Audience wants shorter games - Argonauts dev

Gamers have evolved and can't afford to spend "days and days on end" trawling through lengthy adventures, Rise of the Argonauts lead designer Charley Price has told Eurogamer.

"No longer are videogames almost exclusively played by 14 year-olds over summer vacations where they have days and days on end to play through these epic journeys," Price explained when we popped over to the US last month to preview Rise of the Argonauts.

"Every time someone invests 25 hours of their life into a game and then realises there's another 75 hours to go, they just can't stomach continuing and they walk away with a sour taste in their mouth - no matter how much fun they had with the game.

"They need to be doing something achievable with the end in sight; people's expectations are evolving for what they want to get from the experience," he added.

Liquid Entertainment has designed Rise of the Argonauts with this philosophy in mind, Price said, and has sought to discard many of the antiquated trappings of the RPG genre in order to do so.

"Games are the only medium where it's commonplace to say, 'you've got to struggle through the first hour or two and then it starts to get fun,'" said Price. "I think it's unacceptable for a lot of people, you know - if the game's not fun within the first half an hour to an hour then a lot of people are just going to take it back."

"So you've got to be going through and presenting the fun up front; you've got to be going through and presenting what you're game's about and what makes it compelling so that people can really get their hooks in and can really get in to what you're game's all about."

Rise of the Argonauts is due out this autumn on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Head over to our Rise of the Argonauts preview to find out much more.