With the rise of open world design and GaaS (Games as a Service), it’s become a trend for most major releases to be stuffed with content. It’s not unusual for a major release from one of the big publishers (Ubisoft, EA, etc.) to have either a near overwhelming amount of content or a set up to give at endless content as time goes on. Someone who doesn’t think that’s always a good thing? Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.
Zelnick has been bucking some of the gaming trends recently, like with his comments about gaming and how he sees subscription services as maybe not being that great of an idea. In an interview with GamesBeat, he gave answers to a wide range of topics ranging from the state of E3 to crossplay. When asked about game length, specifically Red Dead Redemption 2 and its endgame that some consider too drawn out, he actually said he felt not every game needed to be a behemoth taking 100+ hours to complete. It depends on the game and what it’s trying to accomplish.
“I think entry barriers are going up, but I’m not sure anyone, including ourselves, believes that every big release has to have a massive team or have more than 100 hours of gameplay. There’s room for any number of different games, from casual smartphone games all the way to Grand Theft Auto, and plenty in between. The commonality that’s required is enormous attention to quality. Quality means something different a smartphone title than it does a free-to-play PC game in China, and that’s different from a huge triple-A action release for consoles, and that’s different than a free-to-play mid-core game.”
Interesting to see a CEO of one of the major companies taking a bit of a different approach on the industry, or at least on paper. The next major title from Take-Two will be Gearbox’s Borderlands 3, which the main story is said to be roughly 35 hours long.