There is way too much bloat in modern gaming. There’s a lot of recent games that I really enjoyed but couldn’t help feeling relieved that it was over. Usually I’ll get exhausted of playing by 3/4s of the way through.
Yeah. I wonder if it’s only a problem to the hardcore enthusiasts who play a shit ton of games. Like maybe if you’re the more casual player who only plays maybe 1 game a month or less, it won’t matter to you.
Still going through the video but I have some comments on part 1: 1. A game being $50 back then but $90 by today’s standard is irrelevant to how much it costs today. You’re forgetting that a) people have become accustomed to 50-60 dollars for decades so it’s understandable they’d be jarred by a $10 increase, especially when we all know that even the $60 games are not worth $60. b) inflation and prices have gone up but salaries don’r reflect the prices going up. People’s purchasing power is weaker than back then. So in a way $70 today feels more than $50 back then. 2. The movie theater thing is a bad example. You’re not paying that much to watch a movie. You’re paying that much for the experience. It’s a night out. It’s like saying you can go to a theme park or buy a video game that you own forever. Yeah it’s cheaper to buy a game but I’m not there JUST to watch a movie. I’m there for the experience to watch it with friends in a crowded theater, otherwise I’d have waited for a blu-ray or a subscription service to carry it.
Great discussion! Very underrated topic. It also opens up a broader discussion about replayability/replay value in video games. I feel that many games (especially open-world games) are being made to be long and fulfilling for a single play-through, rather than being tightly designed and a joy to replay again and again. There’s something special about a fully fleshed-out, tightly designed, focused, well-paced experience that’s fulfilling but also doesn’t overstay its welcome. Game design that’s deliberate and carefully well-crafted which gives it that polish. I think this is why games like Super Metroid, Doom, Chrono Trigger, traditional Zelda, Super Mario, Resident Evil, and Metal Gear Solid, to name a few, are so well-beloved till this day. They’re not long games and yet, they’re densely packed. There’s things you can miss on your first play-through. You may not even be able to grasp the depths of its gameplay and design on the first play-through. Growing up, Star Fox 64 in particular was very impactful to me in this regard. Games with multiple routings and layers. Multiple approaches, missable upgrades/items, endings, lore, easter eggs, bosses, challenges, etc. Games that are great enough for a casual play-through but you can also dig deeper into it for additional secrets, depth and value. For example, Final Fantasy X does a great job at being straight killer, no filler. And you can engage with the game at a deeper level at your pace. It's never forced on you. Not to mention, most of the side content feels more like side adventures with meaningful rewards rather than chores.
@@radiorah768 I agree. While shorter doesn’t always equal better, I believe that limitations help creativity. A shorter runtime would ideally mean more intention with how you ask a player to spend their time with your game.
I feel crazy when people talk about games not being long enough. Like you, I grew up with the Gameboy Pocket and the GameCube as my first consoles. Aside from RPGs, most games were fairly short. I gamed any second I could and replayed a lot of games. I guess it also helped I was never a skilled gamer so games would take me a while to finish. Unlike the newer generations, we didn't have any F2P games to tide us over until the next release. I think most kids were lucky to get 2 to 4 games a year. There are so many long games now, which have a better "value" now than they were back then. I think the conversation about game length really boomed with The Order 1886 but it was also an ongoing discussion during the PS3/XB360 era with short single player campaigns of multiplayer games. I guess a valid criticism people had with the game was that it was repetitive despite being short and seemed to end right when it was getting interesting. After games like GTA V, Destiny, Dragon Age Inquisition, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher 3, Farcry, MGS Phantom Pain, Skyrim, and Watchdogs; the race for bigger and longer games really took off. The concept of living in a game world was novel and exciting at first, but I quickly started to notice how less focused games were and how inconsistent the quality of content in the games were. More and more games started to adopt more RPG elements that were not originally RPGs and many games seemed to borrow a lot from Ubisoft "distractions," I mean side content. I like to play a game and not feel like I spent 3 hours getting absolutely nowhere in the main quest. It is exhausting and isn't as satisfying to me personally. Not every game has to be short, but I would like more games to take out the bloat. I think 8 to 25 hours is the sweet spot for most games, imo, but live service and open world games are still selling a bunch.
Thank the lord someone is talking about this. So many games feel bloated nowadays, even BG3 and TotK which I truly love have quite a bit of bloat, BG3 in it's itemization/loot system which just eats away hours over a whole run and TotK with the depths and overabundance of some side-content. Persona 5 Royal (which I played somewhat recently) had so much bloat it definitively broke me, I didn't even play FF7: Rebirth because I knew how bloated it would be. Not a lot of people talk about it, but man do I wish gamedevs would stop putting stuff in to simply make a game longer.
A fantastic video that does a good job illustrating what's wrong with the video game industry and how it's been getting progressively worse over the years. people at the top of the gaming industry have always been out of touch from what their designers want to do and what players actually want, And this weird bloat problem we're starting to have where games just have so much content they are a infinite well that never ceases Is only going to cause the industry to balloon further. We're going to hit a breaking point. I remember when I was growing up thinking "Man, I sure wish I had a metroidvania game that randomized its layout, that I could just replay over and over again!" Now there's a game called Chasm that does that, and Bloodstained has a randomized items mode. I don't like either of them, there's something about the non-human design that is just innately unappealing. It's something I said I wanted, yet when I got it, it was terrible. We've tried this approach with games going on forever and it doesn't work. They don't feel impactful and people stop caring. It's time to stop this toxic design practice.
