20-hour games are "short"?

[otakon17]

It depends on the type of game. I love both Enslaved (~8 hours long) and Fallout: New Vegas (~40 hours). If I really love a game, a short length won't bother me. I'll almost surely play it again. Twenty hours is on the lower end of what I expect from an RPG, but some games (like the first Mass Effect) I hold in high regard despite them struggling to meet that mark.

You beat Mass Effect in under 20 hours? The hell is wrong with you? You didn't explore AT ALL then, which was half the fun of that game and they subsequently made it into a shooting gallery with the sequels(not getting into that though).

OT: I'd say 20 hours is an acceptable playthrough time of most games nowadays except for meaty open world types. To cite an opposite example, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night only took me just over 11 hours to beat fully(not 201%, just the true ending) the second time I played through it. However, there was a gap of well over 10 years in between playthroughs and I didn't even bother with a guide for it. However, those were a great 11 or so hours.

 

[DustyDrB]

It depends on the type of game. I love both Enslaved (~8 hours long) and Fallout: New Vegas (~40 hours). If I really love a game, a short length won't bother me. I'll almost surely play it again. Twenty hours is on the lower end of what I expect from an RPG, but some games (like the first Mass Effect) I hold in high regard despite them struggling to meet that mark.

You beat Mass Effect in under 20 hours? The hell is wrong with you? You didn't explore AT ALL then, which was half the fun of that game and they subsequently made it into a shooting gallery with the sequels(not getting into that though).

Haha....I've played Mass Effect start to finish 13 times. I wouldn't say exploring is half the fun in it (not even close), but I'd say I finished at least 85-90% of the content for almost all of those playthroughs (I even found all the Matriarch writings/Salarian IDs/Turian insignias in one go at it, which is totally NOT worth the effort). You can have a pretty thorough playthrough in about 17 hours. Granted, this comes much from an intimate familiarity with the game. So I know where to go and when. So it's not a speed running situation, just the kind of efficiency that comes with having played a game a ton.

 

[Tallim]

It depends on the type of game. I love both Enslaved (~8 hours long) and Fallout: New Vegas (~40 hours). If I really love a game, a short length won't bother me. I'll almost surely play it again. Twenty hours is on the lower end of what I expect from an RPG, but some games (like the first Mass Effect) I hold in high regard despite them struggling to meet that mark.

You beat Mass Effect in under 20 hours? The hell is wrong with you? You didn't explore AT ALL then, which was half the fun of that game and they subsequently made it into a shooting gallery with the sequels(not getting into that though).

OT: I'd say 20 hours is an acceptable playthrough time of most games nowadays except for meaty open world types. To cite an opposite example, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night only took me just over 11 hours to beat fully(not 201%, just the true ending) the second time I played through it. However, there was a gap of well over 10 years in between playthroughs and I didn't even bother with a guide for it. However, those were a great 11 or so hours.

Actually I finished ME1 in about 12 hours and I was certainly exploring and doing everything I could find. The issue was I stumbled upon the ending without really noticing it was the ending.

OT:

I love Vanquish and that game is really only about 3-4 hours long but I never felt that it was too short. You can't really look at game length in terms of time playing as that's rather subjective. I mean I can finish Fallout New Vegas faster than I can finish Vanquish. Does that make NV short?

 

[DustyDrB]

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

The first game is easily the shortest, if we're talking about trying to do everything. It was also the most padded (Mako sections both on main missions and planets, the "collectibles" like the Matriarch writings/Salarian IDs/Turian insignias/rare metals). I'd say my average playthrough is about 25 hours, though I know I've finished it in under 20 (not skipping a lot of content, either).

I think Mass Effect 2 and 3 are about even in how long it takes me to get through them. Mass Effect 2 is still pretty padded, if only for the planet scanning. Mass Effect 3's planet scanning doesn't really take that much time. Though the game's length is roughly the same as Mass Effect 2 (35-40 hours sounds about right), I'd say it's the "meatiest" of the trilogy.

And I say this as a guy who puts both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 in my top 5 games (ME2: #1, ME: #3), and as a guy who doesn't even bother to rank Mass Effect 3 (not that I hate it either. Just has way too many issues to ignore).

 

[Neonsilver]

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) or Final Fantasy VII are now out in the "real" world, but with unemployment at an all-time high, a lot of them have quite a fair amount of free time (myself included). Also, there are simply a lot more games being released these days than there were back in the 80's or 90's. Over one-hundred and fifty games were launched this year alone (partly due to the launch of the Wii-U).

I think it's not really a good idea to compare speedrunning sonic or playing banjo kazooie when you already know where everything is when you want to make a point about the length of a game.
In a game like Banjo Kazooie is a game where you have to search and find a lot of items, so if you want to compare it you have to compare the first playthrough since the search is a big part of the game.
The same goes for a speedrun and if you take the practice and multiple tries it actually has a lot more playtime.
And games like sonic felt a lot longer because they were often quite hard to beat.

