By Richard Cobbett on July 21st, 2011 at 5:00 pm.
A few years ago, games were mocked for ‘only’ being ten hours long. Now, increasingly developers aren’t simply coming in under that on a regular basis, but potentially aiming even shorter – as seen in this Develop 2011 session written up by Gamespot the other day. Some are arguing the audience doesn’t have the patience to last for ten hours with a game.
So how long should games actually be? How much do you insist on getting for your money?
We’ve got a weird split at the moment, where games that cost £35 or more can be finished in a single play, while 59p in the Apple App Store (other App Stores are available, but they suck) can while away hours, days, weeks or years. And that’s not counting MMOs, free-to-play games, or whatever interactive pyramid scheme dressed up in pretty graphics is taking Facebook by storm this second. For this though, I’m thinking of regular, commercial games, of the kind you might download from Steam or buy in an old-fashioned gaming shoppes.
It’s not an easy question, not least because every genre comes with its own expectations. An all-out action game might be deemed acceptable at eight hours, while there’s armed revolt (or at least, dice rolling to symbolise armed revolt) if an RPG comes in at just 15. And I don’t think there’s a specific number that applies to every game, for all people. One of my least favourite arguments is taking the cost of a game, dividing it by the number of hours, and comparing it to the price of a cinema ticket or a coffee or similar. The experiences are too different, not least because the film you’d have watched at the cinema has been edited down so that you don’t have to watch Batman trudging around Arkham Asylum for two hours looking for a giant green question mark or whatever. Two hours of a film is a complete, coherent experience… at least, ideally. Two hours of a game is usually much less directly satisfying – there’ll be awesome high points, yes, but likely many more forgettable moments, especially given the amount of repetition not simply accepted in, but directly built into the average game’s core mechanics.
When games were huge of course, there were many, many more of those. Mazes thrown in to artificially lengthen areas. Puzzles that didn’t give a damn if you were stuck waving a mouse cursor over every pixel for the best part of a week. Role-playing games utterly reliant on grind, or which abused the ability to use simple tile-sets to make dungeons so big, it’s a wonder the planet underneath them had enough space to fit them in. There’s definitely something to be said for focus, and for knowing you’ll be able to sit down with a new game and actually finish it.
At the same time though, £35 is a lot of money… Hmm. Tricky…
EXCITING VOX-POP QUESTION TIME!
Ignoring the obvious answer that a game should be ‘as long as it needs to be’, what kind of minimum length do you currently expect for your money? At the same time, how long is too long? Are there any games out there that you’ve been meaning to play, but ultimately avoided because you knew they’d be too much of a time-sink, no matter their cost? Go!
21/07/2011 at 17:02 Delusibeta says:
It really depends on the amount of money I spend. I’m happy with VVVVVV lasting little more than two hours because I only spent five quid on it, and it was very good two hours. If I spent £30 on it, however, I’d feel a bit ripped off. Likewise, I spent literally £3 on Mirror’s Edge on my console toy, and thought it was very worthwhile. Had I spent the full 40 quid, I would have felt a bit ripped off.
21/07/2011 at 22:36 GT3000 says:
I personally think that it has to with value. There are people who place value on it’s entertainment per hour per dollar and those who judge it on quality per dollar. Honestly, you get more enjoyment out of the latter than the former.
Homefront for example is great example of my personal quality per dollar. I enjoyed every hour of those short 5 hours in the campaign. I was engaged and it felt worthwhile. Multiplayer was a bonus. Others will grossly disagree. Would it been better if the quality (my personal perception of it) were halved for double the time? I don’t think so. I don’t aim to drop hundreds or dozens of hours for sub-par gameplay or plot. Like watching a movie at the theathers. Would you rather watch a stupid movie for cheaper price or a quality one for more dosh. I’d shell out for more dosh because the entertainment value is greater per dollar.
Tl;dr: You have to way your values rubric. Which more important. A spellbinding experience or burning time. Short and sweet games or bland and long?
21/07/2011 at 23:31 PiP999 says:
My whole perception of value has been thrown into chaos ever since indie games on Steam have been on sale.
I bought Metro 2033 for $50. I loved the heck out of the game but only had 7 hours of gameplay each time through the campaign. On the other hand I got Terraria for $5 and sunk 40 hours in 4 days’ time. Another time sinker for me was Killing Floor for $7 in which I had 140 hours.
Overall I’d say that a bit over 20 hours for a single player game would be reasonable (STALKER comes to mind). For a multiplayer game or coop I would put the mark at 80+ hours, as I don’t have a single multiplayer game that I haven’t played for at least 100 hours.
One game that I avoided due to the amount of time I would lose is Minecraft. I know its a wonderful game, but my life would end the moment my screen would become pixelated with its glory.
21/07/2011 at 17:04 TsunamiWombat says:
8 hours, give or take, for most any game. If I come in above that I feel i’ve gotten a value for my money.
21/07/2011 at 17:53 ulix says:
I agree. 8 hours is totally okay for me, if the 8 hours are awesome and action-packed (obviously it has to be an action game, otherwise it’d be too short). God of War 3 is a good example. Don’t regret paying full price for it.
And as sad as I am to admit: there are so many good games, and all of them I want to play. So in some cases I’m actually happy if a game is short, even if I have payed 50€ or 60€ for it.
It all depends, I guess, on perceived value. God of War was my example. I could also name Heavy Rain (which isn’t an action game, although this one at least has some replay value).
Obviously with some games I’m happy with more. I played through New Vegas taking about 80 hours or so, GTA4 also probably took me 40 or so (plus 10 for each episode).
21/07/2011 at 18:49 Frank says:
I’d also expect 8 for a SP game. Most of my favorites (Beyond Good and Evil, Zelda: alttp, Sands of Time, Riddick (?)) come in around there. I hate longer games made up entirely of filler (Oblivion and what I’ve seen of GTA), but will always go for a good long game (Deus Ex and Arkham Asylum feel a lot shorter than they are, at around 25 hours; Fallout maybe also falls in this range?). In recent memory…Assassin’s Creed 2 was pushing it by being so long and repetitive…Fallout 3 was long but not repetitive to the same degree, so I enjoyed it a lot more.
21/07/2011 at 20:08 Kadayi says:
I’d go with 8 hours also. I’m fairly fastidious gamer so I tend to take my time with games anyways, but judging from reviews & reports games I pretty much discounted as day one purchases based on SP play Length & review score were; Homefront, CODBlops & DNF . A lot depends on the quality as much as the quantity with a game though, as well as the genre type, and the novelty of the game. Mirrors Edge was a short game, but it was day one purchase simply because it had such an interesting mechanic in place. A flawed game, but extremely memorable.
With a decent FPS 8 hours + (or 3 – 4 evenings ) of gaming is worth my £30 – 35.
With an RPG I’m generally expecting about 30+ hours which is probably going to translate into 2 – 3 weeks of gaming for me, given I’ll probably fit in a few extra hours over the weekends.
Conversely though I kind of dislike games that go on to long, especially if the story is deliberately dragged out. GTA IV is a prime example, of a game that would of benefited from a tighter story-line focus and a good 10 hours shaved off the playtime imho.
21/07/2011 at 22:38 OOS says:
For a full priced game, 8 hours is around what I expect. For me, between 8 and 25 or so hours is my ideal point; anything more, and the risk of padding enters the equation, anything less and it’s likely that the mechanics / story were not fully explored.
22/07/2011 at 02:08 anonymousity says:
I find 8 hours is ideal if the game is linear, ironically if the game isn’t linear and hence has replay value I expect a bit more.
22/07/2011 at 02:44 P7uen says:
I seem to remember completeing DX1 in 21 hours (without re-playing bits for fun). 8 hours of that and I wouldn’t have run round chopping up Hong Kong.
Fair enough it was a bit RPGy as well, but that was just how long it needed to be. Even Fallout 3 with its 50 odd hours for me was ok, because I wanted to do all the trudging around, it was made to be interesting.
22/07/2011 at 14:32 0p8 says:
Totally agree…
Not counting the better quality “extra” long SP campaigns in shooters e.g.Half Life2, Stalker(CoP); and not going into genre specifics (RTS,RPG),or MP games……your average manshoot (FPS,TPS) or action/adventure game,the magic number should be (minimum) 8-10 hrs for the SP campaign (dependant on difficulty chosen of course)
21/07/2011 at 17:05 pakoito says:
* Story game: 10-20h. More than that the story is diluted.
* Grindy or sandbox game: 50-1000h. Yeah sure background and stuff now lemme grind moar monstars and jump off cliffs.
* Match-based game: Depends on the game. RTS ~1h, Grand Strategy ~10h, ClassBasedFPS ~20min…
21/07/2011 at 17:07 Batolemaeus says:
You play class based fps only for 20 minutes until you get a new game?
21/07/2011 at 17:11 pakoito says:
Get there, pewpew some idiots until 50 points achieved, new round starts. Anyway, ~ can be more can be less can be 24/7 2forts.
21/07/2011 at 17:12 westyfield says:
I think that’s how long a round of class-based FPS is. Hence RTS being about 1 hour, and grand strategy being 10.
21/07/2011 at 19:49 FakeAssName says:
you are so delusional!
anything longer than the opening cut scene is clearly excessive, in fact I personally insist that all my games consist exclusively of a single cut scene and whatever day one DLC is available.
21/07/2011 at 23:53 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
Batolemaeus: I think 20 minutes is the average length of time between new hat releases in TF2, each of which transforms the game into an entirely different (and indubitably worse) experience. ;)
22/07/2011 at 00:38 pakoito says:
You’re so effin funny you should get a show in History Channel. Asked for lenght of a game, gave it. If you want to say a Singleplayer last 46 hours because it’s 20 first run and 25 New Game+ and 1 hour for that time I roll a character I didn’t like go ahead.
Tits.
22/07/2011 at 02:49 P7uen says:
Come come, that was actually quite funny.
21/07/2011 at 17:07 Nalano says:
In a purely single-player game? 30 hours, at least. STALKER comes to mind.
Hopefully closer to 50, though, like the SPRPGs I play. Some, like Civ, of course, get hundreds, and were worth every penny many times over.
But yeah. Full price? 30.
Tired of the “Cinematic SP experience that’s shorter than two of the three LotR movies but costs the same as all three in IMAX with popcorn” business model.
21/07/2011 at 17:35 Nesetalis says:
ugh i hear you..
if a game doesn’t give me at least a couple weeks of enjoyment, I’ve wasted my 60$
if its short, it has to have replayability, to the point that i’ll play it over at least 4 or 5 times.. these fucking popcorn games need to vanish off the face of the earth.
Dungeon Siege III for instance, i finished it in 9 hours, doing almost everything, and i cant replay it, there’s nothing new, nothing interesting, no way i could have done it differently, it would just be the same tired story over again.
21/07/2011 at 22:03 Stephen Roberts says:
I recon a good 25 to 30 hours should be the benchmark for FPS. There needs to be a distinct arc of variation too. Take Crysis: Jungle, jungle, tank, alien stuff? oh fuck yeah alien stuff, frosty bit, vtol, base attack, jungle, car, (train? or was that warhead) aircraft carrier. There was huge whopping great bits that nicely arc to another area. Crysis 2 by comparison (apparently 11.5 hours on the ‘hardest’ setting) was just… men, men, cutscene, aliens, aliens, aliens, QTE, end. So the short duration was exacerbated by the homogeny of the action. Look at Prey! That’s a one sitting. (Meat walls, meat walls end).
Describe other games in this method, it’s fun.
Should I hit post? Oh too late!
21/07/2011 at 22:41 triple omega says:
I think the problem here is that devs are looking at games with multiplayer in them and determining their singleplayer value while ignoring the multiplayer. This really skews the results in favor of shorter singleplayer.
What they are also, strangely enough, failing to realize here is that a shorter game is relatively more expensive to make. The more you can reuse content(textures, models, etc.), the cheaper it’ll be relatively. You also have to pay the same for the engine regardless of length. So there is no way a 5 hour game will be half the price of a 10 hour game, more like 80-90% of the price.
Lastly I also think that the indies are really screwing up the value for money ratio for “AAA” developers. This is mostly because indies focus on gameplay first and fancies later or never. This means that even though they have something that can compete with the AAA’s on a gameplay level, they can put out way more content, as it is much cheaper to make. And to top it off the indies do all this while innovating.
