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On the Pointlessness of "Hours of Gameplay"
KaiEl writes "An article on TotalVideoGames is quoting Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser as saying Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will have 150 hours of gameplay. That's all well and good, but what does it really mean? The way I see it, a game that I enjoy for 20 hours is much better than a game that I hate for 150. So why the obsession in video game media with quantifying gameplay time?"
Marketing is easier if you can reduce your product to a number. Bigger numbers win.
AOL 9 is better than Netscape 7, which is better than MSIE 6.
Firefox 0.9? Forget it.
An Athlon XP 2000+ is better than a P4 1800MHz.
V-8 is better than 7-up.
etc.
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a game that I enjoy for 20 hours is much better than a game that I hate for 150.
While I agree with this statement, what about a game that you enjoy for the first 30 hours, and then hate for the next 120 over a game that you enjoy for 20 hours. I'm looking forward to this game because of the vast amount of things I expect I'll be able to do. I'm guessing with all of the options there's only a slim chance I'll hate it right off the bat... I'm sure I'll get bored with it eventually just like the other 2 gta 3's, but if it provides me a decent amount of fun before it hits the repetitive wall I will consider it a good buy.
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Play a game I like for 150 hours than a game I like for 20 hours. =)
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'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
It's different that you need 150 hours to beat a game or that you can hang around in it for 150 hours before losing interest. Though I like tough games on PC, can't imagine the former on console...
That said, does anyone have the ship date for GTA:SA for PC?
I'm gonna call bullshit on this. You don't HAVE to find every hidden package, do every taxi/vigilante/firefighter etc mission, or even do some of the story based missions (as was the case in vice city). You could tear through the story in a good thirty or so hours if you wanted.
But if you are like me you probably will do all the side missions. And you will enjoy them too.
Non-Linear RPGs (like Fallout, etc) are good if long if you enjoy the setting.
Something like GTA 1,2,3 and 3.5, though...for me, every mission started being the same after a while. If the 'core' game can be completed in about 15 hours, with extras of about 30, this style of game is valid.
But, 150 hours!? There is almost no dialog, or story, so what actions are you going to be doing for that long?
They mention gang wars and such, Sim-Gang? If so, a Sim game should not be measured in hours. If can finish "It came from the Desert" in about 10 minutes, while others take hours. Hours mean nothing in a Sim game.
Straight-up clockspeed is a marketing tool, for which more appears better. Total play time seems to be heading that direction. There's one significant difference: you can't measure play time. No game in history has ever made one play-through of the minimum take 150 hours, for good reason... no matter how good the game is, within 150 hours it WILL get boring. So that's not what they're measuring.
What are they measuring? One playthrough with everything? I doubt it, for the same reason as above. I get the impression that there are enough side paths that it will take you multiple passes through the game, and that will total 150 hours. Compare to the average MMORPG, if you go all the way to endgame content. Compare to, actually, most games with multiple paths.
And the most important point... play time varies by player.
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I very rarely see reviews of games that cite hours played by the reviewer. Based on the knowledge and quality of most reviews, the reviewers rarely play the game for more than 1 or 2 hours. These game play times are generated by the company that is releasing the game, not by people reviewing the game. I mean, look at the cite that is provided - Rockstar games' co-founder Dan Houser is talking about number of hours of play, not an independent third party. The whole rant in Kyle Orland's blog is built on a false premise.
The premise is that these statistics are cropping up in reviews of games. This is not the case. They are cropping up in the marketing of games. And so why bother with a critique? What the marketing firms say about the game is entirely subjective and not even worth noting in evaluating a game.
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Waaay back in the dark ages of programming it used to be all about how many lines of code you could produce, not the quality.
I guess Games are in that realm now.
We need to make a game that allows the player to play for 150 hours if they want to, and is fun enough to encourage that. If we look at gameplay itself, content alone is NOT what is needed. I am sure many of us clocked well over 150 hours on tetris.
Make the gameplay solid and interesting, and the gametime will follow. There are probably those of us who spent 150 hours in the first GTA just exploring everything.
The best reason to qualify gameplay time is to put a value on the game. Think about it: I played Max Payne, and it lasted 15-20 hours. It cost $50. I payed over $2 per hour, but it was worth it.
