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[Men_in_Boxes]

I hear this said a lot now. "I wish they'd make more 6 - 8 hour games so I could actually get through them. I just don't have the time to play these 40+ hour epics."

Math Fact: Six 6 - 8 hour games = one 40 hour game.

This is Stockholm Syndrome right? These people have identified poor game design (gets boring/uninteresting by hour 6) and instead of wanting better made games, they want more, short, crappy games with no depth.

Who buys a $5.00 bag of Lays potato chips and says "I wish they made these bags 1/5th the size and priced each bag at basically the same price."

Here's a crazy idea...what about a 40+ hour game that's entertaining the whole way through? What if we wanted more of those?

Can we collectively (metaphorically) beat these people back into the dark corners they lurked from? It was a better time when people held these thoughts but were too afraid to voice their insanity.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

I prefer sub 20 hour myself but have no issue with 6-8 hours. Most game ideas aren't worthy of 40 hours IMO.

Price should reflect play time.

 

[Graciaus]

Depends entirely on the genre. A FPS does not need to be 40 hours for a single player campaign. Most games are fine at around 10-15 hours.

Majority of games are filled with boring filler anyway to pad time.

 

[64bitmodels]

6-8 hours is far too short, and i agree. a game with engaging gameplay can keep you interested for 60+ hours. the problem is that making a (singleplayer, non sandbox) game that's engaging for 60 hours is near impossible. your gameplay has to be top notch shit and even then it might make some people fall off

i think a better example is a 20-30+ hour campaign because those are typically the sweet spot, especially for RPGs. wanting anything shorter or longer than that is getting into 'ridiculous' territory

 

[Gaiff]

I certainly wish trash-ass AC games were shorter. They could be fun and tight 20-30 hours experiences but Ubisoft pads the heck out of them behind level gating that requires bullshit boring sidequests.

The mentality of short games = bad died out at the end of the 7th gen when we saw plenty of high-quality, fairly short games (by the standards of the time) such as Uncharted, The Last of Us, Arkham City, Bioshock, and many more. A quality 10-15 hours experience that delivers what it wants without pointless filler is far better than a 60-hour game with tons of useless and repetitive shit (ie, most open-world games).

6-8 hours is damn short though. Unless the game has tons of replay value that allows for a lot of experimentation, it's hard to justify full price for such a short amount of play time.

 

[H4ze]

Depends on the genre, I don't need a 40 hour uncharted, sub 20 is just fine, for example.

 

[ResilientBanana]

I prefer non-linear sandbox style games that allow you to beat it at your own pace. But I hate big dead empty open worlds.

 

[Madflavor]

I think it entirely depends on the genre of the game you’re playing.

 

[Spyxos]

Actually, I want to agree with you, but the problem is just that many games that would actually only carry themselves for 8 hours are inflated to 30+.

 

[Roufianos]

I think 12 to 16 hours is the sweet spot. Maybe 20.

I think this OP is a really simplistic take. People aren't necessarily asking for shorter games, just ones that value quality over quantity.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I think 40hr of gameplay is minimum to me. They can say it's 15hr then I'll spend 30hr fucking around. I usually crack beyond 100hr in games like Death Stranding, AC, Horizon FW, etc.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Most single player games exhaust all their interesting gameplay ideas within 10-15 hours -- people are just saying they'd rather the story and everything wrap up somewhere around when the gameplay starts to drag, instead of pondering if they want to repeat the same things over and over for another 30 hours just to find out what's gonna happen.

But there's weirdos out there that have played Assassin's Creed Valhalla for like 200 hours, it's literally just playing the same 10 hour game twenty times.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Some people don’t enjoy being in the same digital World say AC Valhalla for 70 hours for the campaign alone and would rather play three different 22 hour games in that time. You could also play three different genres.

Valhalla itself would have had a far, far better campaign if it had been trimmed of all the bloat and fat to a 22 hour campaign.

I can totally understand the argument of game length from people with limited cash to spend on games though. At that point you want the most hours for your money.

I’d rather have quality over quantity in terms of game length personally.

 

[ssringo]

There's room for both. Get over yourself.

 

[Chastten]

As someone who absolutely loves JRPG's, I often dislike how long they can get, and get sad about the fact I'll never play all of the games I'd like due to the required time investment.

