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[AncientOrigin]

"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.

A movie does not have to be entertaining for 4 hours.All Lord or the Rings or Hobbits parts are 3-4 hours and they are amazing.Ben Hur is 4 hours and is amazing.If you like something time passes by very fast 4 hours will be gone like a blink of a eye.But 2 hours of something you don’t like will be like 10 hours time will stop not move.

 

[vodka-bull]

Seems like OP doesn‘t make a lot of sense. Count me in the wish games were shorter camp.

 

[Knightime_X]

Really depends on the genre.
A 30 hour action game is stupid.
It's mostly watered down nonsense to add padding. It really kills pacing.

RPGs that take 70+ hours minimum to beat are equally as bad.
Even some 50+ hours rpgs are really pushing it.

Either cut the fat or make it strongly worth your time.

 

[Krathoon]

I just love it when a game makes you fight all the bosses again. Looks at Okami.

 

[BouncyFrag]

I love loooog ass games that have a good payoff at the end. Currently in the middle of Persona 3 FES. Love it.

 

[Keihart]

You are delusional OP, show me all those single player games that keep innovating its mechanics in inventive ways past the 40 hours mark instead of becoming repetetive ass draging experiences.
I could probably count in my hands and have free fringers if i count the single player games released in the last 24 months that meet that criteria, most games are padded to oblivion with repetitive shit and would be better with the fat trimmed off.

 

[Sethbacca]

I love loooog ass games that have a good payoff at the end. Currently in the middle of Persona 3 FES. Love it.

I loved Persona 5, put 50 hours into it and really loved the music, visual style, and game, but the thought of sinking another 50 just has me going ehhhhhh.....

I really don't know how people have played it through multiple times, but different strokes for different folks and all that.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I think we should beat people like you back into the dark corners and basements where you came from. Why do you want a prolonged, bloated experience? God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Halo Infinite, Any Assassin's Creed since 3, Hogwarts Legacy, and more - all pointlessly long, poorly paced, and filled to the brim with bullshit.

Again...this was addressed in the OP itself, and then two times later in this very thread. I will address it a 4th time now...

The question is not SHORT GOOD GAME vs LONG BAD GAME. The question is SHORT GOOD GAME vs LONG GOOD GAME.

Bloat is bad just like shallow depth is bad. That's not what we're talking about here.

Which of those have you personally played for 40+ hours? Or did you just look at the top played games on Steam with SP components and assume that's what more games should strive to be?

The 40 hour number is arbitrary.
There are SP games that instantly bore me (God of War) and there are SP games that entertain me for ~20 or so hours before I bounce. Call me crazy but I think games that entertain for 20 hours are superior to games that can only entertain for 30 minutes.

I remember watching a Ken Levine interview where he was asked the last game he beat was. He responded by saying [paraphrase] "I don't beat games. I play the tutorial and then one or two levels before moving on."

The reason I'm highlighting this is because the industry isn't geared towards creating long lasting, compelling SP games. They're incentivized to create short, consume and crap out titles.

They're all crafting/base building sandboxes. They're games with lots of playtime because they all rely on the user farming, in one case quite literally. Hold X to collect resource, use resource to build thing, use thing to generate resource, etc. This works great for that subgenre of games but nobody in their right mind would dream of adding those mechanics to most other single player games, as you know well from my space turnips example with Metroid.

I guess I'm looking at it from a broader perspective than you. When I list those 3 games, that are very clearly SP focused, I want you to think about the wide swathe of genres and the wide swathe of titles within those genres. You do that and you will see the following...

-Some genres entertain players longer than others.
-Some games within those genres entertain players longer than others.

My point is common sense really. 100 hours of fun is superior to 5 hours of fun provided the level of fun between each is similar. The industry craps out styrofoam. The incentive is to bore you quickly so you can get excited about the next AAA filler coming down the pipe. Get your money with marketing hype. Repeat the process in 6 weeks.

Some games are short, others aren't. Take my previous Metroid example, how do you turn a tight 10 hours into 40?

Metroid games are short because their game mechanics don't have depth. The designers of those titles know they need to end at a certain point because the veneer wears off so fast.

Take Rimworld and apply your logic to it. Why on earth would the makers of Rimworld turn their title into a 6 hour campaign with little to no replay value? They would have to chop it up until it's an abomination of a game. The only way you'd be able to save such a monster is buy giving it AAA graphics, adding pretty cutscenes, and spinning up the marketing blitz for it. All wasteful and irrelevant to nourishing game design.

