Question about games (not sure if it's in the right section)

[Serkai]

This is something I've been wondering about for a while (since before I encountered renpy), and today I decided to poll it here.

[DaFool]

In order of preference:
1. Long game.
2. Many short games, connecting a longer story.

In order of doability:
1. A single short, complete game
2. A series of short, complete games
3. A single long, complete game
4. A series of long, complete games

Actually, it depends on context. If you're writing a kinetic novel, it needs to have a lot of words for a lot of plot. But if you're writing a simulation or hybrid, you can get away with less since the user tells the story through his style of gameplay.

Then even when you have a short kinetic novel, each sentence counts more so that's why some writers say that short stories are the hardest to write since they can't afford to waste words.

Then you have the amount of graphical resources needed. A two-hour epic spanning galaxies and multiple races will have lots more music, bgs, and sprites than a two-hour epic mystery in a haunted house with only four bedrooms.

There are artists out there who can crank out a lot of resources. Good for them, they're on their way to being capable of becoming mangaka (i.e. if you can hit 50 pages within a reasonable amount of time, with multiple panels and maybe just in black and white). The average short visual novel easily exceeds 500 screens of dialogue, which is more than the number of manga panels in a typical short volume. (Although, it's an unfair comparison because manga depends more on graphics for storytelling, while VNs can rely on just words against a blank backdrop accompanied by music)

If someone were to say "I need more than 20 pieces of background / character poses" I would be hesitant to embark on that project. 10 is more likely, or better yet, much less, especially if the art is of a style that takes a whole day to complete per picture.

And then there's the issue of development time and how long till your gas runs out. Some people can work on a project for 3 years. Me, I usually start feeling extreme burnout 2-4 months in. The most I'm willing to go at a steady pace is 6 months. Of course with collaborations and team projects there are more hands on deck, so you can work steadily for 9 months to a year -- but that doesn't mean you're purely working for 9 months. If it's continued work without break, then its like the workload of a solo project. Of course you can opt to take a breather but that increases the likelihood of a project not finishing because new, better ideas have a chance to creep into your brain.

Okay... I'll stop now... (this was like a rehash essay of way back).

[herenvardo]

If someone were to say "I need more than 20 pieces of background / character poses" I would be hesitant to embark on that project. 10 is more likely, or better yet, much less, especially if the art is of a style that takes a whole day to complete per picture.

I must say I understand you. My current project Wars of Barkhorkh I (see my sig) is a quite big one; while I cannot get into exact numbers, there are already some details defined:
- There will be dozens of locations to explore and, while some of them share bgs, my team's graphic artist is already on the work for 18 outdoor and 9 indoor bg images, which the game will surely use.
- The game will feature between 8 and 12 dungeons (it's not a visual novel, nor a NV-RPG hybrid animore, but a fully-fleshed Ren'ai RPG!) with between 2 and 5 bosses each (let's say an average of 3 bosses/dungeon). Each boss encounter will have a unique background for it (dare to guess how do you unlock these on the galeries? ), which makes for around 30 more backgrounds.
But obviously, that's not enough for me. We (the artist and me) are working on a system of character art that let's us compose a character's final representation using several "parts". Ie: bodies, heads, hairs, and eyes (pairs) are drawn separatelly; so once I get, let's say, 3 of each, and the code to handle the compositions, I'll virtually have 81 potential characters. For sanity and common sense reasons, (this is, to prevent exponential growth in the ammounts of work to be done ) facial expressions are also based on this "composition" system... So in total the artist would (as per the example numbers above, final numbers are not yet defined) be drawing the equivalent to 3 characters, maybe with three variations each, and as soon as the code is ready and we have "dismembered" (woops, that sounds a bit gore, doesn't it?) these, we'll have more than 80 "frankensteinian" characters, each with 3 facial expressions.

So, I understand that nobody has the enough motivation, time, resources, and insanity required to engage a similar project. It's worth mentioning that I asked several times to my artist if he was already aware of the ammounts of work he'd have to do, and the deadlines we'd need to make for. While he's kept answering yes, yes, yes, ..., I still think he's not completely aware of the challenge.

Going back to the original question of the post, from all what I said above it can be noticed that I like long games. Also, from the "Episode I: The War of Darkness" thing on the title, it might also be noticed that I like game series. In the poll I marked the "short-game series" in favor agaisnt the "long single game", but in most cases I'd like to find (when relevant) some save-game import capability (ie: you can take your character(s) from part 1, and "travel" with them through part 2). Hardly doable in Ren'py unless you mess up a lot with persistence, but that doesn't change the fact I'd like to find this in those games. I can bear without it, though.

With no more to say, I go back to work, there's a lot to do yet ^^;

[Serkai]

These are all nice tips and all, but what I was wondering about is if you as a -player- would prefer to play through the story in one long game, or in many shorter games ^^; Of course I'm aware that making a long game = lots of work.

