3641

I admit to being shallow.

I would need something to hold my attention in order for me to play a game past the 5 hour mark. Something–anything–has to happen to make me care.

Otherwise, I can go back to planning a Skinner box to help train my dog on markers.

3642

JRPGs seem like pretty good fodder for “Less talk, more rock”.

I liked the Chrono Trigger comparison above.

3643

Chrono Trigger was pretty awesome, even though I didn’t play it until 2005. It helped that I played it on an Xbox though, with the turbo feature that made it even cooler than the original.

3644

I would need something to hold my attention in order for me to play a game past the 5 hour mark. Something–anything–has to happen to make me care.

You aren’t shallow, if the game can’t hook you within first 20 minutes, they failed in someways.

At least that’s what I was taught in school and at work, that’s why usually the first few levels are the most important levels in a game. Look at God of War 3, they probably spent the most resource/time on the first 45 minutes of the game.

3645

Pretty much true of anything, really. Many writers say that if the first sentence of a short story doesn’t hook you for the rest of the duration, the story is a failure.

3646

You aren’t shallow, if the game can’t hook you within first 20 minutes, they failed in someways.

I absolutely agree with this. If I have to play your game for 20 hours before it gets good, your game sucks. Cut the first 20 hours and call me back.

3647

Yeah, probably. They spent months on that boss battle alone. Actually, it could be the most expensive boss encounter in a game… ever?

3648

Sooooo true.

I wonder if Squeeeenix hasn’t got a bit of the Popular Author Syndrome: The longer a popular series goes on, the longer the books get, because the editors essentially no longer have the power to ask an author to cut anything… the people will buy it anyway, so what’s the point? See also: The last 4 books of the Harry Potter series, the Star Wars prequel trilogy…

3649

I prefer to call it Tolkien Syndrome.

3650

I don’t think a game production company really enjoys adding 12 consecutive essentially identical linear levels all that much; they do after all have to do some of their own playtesting. The main level designer choice in the first 20 hours of play is where to hide the inevitable floaty sphere treasure chest so that the player has some momentary trivial pleasure in uncovering it, because for sure the fights along the way won’t be that much fun.

I have to assume this comes from a few things:

  1. CD with head up ass.

  2. Cutscene budget way too big, and a suit telling the designers they’ve damn well got to spend it all.

  3. Frustrated novelist lead story designer given way too much creative control. “Yeah, drag out the tutorial another 8 hours of linear dungeons, I’ve got a story to tell!”

I mean, even at the silliest JRPG studio, you can’t imagine all those designers not rolling their eyes at the latest weekly cutscene storyboard meeting. Assuming they were invited, which, on mature consideration, I have to assume they weren’t.

Edit: I have to say, though, godawful as the FF XIII story and gentle introduction to the game may be, it still can’t compare for sheer horror to Star Ocean 4, where the dialogue doesn’t even make sense, and the characters are actually more irritating. I want to slap the FF XIII characters around, but I would gladly see the SO4 characters die horrible deaths.

3651

I play and enjoy Nippon Ichi games and even I am turned off by the ‘15 hours till it gets fun’ lines I am hearing about FF13.

3652

Stretching out the game is a pretty popular tactic in Japan to try to curb used game sales in the first few weeks of release. It’s not surprising that FF13 is using it as well.

3653

That’s horrible, Ex-S! That means spoiling the game for everybody in order to make some more money. How much more self-defeating can you get?

Is that your own analysis or are there also others saying this? It’s the first I’ve heard of such practises.

3654

I heard in Japan used game aren’t worth much after first few weeks, and since games are so expensive, I imported the Japanese ff13 for around $100, and that’s suppose to be the retail price there around $90 or so.

So a lot of gamers in japan would purchase and beat the game ASAP then sell it back to game store before the used game price drops.

3655

The used game market is quite different compared to the US

  • The Japanese game association tried to sue to ban used game sales and lost in the early 2000’s
  • Companies limit initial presses of new games to try to ensure a 100% sell-through rate.
  • There are many retailers who sell used games and there is fierce competition between game retailers
  • Japanese gamers tend keep their games in pristine condition and the expectation is that there is no degradation between buying a game used and new.
  • If you sell-back a new game within the first week of release you’re almost guaranteed a trade in price of 85%+ of the buying cost if isn’t a total flop. IN CASH. The trade-in price can go above 100% if there is a severe supply shortage (Final Fantasy X-2 actually had this for a few weeks, I remember)

This creates a market in which hardcore gamers are encouraged to try to blow through games as fast as possible and sell it back in order to keep their gaming hobby almost a cost free one.

From the publishers side, new game sales drop incredibly fast once the hardcore gamer crowd starts trading their games in mass…and since multi-player games aren’t that popular in Japan, they need to find other ways to try to delay the trade-in as long as possible.

As for my comment earlier, I base it from a article on a Japanese gaming mag a few years back and that article had some quotes from devs admitting to the practice. I’ll see if I can find it later…

3656

Wow, that’s eye-opening, thanks for the elaboration, Ex-S! This pretty much kills what little interest I might have had in Japanese grindfests. Wasting tens of hours of my life because of the quirks of the Japanese game market? No thanks.

3657

God of War III - who the hell was that?

3658

Sounds like Ben lost his soul.

3659

Or at least his enthusiasm. Or his energy. Or something like that.

3660

It sounds like he’s sick. Sore throat or something. Not only is the tone different, it’s slow. I guess speaking really quickly is hard to do after you’ve been gargling razor blades.

  • Gus