JBoc924
There’s always a concern with games released nowadays related to the amount of content we’ll be getting for our hard-earned cash. Sixty dollars a pop for each game isn’t really cheap, so it’s understandable why many gamers have this concern before making those big purchases. So when a game that’s going to be full-priced at launch is said to be only five hours long, gamers are sure to have a big response.
Over the weekend, YouTube user PlayMeThrough uploaded an entire playthrough of The Order: 1886, including cut-scenes. In the end, it all added up to five hours and thirty minutes. For a game that’s single-player only, many have been struck hard by this revelation. The game’s developer, Ready at Dawn, have responded to the issue. The studio’s founder, CEO, and creative director, Ru Weerasuriya, stated the following:
I know there are numbers out there. I know why the question comes up. I know numbers have been put out there that are actually not right. It’s impossible to finish the game in that time, so we know the numbers are wrong.
At the end of the day, we’re not going to comment on it. We can’t stop people from writing the things they do. And we’re not going to jump at every single mistake that is made out there. Every time somebody has the wrong impression of something we made, or somebody writes the wrong thing about what we did, it would be a full-time job to be like, oh no, that’s not right. We make games. We do what we do for the players. And, ultimately, that’s where I want to leave it.
Then he spoke about game length in general:
Game length is important. Every game has to take its own time to tell its story. Some games can be short. Some games can be long. I still remember the first time I picked up Modern Warfare, I finished the campaign in about three-and-a-half or four hours. And it was fun because they made that campaign work for that because they had something else.
Any of these games need to pack in what it needs to to deliver the experience you were hoping to deliver when you first tackled it. For us that meant, it’s not going to be a short game, it’s going to be something that rewards you as you play through, that there is a storyline, that you have information there, and then also it opens the door to a lot of questions you might be able to answer either by what you find in the game, or hopefully by what you will find out in the future.
Our industry is diverse enough that we need different games. We have to allow for different genres and single-player games like we do, multiplayer games, co-op games, social games, whatever it is.
He also touched on his team’s “quality over quantity” approach to game development:
I absolutely understand. To tell you the truth, that’s something we always keep in our heads. We know people want to be entertained and have things they can play longer. But the industry has always had diversity. You go back 10 years, there were a lot of games that were just single-player, one time play. There were some games that were single-player and you could jump back in and get more. That’s what we did in our game. You can jump back and get other things out of it.
Do we all need to do the same thing? I hope people who do like these kind of games, do play them. But I also want to be in an industry where me as a gamer, I’m given the choice to do that. I’ve played games that lasted two hours that were better than games that I played for 16 hours. That’s the reality of it.
I’ve had many more experiences of very short games that have floored me, that have left me dreaming of the things I could do after, more than the games that have lasted 15, 16, 20 or 30 hours, where I’ve just been like, okay, I played it through and I got what I wanted, but I didn’t get more than what I was expecting. Sometimes I want to be floored, even if it’s for a short amount of time.
Gameplay length for me is so relative to quality. It’s just like a movie. Just because a movie is three hours long, it doesn’t make it better.
Personally, I’m quite excited about the project. I’ve loved the games this team has put out before and can’t wait to see what they do with current-gen tech. What do you guys think about this? Are you picking up The Order this week?
[Source]
