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

cost

[ziggles]

When games cost 20 dollars new, I won't mind if they're only 5 or 6 hours long. At 50 bucks, it's just not worth it. Max Payne 2 is a really great game, but it is not worth 50 dollars because of it's length. Bring it down to 25 or less and short, quality-packed games are A-OK with me.

I couldn't disagree more

[zenobr]

I much prefer the epic games that I pay 50 bucks for and then play for a solid 3-6 months (30+ hours actual play time). I hate nothing more than buying a game and beating it within the first week, or less than 10 hours of play time. My main complaint with most games recently have been their lack of story/game length (Halo for instance). Just my 2 cents I guess.