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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"
It really depends on the genre. If I sit down to play an RPG it better be a lot longer than 25 hours... With that said, 25 hours out of an FPS is acceptable. The 12 hours it took to beat half-life 2 the first time was lacking though.
Game girth is a factor too. Really, it is.
why? forty-two.
It may be more of a question of game depth rather than pure length.
...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.
I agree with the second answer - within reason, cost is not an issue. I'd rather pay $40 for 10 really good hours of gaming than 40 quite good hours, I can always buy another game. Very few single player games have enough variation and interesting content to justify more than about 15 hours of gameplay.
As a gamer who's growing older (heading into my mid-thirties), I realize my response will likely anger many younger gamers who have 10 hours a day to play games. The maximum length I want a game to be these days is 25-30 hours. If it's a mindless platformer, I only want 10-15 hours out of it before I get bored. I have played some RPGs that go longer than 30 hours, but by that point I just want it to wrap itself up. For me, it's hard to make the time to play anything longer.
This guy's the limit!
Beyond Good an Evil is a great game. Amazing story, and it's short. 10 hours to beat. I enjoyed every minute of it. Problem is, no replay value. (You can go around and take pictures, sort of, but that really isn't a game)
Tales of Symphonia, Amazing story... and then you're 30 hours in. You're tired of the same fights over and over again. The combat system has lots of variation, but once you find something that works well enough, why bother futzing around? And by this time, i forgot why the story even started. I'm going to rescue someone? No that was every zelda ever made.. trying to save the world? Yeah, I assume so. Save it from who? I can't even remember.
My point is, if I can beat a game in 10 hours, that's a week of after work play and I can still remember the plot elements from the first hour. But for me to buy another game it's going to need a 10 hour time frame from start to finish, but also have multiple paths and choices I can make so it'll be a different game the next time I decide to play it. Oh, can cut out the item fetching quests, they suck. Mind puzzles, that's where it's at.
DOH!
If you had a great game that last 10 hours but had 10 completely different ways to play it, would that be worse than a 30 hour game you'd never play again?
Should Gears of war be downplayed even though it has 3 difficulties and the ability for co-op play?
How can we rate Multiplayer? Exactly how do you define game length? Do you need all achievements?
Overall the "length" of a game differs to much to be considered.
In addition this discusses quality versus quanity? Guess what, that only is good if there is quanity. A 5 minute game can be the best game ever but it's not going to get 50 bucks, however a rpg that is good that last 50 hours will easily get 50 dollars.
You have people on that site saying length isn't important and would rather buy a 50 dollar game that takes 10 hours than a 50 dollar game that takes 50? All I can ask is, is he stupid? I have felt that games are too long also for a time, Tales of the Abyss took me entirely too much time, but I spend almost the same amount of time on the new zelda already and I want another exactly like that. It was a fantastic game.
The bottom line is it's always better for a game to be too long but enjoyable, than too short and be the same thing over and over. But even more so, they are asking people in the industry, as one of those people I can tell you, we don't have the time that the people outside of the industry have to play games. You can invest the hours into games but you also spend your entire day doing the same thing.
How long is Nethack? I've been playing almost 20 years and I've never ascended. It's never the same game twice. When your game is the same twice, then you have to worry about how long to make the content, just like some lame-ass movie executive. Make your game more real and it will be as long as the gamer's interest.
I think the main problem in this question is that there is not one but TWO answers depending on who you re speaking to.
- On one hand there is the teenager. He has a lot of spare time but not much money. When he buys a game he wont buy another one for months because he just doesn t have the money for that. So he wants a game which will still be interesting in 2 months. A game like "Beyond Good and Evil" is not good for him...With his spare time, he will finish it in 2 days. And then, the game has no mechanism that allows the teenager to still have fun with the game after he finished it. So the game he bought with all the money he got in 6 months is worthless after 2 days of playing. What the teenager is looking for is GTA : A game that is really long to finish, and is still fun to play once you finished it
- On the other hand, there is the adult. He has a lot of money, but he doesn t have much time. He will really enjoy beyond good and evil, because it will took him 2 or 3 weeks to finish it. He will be really glad once he finished it, because it took him quite a long time. And after that, he will be able to buy another game with his "endless" stream of money : He will aim for another short game, because a long game would take 1 year of his spare time to finish, which will make him bored.
