GDC: Jaffe on console game problems

During his microtalk at GDC 2011, David Jaffe talked about how players get pushed to the mobile space by the barriers that have developed to playing console games.

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David Jaffe opened his GDC "Microtalk" by adding his voice to the growing crowd that feels the need to tell us they play games on the toilet. At this point I'm over all the sharing, but he followed up with a good point. He, and all the rest of us, play apps in the bathroom and other short time windows because we can tap the icon on the screen and almost instantly be playing.

Jaffe said that console games are pushing people to the mobile space because, "it takes too damn long to get a game started." To support his point, he timed a few games over the prior weekend to see how long it took from the time he turned on the power to actually getting in the game. The fastest of them took a couple minutes, and the worst rose closer to ten.

He suggested a couple of solutions. One was to have a system where with a game in the drive, the console would offer a quick startup to continue from your last save bypassing all the home screen and game menu screens. The other was to give home consoles a sleep function like portable platforms use so he could put a game to sleep and then pick right back up where he left off.

Jaffe said console games face other entry barriers as well. They are too long he says. He wants a game he take home over the weekend and have a great, complete experience beating it. Needing patches to fix or add content, sometimes right out of the box, is another. He thinks there should be a restriction against patching a game in its first two months, and patches to be limited to a max of four per title. And finally, he said that we've forgotten that multiplayer is best when it's one-on-one. One of 300 in massive online games doesn't feel epic; it's just chaos.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 4, 2011 6:30 PM

    Comment on GDC: Jaffe on console game problems, by Garnett Lee.

    • reply
      March 4, 2011 6:42 PM

      This is a big reason I stick with PC games more. I am on the PC much more frequently so if I get a window to play something I will just fire it up on steam or whatever and be in the game quickly. A Console game takes longer to get in to and feels like much more of a commitment.

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        March 4, 2011 7:06 PM

        And thats ironic because that was one of the most important and lauded benefits of console gaming. Now I can purchase a PC game, have it downloaded and installed and at the title screen in 20 - 30 minutes without leaving my chair, while looking at porn or watching TV or whatever. If your on a PS3 your lucky if the godamn first mandatory software update gets downloaded that fast.

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        March 5, 2011 4:18 AM

        although a lot of people are the opposite, they come home and sit down in front of their TV first, and it's far easier to turn the console on with the controller and away they go.

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      March 4, 2011 6:56 PM

      I hate to get into a deep discussion about it, but I really disagree about games needing to get shorter. I'm not that big into the hours per dollar thing, but if single player focused games went from like 8 hours to 6 or 4 then I wouldn't buy them. I would just watch movies instead.

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        March 4, 2011 7:02 PM

        Agreed. Some games need to be long epic's, some games do not. But no full price game should ever be anything less than 8 hours of estimated content. If we get to a point when difficulty prohibits that, then I think the industry as a whole needs to check itself. I also think its kind of sad that people want games to become movies that you hold a gamepad while watching. There is certainly a place for those, but the idea that the medium as a whole would want to move that direction really bothers me.

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          March 4, 2011 7:03 PM

          errrr i meant to say when difficulty of development prohibits that

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          March 4, 2011 7:17 PM

          And if all a game has to offer is a short single player, Jaffe can be sure as shit I won't be paying $60 for it unless its quality is something on the level of Portal 1.

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          March 4, 2011 8:28 PM

          Who are these "people" who want games to be movies? Generally it seems that people don't like overly long drawn out cutscenes.

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            March 4, 2011 8:39 PM

            I am convinced that every lead game designer, and especially the writers, in their heart of hearts, wants to be a Hollywood movie director.

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              March 5, 2011 3:10 PM

              I blame it all on John Romero's hair.

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        March 4, 2011 7:13 PM

        That's right. If it's not multiplayer, the games I am interested are rarely weekend long tidbits of fun. I don't expect Skyrim or Fallout or Mass Effect or Red Dead to be over in a weekend.

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        March 4, 2011 9:43 PM

        I agree with him, I just don't have the desire to spend that much time playing a game anymore, unless it's a really really amazing game. Of course some games should be long, but usually I feel more could be left on the cutting room floor, so to speak.

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        March 5, 2011 4:20 AM

        I would, but they'd have to be a bit cheaper that's all. I love quite a few of the Indie and XBL arcade games I've bought.

      • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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        March 5, 2011 12:49 PM

        If the price per game dropped and the length dropped, that'd be awesome.

        But $60 for a game I finish in an evening? No.

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        March 5, 2011 1:44 PM

        [deleted]

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      March 4, 2011 6:57 PM

      Definitely agree on the patching part. Games used to have much higher standards of quality control, now the developers push them in order to hit release dates that are set by marketing instead of producing a finished product.

      As for faster loading next gen consoles need a SSD drive to store the OS and game assets that need the speed. Coupled with the sleep system mentioned if would bring things back to a respectable level of loading.

      His comment about games being too long makes me want to tell him to fuck off.

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        March 4, 2011 7:20 PM

        They'll never give up patching now that they have it and yes, SSDs are essential to cut load times but you won't get SSDs by default in the PS4/Xbox1080 due to cost. You'll have to buy it yourself assuming you can upgrade the drive yourself ala the PS3.

        And yeah, he can fuck off with his opinions. Clint Hocking had a similar blog post a few weeks ago.

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        March 4, 2011 7:40 PM

        Definitely agree on the patching part. Games used to have much higher standards of quality control, now the developers push them in order to hit release dates that are set by marketing instead of producing a finished product.

        Games used to be orders of magnitude simpler too. Compare testing physics and geometry interactions in Mario vs Quake 1 vs GTA4. There's a very good reason for there being more bugs and need for patches these days.

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          March 5, 2011 6:39 AM

          How many people worked on quake 1. How many people worked on GTA4. Now please tell me wtf the PC port was complete and utter shit with that many people working there.

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            March 5, 2011 10:19 AM

            Because it wasn't a priority. Because tons of those extra people work in content creation (models, maps, textures, voice acting, etc) which has no effect on bug fixing.

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            March 5, 2011 12:23 PM

            theres only one john carmack

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            March 5, 2011 12:25 PM

            the gta4 port was pretty good after a year or two! couldve been just rockstar rushing the development team to get it out.

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        March 4, 2011 8:49 PM

        I would argue that the publishers are more often the ones trying to push a game out the door prematurely, at least that's how it used to be with PC games. As for patching, would you rather the developer fix things faster, or slower? I don't see how limiting the number of patches would help anything.

        Games are orders of magnitude more complex than they were in the 80s or 90s, of course there are going to be more bugs. If perfection were easily attainable, there wouldn't be issues in the first place.

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      March 4, 2011 6:59 PM

      my married friends cant game on the xbox much because their fat wives are watching TV on the big screen. They game on PC more.

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      March 4, 2011 7:00 PM

      I wonder if console manufacturers are scared of the "anti-green" attacks that might follow the addition of a sleep feature. With such a huge improvement in gaming downtime, I imagine it would be used by most owners.

      Sleep functions rely on the system state being kept in memory. RAM is a volatile medium, meaning it requires some (albiet a small) amount of power to be drawn constantly to keep that information from being lost. But, honestly, it would be pretty worth it.

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        March 4, 2011 7:08 PM

        Considering how much power draw consoles already take I doubt it would make much of a difference.

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        March 4, 2011 7:14 PM

        I think him asking for a "sleep" function is an indication that most console games don't have enough save functionality.

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          March 4, 2011 7:28 PM

          No, it's more to have the instant-on capabilities of a tablet for even at phone to a degree.

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            March 4, 2011 7:58 PM

            To get close to "instant-on", there would have to be tighter controls over games reloading their engine. I'd rather see faster loading through standard "install to HDD" options, faster hard drives, and "cache" stages composed of flash memory or auxiliary system RAM. Include better options for checkpointing and arbitrary player-triggered saving, and this would be close enough to "instant-on" without the strict tolerance for system state that a DS or PSP game would need to have.

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        March 4, 2011 7:17 PM

        I can't even measure the power draw on my PC with a kill-a-watt when it is in S3. A cold boot would use up more power than just leaving it sleeping.

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        March 4, 2011 7:56 PM

        Or hibernate. How long does it take to copy 512MB to RAM?

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          March 4, 2011 7:59 PM

          Depends on what it's reading from. The drive in my PS3 slim is a 120 GB laptop drive that isn't very fast, and the Blu-Ray drive isn't very fast.

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            March 4, 2011 8:30 PM

            Well so it's reading from a 5200 RPM SATA I (150) drive (at least on my old PS3 I had to restrict my hdd to SATA I to get it to boot correctly). If you hibernate you would write the RAM to disk and read the RAM back from disk when you want to resume. I think even worst case it would take less than a minute to resume from hibernate.

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        March 4, 2011 8:32 PM

        If magnetic RAM hits prime time that concern won't be applicable. Then again, I remember reading in the 90s that MRAM was supposed to supersede it years ago.

