Support NeoGAF

[Zen_Arcade]

Are we really complaining that developers are putting more content into games now?

The reason games are getting stale is because developers capped what they could do with the hardware years ago but have to keep developing for a system they can't do anything more with. The next-gen consoles will raise the bar to what developers can do and the industry will feel a bit more fresh then it has for the last few years of this Gen.

 

[SteveWD40]

I think two things really made this the case:

WoW
COD4

People saw the income Blizzard were taking and the idea of player retention and monetization took hold, then COD4 made it mainstream, unlocks and XP in an FPS.

I am guilty of having run on the Hamster Wheel for years but now I tend to avoid it as I don't have the time.

 

[Metalmurphy]

Please tell me this is sarcasm...?

Why would it be?

 

[bishoptl]

It was fine when it was only a few games. Assassin's Creed, scratching that OCD itch with meaningless collectibles. RPG elements popping up in a couple of games here and there. Then it escalated. The buzz words started to infect series that had no business including them. Darksiders 2. Far Cry 3. Dead Space 3. Every first person shooter since MW1. And many, many others.

This is a disease with many symptoms:

• Collectibles
• Loot
• XP
• Crafting
• Sidequests
• Unlockables

And more.

These features can add a lot of depth to a game. They can significantly enhance your immersion and sense of realism. They did, and still do, sometimes. When they fit into the theme of the game and feel natural in the context of the world. The problem is when they automatically become associated with FUN, and thus start appearing on game boxes with little checkmarks next to them. "Crafting? Yep, we've got that. XP? Yep, that too. What game is this, you ask? Does it matter? YOU CAN PUT A SNIPER SCOPE ON THIS SHOTGUN." +100 000 sales?

They can be meaningless busywork, designed to make you check a menu every five minutes to make sure those LISTS keep getting shorter. You do the same thing over and over, each time making a little bar climb, a number increase. You're doing it because you're a rat in a Skinner box, mindlessly pressing that button to get your empty reward. Walking around with your silly littly radar, collecting scrap, in the middle of the most horrible, nightmarish scenario you can imagine. Jumping in an abandoned jeep when suddenly the screen goes black, a timer appears in the corner, flares magically rise out of the ground. RACE TO THE FINISH LINE TO DELIVER THE SUPPLIES TO THE NATIVES. Is the game automatically better because of that detachable sniper scope? Because you can take this box, run to the other end of the world, give it to the man in the shed and collect $500? Because you have 30 abilities locked behind little icons, waiting for you to kill 157 enemies before you can learn how to climb a tree? Apparently so. The core is forgotten, content is king.

This is not simply a matter of "just don't do it if you don't like it." I am the gamer, not the game developer. It's not my job to filter the content, to create the game I want by laboriously whittling it down to its most enjoyable parts. But let's say I do. Let's say I decide that I will do a, b, and c, but not d, e, and f. That's still not enough. Because in every facet of the game design, the philosophy of "more content, less meaning" seeps through the cracks and it doesn't just affect the parts I don't like, it affects the game as a whole. "Helpful" text will pop up. Loot will emerge from chests in colorful explosions. Environment design will be tailored to the underlying gameplay systems. Difficulty will be balanced with the dutiful content consumer in mind. And, perhaps most importantly, immersion will suffer. This is not a believable world anymore, this is a theme park, stuffed to the brim with padding.

Are you playing Far Cry 3? Sounds like you're playing Far Cry 3

 

[Air Zombie Meat]

Got to agree to some extent. As an example Dead Space 3 crafting. So now you can combine two weapons into one! But wait, you can only carry two weapons instead of four now. Which effectively puts us right back where we were with added hassle :/

 

[Oldschoolgamer]

Got to agree to some extent. As an example Dead Space 3 crafting. So now you can combine two weapons into one! But wait, you can only carry two weapons instead of four now. Which effectively puts us right back where we were with added hassle :/

You effectively have four weapons though. It's basically duct taping two different guns on top of each other...

 

[Tobor]

I loved Far Cry 3. My GOTY.

 

[chickdigger802]

Stop adding all these systems that don't add anything.

Worst thing is ass creed. All this collecting is meaningless. All these side quest give shit. Heck having any kind of weapon system is pointless when your starting weapon are viable at end game.

