Everything in gaming pushes for shorter matches. It fits better with today’s time, or so they say. But is that really true? Are you playing longer, shorter, or earlier now?
It’s the trend: short matches, short sessions. The dungeon run should not last longer than 15 minutes, the round in PvP maybe 12 minutes. Everything should go quickly, no one should get bored. The heartbeat of gaming has become faster.
In modern mobile games, the rounds only last 2 or 3 minutes, so the bus ride could already be over.
The little number in between
Where long sessions were common in RPGs, and fans raved about getting so immersed in a game yesterday that they lost track of time, the trend today is towards “mini-games.” Hardly a game does not set a round length that is between 10 and 20 minutes.
Developers see a turning point in players’ consumption behavior. Attention spans are getting shorter. Players want to be rewarded more often; there should always be something happening.
Short quests, short instance runs: This also means “Many rewards.” Players do not have to play for an hour until the next kick comes in the form of a reward; it is only 15 minutes away.
In short matches in PvP, so the logic goes, defeat is not so bad, because even if you are at a disadvantage, the next fight is only minutes away. In long matches, where you quickly start to go down the losing path, the frustration is greater.
The nightmare in MOBAs like LoL: a match runs long. If a 20-minute fight suddenly lasts an hour, everything gets pushed out of shape.
Players cannot plan; real life calls, but the game is on the line – such “outliers” disrupt the player’s rhythm. A consistent game length is needed. One reads about games: We don’t want that anymore. We introduce rules to capture such outliers.
A bit of this, a bit of that
The trend is towards gaming menus. Players do not want to play just one game for 4 hours in an evening; they want to sample here and there. Three rounds of Hearthstone until everyone is there, two instances in World of Warcraft, two games of Overwatch with the regular group, and then still Heroes of the Storm with friends to unwind – a menu, and everything is available in Blizzard’s Battle.net ecosystem.
In the “big MMORPGs,” the trend seems to be going towards “packeted content.” The Elder Scrolls Online, which originally wanted to offer only epic battles, is now focusing on battlefields. Raids in World of Warcraft have long since removed tedious trash sections. Now raids are divided into wings. Everything should be portioned so that players can better manage the large bites of content.
Even the slow-food game par excellence, Final Fantasy XIV, has now come halfway to meet players with “Jumping Potions.” Chef Naoki Yoshida feels the change of the times.
Are you playing shorter now?
We want to know from you: Does this philosophy of the gaming industry fit your user behavior? Have your game sessions become shorter? Are you still playing games for several hours at a stretch, or are you looking for the kick and switching regularly back and forth? Or are you just cramming tiny bites of the same game over and over?
Has your gaming behavior changed?
The survey from last week is still on:
Mein-MMO asks: Which MMOs are interesting for female gamers?
