I'm sure that, just like me, you have about 100 games on Steam that you've never got around
to playing.
You promise yourself that you'll play them some day and yet the list gets bigger and
bigger, with newer games taking priority.
There's something going on here.
Games are becoming more plentiful.
They're having a harder time grabbing and holding your attention.
Some will always be big enough to manage it, but for others they need to resort to other
tricks and tactics to get a moment in the limelight.
And because of this, I believe that we're about to enter a new age for games.
One filled with shorter, broader experiences.
Don't think that short is a BAD thing.
We'll always have 100 hour-long epics, but there's a lot of untapped potential in smaller,
break-sapping experiences.
They used to be filled with basic flash games but even in this area the standards are rising.
Basic gameplay just doesn't cut it any more.
Take the Hitman Sniper Challenge, for example.
It only takes a matter of minutes to complete it.
At that point you could wander off and do something else...
OR you could try it again, and if you're anything like me, you WANT to.
Perhaps even more so than you did on the first attempt.
Perhaps you want to complete it without raising the alarm.
Or you want to get that perfect score.
Or maybe you want to slaughter everybody in horrible ways.
Your mind suddenly bubbles up all of the exciting things you want to try out and better still,
the game is prepared for it!
It leads to different outcomes, all of which are feasible and rewarding... but most importantly,
they're DIFFERENT.
The game rewards you for adopting a different strategy.
For thinking outside the box.
Do you remember your favourite demo disks, where you were able to sample small parts
of games to see if you'd want to get the full version?
If you're anything like me, you'd play some of these demos more than others, perhaps even
more than you did with the full versions of the games.
Once you find the level easy, you start giving yourself challenges.
Perhaps you complete it without killing any monsters.
Or without jumping.
Or you deliberately lose all of your health and must do it without taking a single hit.
There's comfort to be had in the familiar.
Even when you get the full game, when you run into those demo levels it's like visiting
home again.
You can waltz through them with ease, dodging every trap and exploiting every glitch first-time.
Do you find them more boring because you've done them so many times before?
No!
If anything, you can enjoy them more, even if it's in a different way to the rest of
the game.
Another example is Deus Ex, a game famously known for having multiple paths through the
levels.
I have played through those first opening scenes so many times.
The environments feel so much richer and fuller than the later levels.
Maybe they are, or maybe it's because they're more familiar to me.
As the game progresses you become more set in your ways, you stop experimenting as much
and it almost becomes a race to the finish-line.
Something is lost along the way.
But enough of these examples.
What do I expect to see in future games?
I hope for shorter games that reward your decisions with large consequences.
In longer games you're constrained by a story.
Characters can't die otherwise it would break the path the game would have to take.
If it's just a few levels long, on the other hand, why shouldn't everybody be able to die?
Why shouldn't the world blow up in a firey cloud of doom?
Why shouldn't you be able to become a rogue agent who can earn his own ending?
Deus Ex manages this with trivial things, like minor characters and sub-plots, but I'm
talking about the game itself.
In my opinion, the longer the game is, the less freedom it has for options like these.
I can't wait for a game that's just one level long and yet can be completed in a hundred
different ways, each with their own end-story.
Mass Effect 3's original endings disappointed most players, which isn't surprising when
you consider the number of combinations required for it to take into account all of the decisions
that players made across the games.
If it was just a fraction of the length, it would have been easier to achieve.
Choices rapidly bloat the number of end outcomes.
Please don't get me wrong.
I don't want EVERY game to become like this.
Many are best kept as a story and RPGs should be long so that characters can develop, which
unfortunately includes the Mass Effect series.
But there are games that would benefit from this new approach to game design.
Take Hitman, for example.
I talked about the sniper challenge earlier.
I probably spent more time on that then on the full game, which required SUCH mastery
of each level to get a good score that I honestly couldn't be bothered to do it.
If I could focus on just one level, however, I would happily pick it apart provided it
had the depth to reward me.
But who has time to program that in when there are 30 levels to design?
I would love to see them adopt a new approach.
Perhaps to feature individual, beautifully realised levels where every character has
a complex personality that can be seen if you invest the time to discover it.
It would be like a demo but with so much more replayability.
I would rather have one level like that than 30 that I can't be bothered to play through.
It would invite more people into the world of speedrunning.
Would you like to speedrun the entire of Dishonored?
I didn't think so.
But a single level?
Perhaps that would be interesting to attempt.
You could then appreciate other peoples' attempts on youtube so much more!
Recently I challenged you to beat Deragon Eremine as quickly as possible.
A lot of you have undertaken the speedrun challenge and I have loved watching each and
every one of your efforts.
You have found exploits in the levels that I didn't know about, even though it was ME
who made it in the first place!
I'm sure that anybody who has attempted the same level a hundred times for a speedrun
develops the same feeling.
It's one thing to complete a level.
It's another thing to MASTER it.
To understand all of the little details that can be exploited, or annoying random events
that can throw you off as you're approaching the end.
It's as though a new level of gameplay is added to the experience simply by repeating
it time and time again!
I suspect that without that challenge, you might have given the game a go once and then
moved on, not knowing what else you could do with it.
All of a sudden those hundreds of achievements on each Steam games make sense- they ENCOURAGE
you to replay it in different ways.
They artificially boost the length of the game by creating challenges from existing
game content.
I'd argue that this is slightly forced.
You shouldn't have to be told to do this.
With an excellent game you'd want to do that stuff yourself.
But it serves as a gentle push into the world of replaying games and has probably given
many of you hours of enjoyment and frustration.
But that's enough for now.
I don't have enough spare time to invest in a hundred games.
It's not a matter of attention-span.
It's simple math.
A hundred demo-lengthed games, on the other hand, I could manage.
And from those, there would be some that I would want to replay multiple times.
Perhaps more.
I look forward to more experiences like Facade, or Hitman Sniper Challenge.
I want more sandbox experiences like Grand Theft Auto or Red Faction.
But I don't just want a lazy sandbox with cut and paste enemies and environments.
I want one that's lavished with as many hand-placed details as a scripted game.
I want breadth, rather than length.
Take note, game developers, or perhaps I'll have to do it first.