Appreciate the thoughtful comment, my friend! I agree with you on the non-human element. It’s only going to get worse with AI. To me, the perfect game length is anywhere between 15-25 hours. 30 hours sometimes. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a rare example of 50+ hours well spent on the main story, but there’s still a few points that could’ve been shaved off.
The re1 remake on GameCube is perfect in length. I would 100% prefer shorter games with more focused mechanics and replay value vs modern gaming where everything is open world and takes 3 weeks to get past the opening
Lol I just bought RE1 remake for my Steam Deck. I'm taking this comment as a sign to play through it soon. And yeah I agree. For me, a perfect game is around 10-15 hours give or take. For RPGs and JRPGs, I'm a big fan of 25-35 hours. Of course, certain games require and deserve more time too, but its rare for me to feel like a 50+ hour game truly used all of its time effectively.
The biggest issue with the assertion that game prices aren't too high because current prices are less than what they should be according to inflation, is that it doesn't take into account that purchasing power has dropped over time because the average income hasn't kept up with the rate of inflation. People base their price expectations on how much money that they have to spend, not by inflation rates.
for me pricing is only as issue when the store page as a deluxe edition for $100 and gold edition for $120 and deluxe gold directors ultra pro max edition for like $200 or something, or live service games that release seasonal pass for $30 and yearly dlc for $120 *coughcough* destiny 2-
Yeah, just ignore that costs with distribution and physical production went down exponentially due to digital, dev tools becoming more democratized and cheap, storage becoming extremely cheaper as well as the hardware needed to make the games themselves, and the fact that games sell multiple millions of copies instead of hundreds of thousands (and, once again, the majority of those sales without the need to print anything physical, or distribution). Also keep in mind that the production of those games, for those companies doesn't happen in the vaccum, they are producing other games and offering their services to other companies, while they produce one game, as opposed as in the past where the entire industry was more insular. Just look at the credits of any game and you'll see names that repeat over and over again in many AAA titles, such as Keywords or Poletowin, which are companies that basically take LQA, FQA, Art, and a lot of the development of hands of the AAA company, providing cheaper services by hiring in studios in Indonesia or Philippines for example and spreading the cost of production even more through having people work in multiple projects at the same time for multiple companies. The way you're doing the "math" is very simplistic and ignores how things actually work. If videogames weren't profitable, publishers wouldn't be in the business, and yet, Valve makes more profit per worker than Apple, Alphabet (google) and Amazon. The problem isn't games not having increased their price, nor games being long, the problem with the videogame industry is the same as any other industry: companies pay less to workers and fire with no issues because they simply can, and it's good for investors in some cases. That's how some of those companies declare record profits year after year. Where did those record profits come if games "didn't increase their price since the 90's". Also I like the example you gave with the 49,99$ FF7, since that, even for the time was odd since Sony actually reduced the price of their games in comparison with the competition and that affected the whole market since games were more expensive before. I have a copy of Fifa World Soccer from 1994, for the Megadrive/Genesis, with the price tag still glued to it, and it cost 65$. It was a business move to show that CD's were better than cartidges even in price. Ofc that, like with everything else, the prices went back up in the next gen. When they tell you they lost money, they didn't, they just didn't make as much profit in the previous year, which means investors don't get as much of a payout. They are still paying for everyone + profit for the game. Yeah, some devs can't make it, but that was the case back then as well, just look at the army of corpses EA has in its wake, however, it's not those companies that are complaining about the price of games, it's the AAA companies. They want to raise prices, because they know they'll keep selling with higher prices since people who buy loads of games will still be able to afford it, it's not because they are hurting.
There are more people playing games yes, but there are also more people MAKING them than ever. More people to pay than ever before. Paying people is the most expensive part of game production.There's literal charts of how much games cost over time both in real money and adjusted for inflation and games are actually cheaper now than ever before when you consider the price of groceries, gas and other necessities. Uncharted 2 cost rough $20 million to make. 7 years later and Uncharted 4 cost over triple that. Both $60. It's strange. I'm not disagreeing with you about corporate greed and the firings and layoffs. If you go to your favorite restaurant and always get a steak, if the price of beef goes up for the chef to buy, the price of the customers steak goes up. But the same isn't true for games?
@@WITAWITAVG do you have the passing understanding of what economy of scale is? how do you explain the profits of the AAA devs without the increase in price? Does your understanding stop at games costing the same as before, and yet production is more expensive?
@@WITAWITAVG The same isn't true for games or anything else really at that scale. They cost less because a lot of the processes cost less and bear multiple uses. Rarely a worker in the industry is working towards a single project, you have the lead programers, yes, but everyone else works in multiple. I alone have at some point worked in 5 at the same time as lqa. I know people who do so for many more, all this within the same company. It's not as simple as you try to paint it.
Also the comparisons you make. Do you know why most remasters are botched to a point, specially from JRPG's, or why Bluepoint had to backwards engineer MGS source code? Because often they would have to erase the hard drives with the source code before jumping to a new game, so they had space for it. This indicates you that the amount of games being produced at one point was much much smaller, for each company, and that the costs of keeping them were very high, to the point that led to many inefficiencies. These are barely an issue today to any large company. Yes games are more expensive to make, but the costs of production are also investments for other games that are being produced at the same time. Overall the management changed and that's why companies aren't struggling as they paint they are, the reason for the price increase is solely wanting more profit.
I’m not gonna lie, I bought Spider-Man just to play as MJ. Haha but seriously the video came content vs art category is a good mixture and great point for developing teams for a better focus.