Make 4 games worth of Metroid in one? Even Hollow Knight doesn't do that, a significantly longer Metroid game that's (in)famous for having the user meander around zones they're already seen for hours and that's enough to turn a lot of people off a 20 hour game - not me, I loved it, but I didn't want another 20. There's no one-size-fits-all solution because video games aren't one-size-fits-all. Give me an 8 hour FPS campaign and 10,000 hours in WoW, both are great.

Hallow Kight would be a better game if you wanted another 20 hours of it. The veneer wore off for you because the game lacked depth.

 

[spawn]

I'm sure the type of people saying that are probably older and have kids so they don't have a lot of time. I myself am one of those people, but I still enjoy long RPG's even though it takes me months to finish.

 

[mariosbrother]

I don't mind the length of the game, what matters to me is if I can get something out of it (i.e., feel like I'm progressing) if I only play in short bursts. I have a 5-15 minute window right before I crash for the night to get whatever gaming in that I'm going to. Right now that amounts to a couple Super Mario 3D World stages, nice little bite sized chunks.

 

[Keihart]

The real reason is that they want you bored by the time the next 20 hour one and done game comes out. They've created a conveyer belt and they know gamers will spend money once every 1 - 2 months. They're not incentivized to create a game that's engrossing for 6 months. They'd lose money that way.

Games media wants the public focusing on the next shiny object coming up. You won't tune in if you find your one game and ignore the rest.

This is the way.

ah, so this is why RE2 and its remake are so short, no wonder people don't replay them like all the time right?

If anything, making games long it's the actual corporativism creeping into game design, it's like tiking a box for the marketing department.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You are right but the problem is spending 40 hours on 1 game is still a big investment when you have 30 mins to an hour a day to game. Having a job, significant other or kids can really limit your free time.

That's why I put the Math Fact in the OP. 40 hours on 1 game is the same time investment as 40 hours on 5 games.

 

[Stuart360]

The longer the better for me. I have never played a game where i thought 'damn i wish this was shorter'. Well maybe Alien Isolation although that was more to do with the game having 2 or 3 points in the game where you think its the end, but it just keeps on going.

I get not everyone has as much time to play as some poeple, like i do since i live on my own now and can do what i want.

I'd hate to go back to the Xbox/PS2, PS3/360 gens where we were paying $60 for 4-8 hour campaigns, and where a game that lasted like 10 hours was thought of as a 'long' game.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

That's why I put the Math Fact in the OP. 40 hours on 1 game is the same time investment as 40 hours on 5 games.

Yes but there's a difference between completing 5 great movies and only 1 great movie.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

A movie does not have to be entertaining for 4 hours.All Lord or the Rings or Hobbits parts are 3-4 hours and they are amazing.Ben Hur is 4 hours and is amazing.If you like something time passes by very fast 4 hours will be gone like a blink of a eye.But 2 hours of something you don’t like will be like 10 hours time will stop not move.

Hollywood movies have been creeping up in length the past decade too. They used to be able to tell the story in 2 hours, now many movies are verging on 3 hours in length and it's not like they are better or anything. Too much of the mentality of quantity over quality there too.

 

[Griffon]

20 hours is good.

40 and more is not sane.

I don't want devs to make boring fillers just to fill a quota. Low quality content makes great games much less enjoyable.

 

[BlackTron]

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+.

This is exactly what the problem is. A lot of them could be pretty great games too if they didn't spread themselves too thin this way. We would have more good games that didn't sell themselves short if they didn't have so much padding and grunt work beyond what they can carry. Maybe instead of "I wish games were shorter" it's more "I wish the teeming masses of average games were shorter so they wouldn't overstay their welcome, allowing their high notes to shine better and respecting our time."

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

ah, so this is why RE2 and its remake are so short, no wonder people don't replay them like all the time right?

If anything, making games long it's the actual corporativism creeping into game design, it's like tiking a box for the marketing department.

Bloat is incentivized.
Quality is not.

This is not a discussion about length being good. It's a discussion about quality length being good.

Also, go look up Resident Evils metrics on Steamcharts. It's not exactly a popular "replayed" franchise.

 

[cireza]

Metroid games are short because their game mechanics don't have depth.

Just like Mario, Kirby or Sonic etc... Yet these games are more fun than anything like Horizon, Tomb Raider or whatever 40 hours shit some random Western studio made, even when they have "unbelievable" depth with their crafting system or whatever feature they added. Truth is their isn't any depth to all of this, it is artificial bloat used for marketing, to give you the illusion that you have depth in your games.

