Ken Levine, mastermind of the BioShock series, has been forced to defend the short length of the first DLC episode for BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea. The game apparently can be completed in under two hours, a fact which has faced much criticism.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Ken Levine had a lot to say about this:
“If you zip through it then it’s not a hugely long experience but if you dig deep it’s probably three hours plus, if you really dig deep. But it’s not the longest thing in the world.
“I think there are definitely people who are like ‘Well, I want hours and hours of gameplay’. I think if that is your primary metric, this probably isn’t the thing for you. If you want to feel like ‘Wow, I just got a whole new experience’ – that’s what you get out of this.
“I’m very respective of people’s time and money,” Levine continued. “Journalists often ask me to tell their audience why they should buy something. I’m always very uncomfortable with that question because I don’t read people’s household budgets and I can’t tell them what they should buy. We chose quality over quantity. As a gamer that’s a choice I usually make. Very few people would judge a movie based on how long it is.”
I think that people should actually play the Burial At Sea DLC before judging it on its length, some short experiences can definitely be worth it. Just take a look at Journey last year, that game was easily less than two hours long and it was personally one of my games of the year. Although two hours is short for me it depends on how much story is in there, that is what I want from a BioShock game and especially Burial At Sea, if it is two hours of gameplay then I am more likely to feel like a got less value for money, but if I get two hours of fantastic story-telling then I will be much more satisfied.
Let me know in the comments if you think two hours is too short for Burial At Sea, how long do you think it should be?
