So I was going to show my solidarity with the "game length" bloggers today by re-posting an old post that I thought was entitled "Shorter Games Please!" but...I can't find it.

I suck.

I found this instead - http://www.gamedevblog.com/2005/04/finish.html - an article that mentions only 54% of players surveyed actually finished Spider-Man 2.

Honestly, 54% is huge for games - although at the time I was bummed in my own casual conversations with people, I've never met anybody who's finished the game. That 54% must be a survey of hardcore gamers, the sorts of people who actually sign up to be surveyed by Activision.

So - yeah - that's like hearing nobody finished reading your novel. And Spider-Man 2 isn't the only one, it's common for games.

Schizoid has the same problem - after we shipped, we looked at the leaderboards to see how far people got. We didn't expect a lot of people to finish - Schizoid has no story, and we expected people to play until they hit their plateau and stop. What we didn't expect was how quickly so many of them stopped - maybe half of them stopped 10% through the game.

Why'd we make a game so hard, that stiff-armed our players so early on?

We were afraid.

We were afraid they'd play through the game too quickly and be disappointed by the length.

We were wrong!

Don't be afraid to make a short game! Make games like Limbo and Portal that give people one of those brief but transcendent moments that makes our lives worthwhile!

And here's the other game length "size doesn't matter" bloggers:

Jonathan Blow of Number None

http://the-witness.net/news

Ron Carmel of 2DBoy

http://2dboy.com/2010/08/12/too-short/

Chris DeLeon

http://www.hobbygamedev.com/spx/short-videogame-design/

Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games

http://nygamedev.blogspot.com/2010/08/coming-up-short.html

Mike Gilgenbach of 24 Caret Games

http://24caretgames.com/2010/08/16/does-game-length-matter/

Eitan Glinert of Fire Hose Games

http://www.firehosegames.com/2010/08/how-much-is-enough/

Cliff Harris of Positech Games

www.cliffski.com

Chris Hecker of Spy Party

http://spyparty.com/2010/08/16/size-doesnt-matter-day/

Scott Macmillan of Macguffin Games

http://macguffingames.com/2010/if-size-doesnt-matter-where-do-you-get-the-virtual-goods

Noel Llopis

http://gamesfromwithin.com/size-matters

Peter Jones of Retro Affect

http://retroaffect.com/blog/160/Size_Doesn_t_Matter_Day/

Lau Korsgaard

http://www.copenhagengamecollective.org/2010/08/17/size-does-matter/

Martin Pichlmair of Broken Rules

http://brokenrul.es/blog

Greg Wohlwend of Intution Games

http://mile222.com/2010/08/a-haiku-about-game-length/

Jeffrey Rosen of Wolfire

http://blog.wolfire.com/

Comments

[greggman]

I think this is only possible because of XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, iPhone. In other words, DRMed not resellable, non rentable games.

The reason people didn't make short in the past is because they'd be rented to death and because there was no easy way to sell a $1 to $15 game. Now there is.

[Jay]

If it helps, I finished Spider Man 2, twice. It was a joy to play (except for the Electro arena maze. Almost couldn't drag myself through that a second time).

The short-game concept is a good one. Is every meal you eat a huge multi-course event? No. Sometimes you just want a snack or a light lunch or dinner with friends. There's room for everything.

[RodeoClown]

I finished Spiderman 2 - then my XBox died, so I haven't finished it twice...

I didn't do all of the challenges, but I did find all of the hint markers so I could hear them say all something different (that was a terrible joke by the way, but it made me laugh).

[Alex Bortoluzzi]

I had a different experience with my game, Zombie Wonderland for the iPhone and iPad. We made a game that would take you a couple hours to finish, and had a beginning, middle and end, with even an end screen and all. I wanted to create a complete experience that you could finish, give the player a sense of accomplishment. People complained that it was too short, 20 nights on 4 locations, that just 6 weapons and three tools were not enough and demanded more for their single dollar invested.
Now I'm scrambling to create more content, but I wonder if they will still be there to play it, as the number of games released on a daily basis is staggering.

[John Valentine]

When developing my game, I was not really that interested in providing the solid conclusion of closure. This case is a bit different from commercial offerings, as progression in my game is essentially the re-use of same procedural generation formula, to give a game of the required difficulty. There is no ending; just harder levels! I wrote a blog article on these choices, which might be of interest.
JV.

[Donovan Moretz]

I think as an avid player, one of things I don't like about a lot of games, is that they ramp up in difficulty to a stupidly hard level near the end. I prefer a more gradual slope, with a spike as you near the finale, and in intermediate boss fights.
Especially in role playing games. You level up, but so do the enemies, so you keep having the same fight, it just takes longer. Plus you never get to feel like a total bad ass. Being able to mow through the 'trash' and then be challenged by a boss fight, or a small set piece works well in my opinion, something I think Left For Dead did perfectly.