20-hour games are "short"?

[shrekfan246]

Sorry, but I don't really see where this is a counterpoint. I said that if you discuss the length of a game you have to discuss the amount of time people invest in the games and how much time someone invests in a game depends entirely on the game itself.
If I understand you correctly you want to point out that it is important how good a game motivates the player to pour time into it. I pointed out that you were excluding a lot of this time in your first argument.
And with my example of Final Fantasy I just wanted to make it more clear that you were excluding part of the game with your argument. I didn't want to say that all games should be like JRPG's. while I like those from time to time and they are certainly long, they often lack in long-term motivation and in my whole life I think I have finished 3 JRPG's at most.

Okay, I feel the need to explain that I'm not talking about the inherent replayability of games.

I agree that how much time someone invests in a game is completely dependent on the game itself. But that's not the point of this thread. The point is that, even in this thread itself, there are people who will automatically ignore any game that is purported to be shorter than 20 hours long by reviews that it receives or by word-of-mouth given by other people, because it is "too short" for them. Regardless of the quality of the game, regardless of how much replayability it might have, they automatically will not play it because it's not "long" enough.

That is the point I'm trying to argue against here. Not the fact that Banjo-Kazooie can be just as long of a game as Persona 4 if you invest enough time into it. Of course it can. But if you take twenty hours playing it your first time, and then beat it again in ten hours your second time while doing all of the same things or even more than your first play-through, how long are you going to say the game really is? It's not suddenly a thirty-hour game because you've done two play-throughs that equaled that amount, even if you've spent thirty hours playing it.

Maybe the entire topic is a bit nebulous what with the inherent difference in how quickly people will get through games and how much they'll explore or replay, but the point is that there are people who will not support games, no matter how good they are, just because of how "short" the single-player might be, and that is an attitude that's going to do more damage to the gaming industry than any number of Call of Duty clones with six-hour campaigns and a heavy focus on multi-player.

 

[deathzero021]

20 hours is plenty long enough. most games pre 90's were like an hour long. The only reason it took us so long to beat it was because of how unfairly difficult the design was. (dead 3 times, start whole game over again, etc)

Today we rarely face that problem so we can actually play a game from start to finish without having to redo anything. Considering that, games are actually pretty damn long on average. We only walk through an area once and than it's never seen again. I actually like a little bit of back tracking in games. sure it may sound like shameless padding but i've always enjoyed walking through areas i've been too before. think of how different jRPG's or Zelda would be without doing that? Just riding through Hyrule field is so awesome, it's like the best part of the game xD

A lot of indie games end up being a bit sure. To me, anything under 8~10 hours is short. Anything over that is a good length. (of course this all depends on the type of game. you wouldn't have an arcade game with that sort of length) Now games that are over 30 hours are a bit too long if you ask me. Only really REALLY well made RPG's have actually been able to make a longer length like that work for me.

I've played shooters longer than that such as DOOM but not from a single play through, which can be completed in an hour or two. I've played them numerous times to achieve that length. I think if a shooter was naturally 30 hours in one play through it would be far too long, most likely have weaker design and get quite boring. Having over 30 hours of gameplay means you need to keep the player entertained with new challenges, areas and obstacles/enemies. Which means it would cost a lot. If you do nothing but padding to achieve that time, it's gonna suck.

To summarize, 20 hours is a great length for gameplay. Hell we pay $10 for a movie ticket and get 90 mins of time. Paying $10~$30 for a game and getting 20 hours is well worth it, if you enjoyed those hours. (i never buy AAA full price games )

The appropriate length really depends on the design of the game as well as the type. RPG's can easily go over 20 hours, while shooters work better with a shorter time (8 or under). It's really hard to measure Fighting, or Sports, or Racing or many other genres though. Horror fits in with Adventure games and probably do well at 20 or slightly over as well.

Also i'm against the argument that: longer time > short time. It really doesn't matter, as long as it's not insultingly short.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Dark Souls can be speedrun in 35 minutes. I've seen stages Armored Core for Answer missions speedrun in five minutes each. Morrowind can be speedrun in 5 minutes. Sometimes there is more content than what you can achieve speedrunning.

