Hitman: Absolution director Tore Blystad is sad. Not because there are thousands of people upset with for making a game about a bald guy gruesomely murdering a gang of busty Catholic dominatrixes (though that certainly isn’t helping.) No, Blystad is upset that he and his team have spent so much time making a game—a complete story with a beginning, middle, and ending—and the vast majority of players won’t ever see it through to the conclusion.
“20 percent of the players will see the last level of the game,” Blystad told the UK’s Official PlayStation Magazine, “It’s horrible to know. It makes the people working on it really really sad. I guess people can’t commit to taking all those hours to finish one product, they get tired of it. It’s not just for this game, it’s for any game.”
That figure comes from analyzing player metrics. “We are using metrics more now than we did, for good and bad. The general player will probably never finish the game, which is very sad. Or they might only play through it once, but the game is built for the people who want to go back through every single level and get all the stuff out of it. It’s built to last, rather than be a one-off experience.”
To the IO Interactive team, the secret to building an alluring enough carrot to draw players to the end of the game is in that re-playability. The game needs to be varied enough to warrant multiple visits. “A battle we have is that we want to put all this stuff in, but we also know that because the game is up to the player there’s a lot of people that will never ever see it,” said Blystad, “In the user tests we have they actually tell us that… they want to find these things, which makes us very happy, because it takes a lot of time and effort to get these thing in.”
Game makers like IO Interactive are in a very tight spot when it comes to game length. 15 years ago, it was expected that a game would last in excess of 20 hours or more, and a common criticism of early Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games was their common length of 6 to 7 hours. People regularly don’t finish games, yet they sink hundreds of hours into open world games like Grand Theft Auto or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Alternatively, hours upon hours are sunk into simple, repetitive games like FarmVille. Why then don’t people finish narrative games? Why only 20 percent of players according to IO’s data?
One possibility: Game stories aren’t good enough. People don’t plum to the end because the end doesn’t matter. Another possibility: The traditional structure of game narrative doesn’t suit the way people play, either in long freeform sessions or quick bursts.
This is one of the thorniest issues facing big-budget game makers right now. Why spend the money and creative energy in making things that most people will never see?
Digital Trends, great website. Found it recently and enjoy reading the articles. If a storyline is good enough i’m going to replay it again regardless if i made it through the game with a perfect score the first time. I played the MetalGearSolid games numerous times because I enjoyed the stories so much. I must not be the only one who feels that replaying great games is worth while seeing as how the recent rereleases of HD games has caught on. Some games like Battlefield, Modern Warefare are built for multiplayer and the single player sucks thats why i didn’t finish the single player. Some narrative game’s stories suck, i’ve never been interested in any hitman games storyline, but i finished the game because the gameplay was cool. kind of like god of war 3. The story just didn’t do anything for me i personally thought that pandora could have died. People these days just want cheap quick thrills. Kill someone die respawn. narrative games don’t proviide cheap thrills
I think the multiplayer parts of games are so good now that most people end up being drawn towards those. I didn’t finish the story of MW3 for a long time because clicking on the multiplayer button was far too tempting!
Im not sure if I understand the implication of this article.
They seem to be implying that the ‘real’ ending wont occur unless you feed into the urge of replayability. And if thats the case, “fuck em.”
If this is one of those things where you play to the end and get one ending..but only get the good ending if you play through every mission again and complete them again untill you score some rating, I really dont want to buy the game because ive always found that sort of marketing to be bullshit.
I will only replay a game if their is some sort of significant difference. if I am gonna face the exact same challenges then why replay it. Skyrim sucks people in because if you replay it with a different character build the only thing thats really the same is the core plot, and everything around it is totally different. GTA is a sandbox, you get sucked into the many things you can do. Hitman has never been a sandbox. If your telilng a story, it should be good from begining to end, I will play it beat it and enjoy it.
This belief that replayability is what makes a game meaninful is a flawed concept. I only played Witcher and Witcher 2 once, because theirs no reason to play them again, but they are stll amazing games and I payed full price for them.
I guess my statement boils down to “your metrics are stupid” and when your bashing the players of your game before they even get your game your gonna screw up your own sales margins.