I think a big part of the problem is the modern gaming is form over function, which leads to the indulging budgets too. Studios are far more concerned with making a massive map with 16 times the detail than make any of it fun to explore. The obsession with open work games is killing the gaming industry. Not every game needs to be a sprawling open world
I would say Remake had a few rough side missions but I was definitely feeling the padding with Rebirth. The Chadley stuff is obnoxious. I think Spider-Man 2 was a massive improvement on 1 tho. They trimmed the fat a ton and as a result I was able to 100% it in less than 20 hours and the side quests were way less repetitive.
Sometimes during Rebirth it felt like I was playing fan fiction. It's interesting how in Spider-Man they had those puzzles and in 2 they just let you skip it. It kinda makes me feel like "If you're giving me the option to skip it, why did you make it?"
Whenever I see someone on the internet equating game length with game quality I automatically assume they are a low-IQ 12 year old. I have to or I will go crazy. I simply can't believe there are grown adults who sincerely think like this. It's the same as saying my car is better because it is physically the longer than yours. It's an asinine way of thinking. Length has absolutely nothing to do with quality and craftsmanship. Great video! P.S. While everyone cheers on AI, I fear it will only contribute to modern game bloat and homogeneity. A good example already here is Ray-Tracing which is essentially procedurally generated light (the algorithm lights the scene for the developer). It's why many modern games look the same. Handcrafted lighting is superior in every way aside from development time. Hand crafted lighting looks so much better and artistic...because it comes from an actual human creator.
@@micshazam842 Yeah I like to play a game like that maybe once every other year. There’s something nice about checking items off on a digital to-do list. But there’s so many of those games and the content isn’t very thoughtful, so it sucks that it plagues so many games.
@@micshazam842 I know nobody played it but Rage 2 did open world the correct way…no bloat, fun, mission structure and flexibility leaning in the open world design. Was one of my favorites in the last couple years. Unfortunately everyone call the world empty and derivative. (It’s not.)
The problem with Rebirth (if youre willing to break it down) is just Chadley stuff and some unimportant minigames (besides Queens Blood). It seems like they just want something that can make you do more exploring of the open world, but I prefer more sidequests for that. The sidequests are enjoyable. Then again, some of Chadley stuff are not completely useless. Like Battle Intel introduce you to some minibosses that helps you learn the combat more.. protorelic stuff which gives more story is also good. But some other like lifespring stuff are unnecessary. They should just give us more sidequests if they want us to explore the open world.. and make Chadley talk less
I think the issue with modern gaming are too bloated with non important activities. They filled games with a ton of worthless side quest, fetch quest, collectatons, marks on the maps. A bunch of things that doesn't really add up to the games. Games before weren't artificially bloated with stuff. They were long because the storytelling was long and the things making those game long was cannon and important events. Games nowadays are 16 hours long of story, but then 60 on sidequest meaningless side content. Games need to be more direct and focus on their stories. The gaming era is on the trend of "Games need to last forever". Games are trying to make you sick tired and exhausted taking so much of you time making you fall into the loop of forcing you to no paly any other stuff. Nowdays i'm not touching games that require me to put more than 20 hours on it unless is a Yakuza game or a Souls like game. I just can't deal with all games being this damn long
I dont mind some bloat but man i will probably never 100% AC origin, odyssey and Valhalla its ridiculous, but honestly this is great for kids who only have that 1 or few games and parents cant buy them one every month.
@@micshazam842Even though the like a dragon series is my favorite game franchise ever, i kinda get you. When i first played Yakuza 0 i stopped after 3 hours because i felt like it was going nowhere. When i came back to it, and pushed through the first chapter, it blew my mind. I really reccomend to just push through the slow start, because it really gets good. And when you know what to expect (since every game has a slow start), it becomes easier to do so. But yeah, the slow pacing in the opening hours can be bad imo, as it can draw a lot of people away, first impressions really matter.
@@micshazam842Yeah, i get you. Like a Dragon has one of the slowest starts i've seen in a game. Though i do find the combat pretty fun since you can earn a lot of moves, and there are 8 fighting styles in total in Y0 for example. A big part of yakuza is trying all the minigames, doing the side quests and just existing in the world. So if you just do the main story it can feel like the game is missing something, which is isn't case for a lot of western titles. And the writing in the side quests i so good, and it's so much more focused on telling fun stories in those quests than a lot of other games. But if you don't like that vibe then the games def can feel boring. Though i love the games so much that ofc i feel like you might enjoy them more if you know what to expect lol Also your brother prob played yakuza 3
dead ass iv been saying this about pacing for long time. id rather main stories be like 15 to 20 hours long then have side content be 50 to 100 hours i love long games and taking my time with them BUT i dont like being forced to play 6000 hours to beat a game but ill grind side content for years. Assassins creed Valhalla was really bad about this too they gloated they had no real side quests but that wasnt true everything was just in the main game. there was a bit where you literally put on a mask and go from house to house getting candy... YOU WERE TRICK OR TREATING!!! thats awesome if it had been side content i just stumbled on but it came about 50 hours into a 100+ hour play through i hated it because i had to do it.
The escapist just released a video (a day after yours) that is extremely similar in title and content. I know this is a topic that a lot of people can discuss but that seems way too non coincidental and it hurts to see their video get more views than yours.
estimated game-length doesnt matter. I spent hundreds, if not thousand hours in super mario world and people finish it in ~1h30 by now. Gameplay is what counts. nothing else. Chasing arbitrary marks on a minimap (im looking at you, ubisoft) doesnt make a good game. it makes a good grind, but... well, f*ck that.