 

[ngff02]

XP & Loot is one of the reasons Far Cry 3 interested me, now Darksiders 2?

I'm a whore for loot though.

 

[astroturfing]

Assassin's Creed III is a case study for this problem.

yep. and it's all because people whined and whined after the first game that it didn't have enough content. so the devs really took it to heart and just went more and more overboard in the following games. one of the devs actually said in an interview "we ignored improving the gameplay because we wanted to focus solely on making a ton of side content because that's what the fans mostly complained about"... so that's also why the controls never got better. fuck.

when i play AC3 half the shit cluttering the map is just completely pointless to me. it's really quite bad. and why do i loot catnip from enemies? who the fuck knows

Spoiler

i still love AC though

 

[SneakyStephan]

The bloat is a result of demands for player retention, it's the in-game solution in an attempt to hold players for longer (and hence, hold the game on for longer). More importantly, they are relatively low cost to implement, and has the most immediate effect in content/length increase.

This sums it up, it also sums up why it is so very wrong to do.

OP is right ,I had your exact same feelings after playing far cry 3 - and a bunch of other games of this type.
This skinnerbox crap is poison, carrot and the stick have been wholly replacing gameplay as a means to keep the player playing over the last several years and games have suffered immensely.

It is a lot easier to keep a player chasing around after empty rewards and give them a false sense of accomplishment than actually keeping them ENTERTAINED with great gameplay that has a solid and rewarding learning curve.
It's factory produced gaming basically, formulaic as can be, without the usual talent requirements to succeed.
You can't just factory produce rewarding gameplay, it takes talent, time , thought and execution.

It is everything that is wrong with gaming today, thank you OP for this thread, it can't be stressed enough.
What happened to just attaining new abilities and gameplay mechanics in a way that serves the learning curve , and with the level design being perfectly synched to this (something that skinnerboxes don't allow for!).

I go actively out of my way to avoid supporting these kinds of games and I feel genuinly gleeful and relieved every time I do find a game that doesn't use skinnerboxes as a crutch and that actually provides excellent gameplay.

Games like natural selection 2 (which has outright no bars and no carrots or filler content)
or Sonic racing transformed or bayonetta., where gameplay is still king and is still the entire fucking game, deserve a MEDAL for carrying gaming in the sea of cynical, focus tested factory produced empty skinnerboxes.

Funny thing. I miss when games were designed to have lasting value regardless of their size or length.

Today, there seems to be two extremes.

1. Five hour long scripted experiences designed to impress the player one time, then be shelved or sold. Often "movie-like", with a heavy emphasis on production values and "immersion" - meaning they are virtual-reality like, where nothing is "gamey".

2. Huge bloated check-the-box titles that are somehow chocked full of pigeons to shoot, yet for all their content don't have the core replayability or lasting power of older games that look similar on the surface. Because their core design is still rather linear, or "critical path" is still short, narrow, and simplistic. They just put a bunch of other stuff around the critical path to keep people playing.

I realize that today, there is an audience that never replays games and prefers to treat games essentially like slightly longer movies. Content tourism has become a real thing.

Of course, I wonder if pursuing the cinematic audience, and/or the content tourist audience, is one thing that's hurting the industry due to the cost and investment involved with the arms race to satisfy these audiences. The joke is that you COULD make an RPG like Baldur's Gate II today, that would remain a classic 10 years later and still command sales after a decade. You could even make it "pretty", with superior quality of 2D visuals, animation, etc.

But it wouldn't appeal to the audience that desires a first person virtual reality window into a 100% "realistic" world, though honestly I think that audience doesn't understand that there's more than one kind of "immersion".

Very well put!
A prime example of nr1 in your post would be zone of the enders, a 5 hour game with some of the best mech combat ever created and ENDLESS replay value.
These types of games (they don't have to be 5 hours... they can still have meaningful content like more levels) are pretty much extinct now

Assassin's creed is the textbook example of nr 2 : packed with 'content' but none of it is meaningful or gameplay related, there is little to no gameplay to be had in the entire game and the mechanics are non-existant.

 

[Lunar15]

Banjo Kazooie is ruining videogames!

