I think 15-20 hours is reasonable for any game, but games with the best stories (Silent Hill, ICO, Killer7) were only 10 hours long so it really depends on the quality of the story.
People complain about short games.
- Thread starter JLrep
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Use your wrench dude. Its the wrench of POWER once you upgrade it.Useful Dave said:
I completed COD4 in a day, twice, once on hardened and once on veteran. Yeah, that game was short
Edit: To respond to the main post. Yes, people complain about games that are 10-15 hours long, but that's honestly a fair time for most games nowadays. Anyone who remembers the Duke should know this, those games were damn short
Games that tout a certain longevity have taught me to be cautious. A mechanic can be used to hyper extend games; for RPG's that's leveling up. For action games, it's stagnation of repeatition. A long enjoyable game of yesteryear had innovation, creativity, enjoyment. Such as Deus Ex, for an example. You could play these games for days, and be satisfied. Today, alot of care is given to graphical details. That care robs development of innovation, and longevity.
Big game names like Gears of War are impressive to look at. Really amazing graphicly. However, you can beat it in something like, 2 to 3 hours. Resident Evil 5 took me (collectivly) about 6 hours to beat the first time. That's 10 dollars per hour. Again, amazing to look at. Really fun. Bloody quick, though.
Oblivion, or Fallout 3, action-RPGs; well you can play those games until the day you die and maybe-MAYBE uncover it all. It takes a basic mechanic, and repeats ad nauseum. You basicly play until you get sick of it.
The Darkness; probably one of the more under appriciated next gen titles when it came out. I fell ill with a powerful sickness, and was in home stuck in bed for SIX days. I played The Darkness for six days! 5 to 8 hours at a time. I beat it on day six, when I was all better. A fantastic game, with amazing longevity. It's not always innovative (first person shooter), but it doesn't repeat alot of its previous mechanics. It uses its powerful and driven story to take hold of the first person mechanic, and joins with you through the game. (Some of that might have been sickness delirium talking, but I did replay it a year later when I was well; enjoyment did not once falter.)
I did ramble quite a bit. I guess the short of my point; graphics tend to be given to much importance. A game that will sacrafice some graphical quality for innovation can earn itself more development time** to woo the players that will play it.
** Unless you're Hideo Kojima. Then you're given unlimited development time to focus on graphics, innovation, longevity, etc etc etc.
Big game names like Gears of War are impressive to look at. Really amazing graphicly. However, you can beat it in something like, 2 to 3 hours. Resident Evil 5 took me (collectivly) about 6 hours to beat the first time. That's 10 dollars per hour. Again, amazing to look at. Really fun. Bloody quick, though.
Oblivion, or Fallout 3, action-RPGs; well you can play those games until the day you die and maybe-MAYBE uncover it all. It takes a basic mechanic, and repeats ad nauseum. You basicly play until you get sick of it.
The Darkness; probably one of the more under appriciated next gen titles when it came out. I fell ill with a powerful sickness, and was in home stuck in bed for SIX days. I played The Darkness for six days! 5 to 8 hours at a time. I beat it on day six, when I was all better. A fantastic game, with amazing longevity. It's not always innovative (first person shooter), but it doesn't repeat alot of its previous mechanics. It uses its powerful and driven story to take hold of the first person mechanic, and joins with you through the game. (Some of that might have been sickness delirium talking, but I did replay it a year later when I was well; enjoyment did not once falter.)
I did ramble quite a bit. I guess the short of my point; graphics tend to be given to much importance. A game that will sacrafice some graphical quality for innovation can earn itself more development time** to woo the players that will play it.
** Unless you're Hideo Kojima. Then you're given unlimited development time to focus on graphics, innovation, longevity, etc etc etc.
People want long games WITH VARIED CONTENT. A game can't be too long, it can be too repetitive. Asking what we'd rather have: Short fun games or long boring ones? is the wrong question to ask. We expect long, fun games! And we're well within our rights considering the average full retail price.
As for the inevitable mention of Portal, yes that game was short and sweet, but it was also dirt cheap (part of a 4-pack of games, all quite awesome). If Portal was a full-priced stand-alone title, people would be complaining about it just as well.
As for the inevitable mention of Portal, yes that game was short and sweet, but it was also dirt cheap (part of a 4-pack of games, all quite awesome). If Portal was a full-priced stand-alone title, people would be complaining about it just as well.
I write long posts that nobody ever reads, so I tend to read the posts of others who do the same thing out of principleValiance said:
Me too, actually...Sometimes I find myself scrolling down past single line posts until I find something that takes up half the page with 6 paragraphs, and THAT'S the one that catches my eye...HyenaThePirate said:I write long posts that nobody ever reads, so I tend to read the posts of others who do the same thing out of principleValiance said:
You think that 10-12 hours is criminal?JLrep said:
Try 3-4 hours! Yes, you read that right, a lot of recent movie licensed games are 3-4 hours long, and FULL MSRB pricing!
Terminator: Salvation, James Bond Quantom of Solace etc.
And then there's the games that are conciderably longer, but only has game ideas to fit within a 3-4 hour timeframe.
10-12 horus is not short. Heck I WISH games where that long, but they are not. They are far shorter than that and they're more expensive than ever.
One thing to remember is that it isn't just the price, it's the tech.
I can (and have) sat down and beaten Sonic 1 in a single sitting. Don't recall how long it took, but when I get the Mega Collection I'll be able to tell you all. I'm guessing... an hour, more or less.
