According to Will Shen, former lead mission designer for Starfield, it’s no coincidence that shorter, more concise games are making a comeback…
In the interview embedded below, Shen talks about how people are tired of games that take dozens of hours to complete. He also apologized for being a part of that. He pointed out that there are action-oriented third-person games (Souls, Elden Ring) and titles with survival and crafting mechanics (Minecraft) where there is not much meaningful content other than those factors. He says he believes most titles longer than 10 hours will not be finished, and he believes titles like Fortnite will be with us for up to 20-30 years, if not forever.
“Part of what happened was the success of games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, these really big titles that you can play pretty much forever. There are still a lot of people playing Skyrim after all these years, and the idea of these evergreen games that you can just put thousands of hours into really hit the industry. It used to be MMOs for that. World of Warcraft, there are World of Warcraft superfans who will never leave that game. And then all of a sudden games like Skyrim and other open-world games really hit their stride with enough content to get past the tipping point of you can play it almost forever. And so that became the big trend that hit the game industry.
A large or growing portion of the audience gets tired of investing 30+/100+ hours into a game. The community engagement around the story of Mouthwashing is only possible because everyone who is a fan has actually played it to the end. It’s a big hit because it’s short. There are other factors involved, the execution, nice iconic key art… but the game wouldn’t be nearly as successful if it were longer and had a bunch of side quests and other content. The brevity is the point, and that level of commitment was so refreshing to see from a developer who’s done a lot of big games. It’s like, oh, you can have a fan community conversation around a game that’s much shorter because the brevity allows everyone to fully engage with the entirety of the product,” Shen said.
And indeed, shorter, more concise experiences are starting to become more common. Perhaps with good reason. After 15 years at Bethesda, Shen moved on to Something Wicked Games, where he became the lead content designer for Wyrdsong, an open-world RPG… and he may very well play a role in the changes.
Source: PCGamer
