Josef Fares, the director of co-op prison escape game A Way Out, has said that people shouldn’t obsess over a game’s length.
In an interview with VG247, Fares said that the percentage of players that finished the game was at 52% . He then likened games to films, saying, “Imagine someone like James Cameron going, ‘Oh, only 50% of the people walked out of the cinema, wow, that’s great!’ It’s insane.”
Fares then talks about the way that game design teaching is being influenced by these trends:
“We have designer teachers who tell their students to focus on the first 40% of the game because the rest? People probably won’t see it. Why put all that effort in for nothing? We should see games as experiences. It doesn’t matter how long they are.
If it’s so common that people don’t play through the games, then why should we even comment on replayability and how long they are? Why should that affect score? It shouldn’t. When my publisher [asked about game length] I was like, ‘Why are you asking that? I’m not even going to answer that shit’.”
A Way Out was released in March this year; it received generally positive reviews and sold quite well.