But that said, when there is nothing else but the gameplay (no customisation, no incentive to replay beyond another difficulty level or something, no exploration value) - like Heavenly Sword, for instance - a 4-5hr long game is just too short to do justice to the game. I don't know anyone who played HS and was not surprised when it ended 5 hours in.

Really though, it depends. Is this an RPG? There are often elements that make for a lot more longevity that the straightest path would give. Is it a shooter? You'd be lucky to get 20 hours out of a single player campaign these days. Is it linear? More open-world games are probably going to have a quicker main-quests-only playtime, but linear games have been known to be short too. There are a lot of different factors I'd take into account when deciding whether 20 hours is enough of not, and even then, it's up to the developer to pace content well.

As for game worlds being smaller, as release schedules and deadlines get tighter we've already seen things cut from games to be released later as DLC, game-breaking glitches shipped with finished products, generally unfinished games. I think a lot of developers would like to expand on the game world more than they do. But then again, it doesn't help that in a few cases single player is only a pleasantry anyway and/or the setting is the modern day (boring as that is).

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

If any of this has already been said, I suppose you can disregard this. Just kinda throwing my thoughts out there since I disagree on a few points.

And I have to ask, are you sure games are getting shorter, or do you just have a lot more free time on your hands?

This is an incredibly broad question that I can't accurately answer, since there are a lot of games (as you made note of in your following paragraph). I can merely go by my own observations. So going by my observations, yes, games (at least AAA games) are getting shorter. I've been gaming since the mid 90's, both on console and PC. Yes, I had a lot of time available to me when I was in school, and theoretically I should have less of it now that I'm out of school and married. Except I actually still do have a ton of time for gaming. Right now I work roughly 8-hours per day on weekdays, meaning I'm only working for about two more hours per day than I would have been spending in school when I was a teen. Considering I now stay up much later at night than when I was a teen since I no longer have a parentally-enforced bedtime, I actually have more time for gaming than I did when I was in high school. My spouse is also a gamer, so our free time together often involves gaming, so no loss there either. So yeah... the amount of time I can potentially spend gaming? It's remained pretty constant, and games (the ones I've played anyway, and my tastes haven't changed much over the years) are definitely without any shadow of a doubt getting much, much shorter.

Now consider this: When a person is a full-time college student or has a full-time job, the chances of them having more than, say, two or three hours a night of "free" time is extremely small. Suddenly, that 20-hour game that you could've completed in two days when you weren't working has you spending three weeks to get to the end. Doesn't seem so short now, does it?

I've considered it, and in my case, yes - it still seems short. I was a full-time college student 2006-2010, dual majored, earned both degrees, and still had enough free time to be a competitive raider in WoW - and I worked with three different raid teams for most of that time. These days I have a full-time job, like I mentioned earlier, and I still have roughly as much time to devote to gaming as I had when I was in high school/college.

At the end of the day, a 20 hour game is still a 20 hour game - regardless of how many days I spread it out over. Assuming quality is equal on all levels (other than length), why the hell would I want to spend $60 on a 20 hour game instead of $60 on a game like Fallout: New Vegas that I'll easily put 200+ hours into? At the end of the day, the 20 hour game is an incredibly poor investment when it comes to price to gameplay hours. And that's a universal truth, regardless of how much time you have available. You're spending more and getting less.

How much of that time spent running around are you actually doing something other than... well... running around?

To some people it's all about the journey, no the destination. Just sayin'.

...to a person who played over 200 hours in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multi-player, it's just as "long" of a game as Baldur's Gate, but for different reasons. The six-hour campaign is really inconsequential at that point, because most of the people criticizing how short it is aren't going to play it anyway, and the assumed majority of people who buy it are going to play both, or the multi-player.

I played both Baldur's Gate and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I'd call this argument conditionally invalid. Yes, the multiplayer adds gameplay hours, and for people who like multiplayer, that's great. But some people don't care about multiplayer whatsoever, they just like first person shooters. To the people who enjoy first person shooters but hate multiplayer, games like the newer Call of Duty titles completely screw them over in terms of cost to gameplay hours relative to other games. Effectively, this trend is killing the genre for those people.