Also, I love short and sweet games. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the Ori games, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Mario 3D World... they're all <10 hour games if you don't 100% them and they're all among my favorite games of the past 20 years. Honestly, money is no issue for me, so if I can finish a game in one or two sittings and enjoy myself the whole way through, than I'm more than satisfied. 5 hours of quality content for €50-70 is a bargain as far as I'm concerned.

 

[yurinka]

I don't need repetitive areas and battles during dozens or hundreds of hours in a game. I'm a busy guy with a huge backlog and a very limited amount of time to play. I'd prefer to see the games being 6-8 hours long, or maybe 10-15 hours long.

One of the main reasons of why skip most RPGs and GaaS is that I find them too long and repetitive. I think it would be better for devs to chop half of their games, repetitive combats, missions and portions of areas. Players wouldn't notice or miss it, they'd sell the same but games would be way cheaper and faster to make.

 

[Punished Miku]

Once you break away from only retail, short games are a nice way to mix things up. Most of the sentiment that you need a longer game comes from not wanting to be ripped off.

I like a mix of short and long games. When you've played games for many decades, you can more quickly determine if you've seen all a game has to offer and if its's just wasting your time.

Quality pacing is important.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

40+ hours on any Ubisoft game sounds like my own personal version of hell.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I wish games were the right size

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

Although I generally prefer shorter games, it is more like I value games that don't overstay their welcome. A game could be long, but it should be fun enough to warrant that length...more isnt necessarily better all the time

 

[JayK47]

So many great games are short. Stray is a recent example.

 

[cireza]

Here's a crazy idea...what about a 40+ hour game that's entertaining the whole way through? What if we wanted more of those?

Maybe that the issue is right there. How do you produce 40 hours of great content without it ever becoming bloated/repetitive/tedious ? Good luck finding the answer.

 

[winjer]

I don't have an issue with game length, only with filler.
Too many games today just pad game time with pointless fetch quests, baren open worlds to traverse, pointless subplots, etc.

 

[Raven117]

As always. Depends on the genre and specific game.

 

[Aenima]

I love big ass games. Just need the content to be varied and not just copy/paste. Reason my favorite genre are RPGs. I finish short games in 1 or 2 days. Unless they have great replay value it always feel wasted money to me.

 

[AV]

New title:

GAF's Resident GaaS Fan Doesn't Understand The Appeal of Not Playing a Game for 600 Hours

I kid, but it's kinda true. Totally depends on the game. When was the last time you played a good 40 hour FPS campaign? Absolutely never. HL2 caps out at like a dozen hours if you go at a steady pace. Titanfall 2 is half of that.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Recent exemple, Hifi rush, ended just on time, I wouldn’t take 40 hours of that. Some game ideas aren’t worth that much time. So many games are just way too goddamn long and it feels like devs are stretching it. Finished Ace Combat 7 on PC this week and it was just a roll eyes shitty corny story with the mission structure being repetitive. Just a chore by the end of it. Soon as I finished the credit, off to uninstall.

If a game is >120 hours and worth it, ala Elden Ring, it’s because it kept being interesting. Not many games I can say kept my interest for that long.

 

[kyussman]

People like different things.I like a really long game I can settle into,the problem these days is that long games make themselves long by adding rinse and repeat content.I really hope Starfield can do something interesting given how big they say the games is....not holding my breath though.

 

[Bragr]

Gives us some examples of the sort of games you want that are 40+ hours.

One reason why people want smaller games is that you simply can't keep up with the industry, always bogged down in month-long games. I'm trying to play through the Yakuza franchise but it's like a year-long project.

 

[analog_future]

"How about instead of wanting 2 hour movies, they just starting making 4 hour movies that are entertaining the whole way through!?"

It doesn't work that way.

 

[Bojji]

People with jobs: that's the answer.

In very long games most of content is filler, you have to level up or get x amount of crafting materials or other shit, it's usually boring and unfulfilling.

I had all the time in the world when i was a kid, i have beaten penencea in FFX TWICE and each time it took ~120+ hours to be ready to face that boss.

Now:

 

[AV]

"How about instead of wanting 2 hour movies, they just starting making 4 hour movies that are entertaining the whole way through!?"

It doesn't work that way.

