Short indie consumable games aren't.
I think this has two reasons:
Low price / value. At 20€ or so 2-5 hours game-play aren't exactly cheap.
Let me present you an indie game named «battle for wesnoth», which provides hours long campaigns for 0¤ :p
More seriously, obviously if a game can be finished in 2H, it won't be considered worth much, but this also applies to AAA games.
When I was still paying attention to them, they would rarely be interesting in solo (on PC at least), and that was several years (more than 10) ago.
Few years after they are published, companies just close the servers because they did N new iterations (which might be very different) and then you have rely on illegally (but at this point, they're abandonwares I guess, so grey zone?) modified versions to play.
Specifically, I'm talking about my experience with the last game I bought for myself: battlefield 2142 (there are still servers around, mind you).
Implementing solo content, notably in a FPS which can also (and I assume nowadays it's mostly) be played in multi is not easy though. I see several points there which are important:
- to have decent AIs: scripted can be good in solo FPS doom-likes, but it's about killing as many monsters as possible, I don't really see many ways to make this work in multi... maybe except the way L4D did it? As for other genres, it's even worst, in a strategy game, scripted AIs really need complex scripts to not be boring (by scripted, I mean, AIs follow a story, not the use of script languages, otherwise every AI is just a script)
- the gameplay need to be done with that point in mind: typically, unvanquished's bots will likely never be able to use wallwalking to fight (other uses for WW, other moves and other gameplay elements are probably doable though). The gameplay also needs some way to make players disadvantaged compared to enemies: being by number, or lack of weapon, resource management, raw skill...
- solo content is about PvE. There's usually a single P (sometimes bots help the player), usually many Es. Usually, this is a special mode, with adapted mechanics, like objectives, checkpoints... and adapted maps. Stories usually help making the solo better, too, even when they're limited (UT98, doom2...).
- solo content must end before being boring, but be long enough to correctly explore one side of the game (in strategy games, this is often a faction). This is important. Very important. And roguelike addicts will likely disagree with me here :D
For example, I find xonotic's «campaign» more than boring (and even frustrating tbh), yet I thought UT98's one was fun. If I had to explain it, I'd say that it's a mix of the difficulty curve, the number of missions, the fucked up amount/balance of weapons in xonotic, and generally talking, I remember that even the GUI does not makes one feeling it's a campaign, but really just a bunch of unlockable missions with specific settings.
IMO xonotic should split their campaign in several parts, corresponding to the weapon set and mutators enabled I guess.
While I talked almost only about FPSes, I think the points I mentioned work for many gameplays. They certainly do work for strategy games in my experience, and possibly for RPGs, although those always integrate solo elements, even when they are MMOs.
