I got to thinking about something after reading some outrage on Kotaku over the possible length of Too Human. Early review aside (and I tried the demo and was not really impressed graphically - Gears of War and Mass Effect still set this bar extremely high), the reviewer complained about the fact that he was halfway through the campaign and being halfway through it in six hours.

I'm not sure how much of his annoyance comes from the decade of hype surrounding the game, but even if it did not have a lot to live up to, the writer highlights a possible weakness in the title due to the fact that its only a possibly twelve hour long campaign.

But does this even matter anymore? In the Nintendo era, campaign length was not really an issue. Part of this could be attributed to the limited genres at the time. You had platformers, some RPGs, and a couple of side scrolling shooter and adventure games, with some sports titles thrown in (Tecmo Bowl - I remember playing Barry Sanders and laughing and laughing). Beat the season and the playoffs? Fire it up again and start from the beginning. Did you beat Super Mario Brothers? Fire it up again. Same goes for Zelda, Final Fantasy, and some other titles. As a general observation, gameplay extended length. And that natural, organic way to extend the life of your games makes me think to some degree that its an era gone by that will never return.

When RPGs took over the US (I'd mark it with the release of Final Fantasy 7), we started seeing two and three disc packages coming to market. And somewhere along the way, campaign length started becoming more and more important to consumers. FF 7's main campaign could be beaten in... 40 hours? You would have to get through all the cutscenes, level your character high enough simply to survive certain boss encounters, and travel to points on the map to progress the storyline. Don't get me wrong - most of you who know me already know my love for what I would call the greatest game of all time - but while some elements of the game are critical to the story, and are there to genuinely extend game play (the Gold Saucer, materia hunting, hidden characters), some others just seem contrived (level grinding).

For some reason this really took off and a lot of titles focused on X number of hours of game play. But where was the fun factor? And how can a human being reasonably be asked to complete an entire storyline in that kind of time? Unless it is an exceptional title (Dragon Quest VII, Final Fantasy 7), or a sandbox title (Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto, Morrowind), most of the time it is just not going to happen. Yet this is emblazoned on the back of boxes as a way to justify the game's cost. Blue Dragon is a perfect example. It takes almost an entire disc just to get the storyline going. And even then it still seems disjointed.

I took a brief informal survey at Seasoned Gamers, which I think represents the new majority gamer demographic, and asked two questions:

1. How many games have you completed in the last 12 months, across all owned consoles?
2. How many games do you have in your entire collection?

Out of 50 respondents:

- 10% have not completed a game in the last year
- 62% have completed between 1 and 5 games
- 74% own at least 11 games 
- 50% own at least 15 games

With family, children, and other options to select from besides gaming, people are not losing interest in finishing games. That is making campaign length increasingly irrelevant. It will never be completely irrelevant, but as a matter of value, I do not see people continuing to buy titles if they cannot finish them.

Blue Dragon's 60 hours of game play is far too much to engage a player. But shorter campaigns get grumbles from the community, especially if the game is not online playable. To make matters worse, I would argue that gameplay innovation overall has slowed down a lot, simply because the industry is not new (Nintendo Era 80s new) as it was in the past. Aside from the rising popularity in music genre games, the market is filled with shooters and movie spinoffs. And just how much campaign time will you get out of those? Would you have finished Halo 3 if the campaign was 40 hours? Probably not.

So, why ARE they buying titles? I think we are seeing a new shift in gamer values, one that isnt centered around length, but co-operative online game play. Developers are finally giving the gamers what they want by adding co-op features to campaigns, which is breathing new life into their titles. Some are doing it brilliantly (Halo 3, Gears of War, Rainbow Six Vegas), others have backslid a bit (Vegas 2), and some others on the horizon look downright fantastic (Gears of War 2, Call of Duty World at War). Even RPG titles like Fable 2 and Tales of Vesperia are molding the genre to fit around co-op gaming. I think we will continue to see a downward trend in single player games simply because today's gamer is looking to stretch their dollar, and the best way to do that now is through online play. And that's the prevailing reason why titles are being bought - for their online gameplay value. To me, thats what makes the 360's model so innovative - sales of the console may be down, but title sales will continue to increase because the service foundation is based on this premise. Sony and Nintendo continue to play catchup here. For Nintendo, its not as bad, because they have done such a great job of marketing the console to families, but Sony is very late, and Home is very delayed (and was a glaring omission from E3 08).

This fall and holiday shopping season is going to be explosive, contrary to the general economic vibe throughout the US, and its because the development community has finally picked up on the changing values of gamers. We dont want lengthy single campaigns that we may never see the end of - well, maybe, if its another Star Wars KOTOR or Oblivion - we want an engaging experience with my friends both on and offline. We're getting it through competitive AND cooperative play! The release cycle for these next two quarters shows this new direction being plotted, which is one I think the industry will be heading in for the foreseeable future.