Creston wrote on May 18, 2011, 16:29:
That's actually a very good point, but it's one the publishers and devs have nobody to blame for but themselves. If games nowadays couldn't be finished in the time it takes for me to take a nice, solid dump, perhaps this equation to zero-day piracy wouldn't be such an issue.
Creston
The developers and publishers are at least partially responsible for this trend. The other half of the responsability is on the consumers end.
Lets take a look at a simple consumer demand "I want my game to run in 1080p", ok so art now needs to create all game assets in a resolution that looks good at 1080p, model and texture sizes increase exponentially what once used to take a few hundred megs on disc now takes up gigs. The higher resolution also means that it takes longer to create these assets which extends the art asset development time. Engineering needs to spend a fair amount of time figuring out how to compress the data to fit on a single disc (as using multiple discs eats into profits) as well as stream the data into limited RAM on todays consoles.
It also has an effect on how fun it is gameplay wise. If a building gets created and you find out that it sinks into the ground too much in one area and now you can't take cover on it suddenly it's a game bug.
In short the request to use 1080p has increased the size of data on disc, as well as caused the development of the product to extend out far beyond what was initially planned.
So you have a choice at this point, cut content, extend the development for however long it takes to add the 40hrs of gameplay, reuse art assets (often playing the same level backwards or similar), and cut into your profits by having to gold master another few DVD's for all this extra content.
And although I did exaggerate slightly in my example, this is the main reason games don't last very long these days.
In some ways consumers got exactly what they asked for when they wanted "Cutting Edge Graphics","Great Story" and "Great Gameplay" they just didn't realize it would come at the cost of re-playability and the length of the game itself.
And considering the game industry isn't completely bankrupt yet, the majority seem to be happy with what they got.