Truth be told, I've never been completely satisfied with RPG's or action adventures. From the time I've picked it up until the time I put it down I would be satisfied with the game, and at many times entertained. But the lack of any additional missions or quests always left me with a feeling of want, and sometimes I just had questions, as to why the developer chose a particular story arc or the development of a character. Granted this latest generation of consoles and the ability to download additional content has given a few titles some extra life. But overall the games that are derivative of these genres as a whole have little to no value after their completion.
Mass Effect for example is a great title. And as a premiere Bioware RPG the game boasted several quests and side missions. However, after completion of the game many gamers were looking forward to the developer's promise of additional content that would extend the life of the 40 hour RPG. Unfortunately, we were all greatly underwhelmed with what was to follow. The Bring Down the Sky quest that was later delivered via XBL was at most a two hour jaunt that was easily defeated with little thought or complication. And after being acquired by Electronic Arts, well lets just say that I'll be surprised if we see any additional content for Mass Effect 2 that isn't overpriced, or unimportant.
Ideally you'd want your game to be replayed. Similar to the way we all played Metroid a million times over on the NES back in the day. The problem being we are a "what have you done for me lately" community, with little regard for the attention to detail, or intentions that a game is meant to convey. We consume games that are built in 24 month development cycles in less than 10-40 hours, and ask "what next?" What's worse is that we take even less regard for the hard work that is put into these virtual worlds by grading them in a biased fashion that does little for the developer or the individuals we are trying to inform. Put plainly we're selfish little souls that need to reevaluate the way we rate and play games; among other things.
One potential solution is additional bonus material included on the disc. By bonus material I am talking about concept art, developer commentaries, and documentary's including the development team. Additionally devs should throw in those vidocs, developer diaries, and trailers that are the buildup to the game's release. Basically what I am suggesting is that game releases would benefit if they worked more like DVD's.
Sure this has been done before, but it's hardly commonplace. If all you give us is the game then how are we to gain a better understanding of what you intended? As we all know even the best games have their faults, and rather than dissect those faults blindly it would be better for devs if we knew what was trying to be done. I think that I can speak for others when I say that I am more willing to forgive a game that tries to do something bold and fails than a game that does what's tried and true and falls into mediocrity.
In this case the leftover material that has been used to compile and build a game from the ground up can give us all a new perspective into not only how games are made, but more importantly why they were made that way.
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