Dude really? Did you just defend the cost of a 70$ AAA game price by pulling out an inflation calulator? AAA game companies make more than the movie the industry and their CEOs are paid hundreds of millions every single year in bonuses... they didn't need to raise the price to 70$
While I agree with you that CEO salaries are out of control, when you compare game budgets and prices, it doesn't make any sense. The budgets keep skyrocketing and prices do not adjust quickly enough. Breath of the Wild was $60 in 2017. $60 in 2017 is worth $74 today. And how much was Tears of the Kingdom? $70. I know inflation is annoying to keep in mind, but it's real. And also, if the price raises help the developers put a few more bucks in their pockets, I'm okay with them. I know the CEOs take most of it, but surely the devs are getting a small piece of the pie too? And I just want to clarify I'm not trying to speak from a personal point of view. Do I WANT $70 games? No. Do I think it makes sense in todays economy? Yes.
@@WITAWITAVG AAA game companies can afford to let their game budgets to rise because year over year they are making massive profit growth. Trust me, if they couldn't afford it and it didn't make business sense they wouldn't do it. The whole thing that the poor AAA game companies need more money because inflation is maddening when you can just look at how massively their profits are growing every single year.
@@WITAWITAVG Another question worth asking when gamers normalized the 70$ price point is who benefited exactly? Did the devs themselves get a raise? Did it stop devs from being laid off after a AAA game is made? No of course not. The investors get a larger stock dividend and the CEO gets a larger end of the year bonus. This has been shown time and time again in studies when Republicans lower the taxes on their donors with the excuse that it will benefit the economy, in truth bussniesses almost never re-invest in their own employees, stock holders get dividends, CEOs get bonuses.
Thats because the bloat in Persona 5 is expected. Persona 5, besides being a dungeon crawler, is a dating sim game. Living your everyday life, meeting with people and doing activities to pass the time will naturally make the game feel bloated, but its also kind of the point of these type of games. The only really garbage bloat in P5 (that people do call out) are the side targets that you find through the PT website, they're repetitive and often have the worst translation in the whole game, making them not just a waste of time but also facemeltingly cringe.
Still going through the video but I have some comments on part 1: 1. A game being $50 back then but $90 by today’s standard is irrelevant to how much it costs today. You’re forgetting that a) people have become accustomed to 50-60 dollars for decades so it’s understandable they’d be jarred by a $10 increase, especially when we all know that even the $60 games are not worth $60. b) inflation and prices have gone up but salaries don’r reflect the prices going up. People’s purchasing power is weaker than back then. So in a way $70 today feels more than $50 back then. 2. The movie theater thing is a bad example. You’re not paying that much to watch a movie. You’re paying that much for the experience. It’s a night out. It’s like saying you can go to a theme park or buy a video game that you own forever. Yeah it’s cheaper to buy a game but I’m not there JUST to watch a movie. I’m there for the experience to watch it with friends in a crowded theater, otherwise I’d have waited for a blu-ray or a subscription service to carry it.
@@cantstandya9749 Thanks for taking the time to watch and reply. 1. While I understand what you’re saying that people have gotten used to $60 dollars, that doesn’t erase the facts. $60 buys you less and less at the grocery store. It also buys you less gas for your car. Going out to eat, going to the movies, buying a vinyl record- they’ve all increased in prices. So why not games? We can’t forget that people MAKE these games, so in order to make sure they can also feed their families just like we do, it makes sense for prices to go up. 2. To each their own. I would argue that watching a movie in your clean and quieter home with access to cheaper food options, AND the ability to pause is infinitely more valuable than the movies. But I respect the theater experience.
@@WITAWITAVG anytime! It was a great video. 1. You said it yourself though, $60 buys you less at the grocery store today than it did back then. The minimum wage hasn’t really changed but prices are going up. It makes sense for game prices to go up but it’s also understandable that people will find it harder to spend $70 on a game today since they’re making basically the same amount they did a decade ago but their money is just worth less. Personally, I care about game quality more than game length but $60 for Silent Hill 2 Remake, an 8 hour game with no real replay value, is tough. I’ll wait for a sale. If it had the same replay value as Resident Evil, I’d gladly pay $60. 2. I guess we’ll just have to disagree here. It is more comfortable to watch a movie at home at your own pace and all but at the same time it’s expected that you’ll be paying a decent amount of money for a night out. Drinking at home doesn’t hit the same as drinking at a bar for example and ordering pasta through an app isn’t the same as going to a nice place with someone and having dinner
I know it's a bit of a hot take, but my opinion is that
This!
There is way too much bloat in modern gaming. There’s a lot of recent games that I really enjoyed but couldn’t help feeling relieved that it was over. Usually I’ll get exhausted of playing by 3/4s of the way through.
Yeah. I wonder if it’s only a problem to the hardcore enthusiasts who play a shit ton of games. Like maybe if you’re the more casual player who only plays maybe 1 game a month or less, it won’t matter to you.
@@WITAWITAVG yeah I can see more casual audiences who don’t buy many games seeing a 40 hour game as getting more bang for their buck
Still going through the video but I have some comments on part 1:
1. A game being $50 back then but $90 by today’s standard is irrelevant to how much it costs today. You’re forgetting that a) people have become accustomed to 50-60 dollars for decades so it’s understandable they’d be jarred by a $10 increase, especially when we all know that even the $60 games are not worth $60. b) inflation and prices have gone up but salaries don’r reflect the prices going up. People’s purchasing power is weaker than back then. So in a way $70 today feels more than $50 back then.