Oh and gamers not wanting to play more then 10 hours? Ever heard or Civ V, the Witcher, any multiplayer shooter, or maybe a little thing called Minecraft?! They seriously can’t be THAT stupid…
21/07/2011 at 17:07 Nero says:
I don’t really look at the time versus cost that much. I’ve paid $5 for a game and played it for 40 hours and I’ve paid full price for a game that lasted 5-6 hours and I’ve had just as much enjoyment from them both. I’ve also stopped playing games that drag out a lot. I think around 40 hours is as much as I can take for a single player game.
21/07/2011 at 17:08 GHudston says:
For a £40 game, I expect to be entertained for about 8 hours. This isn’t a strict rule, by any means.
21/07/2011 at 17:09 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
I think a game should last from when you start playing it to when you finish playing it.
21/07/2011 at 18:09 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
That sounds pretty obvious, but you make a fair point. You wouldn’t want a game to just die half way through.
21/07/2011 at 21:08 LionsPhil says:
There are many games that hadn’t finished yet by the time I was bored of the mechanics. Most of them RPGs, in fact, the usual genre for pumping up “OVER A HUNDRED SQUILLION HOURS OF GAMEPLAY”.
It reaches the point where my time is more valuable than my money, and any kind of padding (not to be confused with downtime for pacing—see modern Half-Life vs Call of Duty) is the worst of game development sins.
21/07/2011 at 21:12 Noumenon says:
That sounds pretty obvious, but you make a fair point. You wouldn’t want a game to just die half way through.
Or to kill you before you’re done playing.
21/07/2011 at 21:12 Wizardry says:
@LionsPhil: I agree. Hence why I always focus on mechanically interesting CRPGs as opposed to story heavy and mechanically shallow CRPGs. Try out a few late 80s and early 90s CRPGs. They do things a lot better in my opinion.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 Terr says:
No full-priced game should be less than 10 hours, otherwise it’s just a rip-off. Personally I like my games to be as long as possible.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 Tei says:
It depends if the game is shit or good. If the game is fun, I want to play it longer.
22/07/2011 at 02:52 P7uen says:
I pumped something like 20 hours into Starship Troopers: TA and that was shit.
I love it, though.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 iou1username says:
In the Game of String, you win or you tie.
*cough*
To answer the question, about 6-7 hours+ for a full price game. I’d have to be something special for me to buy it and only get that much, though.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 Lacessit says:
I got into gaming through RPGs, I used to expect 80 hours of gameplay out of everything. Now I feel cheated under 30.
Unless it’s Portal 2. I love you, you little stunted midget.
21/07/2011 at 18:18 Vexing Vision says:
Yes. Including the midget-love.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 alexiskennedy says:
‘ Some are arguing the audience doesn’t have the patience to last for ten hours with a game.’
Can I just say, aaargh. I was on the panel, and that Gamespot piece took some quotes rather out of context. As a result I’ve been getting some nasty mail. Here’s a defensive blog post in case anyone here kicks off too: http://blog.failbettergames.com/post/The-things-we-did-and-didnt-say.aspx
21/07/2011 at 17:11 Wizardry says:
Uh oh. Dungeon crawlers had to be set in large dungeons else they would have been very short. If a game is situated in a single dungeon, it can’t be the size of a few rooms. “Simple tile-sets” were due to technological limitations. Specifically space limitations. Nothing more, really.
21/07/2011 at 23:23 dsi1 says:
Dragon Age 2?
22/07/2011 at 00:07 Wizardry says:
I doubt Dragon Age II uses “tile sets” as such like old 2D dungeon crawlers did.
21/07/2011 at 17:11 westyfield says:
It really depends on the game. 5 hours of generic manshooting leaves me feeling cheated, because you’ve probably not had much in the way of story (“ANDERSON! BAD GUYS OVER THERE, KILL THEY ASS!”) or different mechanics. 3 hours of Portal leaves me satisfied, because by the end you’re almost playing a different game than you were at the start.
30 hours of Mass Effect was almost too much; the sidequests were fairly repetitive and made up at least 8 hours of those 30. 30 hours of Mass Effect 2 felt just right, because it was 28 hours of the main game and 2 hours of sidequests (I only did a few because I couldn’t be bothered to scan every planet to find more).
I realise this is horribly vague, and I apologise most insincerely, but there’s really no objective length that is perfect for a game.
Edit: Ok, so Kdansky just came along and made my point, but better and more concisely. Right below this one.
21/07/2011 at 17:50 8-bit says:
I played ME2 for about 35 hours and at least ten of those were wasted on the resource collecting, I did most of the side quests too. seriously though, the whole game was made up from side quests with a main story that could be finished in under ten hours, I don’t know where you got 28 hours from.
anyway I think it depends on the type of game or what the developers are trying to do with it, generally though for me a shooter should be about ten hours, rpg thirty and up etc. I do think the reason why some games are getting shorter is because the developers want to make action movies rather than games, and not that people have short attention spans.
21/07/2011 at 18:04 jplayer01 says:
Funny. To me, it felt like the whole game was a series of side quests up until the Omega-4 relay was unlocked. Once I was through the relay, it finally felt like I was doing something important in the galaxy, instead of tending to a bunch of side characters I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about (Ashley? Grunt? Jacob? Miranda?).
So, side quests = 28 hours, main quest = 1 hour. I was sorely disappointed by ME2, in case that wasn’t clear.
21/07/2011 at 18:25 Nalano says:
Well, to be fair, western RPGs are always basically “You’re our only hope to save the world and time is of the essence!” and then attempt to distract you with 14 billion fetch quests.
That said, for me ME and ME2′s story-driven sidequests were worth the time (even Miranda’s and I hate Miranda), but the grindy “clear out this Blue Suns base” or “probe launched” crap was not.
21/07/2011 at 18:34 Wizardry says:
No they aren’t. Only people who haven’t played many western RPGs would say something as ridiculous as that.
21/07/2011 at 18:38 westyfield says:
When you guys say side quests, do you include the recruitment and loyalty missions in that? Because to me, they are part of the main story. They were fairly essential – whilst you could play the game by only recruiting the minimum number of squadmates and not doing any loyalty missions, it a) results in everyone dying, and b) smacks of intentionally missing out chunks of the game then complaining that it’s too short.
1: Starcraft 2 sucks! It only has two races! So boring.
2: There were 3 races.
1: Well, yeah, but I don’t play Zerg ’cause they’re rubbish.
2: *foamy mouthed with rage*
21/07/2011 at 18:59 Nalano says:
@Wizardry
You kidding me? Even in the trifecta of Interplay/Black Isle/Bioware RPGs, there are a looot of lazy, lazy NPCs who need you to clear out their basement for them.
21/07/2011 at 19:25 bwion says:
@Westyfield
I would actually say that the character recruitment/loyalty stuff *was* the main story in Mass Effect 2. It wasn’t a game about fighting the Collectors any more than The Canterbury Tales was a story about a trip to Canterbury.
21/07/2011 at 19:29 Nalano says:
@ bwion
Or Fallout being one about finding a water chip.
21/07/2011 at 19:32 Wizardry says:
@Nalan: You said “always”. And then you named a few developers.
21/07/2011 at 19:44 8-bit says:
a side quest is something, anything, that isn’t essential to the completion of the main story line. sure everyone dies if you don’t do them and they add a lot to the characters if you do, but you can still finish the game, so yes the loyalty missions were side quests.
a lot of rpgs have quests for recruiting characters and then later you might get another quest from them, but they also have a ton of other quests and probably a big old main quest too. hell, bioware have done that in almost every game they made, its just that most of the time they don’t base an entire game around optional quests to recruit party members.
21/07/2011 at 19:47 Nalano says:
@Wizardry
“Gawd, the lines are always so long!”
Turns of phrase. Whenever you hear hyperbole – especially on the internet – turn it down a few notches.
But really, when I think western RPG, I think Interplay/Black Isle/Bioware and, lately, Obsidian.
21/07/2011 at 20:07 Wizardry says:
I think of Origin Systems, Sir-Tech, New World Computing, Interplay and SSI. Maybe Westwood too.
21/07/2011 at 20:24 Nalano says:
Before my time, Wizardry. You’re talking 80s; I’m talking 90s.
21/07/2011 at 20:28 Wizardry says:
I’m talking 80s and 90s.
21/07/2011 at 20:41 TillEulenspiegel says:
Pfft. Even if you were too young to be playing games in the mid 90s (what, under 22ish?), that’s no excuse. Love em or hate em, there’s nothing like old CRPGs around today, they were a thing, and worth at least trying.
I mean, NetHack is still fundamentally a 1987 game, and you’ve played that, right? Right?
21/07/2011 at 20:50 Wizardry says:
Cut the sarcasm, TillEulenspiegel. Don’t you always bring up Darklands? That’s from 1992.
21/07/2011 at 23:52 Nalano says:
Well, I was born in 83, but I didn’t get into PC gaming real hardcore ’til 91 and into RPGs ’til IWD fell into my lap.
21/07/2011 at 17:13 Kdansky says:
Any length at all, provided I am well entertained. I have played 350 hours of TF2 for Orange Box Price (nothing, give or take), and 10 hours of Portal 2 for 45 €. I find both acceptable, because Portal 2 was insanely good. I feel ripped off by bad games, not short ones. Padding games with repetitive grind (Regards to Bioware) is a big offence.
Ironically, short and cheap indie games often have better content density and are less padded. I spend most of my gaming money there, nowadays.
Judging games for length makes about as much sense as judging books for page number. Utterly pointless. Kafka has written great 10-page stories, and GRRMartin has written a bazillion pages for Game of Thrones, and both are very much worth it.
To use someone else’s famous words: ‘Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ I prefer perfect games to long ones.
21/07/2011 at 17:19 Stochastic says:
I could hardly agree more.
21/07/2011 at 17:24 ChaosSmurf says:
Double agree. “Is it fun?” comes before “How long for?”
21/07/2011 at 17:30 Nalano says:
While I agree with the supposition that quality > quantity, less is not more. Less is less. More is more.
The problem is not whether the games are long, but that they’re padded. I loved every second of the single-player games I spent hundreds of hours in, and hated the thousands of hours I idled in MMOs.
But if I’m gonna pay fifty bucks a game, I want more than an evening’s entertainment.
21/07/2011 at 17:49 LennyLeonardo says:
@ Kdansky: yeah, this. Exceedingly well put.
Whenever I see people complain on message boards that a game is too short, it always sounds to me like “I didn’t like it.”
BUT – people are definitely influenced by the expectations set by the genre etc. and as a result the average playtime becomes a big part of the genre itself, which tends to shackle developers who have to stay at least familiar-ish to sell units.
Indies tend to get away with crossing or sidestepping genres more often than big titles and/so we don’t bring the same expectations to them, making playtime less of a big deal. It helps that they tend to be cheap too, and yeah, price is an issue even though it probably shouldn’t be.
Blahblah, in conclusion: 24 and 1/2 hours.
21/07/2011 at 18:00 Squirrelfanatic says:
I agree with Nalano. If a game is long but padded with stuff I don’t like doing or stuff that isn’t necessary (tastes are different after all), I won’t enjoy it, even if it is cheap. If a low priced game is well done and is able to keep me interested, I won’t be happy if it is too short. So yeah – the golden mean. Usually it is hard to judge if my tastes will be met by a game before I’ve tried – maybe even worked into – it.
But I will be much more willing to give a game a chance if it is priced reasonably. The same holds true for the opposite: If I have the chance to test the game before a purchase (demos for example…) and / or read really nice reviews / WITs / user reports I am willing to consider buying it a steeper price.
21/07/2011 at 18:23 cjlr says:
Well said, to all of the above.
21/07/2011 at 23:31 JerreyRough says:
If you like Civilization 4, then those famous words are spoken when researching some tech. I think its a fairly major tech. That’s where I remember it from anyway.
21/07/2011 at 17:13 MonkeyMonster says:
full price 20-25 I’d expect at least 5 long sessions of 2hours or thereabouts. If the story is better you can get away with less of course.
Haven’t paid over 20 quid for game for years though. Either pre-release mark downs or sales after.