I happen to play the CoD games because I like the campaign and multiplayer, and yeah, I'll criticize the hell out of how short the campaign is. I beat Modern Warfare 3 on Veteran in 6 hours, and I'm not even particularly great at shooters. That's absurdly short for a game that cost $60.

But is Mass Effect "short" because you can complete it in fifteen hours?

Compared to RPGs of days past? Yeah. Mass Effect is very short. Combine all three Mass Effect campaigns, and that's about as many hours you'd get out of some of the major RPGs of the 90's.

...but it's impossible to avoid mentioning that maybe part of the issue behind "games are getting shorter" is that game worlds aren't as interesting to explore anymore, because there's just less to explore. Developers don't put in silly Easter Eggs very much anymore, there aren't all kinds of secrets and hidden passageways to find, and even in open-world games there's usually very little reason to actually explore, because there just aren't those small, fun things to find anymore.

Possible. This actually ties somewhat into my theory as to why games are getting shorter. Cost of development. AAA games these days are ungodly expensive to produce. When games cost as much to make as they do now, it's completely understandable for corners to be cut. Why spend the money and man-hours to create an area in a level that only a tiny fraction of the playerbase is even going to see? Better to just scrap it, and put the resources toward something else.

To make a game like Mass Effect have a campaign as lengthy as the classic RPGs of the 90's, you'd have to have an astronomically huge development budget that, quite frankly, just isn't going to happen. It'd be so expensive to make, there wouldn't be a chance in hell of them earning it back in sales. They'd probably have to raise the price of the game, and then they're going to lose sales from all the people who don't want to spend that much on a game. They've found a balance, and short high-budget games are where the money is, and they're going to keep churning them out until there's something else that works better.

Now, I don't know how true it is that it's intentional that games are being developed shorter by design so that we finish them fast and move on to new games... it sounds a bit conspiracy theory-ish. But I'd be lying if I didn't say it sounds at least plausible. Considering the way some of gaming's biggest corporate figureheads view the industry (people like Bobby "let's take the fun out of game design" Kotick and John "make them pay real money for ammunition in Battlefield" Riccitiello), it wouldn't be surprising whatsoever to me if this were actually planned.

...they're saying it like it's a negative just because it's a short game. As if that diminishes the quality of the overall product by itself. As if being a longer game would somehow automatically make it a better game, regardless of the quality of the longer content.

If a game is short, but good - that's awesome. But it still feels like I'm being ripped off when I pay full price for a short, good game since I used to pay full price for lengthy, good games. It's the money spent vs. time spent ratio that kinda grinds my gears with newer games.

It's kinda like breakfast cereal. You might be perfectly content to pay $7.50 for a box of Lucky Charms from a grocery store, but someone else who in gaming terms doesn't so much care about the big-budget polish might prefer to spend $5 to get the huge bag of store-brand "Lucky Stars" cereal.

Meanwhile, there are people like me, who would rather go to Costco and spend $7.50 to get 3 boxes of Lucky Charms since it's more cost-efficient.

Also, I could really go for some Lucky Charms right now for some reason. So... I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.

 

[Bocaj2000]

The people who complain about short games are the same types who complain about a short anime series. Complaining that they "only" spent 10 hours on it. People who complain about difficulty tend to be elitists. People who complain about linearity don't know what linearity is.

Anything is acceptable as long as it fits.
-Game length is irrelevant. If the experience is best portrayed in 10 minutes, it should be told in 10 minutes; if the experience is best portrayed in 10 hours, it should be told in 10 hours; if the experience is best portrayed in 100 hours, it should be told in 100 hours. Time is a tool to be used, not a judgment of worthiness.
-Difficulty is a tool as well. Easy games make the character feel powerful and mighty. Difficult games give the feeling of hostility and overcoming challenge. Both are fun for different reasons and have purpose.
-Linearity is a design choice as well. For direct narrative, linearity is fine and dandy. This is used best in interactive stories in which the player controls specific actions that could otherwise be told through narrative. For open narrative and direct player characters, open world fits best. This is for games that have a direction, but the player shapes the story more than the narrative does. These are to give the feeling of freedom and openness. These are not rules, but these are their purposes.

