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Game design thoughts:
A thing I don& #39;t think gets talked about enough is how long a play session with a game should be, design wise.
A thing I don& #39;t think gets talked about enough is how long a play session with a game should be, design wise.
A game I am very much invested in, Destiny 2, has this really well locked down. Almost every common activity in the game is somewhere between 15-20 minutes in length, and at the end of it I get cool stuff and i& #39;m prompted to either keep playing or do something else.
And, in my estimation, I think cycles like this are pretty common because they& #39;re really helpful to the player in terms of knowing how to budget their time in an experience. A lot of games have & #39;activities& #39; that are about this long, because it& #39;s kind of a sweet spot.
Before I went to art school, I designed a lot of games that had very quick rounds. The idea was -- because I like casual party games -- players wouldn& #39;t mind losing short rounds, and it& #39;d be easier to engage with. And this was partially true.
But an interesting side effect was since each round was almost 45 seconds, it actually ended up feeling not divided at all. Players had a lot of fun in early rounds but ultimately found it hard to *disengage* from the game.
That is -- they reached a period where they weren& #39;t enjoying themselves and didn& #39;t know when they& #39;d start enjoying themselves again, but found it hard to stop, because there was no part of the game that had a built-in break to ask them if they still wanted to continue.
Games should be easy to put down, pick up, and easy to know what they expect from us. And a lot of MOBAs or Survival games.... don& #39;t have this.
I mean, think about it. When was the last time you heard someone say & #39;okay, once this level is over, I gotta go.& #39; and everyone was totally okay with that, because we all know about how long that& #39;s going to take. Whereas I think it& #39;s a lot harder to leave a multiplayer game...
... where there isn& #39;t any stopping points, like Minecraft or Astroneer. Sure, you could argue that the day/night cycle provides this, but... it does so only minorly.