Metroid never needed to be 40 hours long. You will spend 10 hours of pure fun playing through it, and then once completed you will get a picture or ending as a reward and the question will naturally come : can I have some other picture ? What are the requirements ? Then of course you realize that the games were made to be completed under various conditions, some very challenging, and you will naturally want to try it out. Completing the game in under X hours, in hard, getting 100% items, getting lowest % items, all of these combined etc... And at this very moment, you will realize how well crafted these games, because each of these runs were planned by the devs. Even sequence breaking was an active part of planning for certain Metroid games. This is called having fun and making your game replayable.

We don't need 40 hours games that have excellent content for 40 hours straight. Same as we don't need open-world games that have interesting things to do every two steps you make, for the simple reason that designing such games is absolutely impossible. You WILL have to resort to copy/pasting things, or generating uninteresting content. On top of this put some levelling system, crafting, skill trees that offer actually no real choice of interest, and you get the perfect formula for a game that is going to waste all your free time of the coming month.

Why I am replaying every year Nights, Burning Rangers and Jet Set Radio ? Certainly not because there is a ton of content nor incredible depth in these games. They are simple perfectly well crafted and offer a ton of fun. There is always a score to beat and try to get better.

Developers should start by making an excellent 10 hours game (and that's already a lot) and focus on giving reasons to come back to the game once the player completes it.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Yes but there's a difference between completing 5 great movies and only 1 great movie.

Is there though? When the 1 great movie is just as good, and just as long, as the 5 great movies?

Your wallet may disagree.

 

[SegaManAU]

12-15 hours is perfect for me. And I don't have an issue if they are a little shorter either depending on genre.

I get sick of games quickly, and I have a young family so my gaming time is around 1-2 hours per night if I'm not too exhausted from work.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I don't think OP's point is all that controversial to warrant so much discussion. A game that is entertaining for all its 40 hours, or 100 hours lenght, or whatever other symbolic time-frame will never not be a good thing.

And even if you claim you don't have the time for it, as OP said, 40 hours on 1 great game is the same amount of time spent as 40 hours on 5 great games.

Reading the answers, i think there are two main issues people have with longer games:

>The first one is padding. Filling the game with meaningless and mostly boring content to make the game seem bigger than it actually is. That is indeed a problem, and i can see the reasoning in prefering devs to just scrape off all the useless stuff, just stop with the bullshit and give us what we came here for. People prefering the TLoU TV series over the game is a good example of this.

>The second is people with shorter attention spans. That is very personal. Many were trained to experience stories through 2 hour movies and thats exactly what they look for in games, thus they have trouble with the idea of following the same plot and characters for 70 hours over the course of many weeks like one would do with a book.

There's also the discussion of shaping a game like you would a TV series, in smaller bite sized experiences that form a whole or are enjoyable in and of themselves. Thats probably the reason why many people can still engage normally in some GAAS and multiplayer games, since those usually come in the form of short play sessions that can be repeated indefinitely in different shapes.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

The amount of time you spend on a game isn't going on your casket.

If any game is 50 hours+ while maintaining a sparse social life and a full time job I ain't playing it.

 

[Nydius]

I'm not voting because these options suck. For me it depends on the game, but like others I find that far too many games are padding content and going for quantity to cover for dubious quality. Even games that have decent quality -- like the recent Hogwarts Legacy -- falls victim to this padding nonsense. While I personally had no problem doing all of the Merlin Trials, I can completely understand why some people checked out and said "fuck this!" when they discovered how many of them there were. Especially since they were basically the same five or six designs throughout.

Way back in the jurassic SNES period, I remember playing FF2(US) and finishing it in 34 hours. I wasn't level 99 on all characters but they were all in the 60s and easily capable of overpowering Zemus/Zeromus. That seemed massive at the time because games at the time were still very drop in/drop out, short level based, or arcade ports. These days, people think if the same kind of RPGs don't give the 100+ hours, it's somehow a failure. If FF2 had dragged on another 30 hours back then, I probably wouldn't have finished it.

A well constructed game that keeps me engaged that lasts 60-70 hours is fine, but so is a tightly crafted game that only lasts 8-10. Not every game needs to be the equivalent of War & Peace or the unabridged version of The Stand. And I'm very burned out on live service games who want me to spend every waking moment grinding their game -- and only their game -- and use manipulative FOMO strategies to keep people coming back to their lackluster amount of content.