2. The movie theater thing is a bad example. You’re not paying that much to watch a movie. You’re paying that much for the experience. It’s a night out. It’s like saying you can go to a theme park or buy a video game that you own forever. Yeah it’s cheaper to buy a game but I’m not there JUST to watch a movie. I’m there for the experience to watch it with friends in a crowded theater, otherwise I’d have waited for a blu-ray or a subscription service to carry it.
Great discussion! Very underrated topic. It also opens up a broader discussion about replayability/replay value in video games.
I feel that many games (especially open-world games) are being made to be long and fulfilling for a single play-through, rather than being tightly designed and a joy to replay again and again.
There’s something special about a fully fleshed-out, tightly designed, focused, well-paced experience that’s fulfilling but also doesn’t overstay its welcome. Game design that’s deliberate and carefully well-crafted which gives it that polish. I think this is why games like Super Metroid, Doom, Chrono Trigger, traditional Zelda, Super Mario, Resident Evil, and Metal Gear Solid, to name a few, are so well-beloved till this day. They’re not long games and yet, they’re densely packed. There’s things you can miss on your first play-through. You may not even be able to grasp the depths of its gameplay and design on the first play-through. Growing up, Star Fox 64 in particular was very impactful to me in this regard. Games with multiple routings and layers. Multiple approaches, missable upgrades/items, endings, lore, easter eggs, bosses, challenges, etc. Games that are great enough for a casual play-through but you can also dig deeper into it for additional secrets, depth and value.
For example, Final Fantasy X does a great job at being straight killer, no filler. And you can engage with the game at a deeper level at your pace. It's never forced on you. Not to mention, most of the side content feels more like side adventures with meaningful rewards rather than chores.
@@radiorah768 I agree. While shorter doesn’t always equal better, I believe that limitations help creativity. A shorter runtime would ideally mean more intention with how you ask a player to spend their time with your game.
I feel crazy when people talk about games not being long enough. Like you, I grew up with the Gameboy Pocket and the GameCube as my first consoles. Aside from RPGs, most games were fairly short. I gamed any second I could and replayed a lot of games. I guess it also helped I was never a skilled gamer so games would take me a while to finish.
Unlike the newer generations, we didn't have any F2P games to tide us over until the next release. I think most kids were lucky to get 2 to 4 games a year. There are so many long games now, which have a better "value" now than they were back then.
I think the conversation about game length really boomed with The Order 1886 but it was also an ongoing discussion during the PS3/XB360 era with short single player campaigns of multiplayer games. I guess a valid criticism people had with the game was that it was repetitive despite being short and seemed to end right when it was getting interesting. After games like GTA V, Destiny, Dragon Age Inquisition, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher 3, Farcry, MGS Phantom Pain, Skyrim, and Watchdogs; the race for bigger and longer games really took off.
The concept of living in a game world was novel and exciting at first, but I quickly started to notice how less focused games were and how inconsistent the quality of content in the games were. More and more games started to adopt more RPG elements that were not originally RPGs and many games seemed to borrow a lot from Ubisoft "distractions," I mean side content.
I like to play a game and not feel like I spent 3 hours getting absolutely nowhere in the main quest. It is exhausting and isn't as satisfying to me personally. Not every game has to be short, but I would like more games to take out the bloat. I think 8 to 25 hours is the sweet spot for most games, imo, but live service and open world games are still selling a bunch.
Thank the lord someone is talking about this. So many games feel bloated nowadays, even BG3 and TotK which I truly love have quite a bit of bloat, BG3 in it's itemization/loot system which just eats away hours over a whole run and TotK with the depths and overabundance of some side-content.
Persona 5 Royal (which I played somewhat recently) had so much bloat it definitively broke me, I didn't even play FF7: Rebirth because I knew how bloated it would be. Not a lot of people talk about it, but man do I wish gamedevs would stop putting stuff in to simply make a game longer.
A fantastic video that does a good job illustrating what's wrong with the video game industry and how it's been getting progressively worse over the years. people at the top of the gaming industry have always been out of touch from what their designers want to do and what players actually want, And this weird bloat problem we're starting to have where games just have so much content they are a infinite well that never ceases Is only going to cause the industry to balloon further. We're going to hit a breaking point.
I remember when I was growing up thinking "Man, I sure wish I had a metroidvania game that randomized its layout, that I could just replay over and over again!" Now there's a game called Chasm that does that, and Bloodstained has a randomized items mode.
I don't like either of them, there's something about the non-human design that is just innately unappealing. It's something I said I wanted, yet when I got it, it was terrible. We've tried this approach with games going on forever and it doesn't work. They don't feel impactful and people stop caring.
It's time to stop this toxic design practice.
Appreciate the thoughtful comment, my friend! I agree with you on the non-human element. It’s only going to get worse with AI.
To me, the perfect game length is anywhere between 15-25 hours. 30 hours sometimes. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a rare example of 50+ hours well spent on the main story, but there’s still a few points that could’ve been shaved off.
The re1 remake on GameCube is perfect in length. I would 100% prefer shorter games with more focused mechanics and replay value vs modern gaming where everything is open world and takes 3 weeks to get past the opening
Lol I just bought RE1 remake for my Steam Deck. I'm taking this comment as a sign to play through it soon. And yeah I agree. For me, a perfect game is around 10-15 hours give or take. For RPGs and JRPGs, I'm a big fan of 25-35 hours. Of course, certain games require and deserve more time too, but its rare for me to feel like a 50+ hour game truly used all of its time effectively.