 

[Randdalf]

I don't think this is content bloat, so to speak, but "artificial" content bloat. The way I see it, content is comprised primarily of two things: game mechanics and levels. For example, achievements are something I think are used to artificially add content to a game, whereas several additional hours of story I fully appreciate. These sorts of things are usually cheap to implement for the developer, hence why they are so prevalent.

 

[ArjanN]

Are we really complaining that developers are putting more content into games now?
The reason games are getting stale is because developers capped what they could do with the hardware years ago but have to keep developing for a system they can't do anything more with. The next-gen consoles will raise the bar to what developers can do and the industry will feel a bit more fresh then it has for the last few years of this Gen.

If it's bland filler content like in Assassins Creed, then yes, very much so.

 

[blurrygil]

Funny thing. I miss when games were designed to have lasting value regardless of their size or length.

Today, there seems to be two extremes.

1. Five hour long scripted experiences designed to impress the player one time, then be shelved or sold. Often "movie-like", with a heavy emphasis on production values and "immersion" - meaning they are virtual-reality like, where nothing is "gamey".

2. Huge bloated check-the-box titles that are somehow chocked full of pigeons to shoot, yet for all their content don't have the core replayability or lasting power of older games that look similar on the surface. Because their core design is still rather linear, or "critical path" is still short, narrow, and simplistic. They just put a bunch of other stuff around the critical path to keep people playing.

I realize that today, there is an audience that never replays games and prefers to treat games essentially like slightly longer movies. Content tourism has become a real thing.

Of course, I wonder if pursuing the cinematic audience, and/or the content tourist audience, is one thing that's hurting the industry due to the cost and investment involved with the arms race to satisfy these audiences. The joke is that you COULD make an RPG like Baldur's Gate II today, that would remain a classic 10 years later and still command sales after a decade. You could even make it "pretty", with superior quality of 2D visuals, animation, etc.

But it wouldn't appeal to the audience that desires a first person virtual reality window into a 100% "realistic" world, though honestly I think that audience doesn't understand that there's more than one kind of "immersion".

I highly respect this post.

The bloat is a result of demands for player retention, it's the in-game solution in an attempt to hold players for longer (and hence, hold the game on for longer). More importantly, they are relatively low cost to implement, and has the most immediate effect in content/length increase.

Alpha, sadly...but as usual, nails it.

 

[Air Zombie Meat]

You effectively have four weapons though. It's basically duct taping two different guns on top of each other...

Thats what I mean though. You effectively end up with exactly the same number of weapons\options as before which makes the feature seem pointless and nothing more than an excuse to have a crafting system. Great for people who were incapable of switching weapons I guess.

 

[polyh3dron]

 

[VARIA]

Artificially lengthening games toward the end (I'm looking at you Zelda) is what's ruining games for me. Skyward Sword could've been my favorite Zelda had it not been for that stupid collect the notes to complete the song section toward the end.

I don't understand why developers feel that their game will be perceived as not as good if it's shorter. A more concise, finely tuned gameplay experience without lame fetch quests will ultimately receive more repeated playthroughs and overall be a better game.

 

[Deified Data]

We just need more games like Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is padded to the gills, and a prime example of a game that does it right.

 

[nhlducks35]

Hey you're at your destination!

*Boulder falls in front of door*

Hey guys, we gotta find another way around into the castle, which involves going through a cave and then sewers and then the prison of the castle and finally to the courtyard!

Fucking hate it. I don't mind content bloat in the form of loot and XP and all that jazz. But for fuck sake, quit it it with the BS reasons to take the "long way around."

I fucking hate this shit so much

"Isaac, we need to get the engine we just got to the last shuttle. Wait, it turns out that someone took all navigation cards and conveniently scattered them all over the ship. Wait, it also turns out that the direct path to one of the keys is locked, so you need to turn on the power on make the elevator work again."

 

[Oldschoolgamer]

Thats what I mean though. You effectively end up with exactly the same number of weapons\options as before which makes the feature seem pointless. Great for people who were incapable of switching weapons I guess.

Ah gotcha.

edit: Not to try and defend the DS series, but all of the stuff Isaac had to do has been explained in the side games and stories. All of it fits within it's narrative.

 

[Brinbe]

Have no problems with it. It's mostly all optional anyway.

 

[Noray]

This sums it up, it also sums up why it is so very wrong to do.

