Video games can be a massive time commitment, and the creator of Super Smash Bros. says developers should think of that as a cost of playing their games. In a new video, Masahiro Sakurai offers some tips for fellow developers to make sure they’re rewarding players for their time commitment. His comments come at a time where some developers seem to be reevaluating whether massive games that take dozens of hours to complete are actually good for players or the games industry.
Sakurai’s insight comes in a video on his YouTube channel called Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games. While the channel is set to end some time this year, it’s an incredible look into the philosophy of an important and influential developer in the meantime. In his latest video, Sakurai warns that games demanding a massive time investment to finish can turn players away and advises developers to focus first and foremost on fun.
“Consider playtime as something that will fall into place later,” Sakurai says. “Focus first on providing fun experiences, as well as things that reinforce that fun.”
As Sakurai points out, players have nearly endless options for what to do with their free time these days, and compared to something like doom scrolling on social media, playing a game takes considerably more time and effort. When players see that a game takes dozens or even hundreds of hours to complete, they don’t just think about whether they would enjoy playing the game — they wonder whether it will be worth it to give up all the other things they could do with that time.
It’s not that Sakurai is against the idea of players investing time into a game. He’s the creator of a series that some fans have poured years into mastering, after all, though he does hilariously apologize for that in the video. Rather, he’s asking developers to think less about how long their game will take at the start, and trust that fans will have a better time playing a game that’s fun enough to keep them coming back than they would with one that just takes a long time to finish.
Sakurai’s point about the modern world’s demands on players’ time also ties his video into what feels like a genuine shift for the games industry. Over the past decades, video games have ballooned from short affairs you can finish in a few sittings to massive spectacles you could spend weeks or months on if you’re playing at an even slightly leisurely pace. That’s one factor that’s caused the cost of development to skyrocket, along with a greater (and arguably pointless) emphasis on visual fidelity.
But for all the time and money developers pour into their gargantuan games, there’s evidence that exceedingly few players even see it all. A 2019 study published in the journal Entertainment Computing found that most games are only completed by around 14 percent of their players, which is borne out anecdotally by sources like Steam achievements awarded for completing games. About twenty percent of those who own a PC copy of Black Myth: Wukong have beaten the game.
Not all developers have fallen into the trap of thinking that bigger is better, though. Indie games as a whole tend to provide much shorter, more focused experiences, which is just one reason why many players (myself included) are far more likely to pick up a new indie game than the latest blockbuster release. Even larger studios are getting the message as well. Nicolas Doucet, director of Astro Bot extolled the virtues of shorter games with a focus on fun shortly after its release.
“Instead of going for 40 hours of an expansive world, you go for 12 to 15 hours of a really polished game,” Doucet told the BBC. “You can eat a lot of food at a buffet, or you could just go for that two-course meal that's really going to be small and just the right amount, but this one is going to be memorable. So, in fact, you could say that you have more for your money with the buffet, but what's the last memory you take away with you? It’s probably to feel bloated, like you ate too much and just want to go to sleep."
As a Sony-owned studio, Astro Bot developer Team Asobi is about as far from indie as you can get, and its roughly 12-hour game became one of the year’s most lauded games the instant it launched. It seems clear at this point that shorter games can be just as big of a win for well-funded AAA studios as they are for indies who need to save every penny they can. If even a developer as accomplished as Sakurai is preaching the value of shorter games, it seems well worth our time to listen.
