````

To wit:

"Oh, you ate that pie? now you have to replay the entire game up to this
point." "Didn't do the right thing with the cheese sandwich? Ha!" "Didn't
pixel hunt that glowing green crystal? Now you're stuck and you have no
idea why. Wander around for hours please."

In truth, I quite enjoyed the cheese sandwich because it required me to
a) remember the point in the game where the problem began and make the
connection and, b) Find a way to deal with it with limited early game
resources. It totally refreshed the content for me and was humorous to
boot. But Infocom games actually replay quite quickly. Sierra games,
otoh... walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk oh ffs. They
borrowed the mechanic from text and it was wholly inappropriate to the
medium. And hiding critical items is sadistic. Sierra was never my bag.

`````````````````

The only recent game I can think of that offers 120 hours of actual game
play is Baldur's Gate III. That's a large game. 145GB large.

Procedurally generated open world grinds have 30 hours of real gameplay,
IMO. Elite: Dangerous for instance. Or TES. Some people get unlimited
play out of that, I get about 30-40 hours and then I'm bored. Often to
the exclusion of the story quest. Which is plenty. But it's not because
the game is actually full of content. Skyrim's map is pretty tiny, for
instance, and E:Dangerous is 90% empty space.

Civ, otoh, I play and play and play. I have over a thousand hours in Civ
V (with considerable help from my wife). I have 100 in Civ VI, on my own.
I never counted the hours in earlier versions. But that's a different
experience. You can get a lot of mileage out of something like "Monopoly"
or "Parcheesi." A game where your approach to random starts is more
important than actual content gives many hours to the player. It's like
you're procedurally generating the game yourself.

So "large" games are mostly a gimmick to me. Nobody puts the actual time
in. I was shocked at the 15 hour, story driven single-player FPS when it
first happened, but it really is the sweet spot, as demonstrated by the
original Half Life. FarCry is not the sweet spot, unless you really like
ambushing things over and over again only to have them respawn.

If I get 60+ hours out of a game, it's probably due to interesting play,
not the size of the content, and very few games truly provide the content
to begin with.

-- 
Zag

What's the point of growing up 
if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC