So this year is about halfway through and me being halfway around the world, it's hard for me to get my hands on a load of new games, and a new video game console (that isn't handheld) is out of the picture so I've been indulging in some lower tech hits: Steam stuff, and 3DS specifically, and it's been a wonderfully strong year. That said, I noticed a common thread among most of my favorite games:

1. They were mostly RPGs (Child of Light, South Park, Bravely Default)
2. They were mostly story-focused
3. They were short.

Short has lately become synonymous in many game-reviews with bad or at least frequently counts against the reviewer’s overall score. It’s often paired with such dirty words as “value” and “replayability” as if a short game is somehow swindling us. This, of course, from a society where (in Japan at least) a movie is between $10-18 for 2 hours of entertainment, and a fun night of drinking and eating for 2-3 hours can go up to $30 (and that’s on the cheap side) and sweet sweet public transportation is getting up to $5 for a round trip. Perhaps it’s a skewed view of money-spending, and that all of these separate parts of our money-spending habits don’t correlate but I don’t see why a short game (quantified as 3-15 hours) equals bad value or a bad game.



When Portal was finally torn away from the Orange Box and sold separately I saw it as a boon of hope for what the future of games could be. Here we had a solid game that can be beat in 3-5 hours – a length that is perfect because once the premise begins to wear out its welcome it finishes- and the whole thing was about $5. I got my copy for $2 because Steam sales are frequent and awesome. But beyond just being “short” Portal highlighted what “short” can mean in a positive way for game design. It showed more time spent on individual levels instead of a more generalized “experience”, more focused difficulty and level progression, story-pacing that’s quick, on-target and fast moving. In short (pardon the pun) Portal’s brevity, to me, signaled the start of a hopefully positive trend for games to shorten down, and adjust cost to reflect that.
Now, in 2014 I’ve had several games that have paid out on this promise (kind of) and in unexpected genres. RPGs are games that have become synonymous with bloat. The average length of a western or Japanese RPG these days is in the 50-60 hour range and that is generally just for the story. My problem with this is that 50-60 number doesn't really represent 50-60 hours of tight, focused story, but about 10 hours of story and a lot of leveling, grinding, fetch quests and faffing about.



About 20 years ago (in case you didn't feel old enough) Chrono Trigger graced the Super Nintendo. Now, for those that know me, you should know that Chrono Trigger is easily in my top 5 and is maybe my favorite role playing game ever. And unlike many RPGs from my past that I've replayed and since soured to, Chrono Trigger stands up every time. You can guess where this is going, so I’ll stop the pre-amble but it ultimately comes down to pacing.  There aren’t a lot of wasted moments in Chrono Trigger, and the plot moves quickly from one big thing to the next. This time-constraint (get it? Chrono Trigger’s about time-nevermindforgetit) also works heavily in favor of developing the characters who are forced to come into their own and go through their arcs in a timely fashion. We don’t, as a player, have time to forget emotionally why we should care because the last plot point happened within hours, not 2 or 3 play sessions ago. I hate modern games that say “Well, you can enter the next dungeon, but only when you go back to the previous town and talk to the village elder, and then the village elder is probably gonna be crabby and want you to do something for him…” It’s padding. It’s hard to get immersed in the world when your brain wakes up and realizes that the goal of a quest is to make the game longer.

I am LOVING Bravely Default but (without going into spoilers) it makes you play major parts of the plot several times over for the sake of the story and that padding STARTS at the 50 hour mark. If Bravely Default just had the balls to end or do this plot point differently it would easily be my game of the year. But nope, it succumbed to bullshit “It’s an RPG so it better be long, because that’s what RPG means.” That isn’t what an RPG means, it’s acceptable to have short RPGs.
Playing through a FULL-playthrough of Chrono Trigger, i.e. all of the sidequests, getting all of the triple techs, hidden items, extra dungeons and beating the game all takes maybe about 25-35 hours depending on how leisurely you roll (I roll around quite leisurely myself). This number is mind blowing when you compare it to even other games in the same decade (Final Fantasy VII, if one indulged in the sidequests could take 70+ hours) and even more mind-blowing if one thinks of modern RPGs like Skyrim (hundreds and hundreds of hours).
So what I’m trying to say is that games of Children of Light, and South Park have really scratched an itch that I hope continues to be a positive trend: taking bloated genres and bringing them back to their streamlined roots. Maybe I did hope for a little more content in Children of Light but yet. And with more digital stores out there hopefully these short experiences/less money games continue to be a thing.

Also, and this is maybe a hope that is specific to me, I hope RPGs in general have a trend of de-bloating. Yeah, something like Skyrim where the focus of that game is exploration, make that game long because well…you’re exploring, the game is doing what it was designed to do. But when you make a story-driven game 100+ hours but don’t have 100+ hours of story to give…just…don’t do that.