Since you're the second person who has latched onto this, I feel the need to point out that I'm not the best Sonic or Banjo-Kazooie player in the world, and I haven't played either of those games in close to ten years, but I can still beat them in ~1 hour and ~5 hours respectively. Especially with Sonic, actually, the stages only last an average of 3 minutes and you've got six stages with three acts each. The average play-time of a full run without going through any special stages EDIT: and with little/no dying :End EDIT should only be 54 minutes. I'm not even talking about blasting through levels as fast as you can here, either, because some of the stages can be done far faster than 3 minutes (I believe the fastest time for Green Hill Zone Act 1 has been under a minute).

As for Banjo-Kazooie, again I feel the need to clarify that I have not played the game in nearly a decade and never even made it to the last two levels when I was originally playing, and yet when I picked it up again earlier this year, I had very little issues with getting through it rather quickly.

Yes, going into a game like Banjo-Kazooie with absolutely zero knowledge of it will probably mean you play it for significantly longer than five hours if you end up liking it, but how is that not true of any other game? I'm using numbers from my last play-throughs of these games as punctuation to the fact that these are numbers done by a person who has been playing video games for twenty years, not a person who just picked up a controller for the first time in their life. Because that's the point. To a person who has been playing video games for twenty years, a lot of games (within the genres they know, at least) are going to seem "easier", and thus be "shorter".

To explain why I latched on that argument, I'll explain how I understood the topic you started. You started a topic about the length of games and that often gamers feel as if games today are a lot shorter than in the past. Since older games were a lot more limited by their hardware than today and if you consider the best possible plathrough, it is probably harder to find a shorter new game. But it is pointless to discuss the raw length of a game and it is more important how much time a gamer invest in a game.

That is the reason why I had to point out that your argument is flawed. With your argument you ignore a lot of time people play games like Sonic or Banjo Kazooie.
I understand that you wanted to say that a lot of people look at the past games with their nostalgia goggles, but if you say a game is short based on a speedrun, you could also say a Final Fantasy is short because you can beat the final boss in a few minutes.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

it honestly depends on the game and the genre, if the games story just does NOT allow for longer than 15 hours, then so be it, but alot of games, especially in the fps category, have been fucking so weak in this category for a while now.

but since i play rpg's the most, this is my overall feel on it:

20 hours for main campaign/storyline = good enough for me probably, don't wanna pad it TOO much wiht unnecessary requirements
>50 hours for main campaign/storyline = hm..you have one epic ass game to tell or you should've broken it down better.

and for jrpg's they tend to reach that last requirement more than enough times.

granted that's just spitballing, not every game has to hold true to that, there are plenty of exceptions i'm sure.

 

[shrekfan246]

To explain why I latched on that argument, I'll explain how I understood the topic you started. You started a topic about the length of games and that often gamers feel as if games today are a lot shorter than in the past. Since older games were a lot more limited by their hardware than today and if you consider the best possible plathrough, it is probably harder to find a shorter new game. But it is pointless to discuss the raw length of a game and it is more important how much time a gamer invest in a game.

That is the reason why I had to point out that your argument is flawed. With your argument you ignore a lot of time people play games like Sonic or Banjo Kazooie.
I understand that you wanted to say that a lot of people look at the past games with their nostalgia goggles, but if you say a game is short based on a speedrun, you could also say a Final Fantasy is short because you can beat the final boss in a few minutes.

I understand your point.

And I'll make this counterpoint:
When games take 20+ hours to fully complete one play-through, how many people are really going to be motivated to play it multiple times?

Games like Sonic or Banjo have such longevity because they're short, and that's what people seem to be forgetting. If you like the original Sonic the Hedgehog, then you can play it over and over again over the course of twenty years, like I have, and never feel bored with it. But that's because it's not a long-winded, heavily scripted text-spewing monster of a game. It throws you right into the action with bite-sized chunk stages that take less time to finish than cooking lunch.

Yes, there are long games people replay multiple times, such as Final Fantasy or Persona or plenty of other JRPGs, I won't deny that. But if those are the only types of games you deign worth buying, how much are you really getting out of everything?

I suppose the confusion I'm getting is primarily because I love almost every different genre. I love FPS', I love RPGs, I love action games, I love adventure games, I love (some) racing games, I love genre hybrids, I love stealth games, I love platformers. And so every year there are more and more games that I want to play, but every time I see one that's going to last me for over 50 hours, I just get this sinking feeling because it's very rare that the game is actually engaging enough to keep me wanting playing for that long.

There are most certainly people out there who probably only play JRPGs, and so for them, having a game that's over in 20 hours is a huge disappointment. But I guess I just don't understand the mentality behind only being interested in one or two genres. Er, wait, that's a little off-point there, isn't it?