 

[Keihart]

Bloat is incentivized.
Quality is not.

This is not a discussion about length being good. It's a discussion about quality length being good.

Also, go look up Resident Evils metrics on Steamcharts. It's not exactly a popular "replayed" franchise.

Problem is, quantifiying the quality of a game its not easy nor feasible most of the time and budgets are not infinite.
Asking for games to not be bloathed is a practical proposition that can make games better, asking for games to just be better isn't.

Just as editing a movie its important so it doesnt drag, so it's making games not bloathed and identifiying when the mechanics run its curse.
Some games are built like toys , some arent, focusing on making them longer its not precisely what makes them good.
The lenght of minecraft doent really matter when people willfully spend hundreds of hours just fucking around.

You always have the shittiest takes on game design, i always get intrigued when you make a thread.

 

[Manuscript Replica]

Agreed with the “Depends “ crowd. I enjoy shorter games, mostly because I don’t have time to play for hours on end. If I’m going to play a 40+ hour game, I can only play in 1-2 hour bursts, if that. Every session is remembering wtf happened.
8-15 hrs is a sweet spot for me… anything higher than that can depend on the game type.
God Of War Ragnarok felt like it took for fucking ever, even though i finished with 25hrs.
Currently playing Hogwarts Legacy and it’s starting to feel little long for my liking.

 

[JusticeForAll]

Well, I agree and disagree.

I'm in my thirties, have a family and a very busy professional life. I do enjoy gaming, but not just any kind of game. Nowadays I prefer narrative rich games. Can be an rpg, action adventure,... Like God of War, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Dragon Age,... Honestly, I don't care how long they last. The longer, the better, as long as I'm not bored.

On the other hand, there are games like for example Evil West. I know it's not the best, but I'm having fun playing it. It will not remain fun if it's overstaying it's welcome.

I will play both types of games in short bursts of 2h, either early in the morning or late in the evening. I will enjoy both for what they are.

 

[DaGwaphics]

The question is not SHORT GOOD GAME vs LONG BAD GAME. The question is SHORT GOOD GAME vs LONG GOOD GAME.

The think the issue you are missing is that there aren't many game loops that can hold player attention and remain interesting for 40 or 50hrs. RPGs are the one bright spot, for any kind of Action/Adventure game it is going to be a rough, if not impossible, road to hoe.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Problem is, quantifiying the quality of a game its not easy nor feasible most of the time and budgets are not infinite.

We do it all the time here. GotY awards, Metascores, sales, user scores, discussions etc...It's obviously not a science but the amorphous blob known as "gamers" seems to assign quality in a certain way.

The 3 games I listed as being examples of SP titles with more depth and longevity than most are Rimworld, Terraria, and Stardew Valley. I think all 3 games were made by a combined total of 3 people.

Budget and resources have very little to do with quality game design.

Asking for games to not be bloathed is a practical proposition that can make games better, asking for games to just be better isn't.

Right, which is why looking at SP games that have longevity is more beneficial to the discussion.

Just as editing a movie its important so it doesnt drag, so it's making games not bloathed and identifiying when the mechanics run its curse.

Exactly, mechanics that run their course in a few hours are bad mechanics. We need to start holding these games accountable for the cheap Chinese food they actually are.

Some games are built like toys , some arent, focusing on making them longer its not precisely what makes them good.
The lenght of minecraft doent really matter when people willfully spend hundreds of hours just fucking around.

Minecraft is a Mt Rushmore videogame. Show some ***damn respect!

You always have the shittiest takes on game design, i always get intrigued when you make a thread.

(Hope you like Deadwood! A TV show so good that 3 seasons and a movie was not nearly enough...lol)

Get it? Because length X quality = good.

 

[Gone]

14-18 hours is the sweet spot.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Not me, I like my games with hundreds of optional hours. Otherwise I'll only pay a small fee for a short game.

 

[noomi]

Many factors affect this decision for me.

I have NO TIME these days working a full time job and raising a family. That being said, if a game is 40 hours long and is able to keep my interest for that time with game mechanics, atmosphere, story, and side content… then sure I’m in. However, if it’s just 40 hours of cut and paste content… then yeah no thanks.

 

[TonyK]

This my friend is something we VN fans have been asking ourselves for ages. The answer is a resounding "kinda?". Some VNs are undeniably games. Those with action segments, strategy or stat raising. Like Digimon Survive, Danganronpa or Long Live the Queen.