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      March 4, 2011 7:05 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 4, 2011 7:08 PM

      Not sure how I feel about citing the length of a game as an entry barrier. Sure, it does prevent a quick pickup after some time away - I can't count the number of times I've put down Monster Hunter for a week only to be half lost on the controls the next time I picked it up. But a lengthy experience produces a similar amount of involvement in the player: the longer you do something, the more attached you feel towards it (as WoW players can attest). Breaking a lenghty experience down into more digestable segments seems to be the best solution, either through episodic content or through player-set goals ("I'll play two matches today," "I'll make three stacks of glass," or "I'll make a complete Barioth set").

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      March 4, 2011 7:09 PM

      If publishers weren't so hellbent to have unskippable logo screens and paid ads from middleware and hardware sponsors, it wouldn't take so damn long to get a game started. I blame DVDs with their silly mandatory preview and FBI warning videos for the phenomenon of "cooking" a DVD or game by starting it up and going to the fridge or the bathroom for a minute or two.

      Meanwhile, I go to my older PC games like the Doom and Quake series. POW! Main menu in three seconds or less.

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      March 4, 2011 7:14 PM

      What does he mean by "multiplayer is best when it's one-on-one"?

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        March 4, 2011 7:20 PM

        Im thinking he either means 1v1 as in duels, or 1v1 as in two people in the same room on the same TV.

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          March 4, 2011 7:22 PM

          Then Jaffe doesn't understand multiplayer at all and can go back to make PS2 games. To me, his opinions have always seem rooted in the PS2, God of War 1 era that made him.

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        March 4, 2011 7:24 PM

        Probably from the olde quake days. I highly disagree with him on this one, but there is room for both styles. I love and used to dominate in FFA matches. Basically in 1 vs 1 it's about control of resources. In FFA mp games it's all about immediate reaction and on the fly choices since the resources really are in a state of chaos.

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        March 5, 2011 11:25 AM

        I definitely prefer the more intimate battles. Playing 32 man servers is often just chaos to me. I'm a decent player, but definitely not top tier. Still, when playing MP FPS games, I feel like if I see you there is a pretty good chance you're going to die first even if YOU get in the first shot. My favorite maps usually control the space so that they create 1v1, 1v2, 1v3 duels. Seriously, what moments do you remember most when playing FPS games? The kills where you shot your opponent from their 3 o'clock or the kills where you pop the melons of 2 or 3 guys face to face?
        However, I don't think EVERY game needs to be the same. Variety in the game space is nice.

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          March 5, 2011 11:38 AM

          The intensity of a 64 player BF2 match is what I remember. Fuck Halo and CoD for their small little 1v1 or 1v2 battles. Winning one little firefight after the next pales being part of larger fight, especially when you and your squad held down some key area or took out their commander and their artillery assets allowing another squad to push up and capture the contention point.

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      March 4, 2011 7:17 PM

      Sleep state would be awesome.

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      March 4, 2011 7:20 PM

      You know it's funny, the less time I have for games, the less I want them to be retarded and simple. If I have a weekend for playing games and that's it, then I really don't wanna be playing games that suck. Instead of going through the CoD campaign I'd much rather build my character some and do a few quests in an epic 80 hour RPG like Torment.

      Both take the same amount of my precious gaming time, but one is an empty, vacuous experience that will not give you any sense of satisfaction during or after play, and the other is a challenge that in overcoming will reward you with a sense of acomplishment and hopefully the development of an interesting story, a unique world, and some stylish new visual sights.

      If I was in highschool and wanted to check out CoD even though I knew it would suck, I wouldn't mind, but now I can only be mad at a shitty game like that for wasting my time I could have spent playing something awesome.

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        March 5, 2011 3:00 AM

        Check out Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga (PC only). The demo does not accurately depict how good this game is. There are occasional sales for 50% off, so you might be able to pick it up for $20. Best game I've played in years.

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      March 4, 2011 7:31 PM

      He's right about taking to long to get into a game. Movies (dvd & blu-ray) have the exact same problem. Except there all the crap only serves to punish people who buy the disc legit. Games should have a faster ability to jump right into where you left off. I don't contact reminding from Nvidia, Divx, the developer, the distributor, the snack company, the janitorial contractor, blah ,blah. Just let me launch my save game and let me get to it. A sleep mode would be even better.

      Ya know, I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more instant-on in devices within the next 2 years. I think we're all so over long boot/load times.