Maybe that was unrelated, but the bottom line is that if your box says 150 hours and it costs $50, the penny-pinching gamer with no job will think "cost-efficient." A game that costs less than 50 cents per hour! Money money money.
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
Now it's about hours of gameplay. Let's use the example of Metal Gear Solid. MGS I (for PS1) was, in my opinion, solid from start to finish, but one could easily fly through it in 1.5 to 2.0 hours. MGS 2, while on a next-generation console, had better much graphics and much longer gameplay time. However, I think playing MGS 1 for the first time had a bigger impact than when I played MGS 2 for the first time.
I think the basics that everyone tends to ignore is how the game plays. We all loved the original GTA3, MGS 1, and FF7 because of their innovative gameplay. Each of those games set a standard for their respective genres. It's about about game play.
I would also venture to say that a few of us still dust off Mario Bros, be it via NES, SNES, or emulation, and still give those games a go even though they're from earlier generations of consoles and are considered dated by every aspect of video gaming.
It's all about how a game plays.
"There are many things that are known and things that are unknown; in between is exploration."
Why? Because games are $50. Honestly, for many people that's a lot of money. Obviously a game I hate for 150 hours sucks, but why do you think a long game == a bad game?
I spent 100 hours on Knights of the Old Republic and loved every minute of it. I spent about 15 hours on Panzer Dragoon Orta and loved every minute of it. I spent $50 for both. Which one was the "better" value? Well, I can buy KOTOR2 with confidence, because the first one gave me so many hours of enjoyment.
I think most game developers aren't obsessing about game length, because they know the same thing you do, a game needs to be fun. But would a press release of "This game is fun" get any attention?
Despite cries to the contrary, players have been asking for longer games. I have read a few reviews (by gamers) that have rated a game as "high quality, but a little short." It is not just the impatient players asking for longer games either. Even those who intend to replay the game have been wishing for longer games. It may be only a minority of players complaining, but the developers are listening. As result there have also been complaints of repetition: "There may be 60 hours of gameplay, but you have seen everything after the first 10."
(urgh, Graeme Devine is staring at me... )
Anyways, back on topic, The last game I played that took hundreds of hours to complete was Final Fantasy X. In fact I'm still at what I think is the end of the game, clocking in 101 hours played... and because I'm not done yet I have held off purchasing FF X-2. Soooo... had the game been shorter, and had I completed it by now, i would have BOUGHT FF X-2, and probably have done so at it's old higher price tag too.
So developers, don;t go bragging about your long game times... If it's too long, you're just cutting out sales of other games!
No official date for PC, only for PS2: Go to http://www.gta-sanandreas.com/ and choose for UK, USA or AUS.
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Nightmare level: 24 hours = oh fuck it's boring!
Hell level: 48 hours = I really, REALLY should get a life!
After Hell level: create another character and start from Normal again...
We know that isn't 150 hours of straight through playtime.
The "time to play" quantity is for the parent who's thinking, "Sweet! 150 hours of relaxation from the anxty teen!"
(This is in no way meant to imply that I support using videogames to detract from real parent-child interaction.)
bad game with 20 hours of gameplay = bad game with 150 hours of gameplay
good game with 20 hours of gameplay < good game with 150 hours of gameplay
Thus we can deduce that length of gameplay does not matter for bad games. However, for good games long gameplay makes the game better. That is why it matters.
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Play Time was introduced by Role Playing Games. When Final Fantasy II had 20 hours of story straight through, it was a big deal. When Final Fantasy 7 took 40 hours to beat, it was a very big deal. These are games that are played once, maybe twice, and if it takes 20 hours to beat, then 20 hours is all you will get.
A lot of RPG's at the time were suffering from being too short to satiate the player. I remember beating Dragon's Quest in about 4 hours. I also remember the week that I dedicated to beating the original XenoGears in one sitting. I slept on the couch, through 70 hours of gameplay... and the game they shipped wasn't even finished. I could see a fully implemented version of Xenogears reaching near to the 150 mark, and it would have been a damned good ride too.
Furthermore, play time is a metric that all video game developers must use. If you are creating an FPS with 10 levels, each level being 5 sections long and each section taking 5 minutes to complete, if the player has to restart every level once, how much gameplay are you really providing them? In this case, 500 minutes, or about 8 hours. Add in another two hours for setup, cinematics, and (sigh) loading, and you have a 10 hour game. You had better think seriously about your lead programmer's suggestion for implementing cooperative multiplayer, because you're going to need the meat.
That's not to say that the metric has gotten out of hand. I can SAY that the game I'm developing has about 1,200 hours of gameplay, but the fact of the matter is that's just a lie. The problem is that the metric is A: unverifiable and B: linear. Hence, if someone else says "40 hours of gameplay," I must say "50 hours of gameplay," or I'll be second-string. Just ratchet that puppy up: nobody will know the difference.
Of course play time is not a good indicator of quality... Metal Gear Solid was just 10 hours long.
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What exactly counts for gameplay, anyway? Running down the road endlessly? Replaying levels? Leaving the game running while you go for piss breaks? Can we at least agree on a standard before we begin to flaunt whatever the hell this Holy Grail of marketing?
The way I see it, a game that I enjoy for 20 hours is much better than a game that I hate for 150. So why the obsession in video game media with quantifying gameplay time?"
Just because 150 hours of gameplay is a selling point does not mean that it is necessarily a selling point for you. For fans of the genre, it can be a godsend. Take Disgaea, for example. One of the major selling points of Disgaea was that if complex RPG/Strategy games are your bag, then that one game will let you enjoy one of the pinnacles of your favorite genre for months in one stretch. And that's what the GTA developers are telling their fans. No more "Okay, I shot ten punks... time to shoot ten more punks" or "Okay, I've had Spidey deliver twenty pizzas, now I can... deliver twenty more". If you love GTA's style of gameplay, then they're promising than San Andreas will let you enjoy its main selling point -- its huge, content-rich world -- for as long as you want without doing the same great stuff over and over again until it nauseates you.
If you're not a really big fan of the genre, it doesn't matter to you, but if you are, then it means the world. If someone could promise me 150 hours of Ico and Prince of Persia's puzzle/action gameplay, rather than six or ten hours of it followed by six months of waiting for the next high quality game in that little niche to come out, I'd be there. Just like I was when Disgaea was released.
If you play a game you hate for 150 hours, you're a goddamned moron.
I think gameplay hours are valid indicator, as game manufacturers can point to the amount of content in the game. Even if it's just an appoximate figure obtained by people test playing. We all realise the figures are somewhat subjective.
Having a large amount of content is especially important in the case of RPGs, where games like Baldur's Gate I/II and Planscape Torment could keep you occupied for hundreds of hours. If these games only had 10 hours of active content they would not have achieved the status they did.
It makes perfect sense to me for a company to advertise the Amount of Content in it's games.
The answer is simple. If this guy can convince sponsors that an average dork kid will stare at the screen for 150 hours, the game becomes prime real estate for logos emblazoned everywhere.
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...Perhaps because GTA games are historically... good?
They have very little in the way of barometers to say how the game will play. Base and Rec'd System Specifications, listings of the latest graphical dohickeys and boasting about the newer "smarter AI" are all well and good, but they are hardly quantifiable.
Then we have "Gameplay Time", which is an estimate at most, probably from how long it takes their testers to complete the game * 1.5 or some other formula they use to work it out.
The truth is, the marketing people have to use the same tactics as a car salesman, telling things that most people won't have a clue about, all in an effort to sell their cars/games.
The difference here is that we don't have the benefit of test-driving games, but we can test-drive cars, so the games PR people have to try harder.
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I'd be happy if games came out with 30+ hours of real game time period. Most of the games with hours of gameplay numbering higher seem to consist of one of the following elements that don't take much more effort from a programming/design standpoint:
Find X packages, markers, dogs, cats, gerbils, etc. (GTA III/VC, Kingdom Hearts, Banjo-Kazooie, countless others)
Slow down walking speed to a crawl to make the game world feel larger (Elder Scrolls III)
Get an ability at one end of the map that you have to use at the opposite end to get past the place that wasn't passable before (the Metroids, Donkey Kong 64, Metal Gear)
Create artificially difficult RPG bosses which require dozens of hours of fighting in order to get strong enough to beat/unlock (Final Fantasy secret bosses)
Unlocking secret levels which require abilities that only the 99.999th percentile of gamers have (Super Monkey Ball's master levels)
Hunting down items/monsters that drop/appear randomly, some of which are extremely rare (Kingdom Hearts item synthesizing, FFX's monster arena)
In most cases going ahead with these things is optional, but what a lot of the games have in common (especially in the last few years) is attaching some kind of bonus to what I like to think of as obsessive-compulsive side missions. Doing them is as boring as hell, but there is just enough incentive attached to go through with it that a lot of gamers will press on.
