6 ms·

What the medium of games really needs right is to start borrowing length terms from written work. Why? Because the term short/small game is meaningless. Flappy

What the medium of games really needs right is to start borrowing length terms from written work. Why? Because the term short/small game is meaningless. Flappy Bird and Pong are short games but so is A Short Hike which takes 2 hours to complete (feature film length) but there are also RPG games that are described as being short but take 10+ hours to beat. Writers usually divide their works based on word count into flash fiction, short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels, and epics. Now these aren't one to ones when it comes to game developement but it's a much better tool to describe games then what we're using now. For an example many of author's games are better described as flash games (not that Flash just flash as in very short), while something like A Short Hike and many would be a novellet (gamellet?). Many arcade 8 bit, and 16 but games would fall somewhere in between flash and short. Many AAA games and many RPGs would be Epics. Etc. Of course this isn't a perfect way to categorize games but it's certainly better then the term small/short being used for anything that's less then a 100+ hour AAA game and it could help developers too. You can ask yourself "Do I really want to make a Epic? Or maybe this would be better as a short or a Gamellet?" or if you just want to make something very small you can just say "I'm going to make a flash game." Different names are needed but I still think the point stands. We need a different to talk about game length then just the words short, small, or long.

garba_dlm 3y ago
games are a new medium you're right that software engineer and programmer types (of persons) would do well to learn form other older media formats that precede games. but let's not pretend that games are anything like what came before. interactivity is a new element to put into the storytelling toolkit. but the point is how games can do a much more than tell stories; it's like puzzles are part of the story somehow... but answering how exactly goes quite deep.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  Video games are about half as old as film as a medium. I wouldn't call that new.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    New is relative, of course. Movies are a perfect example of that. Think about how far movies came in 50 years and think about how much gaming will progress in that same time.
hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
Games have a “replayability” factor, so I’m not sure the analogy with content length matters. Someone can play a multiple hour RPG just once, while another can devote a life to mastering Tetris or Street Fighter. I believe games fall into some spectrum between movie and sport, the experiences are very different.
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  That occurred to me too, but I wonder if there's a way to caveat that the length descriptors refer to some threshold of player investment that expresses "You've experienced the basic gist of the game and a large majority of what the developer wanted to convey. You can move on to another game or continue to improve in this one, your pick." As a player, I'd love such a classification. Increasingly I just don't have the time to slog through an entire Elden Ring or Starfield. Give me a way to easily find more Rocket Leagues and Cocoons.
  - raytopia 3y ago
    You put it into words better then me.
  - beenBoutIT 3y ago
    IIRC, RDR2 does exactly this. The issue is that you know exactly what percentage of the game you haven't experienced and exactly how good the game is and it makes it next to impossible to stop playing.
    - maroonblazer 3y ago
      But you have to start playing the game before you get that information. I want that information before purchasing it.
      - beenBoutIT 3y ago
        best you'll find is howlongtobeat.com
philsnow 3y ago
A common term in board games (and at least roguelike games) is “coffee break” games, which usually take ~5-15 minutes. I remember going back as far as the 00s, RPG games that didn’t have at least 40 hours of gameplay were criticized as being too short. Is there enough room between Flappy Bird, “coffee break” games, and epic (J)RPGs for a lot of terms about how long a game takes? And what do you mean, like a session? A run-through? There are games where you don’t have access to a save point all the time, and others where you can just turn it off and walk away and later it’s exactly as you left it. There’s that game Desert Bus that takes ~8h but you can’t even really stop to use the bathroom. There’s games that have more or less replayability, or dozens of hours of depth that you can explore but only if you like. There’s so much more to the medium than there is to books. I don’t see how it’s necessary or useful to use a length metric to describe games. It feels like asking “how many pages long is this game?”.
- raytopia 3y ago
  Those are all good points but I'd say but I feel like it's important because game developers can better signal to their audience the type of game they made and what the audience should expect from it. Especially in terms for how much time the player will need to invest to get the proper experience.
deleted 3y ago
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qwery 3y ago
Flappy Bird never ends (practically ... I think?), how could you call it short? Pong is a two player sports simulation game, is that relevant? Is snooker an epic or a novel game/sport? 'A Short Hike' may be a short game but it's not a small game/experience. The mechanical complexity alone far outweighs that of the "small games" by this article's author. Consider telling your friend that 'A Short Hike' is a short game and they should/shouldn't play it. It's a perfectly reasonable and intelligible thing to say (probably -- you wouldn't say it to your friend unqualified if you expect they would get a seriously different meaning from it). ... I don't think this is a problem that needs to be solved. Also, "time to beat" is just not something you can reasonably measure. But even if you think it is, it's not analogous to word count. A novel's "time to beat" would be "time to read", surely.

