The former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, who oversaw the brand’s studios, recently asserted that the video game market would improve for everyone if companies stopped focusing on creating eternal hundred-hour games, which, in his view, don’t always deliver quality hours and are often filled with repetitive tasks.
And instead, they should strive to craft shorter adventures of around 20 or 25 hours that boast higher quality and constant action throughout, which would not only keep players much more entertained without fatigue from the story, but would also help to curb the huge and worrying costs required to develop a modern title today.
The lack of quality in games that never end
Layden spoke about this topic on the
He himself admitted, drawing from his own experiences working on such enormous projects over the years, that “I’ve been involved in many games that have 80, 90, 100 hours of gameplay. And I’ll be the first to say that not all of those hours are quality hours. You know, part of that is running across the desert to get the red key to open the red door when you come back.”
This is something we can easily observe if we look at today’s most famous and successful titles, such as the big Assassin’s Creed releases, the sprawling Final Fantasy epics, and even Spider-Man games, because although they are beloved by many, the reality is that they often compel us to spend energy and time on repetitive side missions or filler tasks that simply aren’t as enjoyable as the main story we want to experience.
A solution inspired by the past to save our future
According to Layden, part of this habit of dragging everything out comes from the 1990s culture, when people used to rent games for the weekend in stores, so creators built very difficult or frustrating levels so you couldn’t finish the game in those two days and would have to rent it again.
Something that, as GamesRadar noted, is clearly visible in ultra-challenging levels like the stampede in The Lion King on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, which for many players seemed crafted precisely to force you back to the store.
To address this problem today, the former PlayStation chief firmly believes we should return to making shorter games that still grip you from the very first minute, directly stating that “So I’d rather see a world where we have good 20 to 25-hour games that are packed with action like a John Woo movie and that you simply cannot let go of the controller.”
Finally, he asserts with strong confidence that returning to this shorter and more thrilling model is the best way to fix the industry’s giant budgets, closing with the idea that “Keep it tight and make it amazing—there’s where I’d like to see it go.”
“If we can make those games at a smaller scale and embrace the idea that what we’re building is that kind of template, I believe many of the costs associated with game development will begin to, if not decrease, at least stop rising,” he says.
All of this, according to the former PlayStation chief, is aimed at getting companies to stop spending so much money on development and for players to truly enjoy every minute of their time in front of the screen without getting bored by meaningless missions.