Some examples are: blooper clips at the ending of the game, new items unlocked, new levels unlocked, alternate endings, new difficulty levels, etc.
What most of these bonuses have in common is that they don't usually add a lot to the game's story and feel more like pieces tacked on as an afterthought.
If you played a game for 150 hours and hated your experience throughout, then you're either an idiot or you didn't actually hate the game.
I don't think a game can ever be too long if you are having a lot of fun playing it. Most recently for me would be Thief 3. It had a lot of great stuff and had fun with it and I wish it was longer. And the whole MMO genere is based on providing enough "content" to keep you wanting to play for as long as possible. Sometimes this is great stuff, other times a boring treadmill.
On a similar note, I have higher than normal expectations on Doom3. For how long it's been in development, it should be oozing with content.
I've nothing against the idea of giving an indication of how long a game is likely to take. Admittedly, these figures often get distorted for marketing reasons, but the length of a game *is* a factor I take into account when I make a purchasing decision.
However, I'm aware that calculating "game length" isn't always easy or simple. With an fps, for example, somebody new to the genre will take much longer to play through the game than somebody with a bit of experience. I recently replayed Doom for the first time in about five or six years (yeah, yeah, I've bought into the Doom 3 hype a bit) and it took me about 4 hours to play through the original 3 episodes (I'd never played the 4th episode, added by Ultimate Doom, before, so we'll leave that out). I didn't really remember the vast majority of the maps, but because I've played a lot of fpses in the mean-time, I was able to blitz through it pretty quickly. First time around, it must have taken me at least 15 hours to beat the game. Which of these figures is the fair one to use?
It gets even trickier in other genres. With "Western" RPGs, such as the Baldur's Gate games and KOTOR, it's possible to replay the game in a way that will give a very different play experience? Should this be included in the play-time estimate? With a Final Fantasy game, do you give a rough figure for how long it will take to play through the game's plot sections, or do you work on the basis of how long it takes to beat all the optional uber-bosses? Personally, I'd rather they just worked on the basis of the time for a basic single play-through, but I can see the temptation to go for the higher figure.
I agree.
The negative effect of this is that normal users get the bad feeling that either they have never *really* completed the game, or that they miss out on stuff for which they don't have time; maybe even that they paid too much and they don't get all content.
For some time now I just don't care anymore. I just play what I want in the way I want, ignoring the other "bonus" stuff, and dumping games, even FFXII, which was a chore to play for me for the first few hours.
If I like a game, and want to play it more after I "finished" it, I look for extra content myself or in FAQs.
However, I still hate developers who give me the feeling I have to do more to get the full ending or stuff...
I love how this is modded "informative" instead of insightful.
I can just picture some 15 year old kid at home with mod points going "Really!? WOW!!", tossing his 7-Up out the window so he can go buy some V-8, dig an AOL CD out of the trash, and find a pawn shop with an Amiga 4000.
There's nothing wrong with hours of gameplay. Keep it, but put down how long you'll keep playing for instead of how long it'll take you to complete - I think some people already do. With some games this is the same: Metroid Prime took me 20 hours to complete, then I stopped playing it for ages. James Bond: Everything or Nothing got boring long before I completed it though, and Soul Calibur II keeps me for two or three days at a stretch (and has accomplished this twice so far), then I move onto something else. Super Smash Bros. Melee on the other hand you can play for ages after you've finished, because it doesn't die. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is the same.
Replay value is the most important factor. A five hour game that you can play twenty times straight off without getting bored is better, IMO, than a 100 hour game. You get the same amount of playtime from each, but you're more likely to go back to the short one.
To me an important factor in gameplay is replayability. When you have finished a game it should be worth playing again, like a good book is worth reading multiple times.
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Time spent playing CompanyA's video game is time not spent playing CompanyB's game.
... the notion of having total control over that persons life was really evident ... some sort of twisty schadenfreude.
The people in the video game 'industry' are among the most competitive alpha-dog meat-head types you will find.
