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The Importance of Game Length
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 01, 2006 01:13 PM
from the waiting-for-the-1000-hour-game dept.
from the waiting-for-the-1000-hour-game dept.
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"
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Genre (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Genre (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, most game mechanics get stale after twenty hours of play. RPGs in particular tend to have relatively simple game mechanics that rarely get changed-up---they pad the game out with level-grinding and plot. Once I've mastered the game mechanics, I want to move faster; I've found very few RPGs that allow me to do so, since the artificial wall of gaining levels still exists.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good RPG's require no grinding at all. If you follow the plot, and go to places the plot requires you to go, and do quests the plot requires you to do, you should have just enough random encounters to level up enough so that when you encounter a boss, you may have a challenging-but-not-impossible battle.
Boring grinding serve only 2 purposes: 1) Doing that optio
They forgot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They forgot... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I play through a game, I like to know that it's more than just A-B-C plot progression. I love sideplots. I love side missions. I love small quirky things that happen in the game that can either distract me from the main plot, or join up with it eventually and make it a broader gaming experience.
Parent
Seeing as how this is very variable (Score:4, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
It depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Second to that - Fable. Much shorter, but REALLY fun. Well, until the end, which completely sucks.
On the other hand, Doom 3 bored me after about 3 hours.
-WS
It's not the size that matters... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:It's not the size that matters... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
growing older (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you don't like the length of the game, thats what cheats and gamesharks are for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
to repeat... (Score:2)
For me, if it is not designed specifically to take forever to do everything (i.e. Oblivion) and is not an MMO (i.e. WoW), gameplay should not take longer than 50 hours for ANY game, tops. I find myself enjoying rpg's that have around the 40 hour mark, fps's that have around the 15 hour mark...I dunno, like I said it depends. If I had to choose a single time that I would want all games to take to play through, I would say 20 hours. 20 hours to me is en
More choices, less length. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Length or time played? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Doesnt it depend on content? (Score:2, Insightful)
cost (Score:2)
It's not game length that's the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Variety is more important than gameplay length. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)