21/07/2011 at 17:15 ResonanceCascade says:
Portal was perfect at 3-4 hours and priced accordingly. Doug Church’s LMNO-that-never-was seemed to be taking an interesting approach to length — 3-4 incredibly deep, focused hours that have a lot of replay value.
I don’t think game length is a one-size-fits all or even a once-size-fits-genre affair. A properly designed 4 hour FPS with tons of replay value *L4D* can be better than a 16 FPS that just drags on and on *Doom 3.*
21/07/2011 at 17:15 Bureaucrat says:
A game should last for exactly as long as it is fun. For a full-price retail game, I would hope that means at least 8-ish hours.
But I’ve played a lot more games that were too long (meaning, stretching past the point where the gameplay is fun) than I have games that were too short.
21/07/2011 at 17:16 ChaosSmurf says:
8 minimum, happy with 10 for your average FPS (assuming decent multiplayer).
If its got an open world or a ridiculous number of sidequests (i.e. “if it’s an RPG”) somewhere upwards of 24, around 30 is good.
RTS between the two for its singleplayer, SC2s was about right and that came out at about 12-15 I believe.
A lot of games these days don’t really have lengths though – what’s Team Fortress 2′s gameplay time? Street Fighter 4? Beat Hazard? Insert-MMO-here? I think we’re passed the point where the length of a game’s singleplayer portion is even a selling point any more (certainly outside RPGs). Multiplayer simply draws a bigger crowd with larger wallets.
21/07/2011 at 19:02 Jake says:
I would be forced to disagree about single player game play not being a driving force behind purchasing a game. I think the rise in indie games and developers is a definite sign of strong desire for good, well made single player games. Multiplayer has become the go to for big design houses because it’s easier…just get a lot of cool explosions, lots of gibbets, and cool weapons. Viola, we made money.
Single player is the only reason I buy games. Multiplayer games bore the living shit out of me. How many times can I get knifed by some dbag that thinks it’s cool to pick on the new guys? Give me single player.
And to answer the question about game length, simple answer. Give me an enjoyable game and I don’t care how long it is.
21/07/2011 at 19:26 Nalano says:
*knifes Jake*
21/07/2011 at 17:16 Stochastic says:
I think the whole concept of trying to quantify the value of a game based on its length is a bit silly, really. I think instead we should measure the value of a game based on the number and quality of memorable experiences which it produces. I remember a lot of people complaining about Portal 2 being too short for a full-price game. However, when I factor in all the “aha” and “whoa” moments from the story and co-op, as well as all the potential the game has in the way of future (free?) DLC and mods, I feel like it was a fair buy. Conversely, there are many games that may have over a hundred hours worth of content but are not interesting enough for me to feel sufficiently motivated to play through it all.
I think the value of the game as a holistic experience should also be considered. I have played hundreds of hours of Starcraft 2, but I have also invested several hundred hours of my spare time watching streams of players on Teamliquid, watching games from the GSL, NASL, IEM, Dreamhack, MLG and a bevy of smaller tournies. I have also spent a lot of time reading Teamliquid and Liquipedia and watching Day9 dailies. Should all this value, which I obtained outside the confines of Starcraft 2 itself, be counted as part of the entire package or altogether separate?
21/07/2011 at 20:28 Kadayi says:
Agreed. I wrung something like 30 hours out of Portal 2 playing the SP, the SP with commentary, & the co-op through, as well as getting a bunch of the more challenging co-op achievements like ‘Still alive’ & ‘Party of three’. Money well spent and as you say a tonne of great memories as well.
21/07/2011 at 17:17 pakoito says:
Just want to clarify what ‘grind’ is. I mean gring in the good sense, the Disgaea-Monster Hunter-MMO one, where grinding is for the sake of grinding.
If you’re padding your game with meaningless random fights or stupid level caps I’ll just quit playing at once.
21/07/2011 at 17:17 tikey says:
Slightly off-topic, but I’ve recently played Jed Knight on steam and the clocks says I’ve finished it in around seven hours. I don’t know if the steam counter is wrong (very well could be) or we remember old games to be longer than they really were.
21/07/2011 at 17:17 killerkerara says:
Personally, I expect at least one hour of strong, immersive gameplay for every $3 I spend on a game. If a game is going to cost me $60, then it had better have at least 20 hours of good gameplay, or I’ll have to wait for a good Steam sale.
A game such as Starcraft 2 that cost me $60 only had about a 10 hour campaign for me, but I have spent enough time replaying the campaign in different ways, as well as endless hours in multiplayer and on custom maps for me to have gotten my money’s worth.
21/07/2011 at 17:18 jezcentral says:
Although my younger self would want me put against a wall and shot, come the revolution, I prefer shorter games. MW2′s SP was a nice length, but I waited until a Steam sale to buy it, so I didn’t have to pay the full price, which I probably couldn’t justify to myself.
I’m at a stage, now, where I can more or less buy any game I want, when I want, which wasn’t the case when I was younger. I still put 100 hours plus into some games, like Left4Dead 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Borderlands and Just Cause 2, but these are the exception, rather than the rule. This is in stark contrast to putting in thousands of hours into Master Of Orion 2, because it was the only game I could afford.
Now I can buy loads, I want to experience them as whole things, not just play a few hours, and leave them unfinished, which is both unfair to the devs who want to show me their whole product, and leaves a gaping wound in my completion-fetish..
That said, if Deus Ex: HR is not longer than 3000 hours, and utterly life-changing, I shall cry.
21/07/2011 at 17:20 coffeetable says:
For a full-price game? A weekend’s worth of solid gaming (about 20 hours). I only buy AAA titles nowadays to de-stress at the end of major projects, with the idea of installing on the Friday night and returning to undistracted productivity come Monday morning.
21/07/2011 at 17:20 Teronfel says:
over 9000 (seconds)
21/07/2011 at 17:59 Zelius says:
So two and a half hours? That’s not a whole lot.
21/07/2011 at 17:21 Cooper says:
Complete Sniper: Ghost Warrior last night.
Total playing time? 4 hours, 30 mins.
Perfect.
For that kind of game.
I got to the start of Chapter 4 in Dead Space too. Took me about an hour a chapter. Wondered how long it was, walkthrough suggests 12 chapters. Thought “I can’t be botherred to play it for that long”
Then again, something like Stalker, because it’s a survival and exploration game, needs to be long.
So, basically – it depends on the game. Corridor shooters should never be more than 5 hours.
21/07/2011 at 18:29 Nalano says:
By that token, corridor shooters should never cost more than ten bucks.
21/07/2011 at 17:23 elmuerte says:
A game should not be much longer than it is enjoyable to play. So, keep the tedious padding to a minimum.
And then you price the game based on the amount of fun. A 50 euro priced game should really contain 10 hours of “game” (of which most of it should be fun).
21/07/2011 at 17:23 dudeglove says:
Nowadays, digital distribution is screwing with this whole cost-benefit ratio. Games like Oblivion are going for peanuts on Steam, whereas boxed copies of Bulletstorm set back $60 straight up.
Rather, if I start to notice a game make me backtrack just that *little* bit too much, that’s a bad sign right there that the game is too damn long by virtue of the fact that it’s being artificially lengthened by simply flipping it upside down.
21/07/2011 at 17:23 Vagrant says:
My shelf / steam library is full of games I’ve only put 4-6 hours into. People say they want longer games, but statistics show most people don’t actually play to the end. Yay for achievements giving developers metrics.
Just imagine how great games could be if they were shorter, removed all that useless fluff in the middle, and focused on meaningful content. Stories could be more cohesive and better paced, no more mundane fetch quests, and we’d be able to complete 10 games in the time it takes us to halfway complete one!
4 hours of high production value would be a sweet spot for me. A drop in price would be nice, too. Many of my favorite games can be done in under an hour (Mirror’s Edge, Super Metroid, a round of Battlefield).
22/07/2011 at 02:07 Saul says:
This. Cut the padding. There’s nothing more boring than repetitive combat, and RPGs are the worst offenders.
I’ll add that I’d much rather see shorter games with a lot more player choice, so that several replays are possible, over linear games that go on and on and on.
22/07/2011 at 16:17 Wizardry says:
They aren’t the worst offenders. Shooters are.
21/07/2011 at 17:24 Cooper says:
Also, on the cinema ticket / coffee metric.
A better one is pints of beer.
A pint of beer is not defined by the amount of time it would take you to drink it, but by how much fun you’d have over the cours of one, two, three or 15…
So a cheap game should provide as much entertainment as drinks after work. A full-retail price game should provide as much entertainment as the best part of a binge session.
As such, I often wait for games to come down in price…
21/07/2011 at 18:35 Nalano says:
Plonking $50 in a bar carries with it a number of benefits that plonking $50 on a corridor shooter does not offer, including but not limited to:
- Spending money on local businesses.
- Speaking with real people who aren’t mouth-breathing twats (mostly).
- The act of going outside and pretending you have a social life.
- The act of getting drunk in a socially-acceptable manner (mostly).
- Real live mammaries with ultra-realistic jiggle physics! (couldn’t resist.)
21/07/2011 at 18:56 Cooper says:
Exactly.
Why spend £30 on a mediocre but not bad corridor shooter, when you could save the money and spend it on getting pissed along with all the above mentioned pros of getting pissed.
Just wait for the mediocre game to cost a pint or two…
21/07/2011 at 17:24 The Innocent says:
Hm, this is tricky. I’d say that a pure shooter (I’m thinking Call of Honor-types here, which are literally nothing but shooting) should last between 5 and 10 hours, while shooters with RPG or exploration bits (Deus Ex, Far Cry, etc) should be around 20-40.
I do like it when RPGs are advertised as being 100+ hours long, even though that usually means they’re 60-80 hours long. Games like Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age: Origins, Skyrim (I hope!) are great when they’re expansive. But then there’s a rather large recent exception: The Witcher 2 wasn’t that long, and I found its length perfect. Maybe because it was intensely narrative-driven rather than trying to be open.
Just Cause 2 was great as well: the central story could be finished in 10 hours if you wanted, but I’ve played over 100 hours in that game just dinking around, and I’m only 75% finished with it.
So yes, very hard to gauge. Probably I’d say, “Your game should be as long as it can be before becoming boring.” Games like Call of Duty can’t really stand to be any longer (in my opinion), because they’d get immeasurably dull, whereas open-worlds where I’m allowed to dictate what I’m doing can always afford to have a bit more over the next hill.
21/07/2011 at 17:26 Grayvern says:
Games should be as long as they need to be and developers should have enough faith in their audience to put them out at whatever length that is.
It saddens me that developers have such a low view of their audience.
21/07/2011 at 17:26 wccrawford says:
If I get below $2/hr, I get upset.
However, as I replied elsewhere, they’re asking the wrong question.
They note that some people don’t finish the game, and that makes them think the game is too long. In reality, they don’t finish the game because it -bored them-. A game is worth playing as long as it keeps you engaged. For some games, that means quitting 10 hours in, and others it means replaying it hundreds or even thousands of times. Measuring games in hours never made sense, since not everyone finds the same things enjoyable. A 100-hour-long game that you quit playing 2 hours in is just as bad as a game that you completely in 2 hours and don’t feel like playing again. At least, for the customer.
For the company, the 100-hour game cost a lot more money to produce!
All of Bethesda’s latest games have seen me spend upwards of 200 hours on them. They have tremendous value for the money. Of course, not everyone feels that way. Others think Pseudo-military Warfare 63 and Quarterbacking For The Money 89 have hundreds of hours of fun, where I think they have about 5, tops.
21/07/2011 at 17:28 nofing says:
I don’t think there is a “too long”, at least not, as long as the game has new things to offer and doesn’t just send more and more filler and grinding stuff your way.
I think 8-12 hours would be a good lenght for singleplayer games, ideally with some replay value (with other character or different skill paths)
And I would actually prefer, if developers would only make singplayer games OR multiplayer games (like for example Valve does it) and if they do want to do both, then have two different studios, make two different games on the same engine and sell them separately.
21/07/2011 at 17:28 Evernight says:
I have a system – it might be stupid but I have one in my head. For me there are many factors for a game to be “good” ONE of those factors is “value”
To factor value I do something very simple:
$1 per hour played.
$40 game? I would expect to spend 40 hours playing it for it to get the “value” factor
I bought Just Cause 2 for $25 on Steam sale…. I have spent 50 hours in it. Lots of value!
