Astro Bot is an important release for the entire video game industry and not just the PlayStation brand. Why? Because entertainment, in general, is and has always been “monkey see, monkey do,” and if a game is popular, critically acclaimed, and sells well, other companies will naturally want their own slice of the same pie, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
For two years now, leading Game of the Year candidates have made a point of the need to have shorter, more concentrated experiences over lengthy epics. Although it didn’t win GOTY last year, Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 proved that 12- to 15-hour experiences are just as valuable and enjoyable as 100-hour epics, especially if they’re filled with filler content.
Nicolas Doucet, the director of the now-critically acclaimed Astro Bot series, recently shared insights into the development philosophy that helped shape this year’s GOTY frontrunner.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Doucet emphasized the importance of having restraint when it comes to game scope. He believes that this approach is the key a consistently engaging, high-quality experience for players.
Doucet’s perspective is in line with a growing sentiment among fellow developers, including Techland, which recently advocated for smaller, standalone titles instead of always going for full-blown sequels.
While there’s always a market for both larger titles and confined experiences, there’s been an increasing amount of discontent regarding bloated, open-world games that demand hundreds of hours to complete. This has paved the way for players to have a better appreciation for tigher, more polished experiences that respect players’ time while still delivering memorable gameplay moments.
According to Doucet, Sony’s Team Asobi studio achieved this with early prototyping and regular playtesting. By establishing the core fun factor early on and refining it, they were able to create a game that feels consistently enjoyable from start to finish.
This method stands in stark contrast to the development cycles of many AAA games, which can stretch on for five to seven years.
Sony, in particular, recently saw how much can change in eight years with Concord as it had no choice but to shut a perfectly good game down because it felt outdated and uninspired in 2024—eight years after development started right in the middle of Overwatch‘s best years.
Of course, introducing shorter AAA games generates a different kind of discussion, namely, the concern about whether shorter titles can justify full retail prices. Does having reduced playtime compared to contemporaries correlate with lower price points even though the gameplay experience remains just as refined, if not better? What about the inverse? Should a game cost more because it’s longer?
Nevertheless, in a market where there’s a constant stream of new releases, it isn’t a sustainable expectation for players to keep up with multiple 50+ hour games. Even two of this year’s other GOTY candidates, Black Myth: Wukong and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, are victims of this long-standing trend.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, in particular, struggled to sell outside of its core audience because of the sheer time investment required to enjoy the middle part of an ongoing trilogy.
Shorter games, like Astro Bot and another PlayStation exclusive, Stellar Blade, allow players to experience a wide variety of titles and stories without feeling burnt out. Besides, if we’re talking about gameplay hours, do you remember how many times you’ve replayed a 100+ hour game or even finished it? How about how many times you’ve revisited and replayed a tighly crafted 15-20 hour experience?
Ultimately, the main point is to justify the length of a game with its content and its quality, rather than artificially extending it to meet an arbitrary playtime goal. There is literally no need to make a game a dozen or so hours longer just so that you could say that your game takes hundreds of hours to finish.
