Video games are too long, too expensive, and take too long to make – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader is frustrated that publishers are obsessed with making video games bigger and longer and wishes they could be shorter and cheaper.

These are strange days for the world of video games. The pandemic saw them raised to a level of mainstream acceptance never before seen, but already publishers are reporting sales being down by 25% or more, as the pandemic catches up with them and the number of new releases slows to a trickle.

At the same time, everyone is trying to buy everyone else and already it seems as if there’ll only be three or four major publishers within a couple of years, with everyone else just being a subsidiary of someone else – with all that implies about homogenised end products and corporate interference (not to mention mass redundancies as companies strip out what they don’t want or need).

These are all worrying trends but what concerns me the most, especially as it’s not something most people seem to be talking about, is the games themselves. The quality of the best titles has never been higher, but I am increasingly concerned that publishers have got themselves into an inescapable cycle of believing bigger is always better, no matter the cost to the customer or the people making the games.

Back in the 90s, the average video game didn’t take more than two to four hours to beat, once you knew what you were doing, but that number has steadily increased throughout the years, to the point where even 12 hours is considered short for a single-player game. To me this is madness. Given how busy most people are it’s almost impossible to beat most AAA game in any less than a month. It took me three to beat Elden Ring and that was with missing out a ton of it, I’m sure.

Everyone wants value for money, obviously,