I spent $40 on portal 2 …. I spent 8 hours in it. Not so much value.
Does this mean that the game was bad? No. Just that it didn’t mean the value factor. Story, mechanics, graphics etc are all other factors.
So if you are going to sell me a game for $50 I should expect to spend 50 hours playing it, replaying it, multiplayering it, etc.
Thats just me.
21/07/2011 at 17:29 MiniMatt says:
Just glanced at Steam – I have 499 hours in Civ 5 and 160 hours in New Vegas (and haven’t even started any DLC in that yet).
Too short would be, hmm, your right it’s genre specific but I’d say anything less than 10 hours regardless of genre is likely going to make me a tad grumpy (heavily multiplayer focused games get a let off here if their single player is a bit shorter, or non-existent).
Too long – don’t think there’s such a thing. I’ll play it while I’m enjoying playing it, and if I don’t finish it first that’s fine too.
21/07/2011 at 17:29 Jason Moyer says:
I don’t really judge games on length. A good game will leave me wanting more no matter how long it is, and a bad one will have me rushing to finish it or just uninstalling it halfway through. I’d pay $60 for a good 2-4 hour game if it holds that peak of awesomeness from beginning to end.
21/07/2011 at 17:33 Colthor says:
I don’t tend to like your linear, “story-based”, desperately-trying-to-be-a-film games much, and when I get them cheap just to see what the fuss is about there’s not much chance I’ll finish them. Gears of War would need a far better story as a carrot before I’d care enough to keep slogging through the actual, tedious game.
So having boxes to hide behind for three times as long wouldn’t be better value, for me at least.
I guess, therefore, that it depends on how much I’m enjoying the game. I was happy to play Dragon Age for 100 hours, and was sad that it was over (although it was obviously amazing value for money, I wasn’t sad about paying twenty-five quid for it).
But strategy games, games with a decent world to explore (or a random generator), simulations and so on will mean you can play them until you get bored or distracted by something else, so for them “how long they are” is not really relevant. It’s their mechanics that are important.
21/07/2011 at 17:33 CaspianRoach says:
Thing is, it’s hard for FPS to constantly throw something new on you, because even the smartest dev can only do so few scenarios themes “you shoot people”. After a while it gets boring. If the game is not over by the moment you’re bored, that’s not a good game!
21/07/2011 at 17:35 HelderPinto says:
This comment reminds me of bioshock, genius game in almost all aspects but it drags too much.. it should have been 5 hours or more shorter.
21/07/2011 at 20:19 Nick says:
never felt bored in System Shock 2, aside from the many section.
Bioshock as boring because the shooting was lame and the enemies were too.
21/07/2011 at 17:34 HelderPinto says:
MGS games are 20 / 24 hours and are perfect.
DeusEx is also 20/25 hours.
If it’s a game like Crysis 2, Uncharted 2, etc, 10 hours is spot on.
21/07/2011 at 18:58 MattM says:
As a pretty novice gamer I beat MGS 2 in about 10 hours, on a second play though I skipped cut-scenes and finished in under 5.
21/07/2011 at 17:36 Duke of Chutney says:
i generally work on a £1 per hour of entertainment. This is a loose rule i apply to all games. The hour should be an hour of being engaged in the game, so slow strategy games like the paradox games i work at something like £1 per every two or three hours. So most modern FPS fail my standard but i never pay RRP, i usually pick up games 6 months later in a sale. Most indies work quite well under this system. A game can be short if its good enough to warrent replay. Ive played Deus Ex 1 through 15 times or more, HL2 about 6 times through etc.
21/07/2011 at 17:39 dadioflex says:
I spent about two hours lost in one particular Two Worlds 2 tomb.
21/07/2011 at 17:41 TheIronSky says:
As far as a linear campaign, Mass Effect 1 and 2 had it about right when it took approximately 20-30 hours to complete everything, including all the side quests. There were enough focused stories and interesting missions that even on the “grinding,” sorts of missions (especially those vehicle sections in Mass Effect 1) there were usually moments of triumph. As far as RPGs go, well, I still play Oblivion, and I’ve probably logged about 150 hours on that game in total, across several playthroughs. Same with Borderlands. For the most part, the grinding/looting is part of the fun in those games, so I don’t mind it. It’s the freedom that allows you to take a break from the repetitiveness (especially in Oblivion) and do whatever you want. That game was certainly worth the $50 I paid for it. On the other hand, Portal 2, while the campaign was incredibly fun and had one of the best endings in a Valve game to date (Looking at you, L4D) it had a surprisingly short and fairly easy campaign. None of the puzzles were really that difficult, and I beat the whole thing in one night in about 7 hours. Sure, I played it again afterwards, but the overall length was just unsatisfying. Was it worth the money? If it was single-player alone, probably not, but with the co-op that I have yet to explore? It might be worth it.
21/07/2011 at 17:41 Serious J says:
It depends on the game, but I’m not happy unless the base game provided at least 12 hours of entertainment, and provided some sort of modding that extends that amount by a great deal more.
21/07/2011 at 17:42 Sky says:
For a story driven shooter or an action-adventure type game, at least 10 hours.
For pure fun shooters(like Bulletstorm) 5-6 hours is enough. It gets boring afterwards.
For RPG’s, at least 25, for JRPG’s longer than every dick(converted to hours) in the world, for Diablo clones, infinity.
For less than 10$ games, i don’t care how long they are, being beautiful is enough.
21/07/2011 at 17:44 Maykael says:
I think my expectations vary from genre to genre.
RTS: Single-player – about 20-30 hours; Multi – whatevs.. needs to be good.
TBS: In my experience, a good TBS (Total War, Civ, JA2 etc.), be it large scale or small scale, can potentially mean hundreds of hours of fun. The wealth of the mechanics is what matters here. This goes for puzzle games as well.
Adventure: 20 hours, but not if it means crappy meaningless puzzles that get in the way of the story.
RPG: I don’t want to be an asshole and say that 70 hours + or GTFO, because I’d be cutting off games that I really like (Mass Effect 1, The Witcher 2), but the best part of an RPG for me is exploration and if one manages to offer that in 40 hours good for them (Risen for example). I felt a bit underwhelmed by The Witcher 2 with respect to exploration. Beautiful environments, but not much to see, as the game was focusing on its story. Still felt it was a bit short for 45 fucking euro, something I’ve not felt with regard to the first one.
FPS: Single – About 10 I’d reckon, though if you’re Half Life 2, you can do less, Multi – depends on the game.
There’s lots more to say, as hours=money=entertainment is not a mathematical equation, obviously, but these are my expectations going in blind, though they may vary depending on the franchise or developer as well.
21/07/2011 at 17:45 Iain_1986 says:
If you’re sitting there clock watching, its obviously not grabbed your attention enough.
Regardless of length, if its entertained me and I feel satisfied then thats all that matters, and thats completely subjective on a case by case basis, there’s no exact forumla for me to grade a game against before I buy it.
21/07/2011 at 17:48 Greg Wild says:
Any less than 10 hours is a travesty.
21/07/2011 at 17:49 Icarus says:
I think I consider cost against enjoyment more than cost against time. Assuming they both cost the same amount, I’d rather play an eight hour game that was pretty consistently enjoyable (War for Cybertron), than a forty-hour game that had an incredible amount of filler, tedium and draggy-outy bits (Oblivion).
That said, though, I do expect a certain amount of content for my money. I’m not going to pay £30 on a game that I can complete in a day and never touch again. If I spend £30 on a game, I expect it to last me a good amount of time- Assassin’s Creed 2 would be a good example of a game I’d be happy spending £30 on. Going by the Steam tracker, it lasted me about 35 hours (probably more since Steam playtime tracking is broken; I’d estimate closer to 40 or 45 hours, with ample breaks in between, which is roughly what I spent on Mass Effect 2) to complete the main story line as well as all the Templar bases and Assassin tombs.
21/07/2011 at 17:50 Nick says:
If its £30+ for a 4-5 hour game, I won’t be happy and won’t buy it if I find out beforehand.
21/07/2011 at 17:51 starclaws says:
Good multiplayer games can get me 1000 hours easily. If a decent single player game can’t get me at least 10+ hours of game play in first play through then it isn’t even worth all the overpricing when I am still enjoying 15 year old multiplayer games.
And I semi speed run everything. So that 10+ hours is tough to achieve. But games aren’t even HALF that generally. Games can never be too long. Depending on how the game is constructed and if it isn’t tedious grind-fest and repetition. Then there’s no way it could be too long. The open world style games could hold me strong literally for years if they develop the concept properly and build it large enough. Take Elderscrolls and mix in random generated humongous world. Ill give you $60.
As for the arguing that 10 hours is too long? Quit playing devil’s advocate. If you don’t spend more than 10 hours a half-year gaming but spend $60 on a brand new game? You should reconsider where you spend your money on entertainment. Like all these idiots that buy movies just to have them on a shelf doing jack shit but collecting dust. If you buy games. Play them. Don’t come crying when you have the attention span of a larva and the memory of a dead badger saying 10 hours is too long.
21/07/2011 at 17:52 Rush Ton says:
I am not sure playtime per dollar is nescissarily the best metric but would rather go for something along the lines of idea’s per dollar with Ideas ranging from new mechanics to new environments to new enemy types. obviously this is a little fuzzy and hard to quantify but can suggest why portal while very short seemed worth it because every chamber was packed with a new component or a new way of using your portals or a new clever gag whilst something like dragon age 2 with its reuse of environments and lazy spawning enemies seems like much poorer value despite its significantly longer playtime.
21/07/2011 at 17:52 oceanclub says:
I’m one of those crazy people who thinks, on the whole, many games are just too damn long and have too much filler. I have a limited amount of time and want to experience as many games as possible. If _the main plot_ (that’s a caveat) of a games takes 100 hours (hello Dragon Age), that’s simply a huge chunk of my time that could have been spent on other things. I mean, I could watch the entire works of Francois Truffaut and Jean Cocteau in that time. I could be a French film genius!
I put in the caveat above since there are games like Oblivion that I _did_ spent 100 hours (probably more at) but that was _after_ the main plot was over. I kept playing because I enjoyed – I didn’t feel coerced to simply keep going to see the ending. I’ve no problem with that way of extending a game – DLC or side quests after the main quest is over. Or even a game like HL2, which I replayed recently, realise was pretty long, but whose gameplay and settings are still so varied (even after you’ve already played it) that time whizzes by.
All in all, I do think games are pretty good value for money. I mean, DVDs on release are, say, €15 or €20 euro, for a movie that, even if you’re a nut, will possibly only watch a few times. PC games on release these days are rarely more than €30 (cheapest price, say online retail).
P.
21/07/2011 at 19:05 cjlr says:
100 hours? For Dragon Age?
The same dragon age at which I put in a near-completionist first run at about 40 hours?
Which only goes to show that ‘length’ is very subjective, on top of all else.
21/07/2011 at 20:46 Kadayi says:
@cjlr
40 hours? Unless you were skipping a tonne of dialogue and side quests I find that hard to believe tbh (don’t trust Steams time record either, because if you alt- tab out of a game it stops counting that session). Even the power gamers I know spent a good 60 – 70 hours on it. Personally with the DLC and a couple of restarts (I like to try things out differently) I clocked over 200 hours.
22/07/2011 at 01:13 Valvarexart says:
It says on your character page or somewhere like that. I did it in 58 hours, and I wasn’t skipping or rushing anything. Might not have done EVERYTHING, mind, but I did a complete normal play-through. And it was long enough for me, thank you. I cannot fathom how you endured 200 hours.
21/07/2011 at 17:52 gallardo1 says:
Deus Ex 1 is my touchstone: it used to be my perfect length but now it would be impossible to complete in a reasonable timeframe.
This over-abundance of titles has its weight since I want to try more or less everything, and when it comes to FPS, I prefer a concise experience.
I would be happy with a 4-6 hours fps but with lowered price, with the possibility of further content within 1-2 months max.
Anyway, I feel like I could play longer games if they can maintan the interest for all their length.
21/07/2011 at 21:19 Inglourious Badger says:
So true! Along with getting everything else right, Deus Ex’s length was spot on. 20-odd hours I’d say per playthrough.