OP is right ,I had your exact same feelings after playing far cry 3 - and a bunch of other games of this type.


This skinnerbox crap is poison, carrot and the stick have been wholly replacing gameplay as a means to keep the player playing over the last several years and games have suffered immensely.

It is a lot easier to keep a player chasing around after empty rewards and give them a false sense of accomplishment than actually keeping them ENTERTAINED with great gameplay that has a solid and rewarding learning curve.

It's factory produced gaming basically, formulaic as can be, without the usual talent requirements to succeed.

It is everything that is wrong with gaming today, thank you OP for this thread, it can't be stressed enough.
What happened to just attaining new abilities and gameplay mechanics in a way that serves the learning curve , and with the level design being perfectly synched to this (something that skinnerboxes don't allow for!).


I go actively out of my way to avoid supporting these kinds of games and I feel genuinly gleeful and relieved every time I do find a game that doesn't use skinnerboxes as a crutch and that actually provides excellent gameplay.

Games like natural selection 2 (which has outright no bars and no carrots)
or Sonic racing transformed or bayonetta., where gameplay is still king and is still the entire fucking game, deserve a MEDAL for carrying gaming in the sea of cynical, focus tested factory produced empty skinnerboxes.

All of the OP and this post, 100%. I bought both Far Cry 3 and AssCreed 3, and played the former maybe 3 hours, and the latter 1 hour. I couldn't put my finger on why they didn't hook me, at first. But I realized it's because neither respects my time. Far Cry 3 has all these completely pointless mechanics. It has terrible inventory management, and yet deal with it you must, if you want to hold more than 2 weapons and 2 spare clips of ammo. Why? Who the fuck knows. Because they have animals in the game, and therefore it needs a hunting mechanic, and therefore it needs something to make the hunting worthwhile. But it all detracts from the actual main goal of the game.

Assassin's Creed 3, I didn't even get far enough in to fully experience the bloat I've read about, but it starts soooo slowly and so boring that I didn't even want to play anymore. That's the other major problem to me, that games are now designed for morons, so every little mechanic must be drip-fed to the player, lest they be overwhelmed.

This is why I love Dark Souls. Granted, it's the extreme in the opposite direction, but at least it respects my time - I can pretty much do whatever the fuck I want in that game as soon as I exit the 5-minute starting area. All of its mechanics have a place and a reason to exist. Doesn't mean you HAVE to engage with all of them, but they're more than just checkboxes to fill, and this is key.

Darksiders 2 is also no better for having loot. At least it's not like you have to go into the inventory every 5 minutes to manage it in that game, and decent gear can last you quite a while.

None of this is to say that no games should have crafting and collectibles and progression mechanics. But it's gone a little overboard. I think whoever said that it's because of WoW and CoD4 nailed it.

 

[Orayn]

Dark Souls is padded to the gills, and a prime example of a game that does it right.

Is it really padding, though? The fastest possible Dark Souls speedrun that doesn't use a glitch to skip the last 1/3 of the game is about an hour long, while an average playthrough is oftne upwards of 20 hours. I guess I disagree with your assessment and the OP because I don't consider that optional content detrimental if it's not forced into the main track of the game, like needing to make money in No More Heroes for example.

 

[Famassu]

I don't understand why developers feel that their game will be perceived as not as good if it's shorter. A more concise, finely tuned gameplay experience without lame fetch quests will ultimately receive more repeated playthroughs and overall be a better game.

Don't blame developers, blame yourself. Devs have done quite a lot of shorter, better paced games, but then you've got a lot of people being all "6 hours? pfftttttt, will wait till <10$", no matter how well crafted & filled with replay value those 6 hours are. So now they are trying to offer games that make more people go all "wow, I could pay full price for a game with that massive a world", and that means there's some bloat.

 

[SolsticeZero]

Is it really padding, though? The fastest possible Dark Souls speedrun that doesn't use a glitch to skip the last 1/3 of the game is about an hour long, while an average playthrough is oftne upwards of 20 hours. I guess I disagree with your assessment and the OP because I don't consider that optional content detrimental if it's not forced into the main track of the game, like needing to make money in No More Heroes for example.

I don't think he meant padded like you think he meant it. I think he was saying that the game is stuffed full of content that can be a) skipped if you want to or b) feels rewarding if you go after it.