[herenvardo]

but what I was wondering about is if you as a -player- would prefer to play through the story in one long game, or in many shorter games

I know that, and I actually tried (without too much success ) to answer to that within my post, so I'll clarify.
My first preference would be a long series of long games (the more the merrier!!! ^^), but that was not an option in the poll (and I can guess why).
After that, the choice between long-single and multi-short can be quite close, only being clear that both cases beat any short-single game.
As a tie-breaker, long-single means that I've to wait for the author to get everything done before I can start playing , while with the multi-short approach I can get to play as soon as the first part is ready , hoping the next might be out before I finish playing this . That's why I choose (as a player), the short game series option in the poll.

[Adorya]

As a player many short games would be nice, because if the big long game didn't please me at start, the maker would have had wasted lot of materials for nothing. Unless it's a pro, with short games you can quickly judge the maker's abilities and advise him fast so he can fix/add better contents in his next release (which would happen to be released faster since it would be a short game).

Though it's nice that in parallel the maker prepare a big game but let it stay secret.

[Serkai]

I see, I see. Then, as things stand now, I will release my -story- as a series of short games, unless someone gives a good reason why to release a long game from start.

[chronoluminaire]

I see, I see. Then, as things stand now, I will release my -story- as a series of short games, unless someone gives a good reason why to release a long game from start.

Well, the obvious reason is that when you get to later episodes, you might find yourself wanting to go back and change bits of the earlier episodes.

I've found this with all my fiction works of 50000+ words: no matter how well planned I might think they are, as I write the later bits, I find myself wanting to go and make slight tweaks to the earlier bits. Maybe it's to add more foreshadowing of a plot twist that happens later; maybe a later plot event would be a lot easier if a little tiny detail of an earlier episode was different.

Just something to think about. If you've got the story exceptionally well planned so that you can be sure your earlier episodes will contain everything you need to build towards your later episodes, then this might not be an issue.

[Vatina]

Well if we're talking games in general, then I prefer one long game. I remember playing both ZOE 1 and 2, and thinking that they were both WAY too short <_<

But considering the games we're probably talking about here (renpy games) then I wouldn't mind a series of shorter games. That is, if the wait between games isn't TOO long

[Kaihaku]

While I like length, I find detail much more interesting. I'd take a short game with 8 endings over a long game with 2 anyday. Ideally, a long game with many branching paths and endings would be great, but...that's a bit harder to pull off.

[Samu-kun]

As a gamer, I would like a single long dramatic game instead of just a short slice of life game. But this being the doujin community after all, it's kind of unrealistic to imagine all games being like that. ^_^;;

[Serkai]

The poll time is far from being over, but as things stand right now, I've decided to release the -prologue- of my story as a short game, and then see how people respond to it, so I can find out if I need to make any major corrections, and also find out if there is an interest in proceeding the story ^^

[Hime]

I actually would say I prefer mid-length - you could say not 5 minutes but not 20 hours either. That depends a lot on the story too, though, but if we judge just by length, mid-lenght. 1-4 hours or something like that. However, I wouldn't like a 4 hour Project Nattsu or a 4 hour Tsukihime, if you know what I mean. Story and writing style matters a lot on how long is too long or too short. However, I tend to like completed, whole games instead of series that have a dozen little games.

[herenvardo]

I actually would say I prefer mid-length - you could say not 5 minutes but not 20 hours either. That depends a lot on the story too, though, but if we judge just by length, mid-lenght. 1-4 hours or something like that. However, I wouldn't like a 4 hour Project Nattsu or a 4 hour Tsukihime, if you know what I mean. Story and writing style matters a lot on how long is too long or too short. However, I tend to like completed, whole games instead of series that have a dozen little games.

Then I can tell you in advance that you won't like the project I'm working on currently... 20 hours fall short for our current aim for Episode I; and we've planned episodes 1 to 7, with the posibility of an "Episode 0" precuel... that makes for hundreds hours of gameplay... if you add up the randomization engine, which makes each game completelly different to the previous one, and some surprises we are still keeping in secret that's going to be a really long series of really long games. Also note that it is an RPG, not a VN (it has a heavy emphasis on romance, anyway), and I expect everyone (including myself during testings) to die a few times in each dungeon boss before taking it down

BTW, did I already say that I looooove really long games?

[risingbamboobanana]

personally, i'd say that i prefer long games, mostly for superficial reasons like that i'm a disorganized person, so it's less of a hassle to play one long game (not all at once though! but i've done it before). also, when i come across a long game versus a short one, i'm more inclined to think that the longer one was worked harder on, even if it's not necessarily true. other than that, i'm not too picky about the length