Everything has purpose. It just depends on if it is used effectively.

 

[shrekfan246]

Your post is appreciated. I'll address the few parts I personally disagree with.

At the end of the day, a 20 hour game is still a 20 hour game - regardless of how many days I spread it out over. Assuming quality is equal on all levels (other than length), why the hell would I want to spend $60 on a 20 hour game instead of $60 on a game like Fallout: New Vegas that I'll easily put 200+ hours into? At the end of the day, the 20 hour game is an incredibly poor investment when it comes to price to gameplay hours. And that's a universal truth, regardless of how much time you have available. You're spending more and getting less.

Well, this is obviously going to be different for other people, but quite frankly I think I would get extremely bored after about the 60-80 hour mark, because how much more of the world would actually be unique and different compared to everything I've seen up to that point? I'm not the type of person who explores every single nook and cranny, which I suppose is where the problem really lies.

(Non-hypothetically speaking, I got bored of New Vegas after about two hours, because I didn't particularly care for the mechanics and in that short amount of time I had run into three or four pretty serious bugs that just killed any enjoyment I had been having.)

How much of that time spent running around are you actually doing something other than... well... running around?

To some people it's all about the journey, no the destination. Just sayin'.

It's more about the journey than the destination for me, too. I meant that question literally. In Assassin's Creed, there's very little traveling time that's more than, literally, just running around. And as I stated in another post, while I think the free-running is fun in Assassin's Creed, I don't feel that by itself, it's enough to hold up the rest of the games. Maybe other people disagree.

I played both Baldur's Gate and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I'd call this argument conditionally invalid. Yes, the multiplayer adds gameplay hours, and for people who like multiplayer, that's great. But some people don't care about multiplayer whatsoever, they just like first person shooters. To the people who enjoy first person shooters but hate multiplayer, games like the newer Call of Duty titles completely screw them over in terms of cost to gameplay hours relative to other games. Effectively, this trend is killing the genre for those people.

I happen to play the CoD games because I like the campaign and multiplayer, and yeah, I'll criticize the hell out of how short the campaign is. I beat Modern Warfare 3 on Veteran in 6 hours, and I'm not even particularly great at shooters. That's absurdly short for a game that cost $60.

I'm going to be honest here, I think that if Crysis 2 had had a 30-hour campaign, I would've been sick of it halfway through.

I love first-person shooters. I could not care less about multi-player components. I don't think the average shooter (outside of Call of Duty) is too short. A lot of first-person shooters will end up feeling repetitive if they try stretching out the campaign for too long, because there's only so much they can do to make it feel fresh while still remaining tonally consistent. Games like Deus Ex can subsist on a longer story because the actual gameplay calls for more than just "Shoot guy in face", but for games like Resistance, Serious Sam, Killzone, Crysis, Halo, and even Borderlands, there isn't really a lot of depth behind the mechanics that would call for them to have RPG-length stories without getting monotonously repetitive.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Well, this is obviously going to be different for other people, but quite frankly I think I would get extremely bored after about the 60-80 hour mark, because how much more of the world would actually be unique and different compared to everything I've seen up to that point? I'm not the type of person who explores every single nook and cranny, which I suppose is where the problem really lies.

(Non-hypothetically speaking, I got bored of New Vegas after about two hours, because I didn't particularly care for the mechanics and in that short amount of time I had run into three or four pretty serious bugs that just killed any enjoyment I had been having.)

That's definitely true that no game is going to be well-suited to all players. The point I was getting at though is that the content is there. If you don't want to invest the time to explore and side-quest and whatnot in a game like Fallout: New Vegas, you don't have to. You can stick to the main story and be done with it in 20 hours or less. But there's still enough stuff to do in the game that a single playthrough could potentially be over 100 hours. Most games these days don't have all of that extra stuff.

To go with the cereal analogy (still hungry), you may have spent that money on a single box of Cereal, finished it, and been happy with your purchase. Meanwhile, I spent the same amount of money, got three times as much, and was happy with it. Even if I got sick of Lucky Charms after the second box, at the end of the day, I still got twice as much delicious cereal for my dollar even if I never bothered to eat the third box. And that third box will still be there later, should I change my mind and want to go back to it.

