The Myth of the 40 Hour Game

Over at Wired, Clive Thompson talks about the myth of the 40 hour game, the typical length of time listed on the side of a game box nowadays. Mr. Thompsons discusses the ways in which that estimate fails to jive with reality. From the article: "This game offers about 40 hours of play. This is precisely what I was told by Eidos — and countless game reviewers — when I picked up Tomb Raider: Legend earlier this year. As I gushed at the time, Legend was the first genuinely superb Lara Croft game in years... I was hooked — and eager to finish the game and solve the mystery. So I shoved it into my PS2, dual-wielded the pistols and began playing... until about four weeks later, when I finally threw in the towel. Why? Because I couldn't get anywhere near the end. I plugged away at the game whenever I could squeeze an hour away from my day job and my family. All told, I spent far more than 40 hours — but still only got two-thirds through."

Comments

Is this really a problem?

[BecomingLumberg]

Man, I really wish their game wasn't as good as it is. And to think they gave me *more* game than they advertised! Oh, what false advertising is this?

I demand my crappy games back that I beat in a week.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Baldrake]

Actually, why it matters is because it's nice to be able to finish games before you run out of time or interest.

I'm reminded of Lagaan, a movie I saw a while back. It would have made a decent 90 minute flick, but at 224 minutes (nearly 4 hours!) it was a chore to watch.

Like overly-long movies, overly-long games are usually bloated, repetitive and tedious.

How long is a piece of string?

[cliffski]

Quoting "time to complete" on a game is nonsense, and always has been. Time to complete for a 12 year old kid? for a thirty year old guy? for someone whose crap at FPS games? for which level of difficulty?
I play games because i want to immerse myself in another world, and play with some interesting stuff. Its not a race. I dont keep a clock going as I play (although oblivion does that for me for some reason).
Whats important is FUN, nothing else. People can't easily define fun, so they try to come up with other metrics.
how many unique units does it have?
How long is it to complete?
How many DVDs does it come on.
I had someone complain about one of my games once because it was "only 23 MB". Apparnatly they didnt want a "good" game, a "fun" game or an "original game" or even a "game with depth", they just wanted one with a bigger filesize. I played Elite for most of my childhood. it was 48k. Was I ripped off?
whats the time to complete for Chess anyway? I'm still working on that one.

One day maybe game reviewers and publishers will shut up about how much bump mapping the game has, shut up about what hollywood actor did the voiceover, shut up about how long they *think* it takes to complete it, and just sell their game on the basis of it being a GOOD game.

King Kong is a long movie. Its also shit (in my opinion, YMMV). Applying the metric to books and movies is clearly nonsense, so why apply it to games?

Dude!

[Otter]

I plugged away at the game whenever I could squeeze an hour away from my day job and my family. All told, I spent far more than 40 hours -- but still only got two-thirds through.

That's because you're old and you suck. I can state that with confidence because I also am old and suck. It's a young person's world, guy.

Re:Dude!

[DorkusMasterus]

Count me in as another old sucker. :)

Quite honestly, however, I did agree with the author more often than not in this piece. But at the same time, I completely agree with your funny, yet intelligent thought, that games aren't made for us. Sure they want to sell to us, but we're not the "core demographic". They want someone who's going to play the game fiercely, talk about it to all their friends and gamers online, spread the gospel, and therefore sell more copies to more hardcore gamers, and so on and so on....

We're a dollar cog in the million dollar machine, so the fact that save points don't come frequently enough is an "old people" problem. It's more important to have the intensity of "will I survive until the next save point" than "I can really only play for about half an hour... will I have a chance to save?"

And I think as the gaming generation ages, it's something people have to really think about. Because while the young, brash minds producing calls of "So U R upset about a longer game? N00b!" are annoying and grammatically...odd, they have a point. But the gameplay has to be structured in a way that it can be crystallized and played in smaller nuggets, and yet still flow. This makes a game that takes forever to be fun. Because if you have to figure out where you are, and what your inventory is, and where your next "checkpoint" is from memory of when you played the game three days ago, you're more likely to not pick up that game. But if the system flows and keeps you where you were, and helps you remember these things, and is structured in such a way as to encourage you to play even when it's been a while, then that's gaming for the adult set. (No, not THAT adult. With the job and the money and the wife and such, we get that stuff for free now. No need to see it in the games. :P)

Clearly...

[onlysolution]

This guy is just angry that he is bad at the video games

Strategy Guides

[y5]

As a former EB Games employee, I remember being frustrated at the large number of customers who would purchase the strategy guide along with the game at release, and then have the nerve to complain that the game was "too short". It's since been my opinion that the growing strategy guide market has encouraged developers to use "cheap" methods to increase the average gameplay time.

Games were much more satisfying before the popularity explosion of guides and cheats =/

Hardcore gamers vs. gamers with jobs.

[Valdrax]

What's he complaining about? Long games = good.

This is only true if you have loads and loads of free time on your hands like a high school or college student might. Otherwise, when you get out into the real world and get a job or start dating someone, you find out that free time disappears and a game that gives lots of goodies for little effort or that can be dropped for weeks and months before being picked back up without losing you is a great thing.

Long games are good for certain people and bad for others. However, the problem isn't really that the game is giving him a lot of gameplay so much as it's making it's gameplay so hard that it's unnaturally prolonged by failure. That's another split between the hardcore and casual gamer markets.

As a fan of console RPGs, I run into this all the time. Some games keep the fun continuous. Others require a lot of old-school level grinding to wring out the rewards. Some games make it easy to pick the game up and remember where you were if work intervenes for a week or two. Others leave you feeling like you need to start over.

It should be pretty easy to guess which type I prefer.

Re:Uh huh... and...

[oc255]

RTFA. The very least thing he complains about is length. So some cliffnotes are in order.

His points (as a person with a job, life, kids) are:
- puzzles many times take him much longer than kids in the 6-17 range he compares himself to.
- he compares in-depth games to his job, dumping information in and out of his mental RAM doesn't get him very far. See: late-night or off-shift coders who work to avoid users/meetings/interruptions.
- he understands the hardcore vs casual design problem.

TFA isn't even that long but his really good point (imho) aren't in the title (which is Gamer not Game). But if you just read the title, then you miss the point. Great read, critical hit close to home.

Re:ok, so the game gives him MORE than promised

[Andrewkov]

I learned my sense of direction in Doom. To this day I always turn left when I'm in an umfamiliar building, and I always sraife to avoid any nasty surprises.