Should Video Games Be More Like Portal?

I found myself wondering about the state of videogames and the stories that they tell. Usually, a videogame is around £40 (I believe $60), and generally gives you 10 to 20 hours of gameplay. Portal, on the other hand, gives around 4 to 6 hours, but only cost £20 when it was released.

Should more games do this? Release a shorter game that costs less? It would allow game designers to explore other story areas and use more gimmicks that might become boring and stale after 15 hours, but that remain fresh for 6 hours.

I understand they already try to do this with DLC and some Indie games, but I'd like to see bigger developers get in on the action too, just to see what they can come up with.

What's your opinion?

I found myself wondering about the state of videogames and the stories that they tell. Usually, a videogame is around £40 (I believe $60), and generally gives you 10 to 20 hours of gameplay. Portal, on the other hand, gives around 4 to 6 hours, but only cost £20 when it was released.

Should more games do this? Release a shorter game that costs less? It would allow game designers to explore other story areas and use more gimmicks that might become boring and stale after 15 hours, but that remain fresh for 6 hours.

I understand they already try to do this with DLC and some Indie games, but I'd like to see bigger developers get in on the action too, just to see what they can come up with.

What's your opinion?

Sammi_Costello

I rarely pay $60 for a game because my main platform is PC. I have always said that I don't care about the length of a game much. If it is longer or shorter so be it as long as it is a good game.

Lots of developers are doing what Valve did with Portal and the Half-Life 2 episodes except that unlike Valve, they didn't lower the price.

I had to pay $60 for portal because it only came packed with the Orange Box for the longest time, we had no separate purchase option until it came out on XBL with a few (very small) extras. Of course now you can get the Orange Box for about $19 new at most retailers, which is utterly ridiculous considering the quality of the games in the package.

Intresting question.

I think somegames should be short, sweet experiences.

Case in point: Chronicles of Riddick:Assault on Dark Athena.

Anyone who played that game should know the end on the planet was a dumbly-made crapfest, as opposed to the parts onboard the ship, which were ingeniously created.

I´d like a reply to this post to see if anyone agrees/disagrees with me.

No I don't think so. Not that there's anything wrong with games like Portal but I just prefer big-budget games myself.Archangel3371

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy big budget games too, when they're done right. It's just that the format a lot of big budget games have to take in order to cover costs is a 10+ hour long game, and that locks them out of some really complelling stories, or it means that the story they're telling could get tedious or be too long drawn out in certain cases.

In any case, the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. You can have developers putting out games in both subsections. Take ODST for example. I think ODST was fine for a Halo game, which I normally dislike. I liked the atmoshpere of the streets you walked around in, and I liked the way they told the (admitidly, fairly weak) story. But it just wasn't worth £40, even with the full multiplayer included. Had it have been priced at £20 for JUST ODST, I would've thought it was a good game. And that would've been Bungie, putting out big budget titles, like Halo 3 and Halo:Reach, while producing shorter games that cost less.

Someone else brought up the XBLA/PSN argument, and I've already mentioned those, and while some of them really impressed me (Shadow Complex REALLY impressed me), I'd like to see more of that, by bigger developers. I'd also like to see more of it in general.

I found myself wondering about the state of videogames and the stories that they tell. Usually, a videogame is around £40 (I believe $60), and generally gives you 10 to 20 hours of gameplay. Portal, on the other hand, gives around 4 to 6 hours, but only cost £20 when it was released.

Should more games do this? Release a shorter game that costs less? It would allow game designers to explore other story areas and use more gimmicks that might become boring and stale after 15 hours, but that remain fresh for 6 hours.

I understand they already try to do this with DLC and some Indie games, but I'd like to see bigger developers get in on the action too, just to see what they can come up with.

What's your opinion?

Sammi_Costello

You provide an interesting notion and I would definitely like to see it explored further. I doubt this will work with existing IPs, however.

[QUOTE="Sammi_Costello"]

I found myself wondering about the state of videogames and the stories that they tell. Usually, a videogame is around £40 (I believe $60), and generally gives you 10 to 20 hours of gameplay. Portal, on the other hand, gives around 4 to 6 hours, but only cost £20 when it was released.

Should more games do this? Release a shorter game that costs less? It would allow game designers to explore other story areas and use more gimmicks that might become boring and stale after 15 hours, but that remain fresh for 6 hours.

I understand they already try to do this with DLC and some Indie games, but I'd like to see bigger developers get in on the action too, just to see what they can come up with.

What's your opinion?

Hexagon_777

You provide an interesting notion and I would definitely like to see it explored further. I doubt this will work with existing IPs, however.

I'm particuarly interested in the stories that could arise from this. Some stories just can't be stretched to 10 hours (like Portal). Interestingly, I'm not sure that Portal's gameplay mechanics would have been fun for 10 or more hours.