I'm a big fan of getting the most for my money, regardless of what I'm buying.

It's more about the journey than the destination for me, too. I meant that question literally. In Assassin's Creed, there's very little traveling time that's more than, literally, just running around. And as I stated in another post, while I think the free-running is fun in Assassin's Creed, I don't feel that by itself, it's enough to hold up the rest of the games. Maybe other people disagree.

When I was at college I picked up a copy of Dead Rising for my X-Box 360. I played through the game, had a blast with it. I felt that rescuing the survivors and figuring out what happened were awesome, and that the zombie killing was mostly just filler between objectives.

One of my roommates asked to borrow the game when I was done, and he also had a blast with it. I was watching him play while working on an assignment for class, and I noticed something kinda odd about how he was doing it. He completely ignored all of the survivors, and didn't bother with the story at all. He spent the entire 72 hours until rescue running around the mall beating zombies with stuffed teddy bears, chucking handfuls of diamonds at them, shooting them with squirt guns, laughing his ass off as they clumsily fell down stairs.

Content that I honestly saw as filler was what he ended up focusing on entirely. So to each their own, I guess. At the end of the day all that really matters is that the person is having fun I suppose.

I'm going to be honest here, I think that if Crysis 2 had had a 30-hour campaign, I would've been sick of it halfway through.

Like your experience with Fallout: New Vegas, Crysis 2 is a game that I quit after about two hours. I loved the hell out of the first game and its expansion. Those games were a blast to me. When I got to Crysis 2, sure, things were prettier... but pretty much everywhere I looked I saw things that had been cut down, simplified, and "streamlined" to the point where it felt like I was wasting my time. I never beat Crysis 2. I have friends who did, though, and judging by what they've told me, I probably would have been highly disappointed with its shortness anyway since I would have gotten fewer hours out of it for my dollar than the first game and a less enjoyable gameplay experience.

Games like Deus Ex can subsist on a longer story because the actual gameplay calls for more than just "Shoot guy in face", but for games like Resistance, Serious Sam, Killzone, Crysis, Halo, and even Borderlands, there isn't really a lot of depth behind the mechanics that would call for them to have RPG-length stories without getting monotonously repetitive.

I'm a hardcore fan of the original Deus Ex. It's always my #1 whenever someone asks for my top 5 or 10 or whatever game lists. I'm also a pretty big fan of shooters, it being the genre that I pretty much exclusively played until Deus Ex came along.

Deus Ex isn't strictly an FPS. It's an RPG/FPS hybrid, and one that you can tell the FPS component got far less focus during development. I'd never lump Deus Ex into the same genre of games as Resistance, Serious Sam, or Killzone because "shooting guy in face" is the definition of what a true "pure" FPS is all about. Games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield... despite their "realistic" trappings, they're in the same group as Serious Sam - not Deus Ex. Their campaigns are entirely about "shooting guys in the face." The only gameplay variety comes in "shooting guys in the face with mounted gun in a rails section" or "shooting guys in the face with a story-mandated different gun." Considering we tended to get more length for our dollar in those older "pure" FPS titles than in the current ones, yeah, I'd say the current ones are definitely shorter.

If you feel like they're still worth the price, that's great - but I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that they are objectively shorter games, not worse games in any way. Whether you get bored with them or find them repetitive or whatever is kinda irrelevant, since that's not really the point. The point is length, and yeah, they've gotten shorter.

 

[Jason Rayes]

I played all three back to back when 3 came out and it took me about 240 hours. That wasn't "standard" as you probably guessed, plus I had all the DLC this time.

DLC would probably had 10 or so hours overall (mabye more) not to mention all that side stuff in ME1 which even I didnt bother with

also ME3 was probably thr shortest wasnt it? I think it was about 35 hours for me

Actually Lair of the Shadow Broker and Overlord gave me about 15 hours between them in ME 2, solid DLC. I did do a lot of dicking around on this playthrough though, completed every side quest, visited every planet etc. Yeah ME 3 was definitely the shortest of the games, I knocked it off in about 50 hours but a good 10 of that was in multiplayer. There aren't many side quests and the ones there are are mostly "Scan the planet, go back and talk to the person who mentioned it" variety. Even with my OCD I didn't finish all of them

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The problem isn't the length of the games, it's with how easy they are these days. And honestly, it's the consumer's fault more than the developer's.

oh bugger off...seriously, its a chicken or the egg thing

No, it really isn't. Developers saw how gamers were reacting to extremely hard games (avoiding them), so they reacted accordingly. It's simple cause and effect, not nearly the existential debate to which you want to compare it.

