Poll: Ideal Game Length

[PedroSteckecilo]

Personally I like a 15-20 hour Single Player segment with about 10 or so more hours of Extra Content, like bonus or challenge levels ala Mario Galaxy or the Time Splitters Series. I would gladly pay $50+ for these length of games, however, I usually feel shafted or ripped off if a game is under 10 hours with no extras.

My general objection is that many game designers appear to be making shorter games as a short cut, charging us player $50+ for a 5 hour game. Now something like Portal, 2-3 hours of awesome with some extras for $20 or Penny Arcade Adventures, $20 for about 5-7 hours of gameplay, is perfectly acceptable to me.

Since alot of buzz in the industry seems to be that the "long game" is on its way out, what do the other citizens of The Escapist think is the ideal length for a game?

 

[fix-the-spade]

I like games at the extremes.

Either it has to be 40minutes or less like Lylat Wars.
Or it needs to be a 50hour plus epic like System Shock 2.

Aside from Metal Gears I don't own many 10-20 hour games.

 

[slaygore]

On average I would prefer a game that's 20-30 hours long especially for action adventure games since there's so many places you could explore. For rpgs I expect a little longer like 40-50 hours although that's including cutscenes. Now that I think about it, usually pure gameplay in an rpg is around 20-30 hours and everything else is cutscenes.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Depends completely on the game. I don't really care how long a game is as long as it "draws you in like a triple C***ed hooker". But, if a game is 30+ hours it needs to keep me immersed. The origanal Half-Life 2 was good, but it dragged on way too long. I prefered ep2. Short but sweat.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Depends upon what's in it. 100 hours' gameplay sounds good on paper, but if 50 of those hours comes from incredibly-slow-elevators-from-heck and wandering featureless plains looking for random weak things to beat up then I'd personally rather see it end up 50 hours long instead.

I'm alright with Portal; it was just the right length for what it was. I'm also alright with Mass Effect, and that's even with the random planet and elevator timestuffers.

-- Steve

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Depends completely on the game. I don't really care how long a game is as long as it "draws you in like a triple C***ed hooker". But, if a game is 30+ hours it needs to keep me immersed. The origanal Half-Life 2 was good, but it dragged on way too long. I prefered ep2. Short but sweat.

True enough, some of my favorite games are under 10 hours.
ZOE2
Drakes Fortune
Silent Hill 2
Portal
All awesome and short. Though those are lucky, game designers can't always ensure that you're going to get an amazing experience out of a 6-7 hour game. And there's always that niggling doubt that maybe spending $50+ on it wasn't the best plan.

Now if all these games included replay incentives or bonus levels/challenges I would be much more willing to accept their shorter length.

 

[Zombie_King]

I used to be pretty cheap, so I wanted games to be long, so I could get my money's worth out of them. Aside from that, when I buy a game, I'm super-devoted to it, and if I don't beat it in the first couple of days, it's probably a game that would make most casual gamers cry. I put a lot of time into games, I'm very devoted to them. I like a game to be a good 20-30 hours. I could muscle past a 30-40 hour game, with a lot of play time. I mean, I'd have to call in a sick day to get some more play time in. And on the weekends, the video game would probably be the only thing I did. If the game's 50+, I'm assuming it's an RPG. While I'm not a huge RPG fan, I still play them. The only really long games I play are MMO's, though, and you can't really count that, because they can offer 1000's of hours of game time (I mean, if you really, really, really need to play the game, like it's the crack to a crack addict).

 

[Terramax]

A game needs length. Otherwise there will eventually be a productive crash. Why will people continue to pay 50-60 dollars when they know the game won't last them 3 hours? Especially when Mass effect, which looks wonderful, and can last a good eighty hours, is in the bargain bin for 25 bucks.
I'm going to have to say, regardless of graphics, longer is better. Bow chicka bow-wow.

On the contrary, how many games will be sold if everyone spends 80+ hours on every game they buy?

More time on a single game = less games we have time to complete, if gamers actually play the games till the end.

I'd rather be playing shorter yet beautiful, imaginative, unique games like Psychonauts than bland, pretentious, samey sci-fi games like Mass Effect.

I've chosen 11-15. Most games that last longer than 20 hrs generally have fillers in the likes of grinding, poinless missions or quests. Okami is a prime example. Great game, but stretched out far longer than it needed to be.

And most of my favourite story-based games have kept me coming back again and again over the years anyhow-- Broken Sword I & II, Sanitarium, Silent Hill 2 +3, Metal Gear Solid, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Discworld Noir, Myst III & IV, Still Life-- so I get my 20-30hrs worth of gameplay anyhow.

 

[Quaidis]

I'm mixed on the poll, and therefore cannot vote on it with good conscience. I think games are ideal long and short. There are some short games out there that you could blow through in a weekend and some long games that are monotonous. These are games that I do not enjoy and probably one of them is what this thread is leaning towards. However there are good long games that keep you wrapped up for an entire summer to play, as well as some short games that, while you can beat it in a few hours, you can reply it many times and see something new each time.

And while I'm of the personalized opinion that a game should not be too long to the point that I have to run with it in parts over a year, I'm of the same opinion that some NintendoHard games or strategy games that last forever (the ones that you don't know if you'll ever beat or are unbeatable) are good games that can be picked up every now and then and enjoyed for the duration of my attention span.

In the end it all depends on the game and its worth, not the time taken to beat it. This is probably why my shelf has a variety of long, short, and moderately-timed games.

 

[TheGreenManalishi]

I find the games i play most are short, but you feel like doing it again becaus eit was so good. massive, longe games are good too, but i wont immediately start again upon completion. windwaker and twilight princess are, alas, bang in the middle of my two extremes or preference.

 

[bluemarsman]

Games should be as long as possible.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Games should be as long as possible.

Fine. I'll take a game of tic-tac-toe and add a mandatory turn length of one hour per turn. That makes the game so much better, yes?

-- Steve

 

[lightbulbthief]

well it depends on the game, portal for me was a perfect length, but Id feel a tad miffed if other games were the same length

 

[Joeshie]

Games should be as long as they need to be. A game shouldn't be artificially extended because the developers feel it needs to be longer. Portal, for example, would have actually been a worse game if they had extended the single-player. Having too long of a game can sometimes make the game seem dull and drag on longer than it needs to be. Of course, you don't want to rush a game either, when it's clear that a segment could benefit from longer sessions.

 

[MindBullets]

Infinite.

ie, a good game needs a lot of replayability, in my book.