21/07/2011 at 17:53 Nidokoenig says:
A game has to have at least ten hours of content for me to feel like £30 is worth it. Really, they’re competing against me deciding to play another twenty hours of Morrowind, X-Com, Dorf Fort or Ouendan, or actually playing some of 200 or more games I’ve got through Steam sales, GOG, indie bundles and freeware stuff, to say nothing of my PS2, GCN and Wii backlog.
Any game that is still holding my interest and still making me feel like I’m learning and improving(not levelling up, my personal skill at the game) after twenty hours is amazing, and probably something I’m going to come back to again, or, like Plants vs Zombies, something I’m definitively done with forever.
21/07/2011 at 17:53 Hammelbamf says:
Depends on genre and price.
I’m not paying 59 bucks for a 8 hour shooter that could’ve easily been an addon the the previous title in that series. For 20 I may be in.
But games likes Deus Ex 3 and the Mass Effect Series I wanna spend at least 20 hours in and am willing to pay the “normal” price. Or innovative projects, like Portal, regardless of their length.
21/07/2011 at 17:54 HeavyStorm says:
Know what? I don’t give a f@@k about how long it lasts. If the game is good, it’s good. I’ve never complained about Portal 1 being short. I don’t complain about The Witcher being long.
If a game is too long and gets “un-fun” because of it, fuck, I want it shorter. If it’s so small that it seems to me the plot is lacking or there is potential to be realized but wasn’t, I will be mad as well.
But I don’t think we should be relating duration to money, games are not whores.
21/07/2011 at 17:56 mod the world says:
As i still desperately try to finish The Witcher 1 in my spare spare time, i got a good feeling about how long is too long. Steam says i played it for 37 hours and i got the feeling of complete saturation at about 30 hours. So 30 hours is my maximum i suppose.
On the other hand, Portal 2 felt way too short, 7 hours of (admittedly excellent) gameplay is just not enough for 50€.
21/07/2011 at 17:56 Vandelay says:
I’m a bit of a completionist; I like to finish my games. Now that I earn money and can buy any game I want, but have far less time to play them in, shorter games are generally preferable.
As others have said, it does depend on the type of game and what it hopes to achieve. For example, Portal 2 was a good length for what was effectively a comedy game; Crysis 2 was about the right length for a corridor shooter; The Witcher 2 was a very good length for a heavily story driven RPG (the first less so.) When it comes to games by Bethesda or similar, the main quests are generally not the draw, so it is more a case of when I get bored, without any compulsion to finish.
21/07/2011 at 17:56 Dr_Nick says:
If it’s a bad game, I’m obviously not going to waste more than a couple of hours on it.
“Sorry devs, guess you’ll have to try harder.”
21/07/2011 at 17:59 RagingLion says:
There were some really good points in the main article btw. So as for me:
- First off £25 is my upper limit for any game, even the ones I really want.
- I am dissuaded from buying games that will require too much time investment but those aren’t necessarily pure single-player: e.g. Star Craft 2; Civ 5; Oblivion or Skyrim.
- I want quality not just length, but certain depths of emotions which I like games to provoke can’t be tapped into by shorter length games; e.g. feeling like you’ve been on a journey or progressed as a character/part of a group of people can only happen in longer games convincingly.
- Given the above, I like immersive stories to be 15-25+ hours long for the sake of quality – nothing to do with price.
- If there’s a small indie game of less than 2 hours length, say, then I’d find it hard to pay more than £5 for that at the most though it’d depend how much I was really excited by it.
- Steam sales and subsequent games backlog has increased the quality/£ I need game to prove in order to convince me to buy it now (e.g. I bought Mass Effect 2 and AC2 for £10).
Edit:
- Shorter game experiences are great though and I’d like to see a greater number of quality 3-6 hour offerings – I’d probably pay £5-15 for such games varying wildly based on quality and personal interest.
21/07/2011 at 17:59 Warlokk says:
If a game is less than 12 hours long in single-player, I will not pay full price for it, simple as that. The only exceptions to this are multiplayer-focused games like the Battlefield series, which I can get many hours of enjoyment out of.
21/07/2011 at 18:01 godwin says:
It depends on the work. So the answer would be: however long it needs to be. Whatever it takes for the intention to be communicated and experienced. You then build the work, the game, towards that. So it could be two hours, or 200 hours. There shouldn’t be a system of strict quantifiable criteria for “what it should be”, and especially not one that’s pegged to genre definitions. Length is not an indication of how good the experience was, rather, that is decided by the individual and her contextual experiences.
21/07/2011 at 18:02 GrandmaFunk says:
well if I enjoy a game, I rarely play it for less than 40 hours…so I’d assume the opposite is true.
But I tend to find one game I like and play only that for months on end.
21/07/2011 at 18:02 der jester says:
“Fights will go on as long as they have to.”
I typically go on the metric of cinema hours and game hours, but I realize that’s unfair. I still use it to rationalize purchases and explain paying for an MMO. If I ever drop below X hours of playing an MMO I cancel the sub.
I don’t think it’s fair to lump any games together and say “This is ok in this scenario.” in SPRPGs having to fight the same five monsters for several hours to progress past the next set of challenges is crap. The game should be structured to have minimal grind and account for various levels of character powers, but also offer non-required challenges for people that obsessively level. FFVII comes to mind as a game that scaled the story well with level but also had absurd challenges that required grinding your heart out.
I think it’s easy to know if a game is too short or two long as a player. Portal was short, but not too short. It was a full experience that scaled it’s challenge through out the game. STALKER did the same on a longer scale. Weapons and armor had constant improvement, along with finding artifacts and exploring new areas. The player has to be engaged throughout the experience.
Halo 1 would be an example that pushed the edge of tolerance. Some levels were incredibly repetitive and the difficulty scaled oddly. The Library was a bullshit grind that took way to long and way too difficult compared to the levels both before and after it.
Call of Duty is not worth it to me personally because I don’t like the multiplayer that much. I don’t feel invested in the multiplayer and frequent player death is unsatisfying to me. TF2 I could play for days on end, primarily because I’m a coward and hide behind Heavies as a Medic.
I think every game and type has a sweet spot that suits it. While a movie price per hour compared to a game is a decent rule of thumb, it’s certainly not law by any means.
21/07/2011 at 18:05 DarkByke says:
I need to finish a game in a single sitting (4-5hrs) otherwise there’s too many distractions of life. I go to work for 12hr shifts and by that time I’ve forgotten everything in the games storyline… So I gotta restart from beginning again. Plus food, plus telephone, plus….
Portal 2 keeps popping up in this topic so I’ll add. I took 12 hrs to complete. I like exploring, looking at things, taking in the visuals and lighting. I like the art.
21/07/2011 at 18:08 Dave Mongoose says:
I’ve got quite broad tastes in games, playing FPSs, RPGs, adventures, some strategy titles, and a bunch of indie undefineables… so a game that’s longer than it needs to be is a bad thing in that it eats into my time to play other games.
As it is I’ve got an ever increasing list of games in my ‘to play’ list (Fallout New Vegas, DoW2: Retribution, Witcher 2.. and that’s just scratching the surface).
21/07/2011 at 18:11 wiper says:
If I were to narrow it down, I’d say somewhere between one and one-hundred hours. Yes, that sounds about right.
21/07/2011 at 18:11 airtekh says:
Quality is more important to me than quantity. If I get both, then that’s fantastic.
I’ve spent 30 hours in games I don’t really like and a handful of hours in games that I really enjoyed, but have had very little replay value.
21/07/2011 at 18:15 VileThings says:
When it comes to purely numerical terms I’d say that I want at least one hour of game time for every Euro I invest, although with current games it’s more like two Euros for every gaming hour, higher or lower depending on the genre. However some games offer a shorter, yet more satisfying gaming experience (like Portal 2) while others stretch out the time you spend in the game without actually doing anything worthwhile (I’m looking at you, Far Cry 2).
To me a really good game is one with a high replay value. I hate it when I play through a game, then think “well, that’s that” and deinstall it because it doesn’t offer me anything anymore, apart from another playthrough in several months/years.
22/07/2011 at 04:30 MattM says:
Cutting out about 30-40% of Far Cry 2 would have made it a better game. Way too many missions were just copy-pasta and I was so relieved to reach the end.
21/07/2011 at 18:17 Fumarole says:
Everyone knows it’s not the length but the girth that matters.
21/07/2011 at 18:21 Radiant says:
Developers!
PACE YOUR GAMES.
If you want to make a movie then make a fucking movie.
COD Blops I’m looking at you.
Although, the exact length of the perfect game is skewed for me.
Currently in a very deep Witcher 2 hole.
I spent 30 minutes last night fucking every whore in Flotsam.
I’m the Shabba Ranks of RPGs right now.
21/07/2011 at 18:27 ssbowers says:
30. I want to shoot from first person perspective for 30 hours.
21/07/2011 at 19:11 Frank says:
Ha! When you say it like that…
21/07/2011 at 18:31 Leandro says:
Te answer is very dependant on the genre. RPG-wise, I felt Mass Effect was a bit short, for example, but I was satisfied with Dragon Age. I did not buy Divinity 2: Ego Draconis because I heard it’s very time consuming and I did not want to tire and leave it unfinished, but I loved Oblivion’s length.
On the other hand, I feel OK spending a much bigger amount of time on neverending games like Galactic Civilizations 2, Civ V, Mount & Blade and Football Manager, I don’t know why.
For FPS, Call of Duties are too short, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 and Bioshock are perfect in length.
21/07/2011 at 18:40 Nalano says:
I wouldn’t call Divinity 2 time-consuming. Combat-heavy, sure, but not overly time-consuming.
21/07/2011 at 18:37 somedude says:
I think if you have a linear-progression game, then game time is important, due to the case that once you’ve gone down that corridor, there’s not often much of an incentive to do it over again. Therefore, if your game is a 6-hour thing that you only touch once, I’m not going to touch it unless it’s dirt cheap. On the other hand, if it’s an open-world game, you can have a scripted “plot” portion of the game that’s essentially nonexistent and I’ll be happy to create tens of hours of fun on my own. So, I suppose it’s variable, but if you’re going to make games like they’re movies (linear, cinematic-heavy, etc.), then a game that charges the same as 4 or 5 movie tickets should have a roughly equivalent length of entertainment as far as I’m concerned. (or, forget about that game style and just make insane open-world games from now on, I’d be perfectly fine with that :)
21/07/2011 at 18:39 mollemannen says:
i think you should get a theoretical infinite time for the money spent. i didn’t get dragon age 2 because just knowing i had to spend 40-50 hours minimum put me off.
21/07/2011 at 18:41 sinelnic says:
Slightly OT, but I believe one thing is “core gameplay” and another is “story”, obviously, but sometimes it’s clear that gameplay could go on forever were it not for the necessary end the developer must put to the story. While sometimes gameplay would not be fun for even a minute were it not for the story.
So in many cases multiplayer adresses that, continuing the “core gameplay” beyond the story, but requiring other humans to fill the “inexpectedness” of the gameplay.
I believe a great game would have a core gameplay fun enough to come back and back again, and a play mode that allowed for that, while still packing a great story for the initial at least 8-10 hrs of gameplay.
As an example, Psychonauts had a great story you could finish straight away in [I forgot how many hours] but you could still enjoy the fun and fluid gameplay and gameworld by coming back to the various scenarios to collect collectible stuff.
In some special cases though, where the developers are trying for something Higher than my mere money, say, Pathologic, I’m cool if the gameplay lasts whatever they feel like, since it’s truly part of the intended Experience.
21/07/2011 at 18:52 Carra says:
If it’s a great game it can’t last long enough. If it’s shitty it can’t be over too soon
21/07/2011 at 18:57 soulblur says:
I rarely buy games at £40. The only ones I would really consider doing so for would be roleplaying epics like Skyrim or the GTAs, where I fully anticipate around a hundred hours of play. Is that unfair? Maybe. I’m generally happy spending £10 on a game which gives me 6 or so hours of good fun. But Sims Medieval, for example, felt like poor value for money when I bought it full price.
However, in console land, I tend to rent a lot of games now. When the game seems good, but the length isn’t there. Much cheaper through Lovefilm.