I once worked for a fairly successful game company, and I've never been so disappointed in human beings as I have when, after the release of an online mulitiplayer game, we noted that there were some people who had been playing -solidly, the server gave us full stats- for 72 hours straight. the reason i was so disappointed was that the entire company was ecstatic that someone had played the game that long
i did everything i could to get fired from that company. those guys are assholes. i stopped playing video games thereafter too, and man do i feel better for it...
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You can complete this game in 5 minutes - it's an arcade beat-em-up. I can unlock all the characters, complete the "tekken force" bonus mode and get a good survival score pretty quickly, so it has perhaps 2 hours of gameplay. However, I have spent several hundred hours playing it, mostly multiplayer, and there are still moves to learn.
The linear play time is short but the "depth" is high, mostly because there are dozens of moves and combos for each character, each of which can be countered, and the counter can be countered and so on.
How long you play depends on how much you like a game, how much depth there is and who you can find to play it with. Linear play isn't usually that interesting, unless it goes with a good story.
Having spent tons of time playing Vice City, I've completed all of the missions several times over, bought all of the properties, basically done the game through and through.
Estimates of Vice City cites 50 hours of gameplay. San Andreas' reported 150 hours of gameplay tells me that there'll be much more to see, do, and experience.
Estimation of playtime is not an indicator of play quality -- that's why people read reviews. When you try to use hours of gameplay as the sole indicator of how much enjoyment you will receive, of course you'll be unhappy with the results. However, this isn't a system failure; you're simply trying to use one metric (estimated time of play) as a measure of another (enjoyment).
What you are doing is similar to saying that Toyota should not publish MPG estimates for the Prius because you need a vehicle which can be used for towing. Since MPG doesn't describe the overall utility you will receive from a vehicle and can also sometimes be inaccurate based on driving style, Toyota might as well stop focusing on a single number and start developing better vehicles. I mean, I saw an F350 with a fifth wheel pulling an RV recently. What is Toyota thinking in claiming 40+ MPG when their Prius can't even tow a mobile living space? That's totally misleading, isn't it?
Perhaps the gaming industry isn't the party which is overly obsessed with the estimates of playing time. San Andreas is estimated at three times Vice City, which means that given ALL OF THE OTHER INFORMATION which I know about Vice City, I'm definitely going to be purchasing San Andreas. If Rockstar estimated playing time at 10 hours, I wouldn't be quite so quick to shell out $50.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Another reason to advertise long game play times is because of the games that are the exact opposite - you can complete them too fast. How many times have you felt ripped off laying down $50 for a game and completing it within hours? I can think of a couple recent examples on the PS2: Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance and Silent Hill 3 could both be completed in 10 hours. Years ago I remember playing The Leather Goddess of Phobos II and finishing it in 5 hours, the same night I had bought it. By advertising 150 hours you know that at least you won't be completing the game in a single sitting even if you don't see it through to completion.
This is common aspect that good reviewers focus, gameplay along side with replayability, but in the end depends on the player. I'm not a fan of replayability and don't remember playing a fame from start to finish twice even games that I like a lot, the same goes with books(excluding comics), this concept only applies in my case to music and movies, and I don't replay movies as much has did. So a short game annoys me a bit, I'm not saying that every game should have 150h because probably I won't play the game to get to 100%, I'm saying is a question of choice some people like to replay games often and don't have a lot a time so a short good game is what 's best for them, others tend to be obsessed with one game and have time to play it often, so RPG's and other's very long play games with multiple paths are there choice. I like the middle, 15h-30h for action, 50h-60h for RPG's so I can play the game once and enjoy it without getting bored. So in conclusion I like GTA model 30h for finishing the game with core missions and some side missions, and more hours for people o like to play it all. I don't like max Payne 2 model play the game 5 times with some different aspects, although I enjoyed the first play I feel a little cheated be cause it's to short.
"So why the obsession in video game media with quantifying gameplay time?"
Because - as anyone who's played a crappy game that was also way too short knows - it's a way the game developer can hedge their bets. If your games isn't going to be good, you should at least delay the onset of futility as long as possible.
