I think the problem is less that games are more expensive to make, and more that the money is spent differently. In a game such as Morrowind, an engine was created, artists designed the setpieces, yes...but there was only so much that could be done with the graphics and gameplay engines, and the rest of the money went into hiring writers, world designers, quest creators, and so forth. On the other hand, in a game like Oblivion, by the time you get the engine and overall 'look' done, you've spent so much time and money on the game that building the world and writing for the game take a back seat. We were fortunate in the case of Oblivion that this part was still well done, it just wasn't as large or complex as Morrowind.

I may be wrong on this, having never worked on the game industry, but it seems to me that companies spend far more time and money now trying to be competitive in graphics and visual appeal, and therefore have less of both to spend making their game unique and memorable.

They don't spend as much time as you'd think.

Sure they do spend a lot of time, but with the way they treat the employees, pretty much every release is mostly done by a different set of people. Back in the 90s, if you look at the credits, for games you'd notice a couple things. One that there were fewer people, not realistic anymore for most genres and secondly that there was a lot of carryover from release to release. In effect there was a lot of thoughts about what they wanted to do but couldn't which would find their way into later games.

I do genuinely wonder how much less of a problem this would be if studios wouldn't burn out all their talent with their indefinite crunch periods and managed to retain a higher percentage of their employees for multiple release cycles.

I personally don't care about game length very much. What matters to me is what they do in the time frame. If it's short, but didn't seem to waste any time and told a full story, then that is fine. If it is long and did the same, then that is also fine. What I don't like is when games are short, but feel incomplete or rushed. I also don't like games that are artificially long and just boringly extend gameplay through repetition or extend story by adding superfluous detail. I like a tightly put together package and I'll pay money for the short or long version if it is done well and not feel disappointed.

I don't really agree that games in general are getting that much shorter. It's only the single player FPS games that are getting shorter in playtime, but the production value of these games is up so much it's almost like playing a 5-hour movie. I fnd that most games pack 10-20 hours easily even these days, and that number wasn't any higher in the past.

As a good example I started the Medal of Honor singleplayer campaign at about 11.30 this morning, and I've now completed it. On the hardest difficulty setting. That is of course woefully short, but hell, I enjoyed the game.

There are of course other factors that might contribute to a decrease in singleplayer gameplay time also, such as:

- Significant multiplayer fraction
- More resources must be spent on the sound and graphics to stay competitive on the console market
- The "era" of DLC makes adding content after release more profitable
- AA games are multimillion dollar projects, hence significant risk involved in straying too far from "the beaten path"
- Console market is make-or-break, said market does not generally favour SP over MP and does not favour dragged-out gameplay or overly long SP campaigns

Despite this, I find that gametime in SP games stays remarkably consistent, with a few exceptions. But they remain exceptions.

I think lately they spend more on multiplayer because the more you keep playing that the more time it takes you to trade it in. I have seen some games within a week already used in the store. And with all the complaining about used sales it wouldn't surprise me if that was part of the reason.

I'd say rising development costs are one of the main reasons for the ubiquity of DLC. Sales of the main game alone are probably often not enough to cover expenses. I think the amount of high quality conversions of typical console games in recent times (Street Fighter 4, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4) has similar reasons: Developers looking for additional ways to make a profit from their expensive games.

For me, that's actually much more of a problem then game length. A niche game selling 250.000 units might have made a tidy profit 10 years ago, today it would be a financial disaster. (I'm speaking of story based games like FPSes or RPGs - 4x games like Galactic Civilizations might still be profitable with that many sales, I don't know). So we mostly get games catering to the lowest common denominator.

That might be true - the original Doom for example was a 5 hours affair, tops. If it took us longer back then, that was because we had never played a FPS before.

Ouch. And here I was thinking Baldur's Gate had a great story. =(
(It rules, fuck Modern Warfare2.)

Companies keep making shitty games because people buy them when they're overhyped like COD. On the other hand, I seriously doubt K&L2 made any significant profits even though the whole game is 4 hours long.

If this were the case, how would Bethesda and Bioware continue to grow every year? Every one of their recent releases sold millions of copies, while these run-of-the-mill short shooters barely reach 500k.

Graphics

Graphics eat the budget

I would absolutely buy a new Infinity Engine game. When the engine was retired, I believe cRPG's lost what it was that made them special.
Aside from Knights of the Old Republic, I haven't really played an excellent RPG since Icewind Dale II. And KOTOR was only good because of the story. The gameplay wasn't anything special in my opinion.
PC Gamer magazine declared that the Infinity Engine was the best engine in gaming history, and I agree completely.

I would say there are multiple reasons

Difficulty: Health regenerates you you can run in like Leroy Jenkins, wait 5 seconds, and do it again. AI are not very deadly so they may miss a lot or do not much damage against you. This important when it comes to regenerating health as AI just can't wear you down over a period of time. The regenerating health can make it easy by just holding back and picking enemies off.

Length: Games ether have a small amount of levels or they levels are short for various reasons. The levels could be on- rails like were you are forced to keep moving or no given much room to look around. There may not be difficult obstacles you have to over come take time to figure out or get past. There may not be any backtracking ether. They may not even have much replay value like finding secrets or different things happening.

Now there are plenty of old games that can be beaten in a short amount of time but for a first time through, they would be hard and take a long time to beat.

One of the remedy's for short games would be to have a limited amount of health and maybe have health packs. Make the AI more deadly and the levels less on rails.

Now this is probably done because of short development lengths spending way to much money, greed, dlc, etc.

As for the DNF thing there are 25 chunks of the game, 3-4 could be cinematically replaced, and if you follow the storyline there is no way to remove one and "add" it in with DLC... the games needs all the chunks to work... it'll me massive, but the racing parts and the rail shooter areas will flow quickly.. im going to guess a game around 8 hours if all your doing is going for the goal and not "playing the game"

Btw how can someone play a game just to beat it? i mean i take my time, move slow enjoy the artwork... YES you can beat Quake 2 in about :30 minutes but why? my runs though Q2 usually last 2-3 days if i pace myself... a run on oblivion can last a week or so if not longer... and if i get into F3 i'm there for a few weeks at least exploring and having fun roleplaying... as for Doom3 Ive yet to play that and hearing that its long as hell makes me very excited!

Quake 4 was quite long if you enjoyed the game and took your time..

Ive also watched a speed run of far cry in about an hour... that game can take me a few days if i push hard and ignore life around me...

Because constant reloading was always so much fun! First thing I'd do in that case would be lowering difficulty to compensate for more deadly AI. I do agree with levels less on rails, I mean, build engine games were awesome

Though I agree that the difficulty level, or more like situational artificial difficulty increases, was completely overboard in games back in the day, this point brings us back to the original question.

Games today are so easy in comparison to the older games that it takes less time to finnish them. This, combined with the increasing effort (and money) put into producing even more realistic graphics is something that has brought us to what we have today.

However, I'm similar to Starkrun in my approach to playing games. I want to experience them. And that takes time even today. Just beating a game doesn't have any meaning to me if it means that I just speedrun through it. Hell, some people even take that approach to real life... but that's another issue altogether.