Dr. Dyack or How I Learned to Love Paying Twice As Much For Games

I may be one of the last few people who is actually interested in playing Too Human (or even thinks it will release), but Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack has shoved his foot squarely into his mouth in this interview, published today

I don't really see it as bold [to make Too Human a trilogy]. I see that as a promise to the consumer that there's more here than just one game. Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. People don't want that any more. I don't care how good the game is I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long. As much as I love World of Warcraft I pulled myself out of it.

The dis to WoW aside, this amounts to nothing more than doubling (or tripling) the price we pay for games. Does anyone here think that Too Human is going to cost less that $60? Anyone at all? I didn't think so. I'll add a little more.

If we're going to craft an epic story we decided we had to divide it into manageable chunks for the consumer. At the same time we wanted to do a game that it has a chance to evolve and take advantage of development changes. We think the future is all about content. By getting our flow of process together for the first game we can then look at it and evolve the way we work for the next games in the series. We didn't want to have to start from scratch again after the first Too Human. Is it gutsy to promise so much? Yes, but making games is hard.

This isn't about quicker turnaround times for games, Episode 2 has proved this. And I won't even devote more than one sentence to commenting that Too Human has been in development for frighteningly close to a decade. But as gamers we cannot let developers shortchange us on content or overcharge us for 10 hours of game play. If we let this happen, developers will know once and for all that we are nothing more than their ATMs.

On a more personal note, I love epics. I've put in 110+ on Oblivion, probably half that on Morrowind, Twilight Princess, gotten back into playing online thanks to Gears, and I've put in a fair amount of time into any other number of games -- my point is, I like epics, I absolutely love them, and the one thing that tends to knock a game down most in my book is a lack of depth / length. This is the main failing of games like Crackdown, or Fable: they're too short, and don't provide enough direction. That's when an epic sucks - when it loses its sense of direction and self. They don't suck because they're long, they suck if they're repetitive or pointless.

Just like the Destructoid post about losing in games, missing the point that all games needed was better writing / plotting, Dyack's comments miss the point that all epics need are direction and style (and quicker development teams). Then the 60+ hours are joy, and knowing that you can settle in and bask in the ocean that is the game should bring comfort to those in the pond-sized games that Dyack is interested in.

Even if you don't have the time to play more than a few hours a week, playing a great, long game should be everyone's dream. It's great to finish a game, but like with any other work of art, it is the process of enjoying it (especially with interactive media) that holds the most for us.

These epics also make the $60 outlay worthwhile. Don't buy purposely short games for full price. It dilutes our purity of essence ;).