Side quests are also nice for the developer, because they provide a means to pack in more play time, without requiring you to stretch the story too far. It's annoying to the player when the story goes on and on and it's equally annoying to the developer when they have to make up ways for the story to go a little longer. If you include side quests, your story can be shorter, but the player will have more play time still because they will still have things to do. Just don't rely entirely on side quests and cut your story too short.
And there's the real problem right? Over using side quests. Lots of games these days have short stories padded with side quests. Even for the ones that don't have a super short story there's still a problem, losing sight of the real goal. In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, I finished the tutorial and spent ten hours of play time before I even returned to the story. The good news is that I was able to enjoy myself for that long without doing anything in the story, but it also meant that I quickly lost interest in the story. The story seemed like a really long side quest. You run into trouble if your player loses sight of the ultimate goal, because they quickly begin to wonder, "Why do I care?" If your player doesn't care anymore, you've lost them.
Real life has side quests too. The main quest is (should be) your job or schooling. Side quests are time with friends, chasing girls, etc. This topic is on my mind because right now I'm trying to ensure that I don't lose sight of my story quest. I got a lot of side quests right now, thus why this post was forgotten last night, and while they're all important, you should never lose sight of the main goal. Think if that's ever happened to you in your life. Remember what happened as a result? Probably didn't go so well. Think about the same effect in games, it's not good to have there either.
You wouldn't want your player to miss now would you?
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