On Videogame Length - Less Is More?

Thanks to Eurogamer for their opinion piece criticizing the excessive length of videogames. The author initially states: "It's the woe of every committed gamer: piles of uncompleted games. We all swear we'll go back and complete [games] but the sad reality is most of us will - most likely - never get around to resuming our valiant quest to conquer these epics." He points out the relative lack of time most players have: "For the majority of gamers, squeezing in the time to play games means - pretty much - not spending much time doing anything else in our leisure time", and goes on to advocate episodic content, arguing "I long for a future when games are delivered in short sharp chunks like all the best visual entertainment is."

Comments

Dear Sirs..

[swdunlop]

I am writing to inform you that I am returning all but one of the discs from your latest epic, Baldur's Gate III: The Quest For More Levels. I find it simply unacceptable that, after I have paid you $50, you insist that I sit through over seventy hours with your game to derive full enjoyment of your product.

In the future, I would appreciate it if you only sent me the first 10% of the game, for the same cost, at the same quality.

Respectfully,
A Blithering Idiot

Re:Piles of uncompleted games?

[Mattcelt]

OTOH, I seem to keep buying games in the bargain bin that I simply never get around to playing!

I actually have a closet shelf full of unopened PC games still in their cellophane wrappers.

I tried to do the math - let's see, $10 for the game divided by the hours spent playing... Dammit, it just keeps saying "undefined"!