See, here's the thing; games used to be short. SHORT. We're talking you can beat them in under 30 minutes short; maybe under an hour if it's a longer game. The catch is that the games were also legendarily hard; hard to where even to this day people can brag about being able to beat the first Castlevania; 25 years after it was released!

to me that doesnt sound like a good thing....sound more frustrating than fun, while I like challenge I also like to have a big old adventure...like assasins creed or mass effect, I like story

Then the gaming scene of the 80's and 90's was not for you; not unless you were a big RPG fan, anyway. Even then there wasn't any guarantee of a story (or even a good one). Back then, the story in (nearly) every game was basically "those are the bad guys, that's all you need to worry about, now go". Yeah, the manuals sometimes gave a little more detail - or in the case of arcades there was maybe a story that you could maybe hear through word of mouth - but the games themselves were always just straight to the action.

But that's neither here nor there. Your initial reaction is the bigger tell of why games are the way they are today. People no longer play games to challenge themselves. Any death in a game is seen more as a nuisance to be avoided rather than a lesson to be learned, so any game which has the player dying a lot is often going to be dubbed as "more frustrating than fun".

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

So either way you slice it, today is a very sad time for single player content in the Triple-A market. If you want a good single player game, stick to the indie market, or play yesterday's Triple-A games.

Sleeping Dogs, Dishonored, Borderlands 2, Hitman, Far-Cry 3, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3...

What more do you want?

So you have to list... (Edit: In no particular order, mind)

a GTA clone that's barely deserved mention before this moment
a game that was designed for multiplayer and just lets you play alone if you want
a game that made headlines for disappointing its fanbase
a game that's barely been out for more than a couple weeks
and a game that's so new I honestly had to look it up because I didn't even know if it was out yet (it's been out for a few days, apparently)
Oh, and a game that, while not quite indie, isn't a Triple-A title...

... That's how desperate you were for games to try and disprove that statement about the state of single player games in the Triple-A market today. Just saying.

As for Dishonored, it's called the exception that proves the rule [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule]. So yeah, great. You got one non-multiplayer-based game that's generally considered to be a great game for this entire year, and a couple newer titles that may or may not stand up to the test of time after the initial release hype dies down. So to answer your question about what more I want... how about more than a few good games per year that I don't need a group of people to enjoy?

But I guess that's what the indie market is for.

 

[jbm1986]

Its at least partially related to pricing.

Taking some games I've played this year.

Dishonored cost 70 odd bucks and can be largely taken down in 6 hours (or less). Some folks will replay it to hit other paths, but many not.

AC3 costs the same amount, and hovers in around 8-10ish hours.

Skyrim's still at the same price point, and is probably going to eat up at least 20, even taking it pretty head on.

Hell Yeah only lasts 3-4, but also only charges 12 bucks.


It's not necessarily that the games are too short, its that if they start dipping below 7 hours and don't adjust their pricing, they're becoming a very dubious investment, effectively costing more then a theater ticket, or (as 10/hour is min wage here) requiring you to actually outwork the time spent playing the game to pay for it.

I agree with this mostly but you can also wait for the price to drop or get it through a sale on steam. You'd get the same game, same length of gameplay, and a cheaper price. Also, if you wait long enough, some games even get released as GOTY editions with all the DLC (or most of it) included.

 

[Dr Pussymagnet]

I don't understand people who try to measure an abstract concept like enjoyment by time spent.

