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"

Genre

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.

Re:Genre

The funny thing is that this is exactly why I don't play RPGs on a regular basis.

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.

They forgot...

Game girth is a factor too. Really, it is.

Re:They forgot...

As funny as the parent comment sounds, I agree with it.

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.

Seeing as how this is very variable

It may be more of a question of game depth rather than pure length.

MOD PARENT UP

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.

This will be repeated ad infinitum...

...but I'll put it another way. I don't think I'll be complaining about the length of my game during hour 65 of Twilight Princess.

It depends...

...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.

It's not the size that matters...

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.

Re:It's not the size that matters...

There's nothing better than causing some nice explosions, steal a few cars and beating up some hookers after a frustrating day at work.

And after THAT, you go home and load up GTA, right?

Ideas

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.

Length doesn't matter. . .

. . . my wife tells me this all the time.

growing older

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.

to repeat...

what many others have said, it depends on the genre...

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 enough time to have a solid experience and is long enough to include many memorable events, but short enough to actually remember the entire game.

More choices, less length.

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.

All depends on the game

I can pump endless hours into an RPG like Final Fantasy, KOTOR, or Elder Scrolls, even after gameplay becomes a bit (or even highly) repetetive. I think that has to do with the game being based around XP. As long as your character is building or you are gaining items to make cool weapons, you keep interest.

For shooters, the time I want to play one (campaign mode) is much less. I thought Gears of War, which most people complain about as being too short, was about perfect. It was exciting all the way through, and didn't try to turn a shooter into an epic quest. For example, I found half life to be very long and lost interest in the campaign around the point of the prison. Can't really explain why, but I don't like when shooters drag out. The Halo games were also about right for my liking.

Dead Rising is an interesting one, the whole game being open, but based on a strict amount of time. I really like the game, but hate the strict time limit. You end up replaying sections over and over again if you want to save all the survivors and stay on schedule for your missions.

I'd say that content is more important, but length does matter. The more open the environment, the longer the man quest should be. For shooters, I think shorter and more intense works best.

Length or time played?

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.

Genre Matters, But I Need a Challenge Regardless

I agree that length is more important in a role-playing or strategy game than in a First Person Shooter. However, as a married thirty one year old, I still want at least 40 bleepin' hours from a bleepin' USD $60 game! If they can't even come up with enough plot or developements to fill out 40 hours of play, then they need to redo the game. For me, the best games never feel like a waste of time or money, no matter how long they take to beat. Nothing is worse, however, than to get into a game only to find yourself, before you know it, slugging it out with the end boss. Unless the game has a powerful replay value, which they rarely do,Game Over. Personally, I think the future is games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which have a great plot, but with a non-linear structure and an expansive, interactive fun-filled environment hearkening back to the glory days of Zork and Infocom where it was fun just to be there, exploring and messing around.

Doesnt it depend on content?

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.

cost

The thing is, for some people the cost is mostly the money, for others the cost is the amount of time it takes... for most it's probably some combination of the two...

progress and variation

Total game length is less important than progress and variation. If a game become repetative it's too long or there wasn't enough variation. Also game length shouldn't be enforced by lack of progress. If you can produce enough progress and variation the actual length should matter much.

I would say that any game should aim for 40 hours of gameplay (in total) for the first time you play it on normal difficulty.

2 types of gamers, 2 different lengths

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.

no time

If you have no time to finish a game that's over 25 hours long, maybe you should play less games? Spend more time on a single game? You don't HAVE to play 4 games every month..

And anyway, you're missing out on the most amazing games ever made..Baldur's gate series, Morrowind, Final Fantasies, blah blah blah blah..

It's not game length that's the issue

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?

Variety is more important than gameplay length.

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.

There are many other kinds of games, you know

For example: if I just want a quick "coffee break" at home or at work, I enjoy stuff like MineSweeper. It's quick to play and requires just the right number of brain cells to be active :-) . I can think of many other situations for which a short (under 5 minutes, or under 30 minutes) game is just right.
BTW, my favorite games are pinball sims -- plug here for VPinMAME --, which depending on your skill level can last 30 seconds or half an hour.

huh?

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.

Zelda is good length

I am actually finding that zelda twilight princess for the wii is a good length. it also allows you to save pretty much almost anywhere. You can save at any time but when you load it will bring you back to a major loaction. If you just got a sword then left the dungeon and went to hyrul field you will still have that sword when you laod up but you might be say at death mountain becaus eits the clsoest main section. Or if you are in a dungeon it will save what you compelted but might laod up at the begining of that dungeon I think this game is perfect length wise.