The biggest issue with the assertion that game prices aren't too high because current prices are less than what they should be according to inflation, is that it doesn't take into account that purchasing power has dropped over time because the average income hasn't kept up with the rate of inflation. People base their price expectations on how much money that they have to spend, not by inflation rates.
for me pricing is only as issue when the store page as a deluxe edition for $100 and gold edition for $120 and deluxe gold directors ultra pro max edition for like $200 or something, or live service games that release seasonal pass for $30 and yearly dlc for $120 *coughcough* destiny 2-
Well said sir! Very good video!
Yeah, just ignore that costs with distribution and physical production went down exponentially due to digital, dev tools becoming more democratized and cheap, storage becoming extremely cheaper as well as the hardware needed to make the games themselves, and the fact that games sell multiple millions of copies instead of hundreds of thousands (and, once again, the majority of those sales without the need to print anything physical, or distribution). Also keep in mind that the production of those games, for those companies doesn't happen in the vaccum, they are producing other games and offering their services to other companies, while they produce one game, as opposed as in the past where the entire industry was more insular. Just look at the credits of any game and you'll see names that repeat over and over again in many AAA titles, such as Keywords or Poletowin, which are companies that basically take LQA, FQA, Art, and a lot of the development of hands of the AAA company, providing cheaper services by hiring in studios in Indonesia or Philippines for example and spreading the cost of production even more through having people work in multiple projects at the same time for multiple companies.
The way you're doing the "math" is very simplistic and ignores how things actually work.
If videogames weren't profitable, publishers wouldn't be in the business, and yet, Valve makes more profit per worker than Apple, Alphabet (google) and Amazon.
The problem isn't games not having increased their price, nor games being long, the problem with the videogame industry is the same as any other industry: companies pay less to workers and fire with no issues because they simply can, and it's good for investors in some cases. That's how some of those companies declare record profits year after year.
Where did those record profits come if games "didn't increase their price since the 90's".
Also I like the example you gave with the 49,99$ FF7, since that, even for the time was odd since Sony actually reduced the price of their games in comparison with the competition and that affected the whole market since games were more expensive before.
I have a copy of Fifa World Soccer from 1994, for the Megadrive/Genesis, with the price tag still glued to it, and it cost 65$.
It was a business move to show that CD's were better than cartidges even in price. Ofc that, like with everything else, the prices went back up in the next gen.
When they tell you they lost money, they didn't, they just didn't make as much profit in the previous year, which means investors don't get as much of a payout. They are still paying for everyone + profit for the game.
Yeah, some devs can't make it, but that was the case back then as well, just look at the army of corpses EA has in its wake, however, it's not those companies that are complaining about the price of games, it's the AAA companies.
They want to raise prices, because they know they'll keep selling with higher prices since people who buy loads of games will still be able to afford it, it's not because they are hurting.
There are more people playing games yes, but there are also more people MAKING them than ever. More people to pay than ever before. Paying people is the most expensive part of game production.There's literal charts of how much games cost over time both in real money and adjusted for inflation and games are actually cheaper now than ever before when you consider the price of groceries, gas and other necessities. Uncharted 2 cost rough $20 million to make. 7 years later and Uncharted 4 cost over triple that. Both $60. It's strange. I'm not disagreeing with you about corporate greed and the firings and layoffs.
If you go to your favorite restaurant and always get a steak, if the price of beef goes up for the chef to buy, the price of the customers steak goes up. But the same isn't true for games?
@@WITAWITAVG do you have the passing understanding of what economy of scale is? how do you explain the profits of the AAA devs without the increase in price?
Does your understanding stop at games costing the same as before, and yet production is more expensive?
@@WITAWITAVG The same isn't true for games or anything else really at that scale. They cost less because a lot of the processes cost less and bear multiple uses. Rarely a worker in the industry is working towards a single project, you have the lead programers, yes, but everyone else works in multiple.
I alone have at some point worked in 5 at the same time as lqa. I know people who do so for many more, all this within the same company.
It's not as simple as you try to paint it.
Also the comparisons you make. Do you know why most remasters are botched to a point, specially from JRPG's, or why Bluepoint had to backwards engineer MGS source code?
Because often they would have to erase the hard drives with the source code before jumping to a new game, so they had space for it.
This indicates you that the amount of games being produced at one point was much much smaller, for each company, and that the costs of keeping them were very high, to the point that led to many inefficiencies.
These are barely an issue today to any large company.
Yes games are more expensive to make, but the costs of production are also investments for other games that are being produced at the same time. Overall the management changed and that's why companies aren't struggling as they paint they are, the reason for the price increase is solely wanting more profit.
I’m not gonna lie, I bought Spider-Man just to play as MJ. Haha but seriously the video came content vs art category is a good mixture and great point for developing teams for a better focus.
Lmao appreciate it brotha.
Awesome deep dive, man! 👏🦖
I think a big part of the problem is the modern gaming is form over function, which leads to the indulging budgets too.
Studios are far more concerned with making a massive map with 16 times the detail than make any of it fun to explore.
The obsession with open work games is killing the gaming industry. Not every game needs to be a sprawling open world
I would say Remake had a few rough side missions but I was definitely feeling the padding with Rebirth. The Chadley stuff is obnoxious. I think Spider-Man 2 was a massive improvement on 1 tho. They trimmed the fat a ton and as a result I was able to 100% it in less than 20 hours and the side quests were way less repetitive.
