This is hilarious:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6324422/ar ... Btitle%3B8

Oh. Wow...just, wow.

I weep for the state of computer gaming.

Jeff Vogel's been wasting too much time writing dialog and plot.

What's interesting is that if you look at the top ten most popular PC games on Gamespot's website, 50% of them (Witcher 2, Rage, Skyrim, Fallout Vegas, LA Noire) are games that are/will take you well past that 10 hour mark. Of course, if you look at the multiplayer aspect, that number jumps up to 90% (all but Portal 2). The article seems to be focused on the single-player story part, however, in which case 50% is still pretty damn high.

Perusing the panel lineup, I'm not really seeing where any of these guys has the experience/expertise to make such claims, save Charles Cecil. Of course gamers are losing patience with games that have poorly written story and/or underdeveloped gameplay. The "Big Guys" are focused on maximizing profits, not the gameplay experience. I suppose if you look at it that way, AAA games are too long... as in the fact that they're even being released.

Well, I don't find those comments especially surprising. After all, the most popular game around is Angry Birds.

The great majority of people want a quick and easy way to get a feeling of accomplishment. There is a much smaller group that wants to be challenged and thinks spending intellectual capital is fun.......

Yeah, but the problem is that too many companies want to cater to that mass appeal. And they wonder why everyone get's diagnosed with ADHD...

I have all three angry birds games on my shiny new Droid X2, but those are time wasters/fillers/distractions... not full blown games for me. I like my snacks, but I also like my steak dinners.

Purchasing habits do not necessarily equate to game preference, as this "Panel" is assuming.

Oh look... shiny!

Well put CrazyBernie!

I'm not dissing people who play Angry Birds. What I am saying is that for lots of people that sort of game is as complicated as they want to deal with.

I agree. And that's fine. There are times when all I want or have time for is a quick 5-10 minute game, so I can relate.

But for that panel to say that that's all gamers want and that's all developers should provide - they're clueless. I happen to also enjoy games that are deeper with epic/engaging stories, challenging puzzles/gameplay, and such. And there are obviously plenty of other people who feel the same way.

Oh, I wasn't assuming that you were dissing anyone... I was merely trying to make the point that a game's success doesn't dictate "what gamer's want." In other words, take five people with different tastes:

Person One buys a First Person Shooter
Person Two buys a Traditional RPG
Person Three buys an Action RPG
Person Four buys an Adventure Game
Person Five buys a Real Time Strategy Game

All five of these people bought games that have potential for 10+ hours of gameplay. Now let's assume all five of them have smartphones with Angry Birds. Now Angry Birds outnumber's each other game 5 to 1, but does that mean most gamers don't like long and engaging gameplay? Of course not, it just shows that there's some market overlap. The "Panel" is just making broad assumptions based on personal experience, which obviously is going to be grossly innacurate.

Here's a great example why that "Panel" is a bunch of bogus: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/07 ... -the-dust/

I must be a nut according to this article.

I'm the one who answers surveys for Bioware and other game companies when they ask, How many hours of gameplay do you want?, i always tell them 100+.

Well I started to read the article but I didn't have the patience to finish it. It was just way too long. Why can't people write articles that only take 30 seconds to read? That's what everybody wants.

On a serious note, there's a place for quick fix games and I understand their popularity, especially on phones or handheld consoles, they're perfect for that kind of platform. But to say that long games are going the way of the dinosaur is insane to me. There is plenty of room in gaming for games of all different lengths. I think more than anything this is developers fabricating an excuse to deliver less content for the same amount of money, or more money (bleed you dry with DLCs).

I keep reading comments from players that bought Spiderweb Software's Avadon for the iPad because they want to play away from their computers when they have time. At 30 to 40 hours to finish this seems a contradiction.

Oh absolutely you can play long games on portable devices. I put over 95 hours into Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars on my 3DS. I just think quick fix games work well for portables since a lot of times people only have 10 or 15 minutes at a time to play at work on break, a bus ride, etc...

I've always wanted to know how long a 10-hour game is. ...Or what that even means.

Anyhow... it seems to me this has nothing to do with what 'gamers' supposedly "want" but everything to do with what the big game companies want... more profit more quickly and for less effort. That's how it's always been and it's why they spend more $$ hiring visual artists to wow the audience than writers to engage their minds. Shooters are simply a cheaper and easier and less time-consuming device for keeping a player focused. They need a good trailer and an exciting-sounding, 15-word description. It's easier to sell "in Diablo 3 your Barbarian can knock down a wall and kill people with it" than it is to sell "NwN2 has interesting characters" or "Planescape has lots of good writing".

Of course, I'm not exactly a 'gamer' in the true sense of the word... so its hard for me to form an authoritative point of view on anything like this... not to mention that, not being exactly a 'gamer' I suppose this means I'm irrelevant, since I'm not part of the industry's focus audience.