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Yeah, it's a pointless metric. You can't measure fun. I had a blast playing both Max Payne games, they were supposedly "short" but had great production values. Then again, I spent... um, countless hours with Chrono Trigger. Because I had to complete all the quests and see all the endings, you know. And I won't even get into my old Diablo 2 addiction. But I honestly don't know why anyone would use "gameplay hours" as a reason to buy a game. If we draw the movie analogy (everyone's always dragging out movies as the base unit of entertainment per currency so I might as well), I really don't care if the movie is one or three hours long... all I care about is what it delivers: if it's good, if it gets me thinking, if I laugh, things like that. Same thing with games.
I'm actually in the silent minority who thinks modern games are too long. I'm not in school anymore and I don't have weeks upon weeks in which to slog through games that demand hundreds of hours of play time to complete the story. That's why I'm more into sports games and free-form action games like GTA these days (ironic how the GTA designer is claiming 150 hours, isn't it? just goes to show what a useless figure it is) - you can boot 'em and play for fifteen minutes without having to remember what quest you were on. Give me quality, not quantity.
I read a totally different meaning from 'the Pointlessness of "Hours of Gameplay"'...
I thought the article was telling me to get a life!
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Because some of us want good time for our money. We don't want to spend $50 on a game just to forget about it a week later.
If you don't like long games, don't buy them. Hell, if you're talking about GTA: San Andreas, you shouldn't even be concerned - it's an open-ended game, you can play as little or as much as you want. But I, for one, prefer games that last.
Glog!
how about a game that you LOVE for 150 hours instead of a game you love for 20?
Ouch! I think this isn't a pointless metric at all. I want to play a ame, finish it, and then get on with my life. This means this darn thing'll take three times as long as Vice City did.
Games like this give a sense of accomplishment when you finish. When I heard "This could be the beginning of a beautiful partnership. You're a backstabbing ambulance chaser and I'm a psychotic killer." -- or whatever that last line was -- I had this happy moment. I was actually irritated, a little, when I found that after the credits there was a little more stuff to experience. Phone calls about Mercedez, for starters. How do I know when I've finished? At some poiont there will be no stimuli left, nothing left to hunt get, and I'll never know for sure. I could be driving around kneecapping people for hours without any payoff.
I want these things to be DONE at some point. 150 hours?!?!?!
Jeez.
For a lot of people, especially those on limited budgets, evaluating the potential worth of a game comes down to this:
Playtime / Cost = Play value
Thus, some measure of the length of a game is helpful. The trouble is this equation is too simple. It ignores the Fun Factor - how much you actually enjoy those hours of game time - which is generally on a logarithmic scale. Then there is the Replayability Factor, which tends to be exponentially proportional to the Fun Factor.
Unfortunately, whenever I try to evaluate free games, I get a "divide by zero" error. Any suggestions how to avoid that?
The important point with a more nonlinear game like GTA is that it offers about 150 hours of gameplay, but of that only maybe 10-30 hours are required to beat the game. The rest is, well, all stuff you get to pick from. So you can tailor it to a length you like--if something's boring, stop doing that mission.
Some games, particulary some RPG's, but also other games, end up doing what I call time whoring. I imagine that the circumstances come up like this:
Designer A: Ok, we have a great game, but it is beaten too quickly, what can we do to extend the game play time?
Designer B: We can take all the monsters at point X in the game, and make them stronger, so the player needs to be a higher level to beat them.
Designer A: Sure, why not?
This results in adding a few hours of waking around in circles killing mosters for experience (XP Bashing). You play an RPG typically to advance the story, and meet story goals. How does spending a few extra hours make the game better?
It doesnt, not if you dont want to spend those hours bashing monsters aimlessly. Being able to do this sort of thing is not the same as wanting / needing to do it. Final fantasy games are somewhat bad for this because you end up feeling the need to have many fights that carry no real risk to you and can be won by just selecting fight over and over again, stopping about one time in ten to heal.
Any game that requires you to spend time doing repetitive tasks that require no real decision making and carry no real risk is guilty of time whoring. I concede that the threshold for crossing from gameplay to time whoring is subjective, however.
END COMMUNICATION
Hours of gameplay, on a good game, is the deciding factor on whether I will rent or buy the game.
If a game, like Max Payne 2, is a good game, but can be beaten in under 20 hours and has limited replay value. Why buy it for $50, when I can rent it for $6 and beat it in a weekend.