Sometimes during Rebirth it felt like I was playing fan fiction. It's interesting how in Spider-Man they had those puzzles and in 2 they just let you skip it. It kinda makes me feel like "If you're giving me the option to skip it, why did you make it?"
@@WITAWITAVGI remember skipping the puzzles in the first game but in 2 there were few enough that I actually did them. But yeah thats fair lol
Whenever I see someone on the internet equating game length with game quality I automatically assume they are a low-IQ 12 year old. I have to or I will go crazy. I simply can't believe there are grown adults who sincerely think like this. It's the same as saying my car is better because it is physically the longer than yours. It's an asinine way of thinking. Length has absolutely nothing to do with quality and craftsmanship. Great video!
P.S. While everyone cheers on AI, I fear it will only contribute to modern game bloat and homogeneity. A good example already here is Ray-Tracing which is essentially procedurally generated light (the algorithm lights the scene for the developer). It's why many modern games look the same. Handcrafted lighting is superior in every way aside from development time. Hand crafted lighting looks so much better and artistic...because it comes from an actual human creator.
Don’t even get me started on AI lol. I find it to be a very upsetting topic. The very essence of art is being stripped away. Thank you for watching!
@@micshazam842 Yeah I like to play a game like that maybe once every other year. There’s something nice about checking items off on a digital to-do list. But there’s so many of those games and the content isn’t very thoughtful, so it sucks that it plagues so many games.
@@micshazam842 I know nobody played it but Rage 2 did open world the correct way…no bloat, fun, mission structure and flexibility leaning in the open world design. Was one of my favorites in the last couple years. Unfortunately everyone call the world empty and derivative. (It’s not.)
The problem with Rebirth (if youre willing to break it down) is just Chadley stuff and some unimportant minigames (besides Queens Blood). It seems like they just want something that can make you do more exploring of the open world, but I prefer more sidequests for that. The sidequests are enjoyable. Then again, some of Chadley stuff are not completely useless. Like Battle Intel introduce you to some minibosses that helps you learn the combat more.. protorelic stuff which gives more story is also good. But some other like lifespring stuff are unnecessary. They should just give us more sidequests if they want us to explore the open world.. and make Chadley talk less
I think the issue with modern gaming are too bloated with non important activities. They filled games with a ton of worthless side quest, fetch quest, collectatons, marks on the maps.
A bunch of things that doesn't really add up to the games. Games before weren't artificially bloated with stuff. They were long because the storytelling was long and the things making those game long was cannon and important events.
Games nowadays are 16 hours long of story, but then 60 on sidequest meaningless side content. Games need to be more direct and focus on their stories. The gaming era is on the trend of "Games need to last forever". Games are trying to make you sick tired and exhausted taking so much of you time making you fall into the loop of forcing you to no paly any other stuff. Nowdays i'm not touching games that require me to put more than 20 hours on it unless is a Yakuza game or a Souls like game. I just can't deal with all games being this damn long
I dont mind some bloat but man i will probably never 100% AC origin, odyssey and Valhalla its ridiculous, but honestly this is great for kids who only have that 1 or few games and parents cant buy them one every month.
Aye bro. Every song on eternal atake deluxe hits, don't do that! I get your point though.
😂appreciate it!
Only game series that does pacing well nowadays is Yakuza/Like a Dragon
@@micshazam842Even though the like a dragon series is my favorite game franchise ever, i kinda get you. When i first played Yakuza 0 i stopped after 3 hours because i felt like it was going nowhere. When i came back to it, and pushed through the first chapter, it blew my mind.
I really reccomend to just push through the slow start, because it really gets good. And when you know what to expect (since every game has a slow start), it becomes easier to do so.
But yeah, the slow pacing in the opening hours can be bad imo, as it can draw a lot of people away, first impressions really matter.
@@micshazam842Yeah, i get you. Like a Dragon has one of the slowest starts i've seen in a game. Though i do find the combat pretty fun since you can earn a lot of moves, and there are 8 fighting styles in total in Y0 for example.
A big part of yakuza is trying all the minigames, doing the side quests and just existing in the world. So if you just do the main story it can feel like the game is missing something, which is isn't case for a lot of western titles.
And the writing in the side quests i so good, and it's so much more focused on telling fun stories in those quests than a lot of other games.
But if you don't like that vibe then the games def can feel boring. Though i love the games so much that ofc i feel like you might enjoy them more if you know what to expect lol
Also your brother prob played yakuza 3
Keep doin ya thing Brodie I guarantee you got a solid shot at UA-cam
A year and a half later, I'm still grinding! Thank you.
@@WITAWITAVG just kno big dawg u got u another sub🔥
dead ass iv been saying this about pacing for long time. id rather main stories be like 15 to 20 hours long then have side content be 50 to 100 hours i love long games and taking my time with them BUT i dont like being forced to play 6000 hours to beat a game but ill grind side content for years. Assassins creed Valhalla was really bad about this too they gloated they had no real side quests but that wasnt true everything was just in the main game. there was a bit where you literally put on a mask and go from house to house getting candy... YOU WERE TRICK OR TREATING!!! thats awesome if it had been side content i just stumbled on but it came about 50 hours into a 100+ hour play through i hated it because i had to do it.
Solid vid my guy
Thank you very much for your time.
Spider-Man 2 is pretty well paced and short for a AAA title. You can 100% that game in like 30 hours or less. Not sure why it’s in the thumbnail.
average is too low imo as i kid i never just beat a game and stop playing
The escapist just released a video (a day after yours) that is extremely similar in title and content. I know this is a topic that a lot of people can discuss but that seems way too non coincidental and it hurts to see their video get more views than yours.
