No not the length that you live on this here overburdened earth but the longevity of a video game. See I happen to remember a time in my life when I could spend hour after hour and day after day just playing my favorite games just to beat them. In fact there are several games from that period in my life that I beat more than once or twice. Unfortunately, that time in my life is long past. It was called High School and every year you got an extra 3 months of free time. Myself and (I would assume) many others like me have a dilemma now. I am an adult with a full time job and a wife and a car and social obligations. I still have the money to play games but am lacking something that I had so much of when I was young. That lacking thing is free time. At least 40-50 of my week are now consumed by work and commuting. In the old days I lived a scant 15 minute walk from school and classes ran from 8:15 (if you were on time) to 3:00, in other words, a piddly 34 hours a week including commute. Right there I have lost around 14 hours a week just from being a responsible adult. Now factor in the fact that we had at least 16 weeks of holiday time a year in high school compared to a mere 1 or 2 weeks a year as an adult and you begin to clearly see what I'm getting at.

For years and years I have loved console RPGs and finishing them in a few days or a week was not unthinkable, in fact in my case it was pretty much the norm. Nowadays I hesitate to start a game such as Vandalhearts or Xenogears just for the simple reason that I feel I will have to neglect the game and play a hodgepodge 1 or 2 hours at a time, here and there as my schedule permits. This breaks my heart. The point of an RPG is to lose yourself in an immersive world of fantasy, be it dragons and sorcery or lasers and hypertravel. How fun is it really to just settle into the groove of such a game only to observe a clock and tear yourself away from this thing that you love because you need to go to sleep or work or whatever. Well if you don't know how it feels let me be the first to tell you that it SUCKS! Let me put this in another way. Say that you're watching Star Wars for the first time, now imagine that every 10 or 15 minutes you have to stop the tape and pick it up again on the following day only to watch another 10 or 15 minutes. Now I'll tell you that if you already have seen the movie multiple times (as most have) then that wouldn't bother you much, but remember I said if you were watching it for the first time ever. If that were the way you first saw the movie it would greatly reduce you're opinion of the movie and you'd probably wonder what all the fuss was about. That would be normal because that is what happens when you are forced to fragment a whole. If it is not viewed completely and fluidly from scene to scene the movie loses its cadence and rythm as well as constantly taking you out of the universe so many times as to make it impossible for the picture to immerse you in its world.

This is what has happened with me and roleplaying games. I said my point this time around was game longevity. This is acheived in two ways

(1) a long and intricate storyline that keeps you playing or
(2) replay value (a specialty of GOOD Fighting and Platform games)

I have already covered the first type of longevity now on to the second. Anybody can beat a fighting game or a platform game once but it takes a special kind of magic to bring you back to that game again and again. With fighting games it is interesting characters and cool moves as well as depth in regards to the fighting engine. You play more, you learn more, and therefore become a better combatant. With platformers a charming character, well developed levels and playability are the most important factors. Both of these types of games award players special incentives for repeat playing such as "Perfect" endings and the like. Both RPGs and Fighters/Platformers provide longevity but their formula for such could not be more different.

As I had said before longevity can be good, but for people in my condition it can also be a curse if it is excessive. I long for the day when you go to the option screen and see a Longevity option. You press the button on it and it asks you your age and occupation and from there it will modify all the in game snizzialities (i.e., EXP pts, Gold, and Level Ups) making them easier to acheive as somebody with a comparitively smaller amount of possible time to spend with a game. I mean really why should Square, Enix or any other RPGmaker care? They already got the money for the game, it should be up to the consumer if they want to spend eternity playing it.

Just a thought.

Dr N8 Dawg Phd.