I've played 3-5 hour games that I've gained more enjoyment out of than even the longest RPG slogs. I wish games were shorter.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

short game are not a problem the only problem that exists with them is when there too expensive
some long games are great and others are artificially lengthen games that should have been a much shorter games.
whether 20 hours counts a short game depend on the game(the type of game,its quality, and does it drag on too long) and the price.
by type game is mean for example 3 hour rpg is laughable.

that being said i don't recommend getting most AAA games at full price because there usually too short to justify the price.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

There have always been short games. The original Sonic the Hedgehog can be speedrun in less than an hour. There have also been long games, such as Final Fantasy. And this trend has continued to this day, where the only difference, strictly speaking, is two things: People who grew up playing games like Banjo-Kazooie (itself only something like a five-hour game depending on how well you know where everything is)

You don't base game length off of a speed run. Halo 3 took me less than 3 hours to complete on normal without trying to complete it in three hours that is a short game. An RPG that is less than 20 hours is a short RPG.

OT: Yes 20 hour RPGs are short but that said there is no point in having a 40 hour RPG that isn't fun. Even then it depends on depends on how the game feels as others have said. Halo 1 not short Halo 3 short as fuck and took me less than 3 hours on Normal first time through and around 3 - 3 and 1/2 on Hardened. No just because a game is 60 hours doesn't mean you have to finish it to get your money/fun worth. So I don't accept the argument that this is done to make games more accessible to college students/workers given that most people can't even finish the appetisers we have out now. Given that I am a college student doing a course with a relatively high work load I would still feel robbed if I got Halo 3 new and blasted through it in 3 hours.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Games seem about the same. Based on PSX being 'old', that is. Action games have always been 10-15 hours first time through. JRPGs were pretty stable around 40 hours, I can't really compare this to today.

Being the end of the year, with no releases to look forward to and a number of holiday sales, I find myself buying more and more of the critically acclaimed games of the past few years. However, as my free time is pretty limited I find more often than not I'm on message boards asking how long a game is because I want to beat it and set it aside, just so I can play the next game all while credibly talking about the game I have actually finished.

Dishonored was a bit short, but I'm rationalizing that by setting it in it's own niche as a sort of exhibition rather than a full on action game. I think if I rushed Bioshock I could beat it in a similar time frame, and the games are arguably similar.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Really, the problem is that games are often both short and incredibly linear. In extreme cases, the problem that people often arrive at is they don't think that the value they received was sufficient to justify the cost they were asked to pay. For example, if there was no multiplayer component in Black Ops, most would not consider the 60 dollar price tag justifiable.

To the larger debate of game length, simply consider that short is a relative term of length. The first person shooter genre for example used to produce games that took dozens of hours to play through the first time. Even RPG's have had their content culled. Sure, Skyrim can be played indefinitely but in terms of true story you'll find the game can be fully completed inside of 20 - 30 hours - sufficient to finish the main quest, the civil war quest, and all faction quests. By contrast, Baldur's Gate 2 required about 200 hours to play from start to finish. Thus even though Skyrim is a relatively long game by modern standards, within the genre itself it could easily be considered short.

 

[MikeTheMugger]

It also depends on just how much time you want to invest in a game. I know it's possible to blast through FFVII in 17 hours, but you'd really be missing a great game. Genre has a big part in this as well. If you know you're not the kind of person who wants to put 50+ hours into a game then you probably have no business playing Star Ocean in the first place. And while I love FPS games to death, I also realize that these titles tend to be in the 30 hour range, on the high end.

I'm noticing a trend in responses here that is a bit discouraging. The phrase "padded out for length" keeps popping up and it is driving my insane. Just because a game has an average playthrough length of 60 hours does not mean the game was padded. I would like to assume that everyone knows what padded means, but for those of you who do not: a game that is lengthened or extended by artificial means. Seems redundant, but by artificial I mean that a padded game has purposely included time consuming elements that have no real purpose in the game other than to make it longer. I've seen a great deal of games that are long, not because they are padded, but because the have actual content and depth. Admittedly, I'm seeing less and less of these games released each year.

 

[Panorama]

Zeno clash, i played it though once thus far, 2.5-3 hours that is it, but its really good fun, but i admit i only payed i think 69p. But if were talking AAA i can't think of an fps that takes 20 hours to complete, RPG'S mass effect 2 for me was 30 hours that was with the dlc, and skyrim not sure that counts well over im like 150 hours or so and still going.