21/07/2011 at 18:58 Om says:
While I make an exception for exceptionally well crafted games (looking at you Portal 2), as a rule I expect to get a minimum of 20hrs from a game
21/07/2011 at 19:00 NickThatCajunMayo says:
Its just that more and more games today are focused on multiplayer gameplay and not the story. Another thing that @tikey said was that older games seem a bit longer, yes they do, games like Doom 3 I spent much more time on than say MW2 or Homefront, but I really think since Cod4 all FPS games have lost many singleplayer hours and just focused on multiplayer. But I have to admit STALKER is a big exception, on one playthrough of Call of Pripyat I spent 114 hours, the multiplayer was fun too, but laggy as hell since all the servers are in Europe, and on SoC I spent 62 hours. But now since the blunder of homefront, which luckly I got Metro 2033 out of, any game that advertises its singleplayer has to have a campaign longer than Half-Life 2
21/07/2011 at 19:02 MattW says:
Full price, probably five hours minimum.
(There’s no linear relationship between value and length though, obv. A game should go on for as long as its concepts can hold up for. Portal 1 was the right length for its concepts. Portal 2 was probably too long. The biggest length-related crime though for me is a game which doesn’t properly signal how near the end you are. Unexpected endings, and unexpected extra chapters, are far bigger crimes for me than “being too short”.
Also, as I get older, I find myself with more money to spend on games and less time to play them. One wonders what the correlation between complaining about game length and actually paying for games is.)
21/07/2011 at 19:03 Dominic White says:
That OMM article is all the funnier because as short as Max Payne 1 seemed at the time, I completed Max Payne 2 in about 4 hours. That’s cutscenes and deaths included. I was so glad I’d borrowed a friends copy, because I would have felt so ripped off if I’d paid full price for that.
It really is a function of price these days, though. At $5-10, you can get away with being 2-4 hours long. If I’m putting down a full $50, it had better be 12 hours or longer, though, or if it’s a shorter game, then it needs serious replay value. I was fine paying £30 for Vanquish because while it may be 6-7 hours long for a single playthrough, it’s designed to be played at least two or three times if you want to experience everything.
21/07/2011 at 19:05 BobsLawnService says:
I’m not too worried about the temporal length of a game. As long as there is no filler and the game stays interesting throughout I don’t care if it is 5 hours or 50. 55 hours should be a minimum though for a full priced game.
21/07/2011 at 19:13 ezekiel2517 says:
I like it when a developer tells me what I like.
21/07/2011 at 19:13 aircool says:
I can remember buying ‘The Terminator’ for the Megadrive. £40 for a 20 minute piece of shite. Twenty fucking minutes it took to complete… I was waiting for the next level. Swapped it for Alien3.
It’s easy to say – no minimum as long as it’s a fun game… but when it’s fun for 20 minutes, I tell you, you’ll still be raging 20 odd years later.
21/07/2011 at 19:14 Vile Vile Vilde says:
I’m finding it hard to stick to any games for even a few hours.
My attention span seems to have shrunk to almost 3 year old levels.
21/07/2011 at 19:18 Avish says:
I just spent 2 hours reading all the comments for free!
21/07/2011 at 19:20 Richard Cobbett says:
You get the bill separately.
21/07/2011 at 20:35 ffifofu says:
I’ve read 5 minutes and skipped to the end. The trial was enough.
I did purchase the terrible Puzzle Agent 2 because I enjoyed a lot the first Puzzle Agent that has little more than 1 hour of gameplay and 0 replay value. A benefit granted to the indie or casual. Maybe EA will fade out this brand in favor of Popcap :P.
21/07/2011 at 19:18 Zeewolf says:
I buy lots of games, but they’re seldom full-price ones (either because they’re indie or because they’re discounted). And when I do buy something at full-price, it’s usually an RPG, an open world-game or something similar, so I expect quite a few hours from it.
If I buy a full-price shooter… about 10 hours, I guess. And unless it’s really great, I wouldn’t really want it to last much longer than that. Also, it’s not the size that matters et.c.
21/07/2011 at 19:25 MaxwellKraft says:
I don’t care about how long a game is nearly as much as I care about how replayable it is. I’m fine with short games if subsequent playthroughs are still fresh and interesting.
22/07/2011 at 02:17 Saul says:
This. Pack all that content into something small and beautiful and complex, instead of stretching it out over hours and hours.
21/07/2011 at 19:27 innociv says:
“Some are arguing the audience doesn’t have the patience to last for ten hours with a game.”
What a coincidence, because I don’t have $60 to spend on a game.
21/07/2011 at 19:37 geldonyetich says:
My personal rule of thumb is never to shell out full price for a game that does not have some kind of open-ended play structure it that permits me to drag it out as long as I feel like. For example:
Two Worlds II – It might have a fixed main plot structure but it is for the most part an open-ended game that you can take your time and dabble about all you want.
UFO: Extraterrestrials Gold – X-Com formula game with multiple difficulty levels, you’ll probably restart it as many times as you want just for the thrill of the tactical combat and going up the tech ladder. (If only it were not a buggy travesty.)
Diablo / Civilization – Both feature a large range of procedurally generated content.
MMORPGs – The developers of a monthly subscription-based game will not only endeavor to extend your play time, they’ll endeavor to slowly drag the life out of you on a hook.
There’s a word for a $50 game that has less than 40 hours of play. That word is rental.
21/07/2011 at 19:38 dehumanized says:
I’ve got a ridiculous backlog due to a lack of free time, too much disposable income, and a general laziness that ensures I don’t finish many of the games I buy. So, given that for like 4 out of every 5 games I buy, I’ll never see the ending (assuming one exists), if I enjoyed the time I spent with it, then it was a good value.
I spent $5 on Red Orchestra and hated the couple matches that I played. Game was definitely not “for” me. Bad value.
I spent $15 on Monday Night Combat, and found the game to be a lot of fun. I think I’ve only played it for maybe 7-8 hours (which is quite low for a competitive multiplayer shooter), but enjoyed every second. Good value.
The same sort of situations applies to single player games, of course. I’m slowly working my way through Dragon Age Origins, and even if I never get around to finishing it I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of it.
21/07/2011 at 19:48 Mman says:
For length a game should be as long as it needs to be, which entirely depends on the game; as it is, many are too short, and many are too long. There are also many games where length is a pretty irrelevant measure in the first place (E.G. Multiplayer and Puzzle games where length is almost entirely player controlled).
One thing is that focus becomes more important with shorter length, and some concepts have a degree of minimum length. For instance, you can’t try and tell an epic globe-trotting plot with many locations AND provide complex level and gameplay design if you try and squeeze that into four-six hours. This is something many developers don’t seem to have really grasped yet, and they end up with games that would have been far better if they had been more modest from the start.
I wouldn’t mind more shorter games if the prices were adjusted and we had more games with experimental concepts and/or storylines, but I know this will never happen in the “AAA” industry barring some major shake-up, and many just want to use this as a excuse to lop a couple of hours off their interactive movies where the gameplay is already perfunctory enough as it is.
21/07/2011 at 19:51 Sardaukar says:
I don’t really care how long a game is, past eight-ish hours, as long as I feel like it is respecting my time. Taking an old example, Chrono Trigger was great fun and very replayable, despite being “short” by RPG standards, by feeling like an epic saga but taking less than half the time to beat as, say, Dragon Age. When an RPG has me running far back and forth, back and forth, doing dialogue fetch quests or checking every NPC to see if some new critical bit of conversation has popped up, I lose interest quickly. When a shooter pads its content by basing progress on endless waves of enemies that instantly target me over all allies while I try to reach a “stop effing spawning” waypoint (looking at you, CoD), that’s also wasting my time (which is already being wasted playing games, so that’s wasted squared!).
That’s not to say I mind wandering around aimlessly, as long if it doesn’t feel like a chore- I’ve logged countless hours just hunting mutants in STALKER.
21/07/2011 at 19:55 Cheese says:
It depends. Some games are better when the gameplay is packed into 8 hours, some do better with 50 or so hours. I got 60 or so hours out of the whole STALKER series on my first play through of it and it costed me about £20. I enjoyed all of it as well. The great thing about it, though, is that there are plenty of mods that either give a new main questline or add a new feel/challenge to the game, which can mean more than another hundred hours of gameplay, depending on how willing you are to run through it again.
It would be amazing if a game with the length of something like Baldur’s gate were released nowadays though. I’m still gobsmacked by how long that thing is.
21/07/2011 at 20:03 llfoso says:
I won’t buy a big-release game unless I can get 100 hours of play out of it.
For cheap indie games like Magicka or something I’m happy with less.
21/07/2011 at 20:09 Vinraith says:
My rule of thumb is $1 per hour of enjoyment I derive from a game, which if of course not necessarily the same as the number of hours the game takes to complete. A 100 hour game that’s fun for 10 hours is worth $10, not $100, in my book. A ten hour game that’s fun enough, and varied enough, to replay four times is worth at least $40, conversely. In general, though, if I’ve played a game on which I spent $20 for 20 hours and enjoyed myself doing it, I consider myself to have gotten my money’s worth.
For something that’s especially fun or unusual I’m willing to let that ratio rise a bit. For example, I played Portal for about 10 hours (original play, commentary play, some custom maps) and would accept that it was probably worth $20 ($2/hour of enjoyment).
This does go the other way, incidentally. If a game provides me with hundreds of hours of enjoyment and cost $20 (I’m looking at you, AI War) I’ll tend to find ways to give the devs more money. By no means do I make up the spread, but there’s a reason I’ve bought AI War and its expansions 3 times. Even having done that, it’s still a bargain IMO.
It’s worth noting that my favorite games are also invariably the games I’ve played the longest and, consequently, games whose devs have something akin to a “lifetime pass” in my book for future purchases. I could buy every Bethesda game from now til the day I die and I suspect that, on the strength of thousands of hours in Morrowind alone, I’d never collectively get above the $1/hour of enjoyment mark for Bethesda games. Ditto Paradox and EU2, Arcen and AI War, Kerberos and Sword of the Stars, Arenanet and Guild Wars etc.
21/07/2011 at 20:11 Makariel says:
If a game doesn’t entertain me for at least 6 hours it’s not worth full retail price. Note I wrote ‘entertain’. When I play something and it takes me 10 hours, but I feel annoyed 5 of them, it’s not worth the money. If a game would take 40 hours to finish, but it’s the same stuff I do after 38h that I did after 20 minutes already and it’s getting painful to play, it’s not worth my money.
21/07/2011 at 20:14 Hatsworth says:
I can’t give you a number, but quality definitely trumps quantity for me now. I have too many games to play already. Gone are the days of loving jrpgs as a kid. The act of having unlockable difficulty settings just to “add replay value” is something I loathe. Why make me play through an (in my eyes) inferior version of the game before I can play the good one? Pretty disrespectful of their customers’ time imo, and utterly pointless. Most recently I encountered this in Trine. Should have downloaded a savegame.
Multiplayer games on the other hand I generally tend to take pretty seriously or not at all, hence they need to be good enough and have a viable competitive scene to support hundreds of hours.
ITG(In the Groove) has also become a timesink for me due to its insane skill ceiling, limitless content and its positive side-effect of making me slightly less morbidly out of shape.
21/07/2011 at 20:27 Kamos says:
I’ll pay a few bucks for a crazy experimental indie game that only lasts an hour or so. And even if it ultimately sucks, I won’t feel cheated. I’ll tell my friends “yeah, I played it, it had some good ideas but kinda sucked.” It’s worth it because I don’t have to sell a kidney to try it.
Now, if I pay 50 bucks, it damn better last forever. Yes, I mean it, FOREVER. I don’t throw away my board games after X hours and I don’t feel video games should be disposable either. If a game becomes unusable after X hours, it is either not a very good game or not a game at all. And by games lasting forever, I don’t mean grinding levels, repetitive gameplay type of forever. I mean game mechanics that I’ll be coming back to for years to come. Not quick time events, not an immersive scripted story, not the eye candy crap that is so easy to mistake for the game part of the fucking GAME.
Multiplayer mode (specially co-op) is possibly the cheapest to build non-disposable gameplay a dev can conjure. Multiplayer only games deserve absolutely no slack. They are already taking the easy route. I felt ripped off paying full price for Left 4 Dead. And before someone says, ‘herp derp did you honestly not get your money’s worth of fun?’, no, I didn’t. I should still be playing it, I *would* still be playing it if Valve hadn’t managed to make my friends give up on it and buy – the irony – Left 4 Dead 2.
