Gamers Want Short Games, Says Silicon Knights President

Denis Dyack, president of Silicon Knights, developer of the upcoming Too Human trilogy, believes that gamers don’t want long games anymore.

“Legacy of Kain had about sixty hours of play, but games have changed. People don’t want that any more. I don’t care how good the game is, I don’t want to play something that’s one hundred hours long,” Dyack said.

Dyack went on to say, “If we’re going to craft an epic story we decided we had to divide it into manageable chunks for the consumer. Each game needs to be self contained. That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies. Too Human will be self-contained across each game of the trilogy.”

Boy, it could take a while to point out all the flaws in this statement. Let’s start with the LotR reference. How exactly is a trilogy that grossed over $2 billion flawed?

Secondly, I have gone on record several times as protesting the fact that games are FAR too short these days. I, and many gamers I know, long for the days of 60 hour-long games. Not from repetition, but from actual new gameplay. I personally believe that the utter lack of quality, engaging, LONG games is the sole reason the MMO market has grown to its current size. Many players who used to play Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, or other longer titles, are now playing MMO’s, since long games are, for the most part no longer produced.

This far, all I have see of Too Human is that it’s going to be one game, split into three short segments. That doesn’t sound worthwhile to me.