Keeping Interest

I played the first scenario of a turn-based strategy game called Age of Wonders II: Shadow Magic. Great game, reminiscent of the Master of Magic series from the 90s. There were, I guess, 16 scenarios, but the first one was so involved, long, showed off all the powers and creatures you could encounter, felt so epic...that when I finally finished it after a few days (a total of 5 hours maybe), I was done with the game, feeling very satisfied but knowing it was just more of the same after that.

MMORPGs people play for years and I wager more because of the community than the gameplay (because the gameplay usually pales when compared to single player RPGs).

I enjoyed half-life 2 and FEAR...both those could have gone on a little longer but the story, as it was, came to an end so I felt satisfied. But again, as far as expansion packs go...I know it's just more of the same so I might not pick it up.

Of course, if you ever waited through the original Bard's Tale on 5 1/4" floppy, you can play anything...

tangential complaint from old gamer

Worst game ever in the "that's too short" genre would be Loom. Awesome game during the two hours it takes to finish.

Best-paced game ever has to be Ultima 5. PERFECT pacing.

It all comes down to content

Two games that had a tremendous play value in my family where "Myst" ( the original ) and "Neverhood". These two got over 40 hours play each in the first play. They do however have little recurring play value. The value ? Solve something and have YOUR intellect work for you. FPS like Half Life II, Unreal Tournament 200x and Quake 3 Arena on the other hand have had little initial value, but a lot of recurring value ( the player usually hold up for 30-60 minutes at a time at the most, but the games are played 2-5 times a week ). The value ? Blow something or someone up. Simple and stress relieveing ( that's how it's written, eh ? ) :) Then there's a lot of games that have had little or no value at all. Initial or recurring. "Riven" - too hard/tedious, "Star Trek - Whatever" - plain boring, The Sims.. well, the girls dig it.. And the only MMO game I've ever bothered to use is Second Life. And I use that what... an hour a month or so... :P

It doesn't make a difference to me

It it's a really short game, I'll play through it multiple times, find all the secrets, get high scores and so on. Even the ones without a lot of "replay value".

It's its a very long game(like many modern RPGs) I'll quit playing before I even get to the end.

Either way is fine with me. I play a game until I get bored and then I quit. The only games I generally reach the end of are adventure game types because they're usually relatively short.

Corresponding price?

I can take games of varying length, but the amount of game you get should be reflected in the price. A good example is Beyond Good & Evil. Great, but short game. About 10 hours. I forget exactly how much it cost when it first came out, but it was less than the standard $50. Maybe $35 or something like that.

Vary it

Why not vary the time, depending on what sort of side-quest sorts of things the player wants to do? Those that don't have a whole lot of time can play through the story, while those that do can explore the world a bit more.

Scripted Length vs. Play Time.

I think some of the posts here are confusing Scripted Length and Play Time. There's a difference between Scripted Length and the amount of time one can replay a game.

I've spent 100's of hours (1000's?) spent playing GuildWars and StarCraft. These games are more like Chess. The playability comes from the player-to-player competition and infinite strategic options, and team/opponent permutations. It has nothing to do with a scripted 'length'.

Game length

I don't buy a game that's less than 25-30 hours. I may rent it, but I'll never buy it. I have little interest in playing games online, so I have little reason to keep playing it once it's done. An RPG needs to be at least 40 hours just to play out enough of a story to make it worth playing. I don't have a lot of free time, so if a game doesn't have a good story, I lose interest fast. Graphics and action aren't enough to get me through any game.

3rd dimension

All of this talk of length and depth even girth. Bah,I think developers should spend a little more time on the sorely overlooked height of today's next generation games.

That's right I said it.

its dropability and depth

I know I'm more or less reiterating whats said above but really depth and the ability to pick up, play and drop are key. GTA SA and HL2 are great examples of this, each level is smallish and the save points frequent, in GTA once you have a level you can play, if you die so be it. HL2 took me a month of playing to get done, it had large enough maps that I enoyed going back to it and trying again. I picked up San Andreas for the PC 6 months ago, I have already completed it on the PS2, but the last six months have been brilliant fun, I've found towns I never knew existed, found sub missions I missed and generally been able to fit it in my rather hectic life.