So yeah, forever. Unless my harddrive catches on fire.
EDIT: the internet did some crazy stuff to my post. Thus, I edit it.
21/07/2011 at 23:25 Kamos says:
I wonder where this comment is going.
21/07/2011 at 20:45 _serenity says:
At least 25h for a RPG, 15 for shooters/action. And it needs to have a good story or I’m not buying it. The only too long game is a boring game :/
21/07/2011 at 20:45 Gabbo says:
I don’t care how long a game is, so long as the game mechanics remain fun and keep me involved in the story. Even the worst story can be entertaining if the gameplay it’s attached to is fun. Preferably a game should be able to muster around 12-15 on the low end.
There are exceptions to this going both ways: games whose mechanics don’t hold up long enough to finish the narrative on one side, and games that have short narratives and leave you wanting more game when its done on the other.
21/07/2011 at 20:57 tikey says:
I never thought about it but I’d say a each hour a game entertains me is worth one working hour.
That’d put it around 5 U$S an hour. So I’m mostly getting my money’s worth by only buying during sales.
(DX:HR is going to be the exception, I’m probably going to preorder it)
21/07/2011 at 21:01 Inglourious Badger says:
weeeeeeell, that’s a good question isn’t it.
What’s an ideal length? Like you say it’s a meaningless question. If you’re enjoying yourself you want it to last forever, if you’re losing patience it needs to wrap things up. I would say Amnesia had a perfect length for that game, I’d got over the fear (enough to see ‘behind the masks’ anyway) and was satisfied the game had explored enough of the no-weapons mechanic that I was ready for it to end when it did, even though in hindsight it’s a lot shorter than most games. Plus it was cheaper to start with. The right price for the right length. If Deus Ex had ended after 8 hours? I’d be livid!
The thing is there is a point where you feel short changed. There’s nothing worse than getting really into a game, reaching that sort of peak enjoyment that in my experience of FPSs and RPGs usually comes 10 or so hours into the game and then it be taken away from you. It’s a horrible feeling that removes alot of whatever enjoyment you had whilst it lasted. If a games going to be that short it needs to be cheaper and I need to be forwarned otherwise I’m going to be disappointed. Anything over 15 hours nowadays and I’m satisfied, but under that threshold it often jars.
Games like Portal and Gravity Bone are hailed as masterpieces but imagine the reviews if you they cost £35? They’d have been 70-80% “it’s good but not THAT good” the conclusions would read. Available for free(ish) you’re not expecting anything so can enjoy those precious few hours for what they are. I’m not saying all short games need to be free, but there’s a sliding scale of price to length that needs to be followed. If you get your multiplayer FPS fix from Battlefield then CODBLOPs would be
about £6.50 on this scale, methinks, and until it’s that cheap I’m not going to pick it up.
A couple of games that have come out recently I’ve been putting off until they’re cheaper, Bulletstorm being the first one that springs to mind, purely because it sounds too short. I was keeping my fingers crossed it would be Steam saled, but I guess I’ll have to wait a bit longer to play what sounds like an excellent, fun, but too short game.
21/07/2011 at 21:01 Brian Rubin says:
I guess it depends on the quality of the story/gameplay/presentation. If I pay $50 for a ten hour game that’s freaking amazing, I won’t mind so much. However, if I pay $50 for a ten hour game that’s repetitive and doesn’t have much depth, for example, I’ll be a bit upset. I guess it’s not just length but the quality of the game within as well.
21/07/2011 at 21:02 Inglourious Badger says:
.
21/07/2011 at 21:20 golden_worm says:
All games should be twice their length from the mid point, unless it’s a Free 2 Play game, which should last until just after you decide to put down real money, and then stop abruptly to make you think about what a silly boy you’ve just been.
21/07/2011 at 21:21 Inglourious Badger says:
.
21/07/2011 at 21:40 Myros says:
I think something like borderlands got it about right. Decent length with built in replay value.
21/07/2011 at 21:41 Daryl says:
I’m less concerned about the length of a game and more concerned about whether or not I will ever want to play the game again. That is a major problem. So few games are worth going back and playing through again. Off the top of my head I can only think of a couple of games that have come out within the last 5 years that I think I’ll pick up 10-15 years down the road.
Take a game like Super Metroid. I can beat it in about 5-6 hours, but it’s so good that I don’t care how short it is. I can beat Mega Man X in about 45 minutes. Again, classic game so I don’t care. I enjoy it every time (I realize these aren’t PC games but I’m just using them as examples). Compare that to a game like Fallout 3 that I spent about 40 hours on, but towards the end it was boring because I was so powerful that nothing could threaten me. I don’t think I will ever play that game again. Could I spend another 40 hours on it? Probably. But it has no replay value to me, so I don’t want to play it again. And that is on the “very long game” side of the spectrum these days . A lot of these 6-10 hours games that I’ve played give me little incentive to ever play them again.
And also when you throw multiplayer games that I’ve played over the years into the mix, like UT2004, CS:S and WoW it makes it even harder to put that money down. I can get a near-endless amount of replayability (sometimes hundreds of hours). So for me, it’s more about whether or not I feel like I’m going to get value out of a game. I feel so jaded because I can’t pick up the big titles expecting a good game anymore. I won’t buy a full-price game unless it has the word “Valve” somewhere on the box.
21/07/2011 at 21:56 propjoe says:
I also make the deliniation between types of games. From story-heavy, linear games, I expect about 10 hours. For open-world games, at least 30. For other games, anything goes. I picked up Terraria in the Steam sale and have already out 25 hours into it, and I’m completely hooked. Others (someone mentioned VVVVVV, a perfect example) can satisfy completely in much less time.
21/07/2011 at 22:05 Stephen Roberts says:
I abandoned EVE Online for the third time in as many attempts at playing it because I simply do not possess the free time in my life that the
game requiresmonthly cost requires.21/07/2011 at 22:09 Navagon says:
I expect at least 8hrs from any full price title. Although it would have to be one hell of a well crafted 8 hours to justify the outlay. Of course that’s not to say that a more average gaming experience should be a over-long. Nobody wants to plod through artificially bloated mediocrity.
That said, I very, very rarely buy games on release these days and thanks to the internet I don’t think that I’ve spent £35 on even a special edition in a long time.
21/07/2011 at 22:52 metalangel says:
It really is a piece of string. I’ve played through the notoriously short campaigns of stuff like CoD and Homefront several times over, as they’re enough fun in places you want to go back and see certain bits again (like the AC-130 level or the Golden Gate Bridge).
On the other hand, I’ve spent 150 hours on Fallout 3, and at least 50 or so on Skies of Arcadia and really became invested in the whole thing as a result.
On the flipside, I put of playing Skies of Arcadia for eight years because I KNEW I’d have to be prepared to invest a lot of time into it, and wanted to ensure I could devote that time.
Likewise, I love stuff like Transport Tycoon (and OpenTTD) but I then dread stuff like when I’ve got tons of money and have to painstakingly lay long routes and plant lots of signals and also sit around waiting for the new vehicles I know are coming to frigging be invented already (the vehicle packs manage to offset this somewhat).
So, I’m fickle. I’m put off buying some games because I know they’ll be short, but other times it doesn’t matter to me, especially if the price is right. Other times, I hate stuff for their padding.
21/07/2011 at 23:14 gwathdring says:
I guess one of my biggest issues when it comes to price is replay value. Sure I might really love playing the game, but if I play it once and then feel like the experience is over … I’m just not sure I can justify even eight hours of temporary satisfaction for $60. I don’t like going to theaters any more for the same reason. I don’t want to pay $10 to see a movie for 2 hours when I might not even like it when I could instead rent three movies for the same price and then buy one movie for $10 to $20 if I enjoy it and watch it numerous times over the years, sharing with friends and so forth.
I don’t think I will buy another video game at $60. Ever. When something comes along to change my mind, I’ll eat my hat. For $60 I could by two discounted expansions to Arkham Horror, or a lightly used but perfectly functional copy of Descent. For $60 I could hop on a train to go visit my out-of-state girlfriend while we’re home from college. There are a lot of things I can do with my money that are simply better investments–while I dearly love video games, I’ve played enough one-time games and own enough replayable games that I simply cannot justify $60 purchases unless the game stands out like the sun in the sky. Portal 2 stands out less than that, but stands out all the same (perhaps Vega or Betelgeuse). Because I’m going to play co-op with one of my close friends, It’s a social affair, not anonymous multi-player or lonely single player. This makes it worth more than it would be otherwise to me. I didn’t need more single player Portal; as I expected from reviews I ultimately enjoyed the writing, voicework and visuals but was too disappointed by the puzzles, pacing and story flow to find the experience worth the money I paid. But there’s co-op left. I can now play mods with more interesting puzzles than even the nastier community maps for Portal 1. I’m looking forward to the Summer DLC whenever that gets out. I project being satisfied with the sale price I paid for the game of about $24.
Conversely, while less visceral and immediately satisfying, I’ve gotten more entertainment value out of Spacechem and Frozen Synapse neither of which I am far into at all. The former I feel bad for having bought at sale price and the latter I am happy to have bought at full price (about what I paid for Portal 2, really). I bought two copies of Minecraft at beta price, because I wanted my friend to have one and I wanted to put more money into that game. I’ve gotten so much joy out of it, and it’s different from anything else I’ve played.
I really want to love big budget games. The first and last game I ever pre-ordered was Mass Effect 2. There are big budget games I would have been willing to pay something closer to full price after I plucked them out of the digital or retail bargain bin and loved them to pieces… Arkham Asylum comes to mind. But as with films I simply can’t justify spending money I don’t have to on experiences I can’t trust to enjoy when there are many more things I can buy and do that I can trust. And other than my mistaken judgment with Mass Effect 2 which came immediately after I finally played and finished Mass Effect 1, no game has made me feel $60 excited with any sort of certainty looking forward, and only one or two have looking back.
I respect that games are expensive to make. And as such I respect that to an extent the high prices relative to things I enjoy as much or more (books, movies, camping trips, CDs) cannot be helped. But I’ve had a lot of fun, and will continue to have a lot of fun with the games I already own. Furthermore, as the industry ages, it’s the less expensive games that I’m enjoying the most thanks to the innovation and variety found in the indie scene. Both due to market tradition and consumer habits, big budget games dump a lot of their budget into things I don’t care about–graphical power, obtuse marketing, CGI cutscenes. These are things that have never changed my opinions on the game or brought games to my attention that would have otherwise passed me by. With much of the games price point decided by factors irrelevant to my enjoyment of the game, I’m beginning to realize I’ve been paying too much for too little. I hope something in the industry changes so that I can enjoy more games in the future without spending what I feel is too much. Either way, game length has never really been a deciding factor.
21/07/2011 at 23:16 gwathdring says:
Huh … I wrote a long response, and it showed up in the comment ticker but not on the page …
21/07/2011 at 23:16 Sinnorfin says:
Games should not concern themself about gametime.. Its the content and ‘play’ that matters..
Lets take DoomII, it’s really not that long..but it does worth a lot more..and thats what counts..
Lets take any of the best of classic games..
As far as it’s about averaging out game length in certain hours, its getting further away from being a game and towards being a movie where you do some arm exercise meanwhile.
22/07/2011 at 00:16 Kid_A says:
A singleplayer game should be precisely as long as it takes to tell its story.
A multiplayer game should be something I can drop in for 10 minutes or 2 hours of, again and again. And it shouldn’t have its servers shut down 2 months after the next yearly update. *cough* EA *cough*
22/07/2011 at 00:27 Inglourious Badger says:
.
22/07/2011 at 01:04 Valvarexart says:
As long as it isn’t tedious is my answer! I do appreciate long games, but not time-fillers. 10 hours is fine if it is intense, but if it’s still intense, I’d rather have 50. The Witcher 2 did it pretty well except for the ending.
22/07/2011 at 01:17 Tams80 says:
Length + perceived quality = perceived value for money.
There may well be other factors and sub-factors, but this is what I believe it boils down to.
Below is the rather obvious, but the Internet often requires the obvious to be stated:
Too long + bad quality = very bad value for money (worst, as more of a player’s time is considered ‘wasted’).
Too short + bad quality = very bad value for money.