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        March 4, 2011 7:42 PM

        I don't see how the next round of consoles or the PC are going to reduce load times, aside from an SSD. The number of layers of hardware/software abstraction are only going to increase because the tech is going to increase in complexity and everyone with a brand will still be fighting for customer eyeballs. The only way I see your instant on assertion coming true is if we do something like give up all our traditional devices and switch to portable/mobile devices.

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          March 4, 2011 7:44 PM

          I would think in 3-4 years a 128gb+ SSD might not be too expensive to slap in a console

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            March 4, 2011 7:46 PM

            Yeah next generation's gonna be all about mandatory installs (and probably other, less awesome shit like cd keys), no question about it. And also a lot of general memory as well, to kill things like texture streaming.

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              March 4, 2011 8:01 PM

              The Xbox 360 and PS3 would be so much better if they hadn't skimped on memory and put 1 or 2 GB instead of 512MB.

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                March 4, 2011 8:09 PM

                They didn't skimp. That was a decent amount of memory when those systems came out. And not cheap

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                  March 5, 2011 2:55 AM

                  2x2GB of nice Corsair DDR3 ram these days only costs ~$100, maybe less. I'll have to check newegg, it's been a while since I needed to shop for ram.

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              March 4, 2011 9:30 PM

              So basically consoles will become PCs. Yay! PCs FTW!!

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              March 5, 2011 10:24 AM

              Nah, they'll be more like OnLive.

              Instant-on, no patches to install, no downloads, instant demos, no patches, no cd keys, no piracy, ability to rent games for 3/5 days, etc.

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            March 5, 2011 12:03 AM

            They don't even need 128gb+ a simple 80gb would be good enough. Just something large enough to hold the OS and a game. Update the bluray drive to a 12x read, if possible throw in 4gb of ram and we are good to go.

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          March 4, 2011 11:08 PM

          load times is just a small part of it though. Much if it is into movies, convoluted menus and other stuff that could be easily fixed.

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            March 4, 2011 11:38 PM

            Hey if they didn't show you that legal blurb you would start a game called Call of Duty Intel Activision and there would be nothing they could do about it, thats how the law works for reals.

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        March 4, 2011 7:51 PM

        This is one of the nice things about iOS games, how most of them will just concurrently sit in suspend mode and you can sidestep all that garbage

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        March 7, 2011 5:43 AM

        qGames should have a faster ability to jump right into where you left off]q

        Quick saves anyone?

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      March 4, 2011 7:49 PM

      He is right about games taking too long to start up. The string of logos is too much and if it is a first time with a game there are some horrible movies and then a tutorial section to deal with.

      I do not agree with patching limitations because that may hold back a game.

      As for shorter games? Well for Jaffe games like twisted metal that are replayable over and over that would be ok. Currently the typical console game is a scripted hallway movie that gives very little value per scene, like the opposite of tetris, without a certain amount of content those games would offer much less value.

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        March 4, 2011 9:46 PM

        God I fucking hate tutorials. The best games build the tutorial into real gameplay.

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      March 4, 2011 7:52 PM

      Agreed on the "too long" I rarely play games anymore and it takes me 5 seconds from feeling like playing a game, clicking the quakeworld icon and typing connect shkn.ws, load and play the game.

      If I get pissed it takes me 1 second to bring down the console and type quit.

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      March 4, 2011 7:55 PM

      "Jaffe then got a raucous response for his next quip about developers introducing new content to titles in the same week that they ship, leading to even more installs and upgrades. He then went on to say that the console multiplayer experience has lost sight of those things that make playing together fun; massive multiplayer worlds scare off players because it doesn't allow them to feel like they actually make a difference. So, while Jaffe still loves console games, he believes everyone should be playing iPhone, iPad and handhelds. On the toilet, preferably."


      I like this guy.

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      March 4, 2011 9:39 PM

      I've talked to friends about this before. One difference between something made by Valve and something made by Activision or EA is the time from start to play. I can be surfing the net on my computer and decide to play CS and be in a game in 20 seconds or less. If I wanted to play Battlefield, then I would probably be looking at about 5 minutes before I start playing.

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        March 4, 2011 10:03 PM

        nah it's not that bad. in fact bad company 2 takes about 1/3 the time to load (from my desktop to in a match) compared to TF2

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        March 5, 2011 12:31 AM

        really? that´s the difference you see?

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      March 4, 2011 10:59 PM

      is this guy retarded maybe?

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        March 4, 2011 11:03 PM

        this guy is the worst. his opinions belong in a trash hole.

