Game Length
All I was stating was 4-6 hours for a SP just sounds very short to me for the usual player -- regardless of how much of a masterpiece it is or isn't. I didn't say anything of if I think the campaign sucked or ruled, despite its so-called shortness -- well, b/c I ain't played it yet, obviously; heh.
I really am not liking this trend of seeing The SP sides of games get quite short-changed in length department, of late. It really just seems like it is becoming more and more commonplace in the past few years, all of a sudden. From what I heard and read, the new MOH: Airbourne isn't long in the SP department, either. Same goes for Halo 3's SP, as well. Though, all THREE of these games are actually more known for their more robust MP side, actually.
This really begs the question suddenly to me -- "Hey, what about us gamers into the SP side of things? Why are we getting shortchanged more so of late???" Man, I remember the good old days, when MOH:AA was just awesome all the way through w/ its SP side; and it took me around a good and fulfilling 15 hours to finish it.
Tangent to SP/MP
Now, yes -- I will admit, I am more into the SP of a game more often than a game's MP. That's often b/c with the MP, they're just skirmishes. I just like the whole idea of doing campaigns, w/ stories and whatnot. That's just me, though. I think it is very nice, I think, to see games like HG: London and R6: Vegas 2 that will offer you to play The Campaign either OFFLINE (SP) or ONLINE (MP). I think this is also what is attracting me to upcoming games like The Crossing, as the entire game, whether played MP or SP, is The Campaign.
The Way MyD Plays Games...
Pug does has a point. With the way I do often play games, I probably could turn a 4-6 hour game into 8-10 hours; probably b/c I take my time and b/c I really burn out quicksave and quickload; I'm kind of a perfectionist, when it comes to playing games. I mean,, hell -- original Deus Ex cracked me at a count of hitting save over 500 times!!! (Of course, that was a nice length game, anyways -- over 30 hours, for me.) Well, hell -- how long did it take me to beat both Portal and HL2: Ep Two? Both took me around 9 hours, according to my STEAM stats -- right after I beat them, I looked at how long I was in them. It's no secret! Portal probably would've took me a few hours less (I'd guess about 3 hours less), if I didn't get stuck for around some odd 3 hours trying to perfect that crazy long drop of a jump-throw portal-run and jump through on one of the higher levels of the game (I think it was like Test 18 or whatever). I just couldn't get that timing right for the longest time...hehe. Eventually, finally got it....
Piracy
Okay, about piracy, yes -- I do think any "excuse" these dev's just can give a gamer to go to pirate a game, they just will do it; especially since it's not hard to find to get them and some people just don't mind waiting forever and a day to download it so they don't have to shell out more $$. As many have said -- designers never will win w/ those who are going to pirate the game period, regardless; you never had their sale to begin with, so that idea's dead in the water.
As I've said before in probably other threads about piracy, when I was in college, I saw a trend w/ some of the gamers I knew up there -- it increase more and more, w/ every year I was in college. Most of them would plunk down $500 for the best, newest and raddest new vid card. Though, they would NOT buy ONE game, period. It's attitudes like that, hurting these dev's from making an actual sale.
With a SP game only 4-6 hours for some gamers, I think some gamers will say, "That's enuff reason to just go pirate it." That was one of my points; that a SP ONLY gamer might pirate the game b/c they feel shortchanged in length. Though, I never felt I needed to state it. Well, I guess I should've; so, there ya go -- I stated it this time. Me, I'd just rather wait a while and get that nice price drop to come out; that's just me, though. Plus, for all that time it'd probably take to download a game (Especially as huge as some of these games, these days), I'd just rather go play something else for the time being. It's not like I got a shortage of games, lying around here that I do want to play...
Of course, worst of all are these crazy piracy protection schemes -- b/c they are hurting the legit gamers, turning them off by doing nasty things to them when they're paying for the game. I mean, this could cause the philosophy of -- "Well, why pay for a game w/ protection that won't work when you could download it for free w/out the nasty protection???" Legit gamers don't need to be treated like second class citizens, by games being "protected" by nasty protections like StarForce and the new version of Securom, which can cause the game for the legit user to not boot at all (StarForce), cause their PC to get messed-up (StarForce), or you have a limited number of times you can install the game period (Securom w/ Bioshock and whatever protection Two Worlds uses). B/c, you know what the legit gamer might do, if they can't get their legit game to run or given any stupid limited number of installs??? Pirate every game w/ whatever protection scheme causing them problems; hell, they might just pirate everything just b/c of that, regardless of any type of copy protection.
Why Do I Make So Many Threads On Designers With No CD Patches Released?
Y'know, I respect designers that make a game, then decide whenever they do to pull their copy protection check right out of a game -- like Blizzard did with Starcraft; yeah, even if it's some numerous years later. Or like Egosoft did w/ their X series of games b/c the consumers/gamers didn't like StarForce. Or like Larian did so they could actually get Beyond Divinity to boot on Vista. Or like Id does with a majority of their games -- such as Doom 3 and Quake 4. I mean, these guys made their majority of sales normally, by the time they decide to remove the protection -- why the hell do they need to keep the game protected, if the game's not selling anymore??? I mean, that's the point of copy protection, anyways; to try and sell units!
Let me tie this back to piracy. I dunno', but if a game I had wouldn't boot b/c of the copy protection, but you knew a designer team often has a history that they would eventually remove the disc check sometime later (normally when the game isn't selling too much anymore. they do so), I'd think gamers would likely be more apt to support this designer and buy their game -- especially more so than the designer saying "Protect my damn game...forever!" or "Deal with StarForce..."