Too long + good quality = bad value for money.
Too short + good quality = bad value for money.
Suitable length (for genre) + bad quality = bad value for money.
Suitable length + good quality = good value for money.
This is oversimplified and each factor can vary to different degrees. A suitable length varies from player to player, as does how good the quality of a game is (which is possibly a more influential factor and is also composed of various components). This subjectivity is what of course causes great problems for all objective lines of enquiry. One factor can also make up for the lack or excess of another. For example a long/short game (for its genre) can be perceived as good, if the quality of the game is very good. If a somewhat poor quality game is a suitable length, then it may still perceived as good (NB there seems to be less leeway this way around and a poor short game is probably going to perceived as better than a long poor game).
There will of course be exceptions. A really good quality game may not be considered too long, even if it is long for its genre, though it could be argued that this is just the quality of the game making up for it being ‘too long’.
I could add more, but to be frank
(I am NOT Frank)I can’t be bothered, though not finishing does irk me.22/07/2011 at 01:22 luminosity says:
I don’t mind games being short, 2, 3 hours is fine. However if it’s that short, it needs to be reflected in a cheaper price. Asking a full $50 for a 5 hour game is ridiculous.
22/07/2011 at 01:51 Iskariot says:
Personally I never pay a dime for any SP game that offers less than 8 hours entertainment. But even games between 8 and 12 hours I only buy for bargain prices of 10 bucks or less. I am willing to pay retail prices for a game that offers a minimum of 12 hours solid SP entertainment.
22/07/2011 at 02:10 Strontium Mike says:
Hi, as been said it’s subjective if you’re into a game and it’s really good then it can be 200 hours and still too short. If the game is rubbish or you hate it, it can be 2 hours long and still be too long. I played Far Cry and hated it, by the time I rescued the journalist and got on the helicopter and flew into the sunset I was really glad it was over. Only it wasn’t I wasn’t even a third of the way into the game, that was quickly uninstalled and donated to charity, Far Cry 2 on the other hand I’ve played 3 times on the pc and once on the 360 I wish they had done some single player dlc or an expansion pack I really love that game.
What really gets my goat though is not the length of the game but the features, I’m an unsocial git and only play single player, if I pick up a £60 game with 6-8 hours single player fine. But when I find out that most of the weapons, vehicles or abilities in the game are multi player only that’s like rubbing salt into the wound. Also games that only have checkpoint saving, it’s so blatantly obvious to stretch a game out, if you could save where you liked how much shorter would these games be?
22/07/2011 at 04:47 kud13 says:
game should give me at least 20 hours. I game very sporadically, and it takes me a while to get through each game (esp since I like exploration, and mostly play games that have some kind of exploration aspect to them)
Deus Ex clocks in around 35 hours pure gametime, if you explore everything. Add another 5-10 due to trial and error trying diffferent stuff, and that’s how long a game should be.
22/07/2011 at 05:21 Ateius says:
I find it depends mostly on genre. I’m fine with a shooter being roughly 10 hours (8 is roughly!) because I can only shoot so many mans before I get tired of shooting mans. An RPG I expect 30+ hours from to explore the story, setting and characters, and also so I can become a god amongst men seated upon my money-throne. A large open-world sandbox game I expect to have enough content to keep me entertained for 100+ hours.
How much of those given playtimes I will actually play depends on how well the game is made, in terms of polish (I’m not having fun if I’m battling too many bugs), mechanics (controls, any sort of inventory/level system, etc) and setting (all those non-mechanical aspects of a game: plot, lore, characters, aesthetics, etc etc).
22/07/2011 at 05:40 malkav11 says:
A game that I can finish in a few evenings play is fine by me – actively preferable, in fact, assuming this doesn’t truncate things overmuch. However, I’m not going to pay $60 for said game. $15 seems more reasonable. Perhaps $20 or $30 if the concept and gameplay particularly appeal.
22/07/2011 at 08:05 jstar says:
To be honest it depends how good the game is. Games like Modern Warfare etc I can’t even bring myself to finish at their current length of 5,6,7 or however many hours long they are. I find the wack a mole enemies popping up everywhere unbelievably boring. Multiplayer though I will play for 100s of hours.
If the story is intriguing I will want to keep playing, and if the gameplay requires thought I want to keep playing. These wam bam full of action explosions everywhere boom boom games get boring very quickly. For me they show a total lack of understanding of what makes playing a game exciting.
22/07/2011 at 08:20 harvb says:
I suppose the money aspect of it is important, but I tend not to think about it unless I feel ripped off. If I buy a sandbox game like Dungeons of Dredmor then I expect shed loads of play time even though it’s cheap. It feels cheap, in its own way, and I have no problem paying that. Same with Torchlight, although it cost a few quid more and had higher production value.
Dragon Age was a humphin’ great game for it’s price tag and I had no problem paying that for for it either. It felt worth it to me. I never did get around to finishing it, instead preferrring to just blat about with different characters for fun. I never set out to finish it and I never once felt cheated.
Now look at Homefront. Oh my god was that short. And I don’t think it ever really felt complete, not in the same way as, say, the COD/Modern Warfare games which it clearly apes. That, to me, was way, WAY too short.
So I don’t think you can put a dollar value on play length, but there should be meaty content there. Paying £30 for a game I suppose I’d want a good 20+ hours of single player plus multiplayer, if we’re talking top-ranked well-advertised built-up games. Or maybe longer single player if there’s no multiplayer. I’ll pay less for less.
And we demand more co-op damn you (but that’s an article for another time, I fear).
22/07/2011 at 09:50 mickygor says:
I don’t particularly care how long the game is. What matters is whether I can just pick up and play, little bits at a time, and whether I’ll enjoy it. I hate open world games, so I never did get enamoured with the whole 1000000+ hours thing people obsess over these days. I also think that the entertainment’s worth the money, regardless of how long it is. If nothing else, I spend my money as a mark of appreciation to the developers.
22/07/2011 at 10:22 Milky1985 says:
For me a game should be about £1 an hour, so a £40 game should last me 40 hours ( this includes multiplayer etc), if the game is exceptional and a lot of fun then 20 hours is enough.
This is an average for a months worth so some games get a free ride if a FF game comes out (as my £40 FF13 purchase has so far lasted me 70 hours, and its a fun game so its VERY good value for money)
22/07/2011 at 10:52 wellsaidted says:
Length doesn’t really factor into my purchasing decisions. Cliche ahoy, but it really is quality or quantity. Applying some arbitrary “minimum length” is baffling to me. Obviously this kind of mentality gives developers scope to create games of any length, but as long as the story or mechanics follow a satisfying arc which concludes well, I’m happy. Better to have a few hours of gold than 200+ hours of killing respawning kobolds and assorted tomfoolery.
Also, and quite apart from that, why on Earth include: “(other App Stores are available, but they suck).” It’s not that I necessarily disagree with the sentiment (well, I do, but that’s not the point), but that it’s a completely random, immovable and isolating thing to say in the middle of an otherwise lovely piece. And I’m over-thinking this clearly. Bye!
22/07/2011 at 11:22 itsallcrap says:
I don’t mind games being shorter, so long as they don’t charge as much.
About £1 per hour seems good.
22/07/2011 at 11:52 bildo says:
simple answer to a simple question. A game should be at least 15-20 hours long to justify spending $60-$50 dollars on it.
22/07/2011 at 13:30 Chorltonwheelie says:
I got Homefront as part of the THQ pack in the recent Steam sale. After I’d finished the excellent Metro 2033 then again as Ranger I thought I’d fire Homefront up and see if it was as bad as the reviews suggested.
Four and a half hours later I’m sat looking at the end credits that seemed to go on longer the game itself. If I had paid full price for it I’d have ran to THQ’s offices and demanded a grovelling apology with a full refund.
How on earth did they think they could get away with it? Well, we all know they didn’t but the episode shows us they would if they could such is their contempt for us. A four hour campaign is the act of a company of swine. We should all point at them and boo.
22/07/2011 at 13:57 Kablooie says:
I think we should continue to mock and attack expensive games less then five hours in length, especially FPS. Otherwise they keep shaving away more and more, or moving more and more resources to DLC they want extra money for. Also remind them that cutscenes are not replacements for depth and complexity.
22/07/2011 at 14:41 deu5 says:
I take Bethesda RPG’s as prime examples of ideal game length… If I complete my first playthrough in under 30 hours, I’ve rushed it.
22/07/2011 at 19:40 wodin says:
Thing is when I see a review and it states the SP game lasts less than 10 hours I think to myself what a rip and don’t buy it…yet 95% of games I’ve owned I’ve never finished because I became bored….I always ahve great expectations I think when reading about a gameb before purchase and many do blow me away for a few hours but eventually I get bored and move on…
So maybe between 8 and 12 hours is a fair amount of time…
Above I am mainly talking about SP FPS and RPG’s. When it comes to wargames like Combat Mission or flight sims like Over Flanders Field Phase 3 I’ve put in hundreds of hours and always go back for more…
23/07/2011 at 05:02 MadMatty says:
easy- the better the game, the longer i´d wish it last.
Didn´t mind Cargo! Quest for Gravity´s 8 hour game, but if theyd pushed it up to 20+ i think it´d be almost in the same leage as Beayong Good and Evil.
Some games are better suited for longevity tho, like the old Elite games-
i thiink i usually prefer about 20 hours, but id rather have a good 8 hour one, than a long-winded turdy one.
23/07/2011 at 22:54 Onaka says:
I base my time requirements on price, an hour of entertainment can at most cost 2 euros. So a 50 euro game needs to entertain me for at least 25 hours for me to even consider buying it.
24/07/2011 at 01:25 Gvaz says:
I want fucking 50 hours in a game unless the game can’t satiate itself for 50 hours in terms of it being fun and overstaying its welcome.
I paid $45 for the witcher 2 and played it for 44 hours and could see myself playing it for double or three times that.
I paid $5 for JC2 and could get easily ten times that number in fun.
I paid $35 for Bioshock 2 and just felt ripped off, though that was more of “overstaying its welcome because it’s not System Shock 4″
24/07/2011 at 08:09 bill says:
I’m too late here, so no-one will read this. But:
Six hours
Now that i’m older, i tend to find 6 hours is the sweet spot for most games. It’s enough time for you to learn the mechanics, get settled into the game, but it’s not long enough for there to be too much repetition and padding, or for boredom to set in. I’d go down to four, and up to eight or ten at a push.
Clearly some games (multiplayer, 4x, etc… ) are limitless. But for story based games I think 6 hours is the sweet spot. (and I don’t think there needs to be this artificial boundary between RPGs and Action games. A 6 hour RPG would be fine. Better even.
Most games are too long
I can’t say that i’ve ever played a game and thought “Wait! That game was too short! I was ripped off!”. Which is strange, as it seems to be a very common complaint on the internet. But those people are clearly strange.
In all my years of playing games, I have dozens that I haven’t finished. I have zero that I felt ripped off due to shortness.
Of course, back when I was a student there were a lot less games, and I had enough free time to work through and 80 hour game in 3 days…. but there still tended to be way too much padding.
Repetitiveness vs freedom vs scripting vs story
As you mentioned, an inherent part of many games is repetition – games are made of learning the rules of how things interact and learning to optimise your results for those rules. But with the recent trend towards heavily scripted cinematic games, i think that the length is growing closer to that of movies as they have less repetition.
Of course, there is repetition and repetitiveness. Games are based on repetition (at least non-cinematic ones), but repetitiveness is never good imho. It’s a difficult balance to strike, between giving the player enough freedom and repetition to learn the rules and excel under them, and making them grind through repetitive filler content.
Freedom is an important element in that – freedom is often based on repeated rules, but the more freedom and flexibility you have, and the more tools at your disposal, the less the repetitive it feels.
(eg: deus ex is at it’s core pretty repetitive, but it never feels like it as you feel you have lots of flexibility in your approach. Brothers in arms has the same core gameplay, but feels repetitive as you have no freedom of approach).
There are very few games that wouldn’t benefit from a good editor. But that doesn’t mean they should all be reduced to fully scripted short interactive movies, just that I don’t need to fight my way through 500 guards to get to the crystal – 5 guards with more depth of combat/ai/options would be more interesting.
24/07/2011 at 10:07 bill says:
where did my long and amazing post go? Down the cracks?