 

[Subaru]

It's like every modern game is Donkey Kong 64. =(

 

[Zen_Arcade]

If it's bland filler content like in Assassins Creed, then yes, very much so.

I haven't played AC since the first so I don't know how bad its gotten, and I'm not really a person who hits every side quest. If I get bored with doing the optional stuff I just stop so I guess this just isn't a problem that I can relate to.

 

[Dead]

Games with stuff like that almost always end up being worth the $60 to me. Almost always get a lot of mileage from them. Ass Creed, Arkhams, currently Far Cry 3 and Darksiders 2. XP, loot and collectibles/unlocks are pretty much what keep me glued to a game these days.

On the other hand a 6-7 hour game with little to none of these features is sure bet for a used sale or waiting til it drastically drops in price.

 

[Dahbomb]

Unlockables and side quests are a bad thing now?

It's not about whether the game has such content it's about how it does it. I can't imagine playing a Dead Rising game without the crafting system. Likewise I can't imagine playing a DMC game without unlockable skill sets.

This is just another stealth Tomb Raider/Far Cry 3 hate thread. If AAA games didn't have this stuff people would be complaining about being done with their AAA games after 5 hours.

 

[Parakeetman]

Are you playing Far Cry 3? Sounds like you're playing Far Cry 3

haha i thought the same thing when i read that

 

[RooMHM]

You didn't mention "achievements". You should have.

 

[Air Zombie Meat]

Don't blame developers, blame yourself. Devs have done quite a lot of shorter, better paced games, but then you've got a lot of people being all "6 hours? pfftttttt, will wait till <10$", no matter how well crafted & filled with replay value those 6 hours are. So now they are trying to offer games that make more people go all "wow, I could pay full price for a game with that massive a world", and that means there's some bloat.

Perhaps if games weren't so expensive certain parts of the market wouldn't feel like they needed to get 50+ hours out of a game to justify a purchase. I'm with you on short replayable games but the reality is that the average person doesn't do replays.

 

[VeryGooster]

I actually started questioning this sort of thing to myself as I made it to the end of the main story in Far Cry 3 yesterday. Now there is nothing for me except the relics, the WWII letters, the hunting of both rare game and remaining pirates (knife-only kills). I stepped back and felt kind of disappointed that there is a lot of potential to be had in an environment as wonderfully-designed as Rook Island, but there are these check-the-list activities that don't feel particularly interactive. I imagine that's where DLC missions come in.

I will say though that I don't think there are enough of the rare animal/pirate leader hunting assignments in FC3. Frankly I'm also interesting in reading those lost WWII letters. heh

Basically, I don't think optional collect-a-thons are a bad thing if done right. Devs have to make it enticing, though. Hunting rare game is fun to me. Chasing missing pages blowing in the wind on colonial rooftops is not.

 

[Toa TAK]

Hey you're at your destination!

*Boulder falls in front of door*

Hey guys, we gotta find another way around into the castle, which involves going through a cave and then sewers and then the prison of the castle and finally to the courtyard!

Fucking hate it. I don't mind content bloat in the form of loot and XP and all that jazz. But for fuck sake, quit it it with the BS reasons to take the "long way around."

This is the worst, especially in horror games. Not fun at all, and it feels forced just to lengthen the game.

 

[Noray]

Don't get it twisted, I don't think the OP is arguing against proper side missions, necessarily. Side quests can be fun to do in their own right, as well as reward the player with EXP or whatever.

But at some point, if you're including EXP, loot, collectibles, and all this other stuff in your game, the game is going to have to be designed to accomodate all that stuff. Meaning padding, or time spent in menus, or other detrimental effects. You can argue about this, but I don't think Dead Space 3 would've had a crafting mechanics, at least in its current form, if it weren't for the inclusion of microtransactions. This means that collectibles had to be added to the game, just enough for the player to feel like they always have a carrot in front of them, but not TOO much because they want people to buy their microtransactions.

 

[noobasuar]

Next gen were going to have pr talking about how they want to make games more accessible to people without thumbs, since it's a huge market that is untapped.

Fuck modern video games.

 

[Cymbal Head]

I'm not going to articulate this very well, but here's what I see. I should note that this applies most strongly to retail games.

