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?"

Comments

Just like everything else...

[ConceptJunkie]

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.

Quantity + Quality over Quality

[BlueCup]

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.

stupid

[black mariah]

So why the obsession in video game media with quantifying gameplay time?

You ever think that maybe it is possible that they do this so you know what kind of gameplay time to expect? Game makers have been doing this for as long as I can remember. Seriously, it's not a big deal.

Optional hours of gameplay

[riverLINE]

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.

Yet another number that doesn't mean anything.

[Incoherent07]

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.

What Is This Guy Talking About?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

From the final link, "The only "gameplay time" statistic that really matters is how much time you're willing to keep playing the game, and therein lies the problem. Despite the seemingly straightforward and absolute definition given above, most "gameplay time" statistics end up reflecting how much time the reviewer was willing to spend with the game -- an inherent value judgement that is largely invisible to the reader. If one reviewer blazes through a game he hates in five hours to get the review done, and another spends 20 hours engrossed in what he considers a deeply moving experience, who's to say which number is the correct measure of "gameplay time?" And who's to say which one will be closer to the amount of time a player actually spends on the game?"

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.

It started meaning something

[cgenman]

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.

The Fans

[DarkZero]

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.