Some games are only fun when you invest hours in them. The video game industry can be inspired by the way fiction writers and the publishing industry prioritize the first few minutes of the audience’s contact with the story.
During the holidays, I learned several games that I had already tried and abandoned. I’m about 20 hours into Bethesda’s space exploration RPG Starfield (I’ve tried playing it twice before) and I think it’s starting to get pretty fun after all.
The games on those days are notoriously long. AAA RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Persona 5, and The Witcher 3 can take players over a hundred hours to complete. Simply completing the main narrative arcs of those titles can take between 20 and 50 hours.
This hasn’t always been the case, but in recent years, games have gotten longer. And as reviewers and players have noted, these games, even when great, can take forever to get to the fun part.
I found the first 15 hours of Starfield to be incredibly tedious. If I hadn’t liked Bethesda’s previous games (and if Starfield wasn’t available on Xbox Game Pass), I doubt I would have done it again.
Some games are difficult to integrate because they are challenging. Learning a new set of mechanics and perfecting a new set of skills can be overwhelming.
For the most part though, I’ve found it difficult to jump into several recent RPGs, including Starfield and Dragon Age, because these games do not use storytelling strategies to hook me within the first hour.
This is a far cry from the way other storytelling mediums and genres work—in fiction writing, the opening sentence is key.
In their book on the publishing industry, The Bestseller Code, Matthew Jockers and Jodie Archer note that the first sentence of a bestseller is an important hook, “a mixture of voice and conflict” that needs to leave the reader craving more.
Take John Grisham’s opening sentence in The Rainmaker: “My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated the legal profession.” In under 20 words, Grisham establishes an authoritative voice, introduces the narrator, and hints at conflict between father and son, sparking curiosity. We want to know who this guy is.
This type of opening line might seem straightforward, but it’s hard to achieve. Packing character and intrigue into a few words without relying on explication is tough. These opening lines raise questions and don’t give away the answers.
Games can make moves, and they do. One of Bethesda’s previous games, Skyrim, takes several cues from the successful game book: the first fifteen minutes are filled with confrontations and pose questions for the player to answer.
You wake up in a car on the way to your execution. You see how other prisoners are beheaded. Then it’s your turn: you kneel, the ax is about to swing, and a dragon lands on a nearby building and starts destroying everything. You escape and run for your life.
There is unresolved conflict not only between the player and the imperial soldiers, but also between the player and the dragon. The fact that you can’t yet defend yourself gives you a reason to hone your skills. You leave with questions about why you were imprisoned and how you fit into the world.
By contrast, Starfield opens with you checking into a mining rig in the area and locating an alien artifact. The pirates appear and try to take the artifact. You defeated them, without a doubt. You get a boat. So you can pretty much do whatever you want. The game gives you complete freedom, without creating too many characters that pique your interest.
Since many games require more than 50 hours of play, it makes sense that opening times are prioritized: players will have hours and hours to stay informed about locations, characters, and mechanics. At the same time, without a fake introduction, it’s difficult for players to perceive their characters’ motivations. Even big RPGs like Starfield would gain advantages from paying more attention to the equivalent of their opening line. If they did, those games might take less than 20 hours to be fun.
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