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You can't have too much of a good thing, right?
Or can you?
Just because a game has x dozen cars, tracks or characters, doesn't mean it's any more fun to play. Still, games companies seem to be doing it, so it must be good. Or else it's easy to implement and sounds good as a selling point....I wonder which?
Ask youself, would a film be any better if it featured twice as many characters, and lasted three times as long?
Not really.
With films it's the idea that sells - the story, the action. The same should be true of games. I don't need to choose from thirty characters when a have a game of tekken, and I don't need to know that I'm driving a Nissan Sentra XE, 1.8 litre, 4 cylinder which can run produce 126HP at 6000RPM.
"Ah, but it gives the game more lastability doesn't it?"
Well I'd say the added lastability of such features is rather questionable. If anyone reading this has played one of the more recent fifa games, how many of the x hundred available teams have you played as? Ten? Twenty? If you own TTT, how many of the characters do you play as? You don't bother to master them all, because you get bored before then.
We don't need all this. It would be much more preferble - in my opinion - if the money spent researching these accurate statistics, securing rights to use brand names, or designing addidional characters was instead spent on developing new features, ideas and things that really appeal to the public.
Thanks
The Game
What would you think of Final Fantasy if there were no FMV? Just FMA?
But then in that case the developers actually used the extra space for not just bigger worlds, but whole new innovative ideas, like a very detailed online manual, better graphics, hundreds of minigames and subquests, it was an RPGer's dream come true.
Gran Turismo used it to provide hundreds of cars and tracks, and although you only needed about 8 cars to complete the whole game, and it DID feel like hard work towards the end, I still feel that to cram it all onto one disc they did a great job, then they put the Arcade mode on the second disc and spoilt it, because that was definitely hard work.
So big is good as long as it's used well and provides lots of variety.
Like someone once said: It's not how big it is, it's what you do with it that counts.
They've got the space, so they may as well use it.
So what do they do with it? Do they make the game itself bigger by adding extra levels or tracks. Maybe a whole new area to explore.
Or do they allow you to change the colour of you characters shirt, and add a few extra characters?
Why do they always choose the later option?
I think that it's becuase they fear that if they made the games bigger, they will take longer to complete, so we won't need to buy so many games. This is bad for them.
Adding extra options is just a bit of icing on the existing cake, and we'll still need to buy another game just as quickly.
Also regarding FIFA and the likes. I tend to win the cups with one of the strongest teams, then do the same thing with one of the weakest teams, so I'd need use no more than four different teams if it wasn't for the 'random' option!
You can't have too much of a good thing, right?
Or can you?
Just because a game has x dozen cars, tracks or characters, doesn't mean it's any more fun to play. Still, games companies seem to be doing it, so it must be good. Or else it's easy to implement and sounds good as a selling point....I wonder which?
Ask youself, would a film be any better if it featured twice as many characters, and lasted three times as long?
Not really.
With films it's the idea that sells - the story, the action. The same should be true of games. I don't need to choose from thirty characters when a have a game of tekken, and I don't need to know that I'm driving a Nissan Sentra XE, 1.8 litre, 4 cylinder which can run produce 126HP at 6000RPM.
"Ah, but it gives the game more lastability doesn't it?"
Well I'd say the added lastability of such features is rather questionable. If anyone reading this has played one of the more recent fifa games, how many of the x hundred available teams have you played as? Ten? Twenty? If you own TTT, how many of the characters do you play as? You don't bother to master them all, because you get bored before then.
We don't need all this. It would be much more preferble - in my opinion - if the money spent researching these accurate statistics, securing rights to use brand names, or designing addidional characters was instead spent on developing new features, ideas and things that really appeal to the public.