Christofer Sundberg, most known for his work on the Just Cause franchise and also as the founder of Avalanche Studios has revealed that he doesn’t feel that stories are a particularly important factor to games recently via Twitter.
“Been thinking about this the last 10yrs. Why should a game have an end? Why bother about story when all data proves that players don’t care?” – Christofer Sundberg
He did of course point out that there are exceptions, but said that he doesn’t feel that 6-12 hour story driven games make sense in this day and age. Although this may feel like a direct attack at many other great titles, it’s worth noting that he is speaking from a value for money perspective here.
“6-12hrs storydriven AAA games makes no sense commercially any more. There are exceptions like Last of Us of course. Stories can have an end earlier, but the game needs to live longer (like in +40-50hrs) to make sense commercially.” – Christofer Sundberg
He also gave some reasoning for his rather cemented view on games when he mentioned the percentage of players who actually played to the end of the story in Just Cause 2. They wouldn’t be the first to bring up this statistic either, many game studios have regularly pointed out that the number of people who reach the end of their typically are the minority percentage.
“18% of all JC2 players, played through the main missions/story” – Christofer Sundberg
Although I would admit I prefer I game that can provide the player with something to do for a longer period of time, however I also think that both types of games still have a place in the industry.