The Myst series is anouther one which is capable of this, but its thinking nature means an hour really is the minimum time you can spend on it, however the little added details make them replayable.But things like Black and White 2 are where it goes wrong, it took 6 months to get to the final level, each time I play I find I need to be there for a couple of hours otherwise things go wrong. I've been sat on the final level for months now because I lack the time to commit a big sitting to it and replaying the earlier levels has no appeal to me since I have literally seen it all.

number of hours?

10-30 hours for a game? Huh? Who plays single player, anyway? I've probably logged over 500 hours in CS and at least 1000 hours in UT99.

There are still a few obsessive people out there who want to find "the" game that they are going to be playing for the next year. I couldn't imagine only playing one game for only 20 hours and then stopping. There's a lot of satisfaction of getting good at a game and being one of the top players on a server filled with incredibly good players.

Unlimited hours == best

Other than the occasional mindblowing FPS (and even multiplayer ones are 'unlimited' in the time you can play them), I only play 'unlimited hours' games. Simulations, sports games, god games.. they're all limitless. You can play NHL hockey as many times as you want, you can keep building cities in Simcity 4 for as long as you want, you can play Battlefield 2 for as long as you want.. that's real value for money. MMORPGs, same deal.

I only play MMORPGs - so "length" is irrelevant

What matters with an MMORPG is how long the minimum session is effectively. In City of Heroes/City of Villains, I can pop on and play 1 mission on a character in about 20 mins or so. I can pick up the character and be in a mission in less than ~1 min I would bet, a bit longer if I need/want to find a group first of course. The action is quick, varied enough, challenging (and you can set the challenge rating to harder levels if its too easy), and most of all fun. Its particularly fun when you get a good working group of friends together and take on something really challenging as a group. These factors make it a casual friendly game

Star Wars Galaxies on the other hand, is a real Sandbox game, despite the recent dumbing down of the entire game, particularly if you play a crafter as I do. As a result although I can log in for a few mins to check my harvesters or vendors, actually getting anything practical accomplished (ie making new crafted items and putting them up for sale), or playing on my alt combat character (which I seldom do), requires me to know that I have at least an hour's time in advance, because everything you do requires other actions or preparations etc. I am also fairly social in SWG, so I get a lot of tells in game and spend a lot of time just chatting with people to keep up with events and coordinate activities.

I don't even consider the notion of playing a game that would last less than 30 hours. I can't see justifying spending the money on something so short lived. Now, games with high replay value I might consider I suppose, but if I can't spend literally hundreds of hours on it over time, whats the point in getting invested in it? I have played City of Heroes since release, City of Villains since beta, and SWG since release - each with a few months break here and there. Prior to those I played Dark Age of Camelot for 2.5 years, prior to that 8 months of EQ. Each game satisfies a different style of gaming for me. I have spent hundreds, probably thousands of hours playing these games so far. Since my wife plays with me, we seldom watch TV and prefer online games. The only TV shows I can recall watching in the last year are Heroes the Series, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. For me online games have replaced the passive entertainment of television. Not much of a step up but they are at least more active mentally. This of course gives the impression that this is all I do and thats not the case. I still find plenty of time to hold down 2 PT jobs, code projects and get together with friends etc.

I disagree on RPGs

I'm actually going to step out on a limb here and disagree with most of the hardcore RPG croud and say that most RPGs these days are TOO long. To be specific, I'm speaking about jRPGs like final fantasy rather than cRPGs like Diablo or Everwinter Nights.

The length of time one needs to invest in todays RPGs is more than I'm willing to commit to. Frankly, if I get part way through an RPG and then fall out of the habit for a month or two, due to external real-life events, I never feel like I can go back to it without starting over at the beginning, which is a dauntingly repetitious task for me.

Games like the first 6 Final Fantasys, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and the early Dragon Warrior games were only 20-40 hours in length and they were damn good, in fact about half of these would be in the running for Best jRPG of All Time. The good one's were chok full of fun, having little, if any, filler content. There were no long-winded cut-scenes, and no feeling of becoming stagnant in one area. You were always on the move, exploring, discovering new enemies, new party members and taking on new quests. For me, I've found that 30 hours is about the sweet-spot, and I'm willing to give 10 hours in either direction if the game is particularly good. Something like 70 hours becomes intolerable for me, even for something generally well-recieved such as FF7.

A game that doesn't entertain you the entire way through is not a game; it becomes a chore -- of which I have much more important ones to attend to in my non-working hours.

Just my take.

