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The Importance of Game Length
Gamasutra's regular 'Question of the Week' feature touches, this week, on the ideal length of games, and the importance of game length. While the overwhelming opinion was 'quality is better than quantity', there were a range of opinions along that scale. From the article: "I would say as a gamer on the more casual side (30+ years) the game length is fine around 20-25 hours. If you are having fun while playing. I never have time to finish anything longer. It makes me more satisfied to have played through the game in 20-25 game hours than never even reach half way. - Joachim Carlsson, Massive Entertainment"
...on the game genre, the target demographic, the platform, and lots more stuff.
A deep RPG could be a hundred hours long and some gamers would clamor for more. The best FPS would become tedious after 100 hours. Strategy games (especially real-time) vary wildly depending on the skill of the player; some people can sail through missions in ten minutes while others take hours.
A few generalized "ideal" game lengths:
FPS: 20-35 hours, with sufficient variation to avoid tedium and ways to finish faster for the dedicated gamer.
RTS: No more than 15-20 *missions* in a campaign.
RPG: At *least* 40 hours, but not much more than 100.
Adventure: 20 hours of actual gameplay, tops. Some people will spend quite a bit of time on certain puzzles.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it!
Seriously, let me use GTA: San Andreas as an example. I finished that game months ago, but I still play it occasionally. There's nothing better than causing some nice explosions, steal a few cars and beating up some hookers after a frustrating day at work.
I love the freedom GTA: SA gives me and I'd probably buy more games that offer me that.