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Video games should be more like albums.

At least, that’s how we should perceive them. The comparison to films is tired and no longer relevant. Portal signals a break from long-and-laborious gameplay. Now, the solid gameplay experience should be likened to a well-composed music album.

This isn’t just a new perspective for consumers and critics; developers should reconsider how they approach the process of game design. Games should become, in a word, digestable. Short, succinct, sweet.

Everyday Shooter is perhaps the most literal interpretation of this new perspective. Because it’s based around the game-as-album concept, it’s short, with its length dictated by the music. However, like an album, the game is replayable, and players are able — and willing — to re-live the experience again and again.

Of course, unlike a music album, the experience changes each time, as the game’s intrinsic interactivity — and elementary chaos theory — dictate that no two playthroughs will ever be the same. It’s this guarantee that should draw players in, and justifies short length over epic storytelling.

In short, playing a good game is tantamount to listening to a good album. And good albums don’t last 30 hours. They usually don’t even max out the space on a CD. They don’t have to.

I’ve felt that there’s a strong connection between music and video games for some time, which might be what draws me so strongly to game design. I’ll never be a musician (despite those ever-present yearnings), but creating a game that plays like an album seems like a good compromise. So I’m going to start reviewing my favorite albums on this site. I’m no John Cusack in High Fidelity, but there is something compelling about a well-structured album, and I think games can tap into that. I think they’ve already begun to.

3 replies on “Video games should be more like albums.”

I agree for the most part–I loved Everyday Shooter, and the beauty with which it handles visuals, sounds and gameplay in order to make such a simple and yet elegant and wonderfully enjoyable challenge.

Yet, when it comes to the length of games, I’m never sure of how best to approach designing one. Sure, having a game that stands like a music album is gorgeous, and if players want to come back to it again and again, wonderful… but what about the difference between music albums and works of literature?

I know I read the Great Gatsby in far more than an hour. It might have taken me three, but it was still an immersive, enjoyable experience. And analyzing it afterwards took me a lot longer, as well. I’d say I put about 30 hours into the experience as a whole. Now, if I want to appeal to the casual reader who isn’t so much interested in literature, I’m sure making a music album would be much more approachable, but what if I want to make a game for a literary buff who doesn’t have that much taste for music?
Or what if I’d like to appeal to both?

A game that follows a literary path in its storytelling and composition is usually very long and requires a lot of elements to keep a player entranced and focused. Games like Half-Life, System Shock 2, and Silent Hill are like reading novels that spring to life and assault you.

I keep dwelling on that idea. Making short and sweet games is wonderful. But I don’t just want to entertain–I want to expand. It would be wonderful if your gameplay experience could make people think profoundly. And that can be done in a short and sweet experience, like we all saw in Passage, yes. But Passage was a beautiful poem. I’d love to write a beautiful book.

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