Ideally, I'd like a game that A) Changes every time you start a new game, B) Has a decent length, and C) Can be played when I want (As in, I can start it at any time and play, and not have to do a thousand things just to get going), and saved and resumed when I want. I used to play a lot of Diablo II, and it's pretty well summed up, at least by those three standards, as "The Perfect Game." Though a nice 70-hour-or-more RPG really gets me going. If you know what I mean. And I hope you don't.

I don't actually mind short games...

... since I am older now and have less free time to game (computer games). I don't actually mind the shorter games. I do mind the prices. Games shouldn't be 50-60 bucks. I usually buy games on their first release week when they are cheaper.

again

Better a game that I can play again than one I hate by the time I finish. I would rather have a 12 hour game I want to play again then a 24 hour game I play once. Show me a game that is different each time I go back to play it rather than a 25 hour long game. Remember how you could beat NES Zelda and go back and play it with different dungeons, that's what we need not long games.

Quality is better than Quantity

Quality in a game is more important than quantity, because who wants to play an excessively long, crappy game?

take it from a former Netrek crack addict...

About 12 years ago, while I was still in college, Netrek (I don't know if it even exists anylonger, it was a text-based start-trel like RPG) was able to hook me for 48-60 hrs straight, until I literally started seeing things (I kid you not, try playing, if you can, for super-excessive amounts of time, lots of caffeine and virtually nothing but bathroom breaks). Happened only once btw.

Today, I finally got my hands on a Wii - because I can play games like Zelda and the Wii Sports, which I don't feel guilty about shutting down at any minute, unlike Netrek (or World of Warcraft, which I only tried for 2 weeks, and immediately quit because I felt my old Netrek-self slowly creeping in, it fried my brain).

I'm 31, married and programmer by day, and I want to eventually have children. WoW and the like are anti-family, anti-health types of games. If you can take a single hint from me, don't play anything that has any sort of 'experience' based type of play, where you have to waste hours at an end to get somewhere. Buy a Wii, you'll get some exercise while at it, without the mental crack.

I like both quality and quantity.

The trend seems to be that most quality games are getting a LOT shorter. Doom 3 and Half-life 2 were way shorter than they should have been.

The most recent tomb-raider was ridiculously short and took about a weekend to go from start to finish. I remember the original tomb-raider as taking me weeks of play.

Thankfully oblivion is excellent and has lasted a good long time so far !

How long should a game last?

Easy: until it gets boring. A 100 hours of gameplay is not too long if the game is still fun, but 4 hours is too long if the game is dull after an hour of gameplay.

Why don't games adjust to the time you have?

I'd like to be able to start a game of Civ IV, tell it "I have four hours to play" and have it automatically adjust so that game doesn't last more than 4 hours. No more staying up to 3 am playing some silly game, and I'd really rather start a fresh game each time anyway.

Of course that's easier with a real-time game, but it should be true of most games.

Movies are a lot better in that way because you know going in how long they'll be.

I Say Dynamic

Personally, I've never understood why you'd want the game to tell you when to stop playing... I'm still playing classic UT, and Chuzzle's Zen mode.

Some bad analogies and little else

One AC in the article says: "This industry needs to get over these over-simplifications. The film industry doesn't get in a public debate over the difference between a 3 hour epic and a 90 minute comedy. Tickets to both films cost the same."

That's an over-simplification in itself. Film length is a very big deal to movie companies precisely because the tickets all cost the same. A 90-minute film can sell twice as many tickets as a 3 hour epic because it can be shown twice as many times during the theater's operating hours. Show length is extremely important to exhibitors and producers.

The same respondent makes another bad analogy: "A good example is comic books. Years ago they were less than a dollar for approximately twenty pages. Depending on the creative team involved a comic could be read in somewhere between 5 and 25 minutes. Fast forward to today when most comics still match in page count/reading time but cost around $3."

Comics are of a much, much higher quality today than twenty years ago. From artistry to genre-busting content to printing quality to raw materials the improvements are staggering. A $3 comic isn't even too far out of line when you consider only inflation. In this light games are highly undervalued. Since their debut in the early eighties, games have increased very little in price where everything else has doubled or tripled in cost -- and game budgets have ballooned by hundreds of times.

I wasn't really surprised to see the overwhelmingly common opinion that games should be shorter, but with all the anonymous responses, only one seemed to be honest about one thing: "the gamer in me wants more, and the developer in me can see why it's not there." In other words, a shorter game would make my job as game developer a whole lot easier.