Then you have those that are purely reading, but keep track of relationship or death flags and have different endings... in my opinion those are games, just like Choose your own adventure books are a kind of toy. Not everybody agrees, but most VN fans do. Games like Muv-Luv, The House in Fata Morgana, Clannad... Most dating sims fit this bill, too.

Finally there's "kinetic" novels, that is, VNs with no choices or inconsequential choices, and a single ending. For me those are basically glorified manga or "bookified" anime. Some of the "best" in the genre are like this (Most of the "When They Cry" series, for example) but they're not really for me.

Sorry for the impromptu lecture. Carry on with the thread (A vote for shorter games, I like JRPGs too but honestly I'm 40 and I can play like 2h a day...)

Thanks for the answer

 

[Lasha]

Length is immaterial to me. I'm a gameplay focused person. Modern games have shit gameplay. A fight at hour 0 is seldom much different than a fight at hour 40. Progression has been replaced by "progression" centered around busywork. Every possible point of friction and challenge has been smoothed over leaving the stakes low.

I would rather buy a game that takes 5 hours to beat but has gameplay that makes me want to play it four times instead of a bloated 20 hour game with a bunch of collectibles. I would love a 40h game with engaging mechanics that challenge me until the end.

 

[Woggleman]

The same people who were complaining that games were too short two generations ago. A good portion of gamers are like that nagging spouse who complains no matter what you do.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

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.

Wrong. This mentality is stupid IMO. You don’t have to play a game in one sitting...

 

[JimmyRustler]

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.

What this man said. There is no game out there which gameplay can carry it for more than 20 hours. Some can extend this by one way or the other but most simply don’t, they just start to drag on after some time. I am sick of playing 15 hour games for 40 hours just because cheap folks think a 15 hour game is not worth the price tag and they‘d rather bore themselves through a 40 hour game just for the sake of it.

 

[64bitmodels]

15 hour game is not worth the price tag and they‘d rather bore themselves through a 40 hour game just for the sake of it.

which is why i think developers should lower the price tag and make the games shorter.... but you know that'll never happen

 

[Neo_game]

I prefer shorter games. There are some who spend shit loads of time but I think most players do not even complete 50% of games so that probably mean it got boring and not worth their time.

 

[JimmyRustler]

which is why i think developers should lower the price tag and make the games shorter.... but you know that'll never happen

I'm not so sure that would help as that would mean they'd have to sell twice as many copies to break even - and I REALLY doubt any game could do that. Cutting the price by a half will not magically boost your sales by 100%.

To be honest, I actually wouldn't know a way out of this predicament. The market is just too overcrowded which makes it really easy to wait and also the prices drop way to fast. On top of that development is just too expensive. So I don't know... Not seeing a way out of it. Games will probably just get even more bloated and less focused, sadly.

 

[ReBurn]

Most 40 hour games seem to be 6-8 hours of actual story and 32+ hours of side quest filler

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Aside from linear RPGs which require grindfests to level up your characters to beat enemies, how many games out there are truly giant games with mandatory 40 hours of gameplay?

Open world games? Not really. You can bee-line the main quest in most of them if you want. You could probably beat them in no more than 20 hours if you wanted to. Just skip the side quests.

But the above games are meant to be large in scope, not meant to be beat in 7 hours no matter what.

Other kinds of games from SP narratives, shooter SP campaigns and linear action games can be hammered through on a weekend if you really wanted to. And you dont have to play for all 48 hours. Just ignore all the filler content. Most games will funnel you through the main questline if thats all you care about. You can beat a COD SP mode in an afternoon.

I think a lot of you gamers hating long games pigeon hole yourselves to do tons of side missions or are completionist gamers where a game takes forever to beat because the game jams all kinds of other things to do, so you get interrupted.

I played Fallout 3 for like 60-70 hours and my final Skyrim saved game I think said like 100 hours. But thats because I did tons of side quests and clearing out endless buildings and caves. If I just followed the main quest log, I would had beat these giant RPG games (on paper) in a fraction of the time.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Linear games that are 30-40 + hours are usually a chore for most parts, and yes everybody would rather have the games get better than shorter theoretically, but that means way more time and money to make those games whereas shorter refined games with no filler are more easily achievable. I'd much rather play a great 8 hour game than an above average 40 hour game. Price to time ratio is an overrated way to compare games imo. All it does is incentivize filler and padding, in your analogy it would be like buying a $5 bag of Lays vs buying a way bigger bag of ok chips with some Lays sprinkled in. More does not make it better

Good point, but when it comes to food everyone does a price/qty estimate at some point to determine if it's worth buying it.