I'm not going to spend $30 on a game that a new player can beat in 5 hours (the Metroid GBA games) or $50 for a game I can beat in a week. Not when I can rent the game from Blockbuster for that week for $5, see most of the content in the game (let's face it - playing the same game again on a harder difficulty level is still the same game), and return it for another one. Say I'm really liking the game and only halfway through it at the end of the week, I just renew it and still wind up with $40 more to spend on games I HAVEN'T finished yet. The only games actually worth full-priced retail purchase ARE the ones that will provide a month's worth of entertainment. (Note: ACTUAL play time, the advertised number is always a significant overstatement.)
While I understand that some persons would not enjoy hundreds of hours of game play, the reason to inform the player of the number of hours available is to allow you to make a choice based content to be delivered. I for one like knowing the approximate length of play time to help me make a decision on which game to buy.
As I do not have an unlimited amount of cash to spend on games I make my purchases carefully and tend to buy games that have replay ability. If I saw a game with 10 hours of game play and no real replay ability, I would probably not buy it. Now a game like GTA which has the core missions plus the sandboxedness attached as well, I find quite appealing. The Tony Hawk series as well. After all the "missions" are said and done, I can still tool around and the game is fun.
While there may not be an exact science to the length of game play due to skill of player, yadda-yadda-yadda, I still I believe that games need to place hours of game play to give the buyer an idea of how much mileage they can expect to get out of a game.
Q. Why does the game industry { advertise hours of gameplay | not innovate | sell the same game over and over | only make games for males | advertise polygon counts | only make violent games }?
A. Because that's what the customers want.
I saw Metal Gear Solid mentioned above, and that's a perfect example. Did anyone care how long it was? If a player is paying attention to how long it's taking/taken to complete a game, the game has failed. The counterpoint being the somewhat unsubstantiated notion that if people get to the end of a game and find themselves wanting more, they'll feel cheated. This is, of course, ludicrous. If the player reaches the end of the game and is wanting more, that's a good thing. Duh.
That said, a relatively short game of extremely high quality is not the same as a short inchoate mess of a game that unravels at its end, comes to no satisfying conclusion, or both. And that's really what we're talking about here, games that for whatever reason leave the player feeling unsatisfied. To assume that the reason people were unsatisfied with your short, shitty game was that it needed to be longer is both stupid and ignorant. In all likelihood, it was the development cycle that needed to be longer, not the game. Turok 2, hooray!
Of course, the point I wanted to make was this qualifier, the 'hours of gameplay' qualifier, really only applies to linear games. How exactly does this apply to a Grand Theft Auto game, eponymous sandbox game that it is? The linear, story, and goal-driven bits, I suppose. Honestly, though, doesn't everyone just boot up GTA to kill people and break things for a few minutes? To play? That's the appeal of creating a game; a good game has limitless potential for entertainment. The amount of time I've played Counterstrike is measured in weeks, not hours. Would you advertise the 'hours of gameplay' on a chess set?
Marketing wants to shoehorn yet one more aspect of play, which is inherently unquantifiable, into a number they can spout off in press releases. Why not just build a 'fun' slider into the game and be done with it?
Swink
But not the 250(or 150? I can't remember) VR Missions on another special game disk. I doubt how many game players will dig deep into this kind of game secrets. These missions do not linked with a storyline and indeed they are bored IMHO, not to mention the simplistic background which made me asleep. There are more and more these games like FFT-A, Super Mario 64, etc provide a bunch of missions, events, secrets or whatever. I myself am not interested in them, and left them behind after finishing the main story, I found the games more fun in this way.
gameplay hours are the primary factor in my decision to buy (or not) a game new, or wait a couple months and pick it up used for $20.
if a game catches my eye, the first thing i want to know is how many hours of gameplay i can expect to get out of it on the first play-through. why? because 99 times out of 100, i'm NOT going to pay $50 for a game that only gives me 15 to 20 hours of entertainment. on the other hand, i'm very likely to purchase a game (even one that might only seem to be "so-so") if i can get 60+ hours of gameplay.
there are a lot of ways to spend $50. if it's going to be on a new game, that game had better supply me with a sufficient amount of gameplay to make me feel that the $50 was well spent. if the estimated hours of gameplay tell me that i'll be finished with this game in under a week, then i'm not going to drop $50 on it.