Does Videogame Length Vary By Territory?

asphyxiation_query writes "I've been looking at the relative length of videogames (in terms of overall gameplay, how long the game stretches out from start to completion) based on region. Can Slashdot Games readers discern any obvious regional patterns or variations in this information? For example, are games from Korea typically longer than Japanese? How do European and North American titles stack up in this respect?" Or is content similarly long if part of the same genre, regardless of country of origin?

Comments

Re:maybey not longer but more challenging

[Babbster]

The reason they don't put variable difficulty settings in certain games is simple: Money. They want to get the games out the door as fast as possible, and it takes extra time to balance out extra difficulty settings. I expect this is particularly important with "first sequels" as they want to ride the crest of the buzz wave of the original.

Me, I hated Devil May Cry. But I found out later from friends that the reason I quit (the lava spider - normal difficulty) was, oddly, one of the really difficult bosses. I'm all in favor of ramping up the difficulty as you progress, but making that thing the first boss just put me off the whole thing.

As for the original point (difficulty of Japanese games), I expect that a ridiculous proportion of their gaming community consists of RPG addicts. RPG people (turn-based RPG people, anyway) get used to having it easy because in most turn-based RPGs levelling solves all difficulty problems. An extra hour or two in "The Forest of Lost Hope" (or whatever), bullying wimps, will make the following two or three stages very easy, thus rewarding time over skill. However, if you spend four hours fighting "The Yellow Turban Rebellion" in Dynasty Warriors 3 (a Japanese action/RPG/strategy game based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Lu Bu will probably hand you your head when you meet up with him for the first time, high level or not, because you haven't fought anyone tough yet.

Heck, this could explain more than anything the Xbox's failure to thrive in Japan. Turn-based strategy isn't anywhere to be found on Xbox, and so the games require a modicum of skill instead of selecting an attack from a menu and then watching it play out. There's a really disgusting marketing campaign in there somewhere: "The Power of X: Too Much For The Japanese." :)