Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Dev Thinks “Brevity” Should Be More of a “Virtue” in Gaming, Questions Link of Game Length to Price
[summaraize]
While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is in no way a short game, it’s not exactly a super-long one either, and if you compare it to other RPGs, its length pales in comparison. The folks at Sandfall intentionally made the RPG to not be as long as other games, since they want to make sure they respected the player’s time.
This was something the studio and its publisher, Kepler Interactivem talked about, and how a game’s value shouldn’t be tied to its length.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Values People’s Time, Which Is Why the Devs Avoided Bloat
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, Kepler Interactive Portfolio Director Matthew Handrahan, and Sandfall Interactive COO François Meurisse talk about the game’s reception and its development.
One of the topics discussed is how the game doesn’t have bloat or any kind of padding to make the game longer. Handrahan notes, “One of the things that’s great about Expedition 33 is it really respects the player’s time. It gives them plenty to do, and it gives them plenty of satisfaction, but it isn’t arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay. It’s impactful because it’s scoped correctly. […] It doesn’t have any sense of bloat or extraneous things that are put there just to make it larger and larger and larger.”
Adding to that, Handrahan thinks games being straight to the point is something that should be lauded. “Brevity should be more of a virtue in gaming. Something can be better by being shorter – something that’s being discussed in film at the moment. Every film seems to be two and a half hours long, and I think most people are like, ‘Can they all be a bit shorter, please? Because we have other things to do with our lives’,” the Kepler exec adds.
Chiming in, Meurisse mentioned that Clair Obscur’s focus was on quality not quantity. The studio COO talked about the game’s length, and how they aimed for a shorter but more intense experience. “”From the beginning, we wanted to do an intense and short experience. The first length estimates of the game were closer to 20 hours for the main quest. I think we ended up closer to 30, even 40 hours if you take a bit of time. As a player, there are so many great games out there that I want to experience, [and] what’s important to me is the level of excitement and fun I get from a game, rather than how long it is.”
Meurisse also makes a case on why a game’s length shouldn’t be linked to its price, and used one of the most acclaimed indie games as an example. “The value that players get from games does not align systematically with the length of the game,” he says. “For example, one of my favourite games of all time is Inside, which lasts about two hours, but it’s one of the most polished, and intense [experiences] – and even life changing for some people,” Meurisse adds.
As someone who also has limited time to play games given adult responsibilities, I agree with both Handrahan and Meurisse. I’d rather play a game with no bloat, instead of collecting various in-game trinkets just so a dev can say that their game takes 80+ hours to complete. Same with length, I don’t judge a mean based on how fast I can eat it. I’d rather play a good 2-5 hour game, than slog through an RPG that promises dozens of hours so it’s worth the price.
Hopefully, whatever Sandfall’s next game is, they stick to Expedition 33’s brevity as well.
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