1. Gamers demand 'value for the money.'
2. Play time is the most salient metric for 'value.'
3. Publishers are resisting a tiered pricing model, so every major game now needs to have $60 worth of 'value.'
4. Developers spend more time and money stuffing their games with content in an effort to increase the time it takes to finish their games.
5. The $60 overstuffed game becomes the de facto standard. A product with a price tag lower then $60 is seen as inferior, and a game that's not overstuffed is seen as a ripoff.

It's a feedback loop that creates a lose-lose situation.

Spoiler

6. Gamers complain that games are overstuffed.

 

[FlashbladeGAF]

as long as the "bloat" isn't mandatory

[ReggieNotMyProblem.gif]


If I have to go and search for all of the 1000 crystal shards in a side mission to progress the main story then I see your point. But if it's optional then who knows how you might feel on a different day.

You may want to run around and level up while actually doing something productive in game.

 

[Cave Johnson]

I really feel sad with this gaming gen. Everything now has become too "predictable". If it's linear, then you get your Uncharted-esque set pieces. If it's open-world then you get exactly what the OP's sentiments. You just recently heard that RE might get a reboot and would take place in an open-world and guess what, the standard cookie-cutter formula will be implemented in a typical manner.

It feels like at this point I feel anybody could be a game designer with such limitations on video games, with the only distinction being how "creative" one can be with it.

 

[AstroNut325]

Sidequests = "content bloat"

Now I've heard everyfuckingthing.

DITTO! There were side quests err... I mean bloat in very early games too! Yes... even in your precious Nintendo games.

 

[Raw64life]

I blame achievements for this problem. They need to die. Or at the very least give me the option to have them not ever appear on my screen so I can pretend they don't exist.

 

[Holy Order Sol]

I have no problem with that but I don't think I have ever played a game where it's as much pronounced as some people say. In my experience more content is better, and the "whittling down" the OP mentions is effortless to me.

No. One arguably tedious section in the game != content bloat.

 

[cuyahoga]

Sidequests = "content bloat"

Well, if they are banal and poor-executed attempts to prolong a game, yeah.

Most AAA games these days are way too long—anything longer than 12-15 hours is certain to have content bloat.

 

[AlexBasch]

I'd rather have collectibles trophies rather than the "you completed chapter 1" style. I should have to EARN them, not get them for just playing the game.

I get ya, but if they're related to gameplay (like the Gorgon Eyes or Feathers from GOW) then it's okay in my book, it's the "kill 1000 pidgeons for no reason" from GTA or "get the enemy intel" from COD stuff that ticks me off.

 

[DaBuddaDa]

I do find these progression systems tiring when they're present in every game. It's overwhelming to have to constantly learn and re-learn a hundred new, slightly different crafting and loot and leveling systems every time I pop a new game in. Systems on top of systems on top of systems. It forces me to invest more time in fewer games, the opposite of what I want.

 

[Of All Trades]

Are you playing Far Cry 3? Sounds like you're playing Far Cry 3

Except Far Cry 3 more or less lets you skip a lot of the "bloat" if you just want to run around the islands doing things for your own entertainment; the game will give you enough money just from playing to unlock most of the weapons, and most of the skills aren't really crucial.

If you want pure bloat you need to look at Far Cry 2's diamond mechanic, which when coupled with the respawn rates and constant hostility created a huge amount of padding and filler if you wanted to play with different features.

 

[SolsticeZero]

I get ya, but if they're related to gameplay (like the Gorgon Eyes or Feathers from GOW) then it's okay in my book, it's the "kill 1000 pidgeons for no reason" from GTA or "get the enemy intel" from COD stuff that ticks me off.

I can agree on that.

 

[Coffee Dog]

Content....bloat? Is this even a thing?

Every game needs more content, it just needs to be a good enough game that I won't mind playing it for 40 hours or whatever. Also: complaining about unlockables? Unlockables died this gen, bro.

 

[Portugeezer]

GTA games are the worst with this.

SHOOT 100 PIGEONS! (or something like that)

I played the game for almost 30 hours and didn't see a single fucking pigeon.

That is not necessary though, so why does it matter? It's like the hidden packages in the earlier games, only a completionist would do this.

Lol Achievements.

I saw some pigeons and shot them for fun, I do the jumps for fun, etc.