yupper: I am bored, and the linked article is a particularly bad article, so....
This is a funny article, in that 80% of it is just plain wrong. I say this just to indicate that, like the author and the people he 'interviewed', I too can make up stats without citing any sources, always an indication of how reliable or accurate an article is. If we are going to have a discussion on whether or not single player CRPGs are becoming shorter, this article does not help to illuminate the conversation. If anything, it just makes the whole topic more confusing. So let's clarify some things by revisiting the author's argument in the article (note: CNN should not accept freelance articles about a topic that is written by someone who clearly knows nothing about the topic) :
Blake Snow suggests in his article that single player games may become "shorter" in the "future" because:
1) gamers are aging.
2) those of us in advanced industrialized countries are living increasingly busy lives
3) culturally, we exhibit increasingly shorter attention spans.
4) shorter games exhibit higher player completion rates (uh...duh?).
#1 is a meaningless observation. It's like saying 'moviegoers are aging', 'television audiences are aging', or 'book readers are aging.' Gamers are aging, yes, but we are also reproducing and multiplying. The new generation of kids don't game? There is no reason that younger gamers can't complete games if the reason that game completion is increasingly rare (according to him) is because leisure time is being eclipsed by work time for the older gamers. This has no impact on whether single player games may or may not becoming 'shorter.'
#2 is also a meaningless observation. We are living increasingly busy lives compare to when? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? Again, irrelevant to his 'conclusion.'
#3 has no basis in fact. Our attention spans are stretched and diffused courtesy of new media, but there is no basis to claim they are 'shorter'--some of the most successful television series are story-arc productions (eg. Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, Games of Throne), rather than the individualized episode production format (like sitcoms). Why do so many popular movies come in trilogies? I can go on, but the 'shorter attention span' myth, while pervasive among some educators, is just that, a cultural myth.
#4 is just...so obvious I am surprised he even mentions it.
Snow's conclusion has no basis in simple logic. If anything, decreasing attention spans and time constraints should increase the number of people who play single-player games (where you can stop and save), and does not explain the popularity of multi-player games. Anyone who has played MMO or MMORPGs know you can lose hours and hours in these games. People who have ultra-busy work/family/social schedules can never truly keep up with all the things about online games that aim to suck you in so you can invest all your free time into the game. The author of the article completely misunderstood the 'head of the video game consulting firm' he cites, who was not making the claim that he was making.
On a side note, I haven't finished TW2 yet, but is it really significantly shorter than TW1? Take away the inane instant respawn of random monsters in TW1 and the repetitve backtracking of areas you have already visited, both of which has been addressed in TW2, is it -really- much shorter?
When was the last time that you listened to a 20 min piece of music without losing focus for at least 20 secs. Do you even know what attention and focus mean?
am bored, and the linked article is a particularly bad article, so....
That attitude is an example of short attention span which is nothing else than an adaptation to the modern world. And guess what? When you try to go back to the previous modes(listening to a 20 min piece of music or listening to a discourse) is not as easy.