I m a student and hopefully, i m gonna graduate this year. So i m between theses 2 categories and i really think that it is two different way of seeing video games.
it's session length.
Some comparisons:
I played Asheron's Call and Final Fantasy XI, both are "infinetly long" as they are MMOs, but I found I like AC better overall. Why? I, a semi casual gamer, could pop in and play AC for 15 mins, log out again, and actually do stuff for that duration. For FFXII, I had to make sure I had a block of at least two hours before considering it.
At another angle, the earlier Final Fantasy games vs. the current games - I could save a lot more frequently in them than the current games (I'll add Xenosaga in here too), because I didn't need to use special save points all the time - so I again could pop in for a much shorter time.
There are many more cases of this with me - "what is the minimum time investment per session while still being fun", and not "what is the overall time of the game".
Anyone else agree to this?
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I remember one of the Final Fantasy games where your little guy meets a bunch of kids playing jumprope. You can join in and mash buttons to jump. If you jump successfully 10 times, you get a reward. 20 times, a bigger award. And so on. I read a FAQ about the game which said that you could get the ultimate prize if you hit the jump button successfully 1,000 times in a row!!! Who aside from a caffeine-addicted 12-year-old has the time or patience for that?!? I don't mind longer games if the gameplay doesn't become "Fight bigger monsters". The classic Ultima games were a great example of long games that kept my interest from start to finish.
I never have time to finish anything longer
What the fuck does that mean? If you have the TIME to FINISH a 25 hour game, you certainly have the time to finish something longer if you would just go and start ANOTHER 25 hour game... Did you mean to say "I get bored after 25 hours"? If I had the time to play a fun game for 25 hours I wouldn't be like, "HOLY SHIT I'VE SPENT 25 HOURS PLAYING THIS GAME! I've got tons of other 25-hour not-fun-games to fucken play... GAWD!!!!" If it's fun, play it. Or is he trying to correlate his experience as a GAME DEVELOPER to normal people who don't have dozens of games sitting around waiting to be played...? Whatever.
What was said is absolutely true: game depth is really the driving question. Much of the length of games today is derrived through repitition. Levels are drawn out longer than they need to be, in order to afford the player extra play time. However the extra time isn't really that valuable, since it consists of the player either doing repetitive or boring tasks, or places the player in the same situation repeatedly. A game with 10 hours play time, where every encounter and situation is utterly unique, seems much more fun than a 20 hour game with areas and levels mostly the same.
Games like Stubbs the Zombie I think fit this mold as well. The game itself is quite short, yet every minute is utterly enjoyable. It's not perfect, but the experience is far from repetitive.
Look at puzzle games. Mean Bean Machine, which is based on Puyo Puyo, takes all of about 30 minutes to 'beat'. Yet the game itself is so good, and adicting, and especially with the two player mode, just plain fun to play. Wario Ware can similarly be beaten quickly, however it's still fun to play the minigames just for minigame's sake.
RPGs are definately the biggest offenders in my opinion. A Link to the Past or Alundra is an example of what to do right. Final Fantasy is not. Much of the 'gameplay' in final fantasy involves looking at cutscenes, wandering around, or battling random monsters over and over. This is not to say that the game isn't fun, it's simply that it could easily have been half the length and not suffered at all.
I'm more concerned with playtime beyond the first playthrough. A game could have 20 hours of playtime, but be totally and utterly unreplayable. Yet that 10 hour game is so compelling, I go back for a second, third or even fourth try. If people come back to play it again, THAT's when you know you have a winner. Ideally, the game would be short and very replayable.