PlayStation Universe: "After my time with Clair Obscur, I see just how correct I was back in June 2024. That’s not to say that there aren’t shortcomings, because there are. However, this tragic story more than deserves your attention, and the gameplay loop provides just enough challenge to keep you tweaking your builds. Clair Obscur is nothing short of special."
Sandfall Interactive co-founder and technical director Tom Guillermin looks back on how Unreal Engine 5 helped bring Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to life and help it reach over 3.3 million units sold in its first 33 days.
Sandfall focused on quality over quantity, and didn't want to stuff the game just to make it larger and larger.
So the opposing viewpoint that Ubisoft has these days? Good. I'm sick of extra long, filler games, not because shorter is better, but rather because I want an exciting game all the way through, and I'd rather have less content, if that content is of higher quality (more unique scenarios or freedom to complete an objective in my own way), than repeatedly performing copy & paste boring quests throughout a massive game map. That to me is not interesting.
Edit: The credit URL is broken, it has extra text at the end, so it doesn't work, this is the correct credit URL:
https://www.gamesindustry.b...
Length to price is a stupid metric. You can play a 8 hour masterpiece and it can stay with you for years.
Or you could play a overinflated generic game for 80 hours that repeats it's gameplay loop ad nauseum while collecting 100s of items around a map with no purpose
Each game sells for full RRP what would you prefer.
Maybe it's just me but the older I get I just want games to respect my time. If a game is justifiably long great if a game bloats itself for no reason I hate it
I would prefer a game that is in between, which is what we are seeing from some of these AA studios.
8 hours, regardless of how amazing it is, is way to short for a full priced game
80 hours of repetitive copy/paste gameplay is simply not respecting my time and is not worth full price.
30 - 40 hours of quality gameplay IMO is the sweet spot.
16 hours bare minimum of great quality for full price is acceptable for sure.
Sandfall, the team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hopes that gamers will support cheaper games as publishers want titles to cost more.
Hell yes.
Especially considering these $40-$50 games are going more then a lot of these $70-$80 AAA games.
So far this year, I've only bought games that RRP at around £35 to £40 (Expedition 33, Split Fiction, plus have a few others in mind).
Both of the above are far better games than most of the higher price games that I've played over the last few years.
They may single-handedly set the market price for video games given the quality is AAA. I have to think any AAA that is thinking about $80 games will have to rethink that price point. We need more games of this quality and this price point to keep AAA game devs from thinking that $80 should be the new norm.
It's the sweet spot. Even if a game is 7/10 that price range alone will encourage people to buy it.
