After playing Crow Country last week, it really got me thinking about how much I miss shorter, smaller budget games. Games that you can easily finish in a weekend and don’t cost $70. Those kinds of games are really rare nowadays or at least from non indie developers. If a major developer or publisher is making a game it’s just about always going to be a 30+ hour experience priced at $60 or $70 and that’s a big shame!

I think major publishers feel that games have to be big and massive now or else people simply won’t care and honestly that isn’t true. Sometimes it’s really nice just to get through a game quickly without having to worry about spending weeks trying to finish it, especially with how many games come out so frequently now. I’m not saying I don’t want games that are massive and super long, I think those kinds of games can provide some of the most memorable experiences in gaming. But I’d really prefer if every single release wasn’t like this! There have been so many games just this year that I have started and loved but I am nowhere close to finishing and thinking about how much I still have left kind of puts me off from picking them up again due to the fact that I have to factor in all the other new games coming out I still want to play! I would love to get back to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth but knowing I only barely scratched the surface of that game after putting in over 20 hours is pretty daunting.

The beginning of this year really got me thinking a lot about this as well as we were bombarded by so many 100+ hour games! Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth all came out in basically a month and those are all games that will probably take the average person well over a month to finish! I picked up all three of them and only managed to get Persona 3 Reload done and that’s probably because it’s the shortest game of the bunch and even then I was mostly just playing Reload and ignoring a lot of the other games that got released right around that time. Even worse was the fact that I ended up feeling so burnt out on these kinds of games that I really did not have much patience left for Rebirth when I picked that up despite the fact there wasn’t much else I was too interested in around it’s release. And because that was the feeling I stopped playing the game with it’s been really hard to even think about picking it up again. Now you could argue I did this to myself by picking up all of these games but you then you also need to consider that all three of these games are targeting the same demographic, RPG fans! It makes even less sense when you think about how Infinite Wealth and Persona 3 Reload were released just a week apart and they both come from the same publisher! No clue why SEGA thought that was a good idea…

It just feels like so many of this year’s major game releases have been these crazy long games. I miss when we could get those shorter experiences! There was even a bit of hope we might be getting more at the start of this console generation with the release of Spider-Man: Miles Morales!

Coming with the launch of the PS5, Sony and Insomniac Games released Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a quick follow up to their last game Spider-Man this time obviously focused on Miles Morales! Now while this was totally made as a shorter experience to insure it would be ready for the PS5’s launch, I honestly really like the approach they went with for the game. It was a slightly budget title, being sold for $50 instead of $70, and wasn’t meant to be on the scale of Spider-Man. Just a bite sized fun game that could be made quickly and probably helped Insomniac get a better handle on how the PS5 works. And while the game wasn’t received as well as the game is was following up, it wasn’t seen as a bad game either and did pretty well sales wise! Showing that this kind of game could be pretty successful. So it was a real shame when we didn’t see much come from this.

I was honestly hoping Miles Morales would start a trend in games where we saw bigger publishers release smaller games, especially as games have only gotten bigger and development times have only gotten longer. Having a smaller studio, or a small part of a big studio, work on smaller games seems like a perfect way to fill any release voids. Voids we’re seeing plenty of now as Sony themselves currently have just one first party game, the recently announced Astro Bot, coming out this year. Sure Sony has some exclusives with games like Helldivers 2, Stellar Blade, and Rise of the Ronin, but people are wanting more first party stuff from studios like Insomniac, Sony Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, and Sucker Punch. Their real heavy hitters! And while we know all those studios are hard at work, not seeing a single thing from any of them for a whole year is really upsetting for more die hard Sony fans. And if this keeps up, it’s going to look real bad for Sony… After all, just look at Xbox!

Xbox is still suffering from a massive game drought that has been going on since the last console generation and only very recently does it seem like they might be finally getting out of it. Granted, Xbox also had the problem that when they released an exclusive it usually wasn’t received well making those exclusives rather forgettable, but still. That being said, Xbox did actually release a smaller game that wasn’t insanely long, and it was extremely well received too! However, with the shut down of the studio that made this great game, Xbox is showing that we might be getting further and further away from getting more smaller games…

The game I’m talking about is of course Hi-Fi Rush. A game made by Tango Gameworks, which was recently shut down by Xbox and Microsoft. This was rather upsetting to hear about! Tango had made plenty of great games so to see them shut down after making a game that was easily the most beloved Xbox exclusive in years was just crazy. And it does not bode well for the future of smaller and shorter games if Microsoft didn’t see something like Hi-Fi Rush as a success. Even though head of Xbox, Matt Booty, spoke in a town hall right after this about how Xbox needs more smaller games that can get a lot of eyes on them and earn them some awards. Which is exactly what Hi-Fi Rush did… That whole situation is really complicated though and honestly deserves a discussion of it’s own sometime. It’s important to bring up though since it seems big companies like Xbox and PlayStation don’t want these shorter games and would rather put more work into bigger experiences and just hope their consumers can make it through the drought.

I suppose it makes sense why bigger publishers would take this approach though. Bigger games generally generate more hype and buzz and as such make more money. But we’re getting to the point where I don’t think consumers are going to be able to stomach this drought of games for much longer now that it seems to be hitting PlayStation and even Nintendo too! Granted, Nintendo at least has the excuse that they are gearing up for their next big console to drop, and generally when that’s happening you don’t see a lot of first party games, but still! Normally, Nintendo is the only one that still follows this idea of having smaller experiences and it’s worked out for them! The Switch and it’s games always do well and generally get a lot of praise. Which makes it all the more confusing why Sony and Microsoft don’t try this method too. Especially Microsoft given how many developers they now have under them! Or had under them I should say…

Another big reason why it would be nice to get these shorter experiences is because a lot of people don’t have that much time to play games. People like me who grew up with the GameCube and PS2 before moving on to the 360 and PS3 are now adults with jobs and bills to pay. It can be hard for some people to want to pick up such long experiences when they know they don’t have the time to play them and won’t be able to finish a game like Infinite Wealth for months! For people like that, hearing a game can be completed in a weekend isn’t a negative but a positive! It’s a selling point if anything! So it baffles me that we are getting less and less of these kinds of experiences each and every year. Not every game needs to be the next big thing or to blow every one away or be a massive epic experience. Sometimes it’s nice to just play something small and self contained. And having shorter development times would help big publishers not have such major gaps in their release schedules… I guess the worry that these kinds of games won’t sell well is enough to scare publishers off though.

Thankfully, indies games still have our backs! When big publishers falter, indies are always there to pick up the slack. Like I was saying before, Crow Country is a great example of a short experience and there are plenty of other indie games just like it! And I am so thankful for that, honestly. I adored getting that game done in a weekend and having it be a complete full experience. I could replay it, and I do plan to, but I don’t need to in order to fully enjoy the game and that’s important!

I really hope the big gaming companies can learn from indie games like Crow Country and give smaller games a try again. It might not be the best thing for their wallets in the long run, but it will benefit the consumer for once!

But those are just my thoughts, what are some of yours? Do you want more short games? Do you wish big publishers could put out more games faster? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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