The experience they would leave with would be much more entertaining and a lot less frustrating. The games would still be challenging, but not at the expense of the players patience.” To me that is much more important than making a game frustrating so that you can feel great about yourself because you won some super challenge that artificially lengthens a game.

I want to be immersed into the experience and not slowed down too much, no matter how casual a gamer I am. Some games like Oblivion will be able to lengthen the game in such a way you have lots to do (many subplots and threads) and that’s great. But the whole “let’s make the gamer play ridiculously hard boss fights so that the game is longer and they have to learn by dying so many ways” is pure rubbish gaming imo. Poor design and the story is lost.

I feel relief not triumph when I get past those. And some anger that it takes so long to see something new. Suttondagger’s comment where he says he likes to spend time exploring is fair enough. Games like Oblivion or Assassin’s let you explore and that takes time. Some enjoy exploring (I do!) and some don’t and want to keep the narrative moving. I’m more talking about the ways games use non-sensical artificial means so that they can say their game is longer to finish, much like the author points out.

Repetitiveness, no sense of clear direction or what to do, button timing pattern memorising boss fights etc. are not fun and stop the narrative flat. (Though there are exceptions to the boss fight rule: I did enjoy Resident Evil 4 and the games like Half Life that have a Walker or Helicopter you have to finish off at the end- it does slow the narrative, but isn’t too frustrating and is fun in its own way).

I do agree about some of these puzzles though, they must be both rewarding yet beneficial to the story.

The Club is a game which is designed along those principles, Short, sweet, productive and yet fulfilling in its own odd way, much like a quick burst at The Arcade Shooter, which are typically designed to last only a short time, yet delivery the fun-factor in spades.

Developers have a hard time atm, delivering high quality visually appealing games that cost over $US15 – $US50 mil to make and deliver, they need to sell, and sell fast, Making them longer like the old ones of 20 hrs plus, just wouldn’t give them the return needed to compensate for the huge investment.

So shorter, quicker games, and more of them is the answer, well it seems to be atm.

But from that I totally disagree. I would never pay $100 for a 4 -5 hour game. I want them all to be 20 hours or over. Even if they are a bit frustrating.

- When are they going to make Monkey Island 5?