Why don't people think that Sonic 1 is too short? Simple - no save feature. You have to do everything in one go. You miss the seventh Chaos Emerald on Scrap Brain Zone Act 2, you can't quickload and try again; you've got to do the whole thing over.
Sure, you can cheat around these problems (Sonic 2 was a classic - I'd use the level-skip cheat to re-earn the Chaos Emeralds I had on my last playthrough, then start over at whatever stage I go to last time) but playing honestly you're stuck with a single run.
I think we can all agree that there are virtually no modern games we can play without Saving. Okay, I hammered Killzone 2 in a single night, but I took a bloody break halfway through! The idea of no form of save is a nightmare!
However, Saving makes the game easier, for reasons made clear above. This also means that we expect a game not to be over and done in an hour, but spread over many days and weeks of play... as such, where once we might spend our 'play slot' practicing to perfect our run-through on Mario 2, now we complete a few stages of Super Mario Galaxy, save it, then pick up from there tomorrow.
Gaming has gone from being about short games you had to master to long games you play episodically. This is why we feel cheated by a six-hour game with Save, and not a 60 minute game without.
I can (and have) sat down and beaten Sonic 1 in a single sitting. Don't recall how long it took, but when I get the Mega Collection I'll be able to tell you all. I'm guessing... an hour, more or less.
Why don't people think that Sonic 1 is too short? Simple - no save feature. You have to do everything in one go. You miss the seventh Chaos Emerald on Scrap Brain Zone Act 2, you can't quickload and try again; you've got to do the whole thing over.
Sure, you can cheat around these problems (Sonic 2 was a classic - I'd use the level-skip cheat to re-earn the Chaos Emeralds I had on my last playthrough, then start over at whatever stage I go to last time) but playing honestly you're stuck with a single run.
I think we can all agree that there are virtually no modern games we can play without Saving. Okay, I hammered Killzone 2 in a single night, but I took a bloody break halfway through! The idea of no form of save is a nightmare!
However, Saving makes the game easier, for reasons made clear above. This also means that we expect a game not to be over and done in an hour, but spread over many days and weeks of play... as such, where once we might spend our 'play slot' practicing to perfect our run-through on Mario 2, now we complete a few stages of Super Mario Galaxy, save it, then pick up from there tomorrow.
Gaming has gone from being about short games you had to master to long games you play episodically. This is why we feel cheated by a six-hour game with Save, and not a 60 minute game without.
Heh. That rhetoric does prove one important thing though: when it comes to entertainment quality is more important than quantity.Jandau said:
Would I rather play a great 10 hour game over a good 20 hour game? Still a yes.
Free time is worth alot and there are many alternatives on how to spend that time. The price of the game isn't the only factor. How much is your time worth?
While I see your point, let me ask you this: Would you rather blow 40$ on an awesome 2-hour game or would you rather buy a pretty good 20-hour game?veloper said:
Game lenght is an issue. There are plenty of examples of games that clocked a good long playtime while still remaining fresh and not overly repetitive. When people demand longer games it just means they want the developers to produce more content on the same level of quality.
Don't get me wrong, I value quality over quantity, but if the level of quantity drops bellow a certain point I just don't see the game as being worth my investment. Whenever a discussion about game lenght is started some people start dragging out all the short-but-sweet games like Portal or Mirror's Edge, and that's all well and good. If such games were longer with the same amount of creative work being dragged over several extra hours, the overall experience would be diminished.
But the issue is that when players are demanding longer games, it's not a request for the same amount of creativity dragged over a longer period of time, it's a request for additional creativity to expand the game. In a way, short games feel like the designers ran out of ideas. They had a cool concept and they put it together, but in the end there wasn't that much to it or they didn't know where else to take it, so they quit while they were ahead.
That would then just have to be best game ever, but yes, if the game is really that awesome I guess I would. I reckon I would problably want to replay the best game ever once or twice aswell.Jandau said:
Even if the game exploded afterwards, there must be a level of quality where even 20 per hour is worth it.
I think a really good restaurant with friends is one of the most enjoyable experiences you can have and that will costs more than 20 per hour of enjoyment.
So why not a hypothetical game that awesome? Well the thing is I'm usually not complaining about the lack of game length, but the lack of gameplay and innovation nowadays.
Game length means almost nothing to me anymore, because the novelty of a new game wears of so quickly for me.
The crazy thing is I think I've clocked more time in total on really simple and short games like SC2 super melee, rather than on long epic games like BG2.
All these minutes in between other jobs and with a quick resolution, make me come back more often. And I happen too love and respect BG2.
Actually now that I said this, I think it's just me. There probably are alot of gamers who want weak entertainment for few $/hr.
Games are far more expencive and less previlent than other forms of media in one month dosens of new books, programmes movies are shoveled out, it can take cycles of years for a popular game sequel in comparison to a movie which can be shoveled out year in. So yeah safe to say if I continue to support an industry with a low annual turnout, I expect quality and a good length especially considering a retail game here goes for £30-40 straight to the shelf.
And there we come back to that straw man argument...veloper said:
Please point out where I said I want long crappy games? Hell, who in their right mind would want all games to be long and crappy? And since when does a game being short make it good by default?
Why can't it be both? Is it so much to ask that a game be both good AND reasonably long before I decide it's truly a great game? Why do you insist that a longer game must be bad?