Poll: What's your ideal game length?

[someguy1231]

With all the recent discussions lately about games being too short or becoming repetitive, I thought I'd ask how long you prefer your games to be.

Me? I'm a firm believer that games can never be too long, as long as the player is enjoying them. I've put at least 200 hours each into GTA V, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and God-knows-how-many hours into World of Warcraft.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Depends. A good story-driven game can be anywhere between 5 and 25 hours long. But I like my sandboxes to be worth hundreds.

 

[Zontar]

Many of the games I like are ones which are soft on narrative but long on enjoyability of gameplay (though that's not to say they are all open world). For instance, I have triple digit hour counts on a fair number of games which are not open world at all.

My idea is of how long a game should be is that, in terms of quality gameplay which I get real enjoyment out of, the ratio is somewhere in the ballpark of at least one of those hours for each dollar I spent on it. So far most of the games I've ended up buying and playing have this going for them (I rarely ignore user reviews).

 

[Lufia Erim]

Main story? 20 hours. Is my ideal length.

I will pay a maximum of 2$/hour of gameplay.

Now if a game has online multiplayer that i see myself investing in. Like say a fighting game where i can and most likely play 100 of hours then i have no problem paying full price.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

As long as a game doesn't leave me thinking "was that it?" or "why is this still going?" then it's a decent length. If you want actual numbers, let's say anything between five minutes and a thousand hours.

 

[MysticSlayer]

It depends on the game. I've played games that only lasted 2-5 hours that felt like they dragged on for too long, and I've played games that lasted 10 hours but left me wondering, "Is that all there was?" Basically, I want a game to feel complete without feeling padded out to be a "proper lengthed game", or, in some cases, be a "proper game". If that means only being 2-5 hours long, then so be it. If that means lasting 100+ hours, then so be it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

15-20 hours for a character driven action game, 40 hours for an RPG.

I think that The Last of Us and Dark Souls pretty much embody perfect game length. They're long enough that you really get to know the characters and become attached to them, even characters that you don't directly control or interact with much, but they aren't so long that they get boring and repetitive.

As much as I love long epic RPGs like Skyrim, the vast majority of those games are just padding. They're made to allow you to waste as much time as you could possibly want in them, but they also directly waste your time by impeding your progress with samey fetch quests and lame go-nowhere side-quests.

 

[G00N3R7883]

My favourite games are RPGs. Witcher, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, NeverWinter Nights, KOTOR, Baldurs Gate, Drakensang, Fallout ... they're all 25 hours and above.

But I could also list a bunch of games I've really enjoyed in the 10-25 hour range. Mainly FPSes like Wolfenstein, Shadow Warrior, Metro, some 3rd person games like Batman and Tomb Raider. Xcom.

So it depends on the type of game. Generally I think a longer game has more time to deliver a more complex story and better character development. But the important part is to also deliver a fun combat system with lots of variety in weapons/abilities for yourself and your enemies so that the player doesn't get bored.

 

[FPLOON]

My ideal [game] length is enough to make me cum come for more and then some... Then again, I think I'm just a slut too easy to please when I really think about it...

Other than that, it all depends on the genre, the [possible] franchise, and my overall tolerance in general... So, it's never a consistent ideal game length, anyway...

 

[linwolf]

Over 20 hours works best for me, if it's under this the game better be cheap or offer something really new and interesting. If I feel the game starts to loose my interest either due to padding or repetitive I will just put it down and play a different game for a wail until my interest is renewed.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

It's more about the girth for me.

I mean, you need a wide array of activities and/or customization options and the like for a good, long dicki- gaming session.

 

[Super Cyborg]

My philosophy doesn't just apply to games, but any media, be it games, books, manga, anime, movies, TV shows, etc.

To me it's like a wizard coming, it should happen at exactly the right time. Everything should be wrapped up nicely and not feel too dragged out. If the game and story can be done in 2 hours and feel fully fleshed, then that's fine. If the game is 80 hours long, but at no point does it feel needlessly long or plot points were added unnecessarily, then that's fine as well. It all comes down to the game and how it works out in the end.

I find myself playing games of various lengths again because of how I like it. I play To The Moon because the story is short and really good. Playing the game again can allow me to look deeper into stuff. I've played Persona 4 a number of times, and I notice details or how early stuff weaved into the later game. Those games then get more play time because of the added incentive I feel it gives by multiple replays.

I could go into an essay explaining this, but I'll keep it simple with the given description.

 

[loa]

It can be 1 hour long for all I care if it has the right kind of replay-value.
If it's just a 60 hour purely story based game with the gameplay of little more than a visual novel, it tends to catch dust once I've completed it.
If I complete it.

The ideal game should inspire experimentation and be able to be played in different ways multiple times.
That, to me, has more value than pure quantity of game length.

 

[kasperbbs]

A game i enjoy can never be too long. I just finished Witcher 3 yesterday and dammit i want more!

 

[Sassafrass]

Anything between 2 or so hours to however long Witcher 3 is if you're doing ALL OF THE THINGS.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, my favourite genre is action adventure, so 10 to 20 hours is about the perfect length for me.

I mean, I really, really liked The Witcher 3, but after 3 weeks playing I was fucking done with it. When I play an online shooter I generally last about 2 to 3 weeks as well before getting tired of it. It's why I can't understand people playing the same MMO for years.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

Where is the 60hour option? 30hours is bare minimum. 60hours is pretty good without post game content. 100+hours for post game content.

 

[MetalDooley]

Around 20 - 40hrs suits me best.I often only get to play for an hour or two so a 40 hr game can last me weeks and I get bored if I'm playing the same game for too long(which is exactly what happened with Skyrim).I don't really get how someone can put 100's of hours into the same game and not get tired of it

 

[Maximum Bert]

The ideal length for me is where a game gets to properly explore all the avenues it presents without feeling padded, so it could be 500 hours or 10 minutes depending on the game and what it is trying to do. There is no length that is ideal across the board games try different things and so I would have to evaluate what I would consider an ideal game length on a game by game basis. Length can also be (mostly) meaningless in some games where extreme repetition is expected and is the main focus such as puzzle games like Tetris, and many competitive games like Shooters, RTS and Fighters for instance.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

depends entirely on the game, but for an rpg I like them to usually be around 40-50 (that's if it is more story based) at least.

action adventure type games can go 15-20 hours, depending on the story and/or stupid fluff content they put in there.