Get out quickly before the Snyder fanboys hone in on this.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I prefer sub 20 hour myself but have no issue with 6-8 hours. Most game ideas aren't worthy of 40 hours IMO.

Price should reflect play time.

I guess my point is that your paradigm is all wrong. It shouldn't be "pick one of the following two options".

A. 50 hour game that gets boring after hour 15.
B 15 hour game that gets boring after hour 15.

Shouldn't it be...

A. 15 hour game that gets boring after hour 15.
B. 100 hour game that gets boring after 100 hours.

 

[K' Dash]

longer games are padded with repetitive, not interesting shit to do with close to zero motivation to explore.

sub 20 hrs is fine.

 

[Smasher89]

Depends on the games for sure, but im starting to get over the whole "collect all these 5 things on every stage" in platformers, rather have replayability in some other ways like new difficulty settings or even speedrun modes (looking at you kirby the forgotten land).

 

[OmegaSupreme]

What's the problem? Most games are filled with bloat and tedious padding to fill out their runtime. Nothing wrong with wanting tighter experiences. In my view most games are too long. Some of us have full time jobs, kids, friends, house to maintain, other hobbies etc.

 

[Umbasaborne]

8 hours of quality is more valuable then 80 hours of bloat

 

[TexMex]

The problem isn't long games, it's short games that are full of boring bloat to make them arbitrarily longer. Think about how many 40 hour games you've played that have a good 15 hours of content.

 

[dDoc]

As long as devs deliver a quality product, the more of it the better.

Maybe people say this for really long games which have low quality over all in many departments, cough *Ubisoft* cough.

 

[rofif]

I prefer to replay 10-15h focused game few times rather than open world.
The problem is that open world games are just not fan on replay. You know there is no reason to explore.
When I replay half-life 2 or uncharted 4, to this day I am finding new stuff.



I will replay souls as I always do. I dont want to replay Elden Ring

 

[64bitmodels]

Shouldn't it be...

A. 15 hour game that gets boring after hour 15.
B. 100 hour game that gets boring after 100 hours.

It's extremely difficult to do that though. Sandbox/eternal games like Minecraft, Stardew, Gmod, and Terraria have the advantage of mods, but besides that singleplayer campaigns can't stretch themselves out because they don't have the type of physics or endless content those 4 have

 

[Guilty_AI]

I think the problem is just that people are too used to the idea longer games == filler content.

It isnt necessarily like that, but tends to be the case in most modern AAA titles. We have VNs that can go up to 100 hours and are pure story, no game filler at all.

 

[EN250]

Needed another option in poll, I do want longer games, what I don't want it's padded and reptitive crap over and over again throughout the whole map just to bloat the game so it can be perceived as "content rich" (the Ubisoft formula) which copy/pasting the same sh*t over and over game it is not

 

[DenchDeckard]

it depends on the game.

I think there is an argument that Assassins creed, horizon FW and GOW Ragnarok could have been better games if they were half as long.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Pacing matters in a game with repetitive gameplay. Like a shooter campaign doesn’t need to be 40 hours or something full of filler. A game like Stray was amazing at a couple hours and didn’t need to be padded out for 20 hours.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

This thread is kind of like asking "why do average games get made when they can just make a game of the year contender instead?"

 

[Nemesisuuu]

Well, I hate filler which most of those 40+ hour games are full of.

15-20 hours is sweet spot for me.

 

[ironmang]

10-15 is the sweet spot for me.

It's very rare that I'll find some 40+ hour game that can keep my attention and enjoyment throughout. If I hear a game is that long it just totally falls off my radar unless it's a game of the generation contender like Elden Ring.

 

[Laptop1991]

I prefer longer games, then again my go to games are Bethesda's single player games and open world, but some are full of bloat like AC Valhalla and not meaning full extra content, so i get why some gamer's don't like them, however with price increases in games, i'm not paying 60 or 70 quid etc for a 4, 6 or even a 10 hour game, i don't think they are worth the price vs gameplay personally, so i went for the middle vote.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Maybe that the issue is right there. How do you produce 40 hours of great content without it ever becoming bloated/repetitive/tedious ? Good luck finding the answer.

Look at, study, and learn from games that retain players longer than their competition.

These one and done throwaway games are the styrofoam cups of the games industry. And yet, our media elites hauk these games as must plays. That shouldn't be the case.