Damn...I just checked and yeah it looks very similar. What a shame. My video will be gobbled up :(
Good video sir
Thank you for taking the time to watch.
estimated game-length doesnt matter.
I spent hundreds, if not thousand hours in super mario world and people finish it in ~1h30 by now.
Gameplay is what counts. nothing else.
Chasing arbitrary marks on a minimap (im looking at you, ubisoft) doesnt make a good game.
it makes a good grind, but... well, f*ck that.
Agreed. If a game is good and on the shorter side, it invites many replays. Which naturally boosts play time.
The real thing is that BOTH of those games in the thumbnail are copies. One from 1997, one from a Spider-Man game that was bland ITSELF.
Dude really? Did you just defend the cost of a 70$ AAA game price by pulling out an inflation calulator? AAA game companies make more than the movie the industry and their CEOs are paid hundreds of millions every single year in bonuses... they didn't need to raise the price to 70$
While I agree with you that CEO salaries are out of control, when you compare game budgets and prices, it doesn't make any sense. The budgets keep skyrocketing and prices do not adjust quickly enough. Breath of the Wild was $60 in 2017. $60 in 2017 is worth $74 today. And how much was Tears of the Kingdom? $70. I know inflation is annoying to keep in mind, but it's real. And also, if the price raises help the developers put a few more bucks in their pockets, I'm okay with them. I know the CEOs take most of it, but surely the devs are getting a small piece of the pie too?
And I just want to clarify I'm not trying to speak from a personal point of view. Do I WANT $70 games? No. Do I think it makes sense in todays economy? Yes.
@@WITAWITAVG AAA game companies can afford to let their game budgets to rise because year over year they are making massive profit growth. Trust me, if they couldn't afford it and it didn't make business sense they wouldn't do it.
The whole thing that the poor AAA game companies need more money because inflation is maddening when you can just look at how massively their profits are growing every single year.
@@WITAWITAVG Another question worth asking when gamers normalized the 70$ price point is who benefited exactly? Did the devs themselves get a raise? Did it stop devs from being laid off after a AAA game is made?
No of course not. The investors get a larger stock dividend and the CEO gets a larger end of the year bonus.
This has been shown time and time again in studies when Republicans lower the taxes on their donors with the excuse that it will benefit the economy, in truth bussniesses almost never re-invest in their own employees, stock holders get dividends, CEOs get bonuses.
this video has bad pacing
They do it on purpose because we are slaves who need their time wasted. Maybe sounds silly to say that, but it is the truth, it’s not an accident.
Persona 5 has bloat too and its annoying no one cares to mention this.
Thats because the bloat in Persona 5 is expected. Persona 5, besides being a dungeon crawler, is a dating sim game. Living your everyday life, meeting with people and doing activities to pass the time will naturally make the game feel bloated, but its also kind of the point of these type of games. The only really garbage bloat in P5 (that people do call out) are the side targets that you find through the PT website, they're repetitive and often have the worst translation in the whole game, making them not just a waste of time but also facemeltingly cringe.
I really hate that Rebirth's pacing is ruined by all those mini games and repetitive side activities in every region
Still going through the video but I have some comments on part 1:
1. A game being $50 back then but $90 by today’s standard is irrelevant to how much it costs today. You’re forgetting that a) people have become accustomed to 50-60 dollars for decades so it’s understandable they’d be jarred by a $10 increase, especially when we all know that even the $60 games are not worth $60. b) inflation and prices have gone up but salaries don’r reflect the prices going up. People’s purchasing power is weaker than back then. So in a way $70 today feels more than $50 back then.
2. The movie theater thing is a bad example. You’re not paying that much to watch a movie. You’re paying that much for the experience. It’s a night out. It’s like saying you can go to a theme park or buy a video game that you own forever. Yeah it’s cheaper to buy a game but I’m not there JUST to watch a movie. I’m there for the experience to watch it with friends in a crowded theater, otherwise I’d have waited for a blu-ray or a subscription service to carry it.
@@cantstandya9749 Thanks for taking the time to watch and reply.
1. While I understand what you’re saying that people have gotten used to $60 dollars, that doesn’t erase the facts. $60 buys you less and less at the grocery store. It also buys you less gas for your car. Going out to eat, going to the movies, buying a vinyl record- they’ve all increased in prices. So why not games? We can’t forget that people MAKE these games, so in order to make sure they can also feed their families just like we do, it makes sense for prices to go up.
2. To each their own. I would argue that watching a movie in your clean and quieter home with access to cheaper food options, AND the ability to pause is infinitely more valuable than the movies. But I respect the theater experience.
@@WITAWITAVG anytime! It was a great video.
1. You said it yourself though, $60 buys you less at the grocery store today than it did back then. The minimum wage hasn’t really changed but prices are going up. It makes sense for game prices to go up but it’s also understandable that people will find it harder to spend $70 on a game today since they’re making basically the same amount they did a decade ago but their money is just worth less. Personally, I care about game quality more than game length but $60 for Silent Hill 2 Remake, an 8 hour game with no real replay value, is tough. I’ll wait for a sale. If it had the same replay value as Resident Evil, I’d gladly pay $60.
2. I guess we’ll just have to disagree here. It is more comfortable to watch a movie at home at your own pace and all but at the same time it’s expected that you’ll be paying a decent amount of money for a night out. Drinking at home doesn’t hit the same as drinking at a bar for example and ordering pasta through an app isn’t the same as going to a nice place with someone and having dinner