Often times, people buy stuff not due to highest quality, but qty is important too.

Lays chips sell a ton because what you get for the price is decent enough. There's shittier chips in bigger bags some people by. But also higher quality chips for a higher price beyond Lays. There's different people with different tastes, budgets, and needs.

Pizza is a good example because the biggest sellers of pizza arent higher priced quality pizzas. It's dirt cheap crap like Pizza Pizza, Little Ceasers, and Dominos. And frozen pizzas from the freezer aisle for $5. Sometimes people just want quantity for the dollar to get their moneys worth.

Some people will spend $100 for one good seat at a single sports event. Other people will buy two shitter seats across two games for $50 each.

 

[kiphalfton]

OP STFU with this stupid open world nonsense. Seriously.

Longer game time doesn't mean anything if the gameplay sucks, and even if it doesn't shit gets stale after like 30 hours.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

LMAO
I'm literally arguing the opposite.
I'm saying his argument is dumb, because OBVIOUSLY 8 games are better than 1 bloated piece of shit.

I'll just call you illiterate from now on, illiterate.

Fair enough.

I was actually agreeing with you.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Open world games? Not really. You can bee-line the main quest in most of them if you want. You could probably beat them in no more than 20 hours if you wanted to. Just skip the side quests.

That is not really true though as many games arbitrarily get more difficult if you do not do the side content. When playing Horizon FW I was so bored I just stopped doing most of the side content at some point and then game became almost frustrating difficult. Same with the new God of War. You can't just focus on the main story any more, except perhaps if you are willing to play in babymode where you one-hit everything.

 

[tusharngf]

40 is perfect spot for me..

 

[Arachnid]

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.

I'm with you OP. I genuinely cant understand arguing for less content and bang for your buck.

And no, a game being good and engaging throughout and it being longer than 15 hours are not not mutually exclusive. Paying 70 for a 4-8 hour game is asinine.

 

[01011001]

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

you can play through elden ring easily withing 10 hours or less without speedrunning it.
if you know where to go and you only want to do certain builds, you can get through elden ring just as fast as any other souls game

 

[Keihart]

We do it all the time here. GotY awards, Metascores, sales, user scores, discussions etc...It's obviously not a science but the amorphous blob known as "gamers" seems to assign quality in a certain way.

The 3 games I listed as being examples of SP titles with more depth and longevity than most are Rimworld, Terraria, and Stardew Valley. I think all 3 games were made by a combined total of 3 people.

Budget and resources have very little to do with quality game design.


Right, which is why looking at SP games that have longevity is more beneficial to the discussion.


Exactly, mechanics that run their course in a few hours are bad mechanics. We need to start holding these games accountable for the cheap Chinese food they actually are.


Minecraft is a Mt Rushmore videogame. Show some ***damn respect!

(Hope you like Deadwood! A TV show so good that 3 seasons and a movie was not nearly enough...lol)

Get it? Because length X quality = good.

A meta escore is not possible without releasing a game and even then you cant hold your game direction to focus groups and expect a strong vision, i think its a goose chase.
Budget and resources do matter when trying to expand on a concept, you cannot develop something like TLoU2 with the budget and resources of Rimworld, maybe , at best develop one level or two. Resources do matter because if you wanna expand your concepts without bloathing you have to start eventually spend resources production tasks like creating new assets to flesh out new mechanics or expand the ones already explored in the game. Just look at how much shit got added on Minecraft after they got seemingly infinite resources, yes the game was made by one guy in java, but the mechanics were not explored to the same extent until it got more resources.

Mechanics that run their curse fast are not bad mechanics necesarilly, its all about to which extent they are explored and that can depend on resources including develop time. Not every game wants or needs toy like mechanics, sometimes even more shallow mechanics can be entertaining enough to get the point across of a game and those games using it should not over stay its welcome just to pad the lenght. Resident Evil doesn't need base bulding and crafting to be a better game and be longer, despite both mechanics having high toy like value and the same time, you cant just pad the lenght of an RE game and expect it to be the same since one of the appeals is having carefully crafted levels that lend themselves to mastering them.

There is a balance to this, you have to balance how far the budget can get you and what you need to explored the concept of the game and assing resources acordingly. There are no infinite resources and there is no magic blueprint that just makes every concept "better", lenght is certainly not something that just makes games better.