UFO 50 answers a long-held question
TL;DR - The answer is no. The question is...
Would more, smaller games help the game industry?
Too many games are coming out, and it might actually be a bad thing.
The trend has received a shocking amount of coverage. It might actually be a problem for the video game industry, making it hard for new and existing companies to find audiences.
I mean, I’m a fiend and there are already 6 games that I have ready to check out (unreleased!) at an upcoming Steam Next Fest1, where game designers can feature demos.
It’s easy to see just how bad times have gotten for indie developers (and game developers generally). Massive layoffs, closures of beloved indie studios, even the Braid 20th Anniversary Edition did not make the money it expected to make. I would bet, even 5 years ago, Arco would’ve been a standout release for its art style and theme. Now it struggled to make a blip. It literally launched the same week as another tactics game made by a beloved Indie brand: Tom Francis. And that indie game was in the top 5 games I was most excited about coming into the year! I love games, and it’s been impossible to keep up.
But if games were 5 hours instead of 20 wouldn’t that make things better? You could play Arco and Tactical Breach Wizards within one sitting. Let’s assume consumers would be comfortable with the increased cost, shorter games might solve some problems: shrinking delivery times, allowing developers to make more games and being played more by more players.
Human Psychology Gets in The Way
In a way that no one expected, UFO 50 somehow feels exactly of the moment. As Stephen Total’s excellent Game File put it, UFO 50 feels like the perfect encapsulation of our oversaturated environment.
UFO 50 is a collection of 50 short games built for a fictional console in the 1980s, designed by some of the best game creators in the industry. Finishing a single game probably takes 2–5 hours. (Closer to 5–7 hours for me because I truly struggle at video games) They feel short. It’s easy to imagine a world where they could have been released individually.
Before their release, the games felt like a vindication of my belief that shorter games could solve industry problems. But since playing through a few of the games, I’ve changed my tune, it actually proves that shorter games are unequivocally not the answer.
It disproves my hunch for two primary reasons: it took 7 years to make, and the realities of time investment for players and designers favors longer games with deeper investments.
It Took 7 Years to Make!!
Let’s get the element out of the room first. This collection took 7 years to make! 7 years! It’s true it was something of a side project, and it wasn’t exactly 50 design groups working on 50 games, but given the length of the games, it would be easy to assume the design turnaround would be shorter.
I’m glad they took the time to give each game the level of polish and care they deserved. If they had less polished, they might feel incomplete or too much like a game jam game. Selling a 5-hour game alone with that level of care and polish would be a big challenge unless you could find a way to produce more of them.
Not just because it would be hard getting people to pay for it. Giving that level of polish to an individual 5-ish hour game would make it difficult to publish the number of games you would need to be a successful game company (or game creator) at the speed and scale. And this is even if people were willing to pay significantly more for each individual game.
Players and Designers Want to Invest More Time
Of the massive games in (my) recent memory2:
Breath of the Wild
Black Myth: Wukong
Helldivers 2
Palworld
Baldur’s Gate 3
Elden Tree
What they all have in common is that they require (and encourage) large time investment from players. Most people want to find a game and then stick with it and get better at it, appreciate it, more overtime. Learning a game is the initial investment, the down payment. It’s a high cost based on the promise of future rewards (fun).
This is pretty unique with other forms of art. Your appreciation for a genre or an author might deepen as you engage with more of their work. You might reread a book or rewatch a movie to discover new elements you missed, but neither require up front investments to enjoy in the first place.
If a game’s payoff in terms of enjoyable hours spent is small, the amount of upfront time a game can demand from a player is also pretty small. Even if you do something obscene and take 5 hours to really learn a game that you spend 60 hours with. That’s still less than 10% of your total playtime! If a game is only 5 hours, the corresponding about would be 25 minutes. Better hope you know the controls!!3
It’s similar on the designer side as well. Game design complexity does not scale linearly. Like a machine, the upfront complexity is building, testing and finalizing a working system. Once you have that system, you can expand it, add subsystems, and introduce components like story and art more smoothly. (No part of this is easy. Building games is hard) Choosing to revise a game downward, to ask less of a player’s time, similarly has a cost to a designer.
Because both of these forces push games toward being longer, it’s unlikely we’re going to see an explosion of small bespoke games over the next 5 years.
However…
The Game Industry Gets Bundled
UFO 50 gets around the issue of game size by giving players a platform for exploration. $30 for 50 games means that if you find 3-5 that you can really sink your teeth into, and the game will feel more than worth it. And, it can attract a wider audience by featuring different types of games: the package is the point.
I don’t think we’re going to see a wave of UFO 50 clones pop up over the coming years. It’s hard to pull off what they did, and a lot of it is a result of the sheer amount of goodwill Derek Yu has in the community, and also the talent that came together.
However, I do think bundling games and experiences within platforms is only going to increase over time. It’s similar to what Puzzmo is attempting to do, and in other ways is similar to how Roblox operates. It’s different from something like streaming, or even game subscriptions because (especially for smaller creatives) being able to sell units will continue to be important. But it provides an opportunity to use trusted relationships to create a familiar space that players can interact with.
My Favorite Writing From the Week
Play Nice by Jason Schreier (Book)
Haven’t read this book yet, but I’m really excited to read it. Getting a look into one of the (formerly?) most beloved game creators in the industry promises to be an exciting and fascinating look into the games industry.
Too Many Games by Chris Plante
Many are saying, there are too many games. What I love about this article is how it recognizes just how much effort they have to put into picking the games to play now. It almost means your choices are “being a casual fan” or “being a hobby” with nothing in between.
Balatro Featured in The Washington Post and NYT4
I was surprised when this popped up in “the newspapers of record”, though I guess I shouldn’t have been. Balatro is popular because of how similar it is to Poker which makes it recognizable to a lot of people who might not recognize it otherwise! But still it’s neat to see smaller and weirder games get recognition. Here’s to hoping for more!
Steam Next Fest is a quarterly event where developers can showcase demos in order to drive interest in their games.
To be fair, Balatro probably also belongs on this list.
I should note there are ways around this. It’s part of why everything is a Roguelike Metroidvania with Survival Mechanics and character creation. If you can convince players they know and understand the mechanics in the game, they’ll be more likely to believe they can pick it up quickly.
The Times’ article also features Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers which is doubly shocking for me, personally.