The Working Man And Skyrim

[Denizen]

I'm 20 and have a lot of time to play games and I can say that I love long games. But for me to be able to complete a long game the main quest must be involving and the side quests varied and not too repetetive. This is why oblivion was so good, because I could just go to another city if I got bored or head into a dungeon I had never seen before. Open games such as TES, Fallout 3 (not New Vegas), Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are my favourite because they can be played at the pace that I like and have that replayability which more linear games lack, but their best feature imo is that quests/missions which I find boring can simply be ignored. However there are some linear games which are great because of their rigidity, such as Half Life and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic because their stories draws you in and give you enough time to believe in your character, and their better sense of 'physicality' provides the immersion which bring you back year after year.

[ub3rman123]

The author's other works are entertaining in my opinion, but this one's pretty bad. Guy needs to keep away from video games. He's good at making a rant funny, but not when it's something you like.

[3WINTERS]

I hate to see a good game end as much as when I'm enjoying a book. I like the sound of any game that has a long play life and that I can enjoy for a couple hours and put it aside. I think Skyrim will take me months to complete

[x722ism]

I'm at the age where I don't have to worry about bills or not enough time to play. I'm only 17 and I'm glad to be this age when Skyrim comes out so I can afford to have no life, but to have a life in Skyrim. My mum got me Skryim CE for my birthday. And I'm very thankful, for that, and for my time being a teenager. :biggrin:

[rajy]

I love long games but i hate when a game is advertised as having lots of play time then makes you grind for hours on end. I have never played RDR so i don't know how much grinding there is in that game.

 

I understand where hes coming from though. World of Warcraft is a bit of a scam, the amount of grinding in that game is silly. Putting grinding in a game and making people pay per month is a scam. Making a person kill the same monster over and over (or do the same quest)to grind rep and get X item so you can feel superior to random joe in orgrimmar is a scam. It is just taking advantage of peoples egos, a total ego trip.

 

But i don't feel like I'm grinding when I'm playing a elder scrolls or a fallout game I love every minute of it and i want it to take up as many hours as possible. So gimme more content in these games plz. 500+ hours or more.

Edited September 24, 2011 by rajy

[roninmedia]

I'm not a working man but I am working on my pharmacy doctorate so I do count as a person where I do have a time crunch. And I do love my games that offer a great value. Value to me is how many hours I can devote to playing the single player game and the multiplayer aspect if it offers any. For example, I am one of those people who spent the past decade playing StarCraft because it was just that good. Plus value is good to me because as a professional school student, money is hard to come by.

 

Really love my older games though, especially RPGs. They offered long stories that were good.

[Vagrant0]

I think that part of the issue is one of narrative and content.

 

People who don't have much time to play a game tend to be the same sort of people who click through dialogues, skip cutscenes, and ultimately just stop trying to bother with games that have some long involving plot. They simply cannot sit there for long enough to get into it before they have to skip away to more pressing and important concerns. Rather they tend to play more action oriented and multi-player games that they can pick up and drop without any sense of grief. It's much like why busy people don't usually sit down to read for fun, by the time they relax and get into it, they have to do something else.

 

But also content... Many games, especially MMO's seem focused on filling a lack of real content with the sorts of things that require hours or even weeks of grinding. For MMO's, one can understand it to some degree since time in means longer subscriptions as long as that time is semi-rewarding, and is still better than the treadmill and camp that worked with Ultima Online and the original Everquest... But the problem is that the mechanic has made its way to single player games too, where you have to kill dozens or hundreds of things to unlock some event, item, or achievement. Sure, the little bonuses and side quests may have their own bit of fun sometimes, but usually it's just something fairly tedious keeping you from enjoying the rest of the game. Stuff like this annoys the hell out of people who don't have all the time in the world since it's some obstacle that they don't usually have much forewarning of how involved something will be or how worthwhile. Then there are random puzzles, jumping courses, or other things tossed in randomly to make the player spend hours in a single room, stuck between save points.

 

The really story here is not that games have this sort of thing... But really that games are trying to appear to too many audiences at once, so there is often too much of a mix of what people like with the sorts of things people find just annoying as hell... All in the same game. Once upon a time, story was only for RPGs and deep Adventure, action for action games, puzzles for puzzle games, and people generally knew what they were getting themselves into from the start. Now you don't have much of that.

[ub3rman123]

Good old Metal Gear Cutscene springs to mind.

 

I love a good storyline. But when you spend more time watching awkward cutscenes than actually playing the game it's a problem.Then there's the opposite: When there's more content than story. They need to be equal. Content must be story, and the story must contain content. Games that do this well would be Nehrim, Half Life 2. They keep you playing while expanding their storyline and it doesn't feel like you're being dragged along on the story nor are you wasting your time (Unless you want to).

[runforitkyle]

StarCraft because it was just that good.

 

My favourite game...... Ever.

[Squizzo]

I work 40 hours a week, practice guitar, practice modding, socialise and maintain a house, yet I still find time for gaming.

The real time eater is having a family.