 

[Fursnake]

I like games of moderate length (15-20 hours) and I enjoy games with a hefty length (can put 100+ hours into them). I just don't care to spend $60 on something a game that only lasts 15-20 hours. I care little for the multiplayer components of single player games. This is why I don't preorder games anymore unless I hear the word or concept "open world" attached to it. I'd pay $20-$30 for 15-20 hours of gameplay, but not $60.

 

[TK421]

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 am both of those things, and a 20-hour game is still short. I paid $60, and I expect many, many hours of entertainment. If a game is only 20 hours long, it sure as hell better have some awesome replay value for the length to not diminish the quality of the game.

Edit:

I like games of moderate length (15-20 hours) and I enjoy games with a hefty length (can put 100+ hours into them). I just don't care to spend $60 on something a game that only lasts 15-20 hours. I care little for the multiplayer components of single player games. This is why I don't preorder games anymore unless I hear the word or concept "open world" attached to it. I'd pay $20-$30 for 15-20 hours of gameplay, but not $60.

This pretty well sums it up.

 

[Skoosh]

It all depends on the game. Different genres have different expectations, just like kids movies are shorter than gritty scifi movies generally. You say it doesn't lessen the quality of the game if it's short, but it can! Think if you go to a restaurant and get an amazing, wonderful burger, but it's 1/4th of the size of a standard burger. You're still starving and wondering why the hell you payed full price for something that wasn't even half a meal, even if it was tasty. Same goes for games. For some games, there's such a thing as too short. Same with being too long and having nothing but a lot of filler. Exactly where this like is (20 hours, 5 hours, 40 hours) all depends on the game, so I can't really comment on "is 20 hours short" but in general, I don't know anyone to call 20 hours a short game unless it's an RPG. Maybe a bit on the shorter side, but not worth mentioning.

 

[aguspal]

More hours of gameplay is always best so long as the quality dosnt suffers from it.

 

[Neonsilver]

To explain why I latched on that argument, I'll explain how I understood the topic you started. You started a topic about the length of games and that often gamers feel as if games today are a lot shorter than in the past. Since older games were a lot more limited by their hardware than today and if you consider the best possible plathrough, it is probably harder to find a shorter new game. But it is pointless to discuss the raw length of a game and it is more important how much time a gamer invest in a game.

That is the reason why I had to point out that your argument is flawed. With your argument you ignore a lot of time people play games like Sonic or Banjo Kazooie.
I understand that you wanted to say that a lot of people look at the past games with their nostalgia goggles, but if you say a game is short based on a speedrun, you could also say a Final Fantasy is short because you can beat the final boss in a few minutes.

I understand your point.

And I'll make this counterpoint:
When games take 20+ hours to fully complete one play-through, how many people are really going to be motivated to play it multiple times?

Games like Sonic or Banjo have such longevity because they're short, and that's what people seem to be forgetting. If you like the original Sonic the Hedgehog, then you can play it over and over again over the course of twenty years, like I have, and never feel bored with it. But that's because it's not a long-winded, heavily scripted text-spewing monster of a game. It throws you right into the action with bite-sized chunk stages that take less time to finish than cooking lunch.

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.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So, Escapambillidandoes, what's your take on this?

The problem with a lot of short games is that there is no re-playability attached. Alternatively when it is it's arbitrary to the point of being retarded (think 'smash all the TV's' in Call of Duty 4).

My favourite game of all time is Lylat Wars (Starfox 64), you can bust that game end to end in 45 minutes. Even beating all three routes with medals, unlocking pro mode and beating them all again can be done in a day (if you're good, or obsessive).

Despite that it's still brilliant, because the 45minutes it take to get end to end is about the best rail-shooter there's ever been, the draw back in is nothing more than to beat it again, but better than last time.

Current short games have lost that simple fun. Shooters like CoD and Halo are now little more than training modes for the infinite and frequently shallow multi player. In both the crap you've unlocked is more important than whether you can use it or not and there will be a couple of maps available.

No fun, little (or facile) variety and no value in skill, most modern releases are rubbish!

 

[fix-the-spade]

Okay, but consider this:
Game A has a 40+ hour campaign, but you have absolutely no fun while playing through it.

Game B has a 10-20 hour campaign, but it's some of the most fun you've ever had playing a video game.

Which one is worth more, then?

Obviously B, but the trouble is that most games released now are under ten hours in length (twenty if you're playing for detail) and boring while at it.

Like Halo 4, I bust through that in just over seven hours, on Heroic, aside from the trench run in the last level I can't think of anything in it that stood out as especially fun, or even more interesting than the original. Aside from couple of stupid mistakes on my part I didn't even die much.
Even the enemies are weak, it's historically been a strength of Halo that different enemies require different approaches, but except for double tapping the Jackals every enemy in the game is beaten by pointing dakka at them and holding the trigger, it's barely different to Call of Duty now.

Full price games are all turning into short, dull identikits of each other and it's pulling the fun out of gaming!

 

[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.