garba_dlm 3y ago

games are a new medium you're right that software engineer and programmer types (of persons) would do well to learn form other older media formats that precede games. but let's not pretend that games are anything like what came before. interactivity is a new element to put into the storytelling toolkit. but the point is how games can do a much more than tell stories; it's like puzzles are part of the story somehow... but answering how exactly goes quite deep.

bobsmooth 3y ago
Video games are about half as old as film as a medium. I wouldn't call that new.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  New is relative, of course. Movies are a perfect example of that. Think about how far movies came in 50 years and think about how much gaming will progress in that same time.

hcarvalhoalves 3y ago

Games have a “replayability” factor, so I’m not sure the analogy with content length matters. Someone can play a multiple hour RPG just once, while another can devote a life to mastering Tetris or Street Fighter. I believe games fall into some spectrum between movie and sport, the experiences are very different.

maroonblazer 3y ago
That occurred to me too, but I wonder if there's a way to caveat that the length descriptors refer to some threshold of player investment that expresses "You've experienced the basic gist of the game and a large majority of what the developer wanted to convey. You can move on to another game or continue to improve in this one, your pick." As a player, I'd love such a classification. Increasingly I just don't have the time to slog through an entire Elden Ring or Starfield. Give me a way to easily find more Rocket Leagues and Cocoons.
- raytopia 3y ago
  You put it into words better then me.
- beenBoutIT 3y ago
  IIRC, RDR2 does exactly this. The issue is that you know exactly what percentage of the game you haven't experienced and exactly how good the game is and it makes it next to impossible to stop playing.
  - maroonblazer 3y ago
    But you have to start playing the game before you get that information. I want that information before purchasing it.
    - beenBoutIT 3y ago
      best you'll find is howlongtobeat.com

philsnow 3y ago

A common term in board games (and at least roguelike games) is “coffee break” games, which usually take ~5-15 minutes. I remember going back as far as the 00s, RPG games that didn’t have at least 40 hours of gameplay were criticized as being too short. Is there enough room between Flappy Bird, “coffee break” games, and epic (J)RPGs for a lot of terms about how long a game takes? And what do you mean, like a session? A run-through? There are games where you don’t have access to a save point all the time, and others where you can just turn it off and walk away and later it’s exactly as you left it. There’s that game Desert Bus that takes ~8h but you can’t even really stop to use the bathroom. There’s games that have more or less replayability, or dozens of hours of depth that you can explore but only if you like. There’s so much more to the medium than there is to books. I don’t see how it’s necessary or useful to use a length metric to describe games. It feels like asking “how many pages long is this game?”.

raytopia 3y ago
Those are all good points but I'd say but I feel like it's important because game developers can better signal to their audience the type of game they made and what the audience should expect from it. Especially in terms for how much time the player will need to invest to get the proper experience.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

qwery 3y ago

Flappy Bird never ends (practically ... I think?), how could you call it short? Pong is a two player sports simulation game, is that relevant? Is snooker an epic or a novel game/sport? 'A Short Hike' may be a short game but it's not a small game/experience. The mechanical complexity alone far outweighs that of the "small games" by this article's author. Consider telling your friend that 'A Short Hike' is a short game and they should/shouldn't play it. It's a perfectly reasonable and intelligible thing to say (probably -- you wouldn't say it to your friend unqualified if you expect they would get a seriously different meaning from it). ... I don't think this is a problem that needs to be solved. Also, "time to beat" is just not something you can reasonably measure. But even if you think it is, it's not analogous to word count. A novel's "time to beat" would be "time to read", surely.