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          March 5, 2011 3:38 AM

          "If nobody will agree with me, I'll agree with myself!"

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      March 4, 2011 11:38 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 4, 2011 11:56 PM

      One of the best games I've played, Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga took me about 80 hours to beat, and was fucking awesome the entire 80 hours. Half Life 2 was what? Only 12 hours? And they want games shorter? The best games I've played take at least 12 hours, and as long as 100 hours or more to beat or to finally get tired of (sandbox games like Oblivion).

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        March 5, 2011 12:33 AM

        It really depends on the type of game and the gameplay.

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          March 5, 2011 2:53 AM

          True enough. Games with heavy RPG elements like D2: DKS or Neverwinter Nights should be longer, whereas FPS games with light/minimal RPG elements like Dark Messiah or Half Life 2 end up just fine with being less than 15-20 hours. RTS games are typically ~15-40 hours of singleplayer gameplay, and open ended sandbox games like X3: Terran Conflict, The Elder Scrolls series, etc. have an expected gameplay length of more than 100 hours excluding mods to increase their longevity.

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      March 5, 2011 1:05 AM

      No problemo with loading time if it is needed for delivering a quality that mobile app will never do. Isawa fro Nintendo is right.... Quality if in danger. please learn to wait.

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      March 5, 2011 1:35 AM

      Console Game Problems by lcizzle

      -The real problem is every other joker in the industry thinks they know what the problem is.

      -The main problem is every game studio out their right now is to chicken shit to develop a game for a platform that is not the least common demoninator of all three or four platforms. Like that other dude at GDC said "don't be a pussy." It's a real bummer that the people in charge are only worried about #'s, $'s, and pre release leaking of their game so they can blame piracy on their bad decisions.

      So to you Mr Jaffe, eat a fucking dick. Because if anyone in the industry really cared about any of those problems we would be dropping dvds in our PC dvd drives and instantly playing games while they streamed off to the hdd in the background a-la MGS4. Consoles are fine, it's you that's fucked up.

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        March 5, 2011 1:43 AM

        lol

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        March 5, 2011 3:33 AM

        it's you that's fucked up !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        Jaffe doesn't know shit. His credentials only include two amazing console series.

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          March 5, 2011 3:39 AM

          that doesn´t stop him from saying stupid stuff

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          March 5, 2011 5:12 AM

          That makes it even worse because he's at GDC running is fucking mouth about shit that needs to be changed yet he goes to work and puts out the same stuff that violates everything he talks about.

          It's one thing to stand up in front of a bunch of people and say things need to change.
          It's another thing to go to work and actually do something about it.

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          March 5, 2011 11:15 AM

          [deleted]

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        March 13, 2011 5:42 AM

        totally agree, icizzle

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      March 5, 2011 4:32 AM

      I do agree with the amount of players in multi games. The more you add the less personal it feels. People boast about how PC version of a game has twice as many players crammed in a map. That just makes the game goofier. The most intense games I've ever played were 1v1 quake deathmatches.

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        March 5, 2011 5:33 AM

        Planetside 256v256 players was the most fun of all multiplayer games.

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        March 5, 2011 6:29 AM

        [deleted]

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        March 5, 2011 1:03 PM

        Battlefield 2 had 64 player servers and that was 6 years ago.

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        March 5, 2011 1:14 PM

        And yet FPS became more popular as we moved to teamVteam, apparently a lot more people like those than not.

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          March 5, 2011 1:21 PM

          well yeah, it helps normalize skill differences and is less intense

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            March 5, 2011 4:41 PM

            This was more or less what I was getting at. You get some kills in the chaos. You're always going to get some scraps. In a 1V1 or 2V2, chances are you'll get your ass handed to you if you suck. I think duels are more avoided anymore due to making people feel shitty.

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          March 5, 2011 4:30 PM

          I think that's more of the result of consoles being more mainstream. Consoles are the priority for game development and therefore being made with console limitations in mind.

    • DM7 legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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      March 5, 2011 6:29 AM

      Make the game shorter, and charge ten more bucks for it. Sounds like crap to me. :/

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      March 5, 2011 6:31 AM

      Splash screens suck! Especially when you can't skip them. Studio logos, epilepsy disclaimers, etc. - f'in sucks.

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        March 5, 2011 6:39 AM

        yeah, Team Ninja is terrible at this. and so are EA games

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        March 5, 2011 10:04 AM

        If these are not there, then you would still be in the same boat except you would be forced to watch a blank screen while all of the menu's/etc load.

        • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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          March 5, 2011 12:57 PM

          Or a "Now Loading [**** -----] " bar.

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          March 5, 2011 3:23 PM

          I'm not sure about that. Many games let you bypass them by just deleting/renaming the video files. I haven't had to wait for a blank loading screen for any of games I've tried it on.

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            March 5, 2011 3:29 PM

            Many games for PC, I mean. I don't know how consoles do it, but I assume streaming in data during the splash screens would be more efficient.

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      March 5, 2011 8:08 AM

      Every patch is (to me) worth time the time to d/l and install. Limiting the dev on that front seems like a bad idea.

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        March 5, 2011 9:08 AM

        Jaffe seems more concerned with day-one patches. Many companies shove games out the door to get sales then patch them later, something PC gamers are all too familiar with.

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          March 5, 2011 10:37 AM

          i would rather the devs spend the time between going gold and launch, working on bug squashing than sitting on their hands because some retard doesn't like day 1 patches. there's no such thing as software without bugs so it's stupid to expect that kind of perfection. you should expect nothing game breaking.

          yeah it sucks that it takes a minute to get into your game where you left off but the rest of what this guy says is just stupid.

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        March 5, 2011 1:34 PM

        Not really. It forces the devs hand to put out the product that is intended on the day of launch rather than the shell of the game its supposed to be. Killzone 3 is a perfect example. There is a glitch that happens very often where you go into a map to play but can't vote for the next one. Seems to be a random occurrence but it gets annoying. Also, they are gonna implement all of the customization to Warzone matches like the previous title where you can control what is played and etc.

        We shouldn't have to wait for the game to be fixed before we finally get what we were expecting this whole time. There is a reason QA is around... to prevent any mishaps that occur along the way. I think we all can live with waiting a tad bit longer for a game if it means that we will be spared the frustration when we bring it home and play it.

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      March 5, 2011 8:11 AM

      Restriction against patching in the first two months? Stupidest thing I've ever heard. I see the point, force them to bug check more and we get better games on release. In reality though, they do miss a bug and you have to wait two months to have it fixed? Doesn't sound like a better experience to me.
      As for getting shorter, the length of the game is a bit more on the creative side surely. Depending on how much story there is to tell etc. I'd be pretty fucking disapointed if they just decided to cut all of the loyalty missions from Mass Effect 2 so that this guy can finish it in a weekend.

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      March 5, 2011 10:17 AM

      Sounds like what he's arguing for is a reason to make short, shitty games.

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      March 5, 2011 10:17 AM

      One of the reasons OnLive is gonna pick up some steam in the near future. :D

      It's very much instant-on and ready to play. The main bottleneck are the current games their long intros. But you don't have to worry about downloading and installing any patches, etc. and starting/ending games is near instant. Hopefully that stark contrast will push game devs to make games more instant-play.

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        March 5, 2011 10:21 AM

        Sorry, OnLive.

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        March 5, 2011 1:19 PM

        If something like OnLIve were to take off I'd hope they take advantage of their platform effectively instead of just using it as a way to control distribution on existing games.

        Think about MMO type games. The reason you don't see FPS MMO work all that great is in order to scale up something like Quake your bandwidth requirements scale geometrically with player counts. OnLive would be able to do this because the bandwidth scales linearly for each person since the client is only display.

        So you could do a 512 player Quake deathmatch... Or bigger.

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      March 5, 2011 10:55 AM

      This was a big consideration when the Wii was in development I remember them saying. Can't fault the Wii for that, it's fairly quick about it.

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      March 5, 2011 12:05 PM

      His problem is he only plays PS3. PS3 is ridiculous with how long it takes to play games sometimes if there is a patch

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      March 5, 2011 1:23 PM

      [deleted]

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        March 5, 2011 10:49 PM

        there is a giant question mark why this hasn't been implemented especially on the PS3. They all have hard drives, so that isn't even a factor. If they are worried about the time to sleep, the PS3 already takes a minute or so to shut down after you told it to shutdown anyway. And even then, it isn't fully off so it can hear the controller when you want it back on.

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      March 5, 2011 3:02 PM

      I must be some kind of deviant, preferring games to be something i can enjoy longer than the 4 hours it takes to beat one nowadays.

      Reinstalled Baldur's Gate 2 just for that reason.

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      March 5, 2011 3:17 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 6, 2011 1:43 AM

      when was the last time i even cared for power consumption lol

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        March 6, 2011 6:08 PM

        You'll care when oil and gas prices start going up and suddenly the use of electricity is a big deal ;)

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