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Ideal game length?

Depends on the quality of content the game offers.

In general i think games got to long nowadays. Would be better to have a shorter game but with higher replay value.
 
No longer than 15.

I can tolerate longer for a few exceptions. Zelda, 3D Mario, Fallout, TES, From Software games, The Witcher.
 
dont care as long as the game is interesting , but 40 hrs is the SWEET SPOT for me

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There is no ideal length for me. The longer the main story, the better in almost every case I can think of. My dream game would be a modern version of Daggerfall where you roam a continent of seemingly infinite size traveling from town to town and doing RPG crap.

Answering your question, for typical story based games, I like 15-20hrs. For open world/rpg, I like 40-60hrs. But like I mentioned before, the more content, the better. I would gladly play a 300hr game if the main story had that much content (aka Final Fantasy 14).
 
20 hours or so is perfect. 60 is pushing it. ~100 is my max across most games. I get burnt out and lose interest.

As a kid, I was in on 100+ hour games all day, all night.
 
None because I've played games that were 2 hours and I played others for thousands of hours and both were equally satisfying.

What I hate are games with few hours worth of content stretched out to a bloated 200 hour slog, i.e. every Ubisoft open world game ever.
 
Min 25 hours, perfect 60 hours, max 85 hours. Ofc I played with less as well but ideally its between those 3.
 
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If it's fun, I don't care.
People bitched and moaned about Alien: Isolation being too long. I never got that criticism as I thoroughly enjoyed every single playthrough for the whole duration.
 
Doesn't matter, the game being fun is what matters.

If a game feels too long it's because the game is not fun, boring, bad paced or just bad. Long games that manage to be fun are perfectly fine, and probably the best designed ones since they keep the player engaged for so long.
 
I love short games with replay value.

6~10 hours is ideal for me. RPG's can last longer, 30 hours being the sweet spot for me, doing just the main quests.

Today's games are too long, and not with content, but with quests designed to make you waste time, so the studio can meet some BS metric.

I understand games are expensive, but think about it, it's not better to have an amazing tight experience, of say, 10 hours, without pacing issues, without some BS mechanic. Just pure awesomeness.

Such a game will worth revisiting, quick to beat, satisfying from the beginning to the end.

I believe most of us finish about 10~20% of our games. And that is because they are too damm long!
 
I do enjoy short indie and AA games that can be completed over a weekend but if it's a game I really love - no such thing as ideal length, the longer the better. But that's also why I skip many games that are just too big for being only ok.
 
It's not length that is the most important, but how content is delivered.
I hate when games are padded with filler to make up game time. I hate games that make the player waste time doing fetch quest after fetch quest, or quests to kill x amount of low tier enemies to upgrade some item.
I hate games that have crafting systems that are there just to gate content, and force the player to waste hours gathering random stuff.
 
depends.

it's not the length it's how it's used :messenger_winking_tongue:

a 5-10 hour game can over stay it's welcome and a 150 hour game might deserve to go on another 50-100 hours.

edit: to try give you a proper answer i'd say 20-30 hours. if a game is 40-50+ then i'm gonna spend more time researching it before i buy it. if i paid £10-60 for a 20-30 hour game i won't be too pissed as long as it makes use of the time it wants me to put into it. if a game is <15-20 hours then it better be damn cheap or really good.
 
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I want to be able to finish the main portion of it in 10 hours.

Any more than that if you're not doing anything new, I'm probably not wasting my time to finish.
 
If you cut out the padding, most video games should be the length they're supposed to be. For example, God of War Ragnarok should have been about 1/3 less the length that it was.

Also I say most, because there are a few anomalies out there like AC Valhalla, which is still too long of a game after cutting out anything.
 
15 to 20 hours max. Anything over has to be really justified (it almost never is).

Doesn't matter what genre, even JRPGs have no business being longer than 20 hours.
Chrono trigger itself is 20 hours and it is goddamn perfect and satisfying to fully play.
 
Really depends on the game.
Some games manage to still feel fresh and exciting after 50 hours, other seem like they run out of content and ideas after 20, but for some reason keep going for another 30.

Generally speaking though:
- Non Rpg single player games: 10-20 hours is great
- RPG's: 30-40 hours for the main story
 
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I can easily do 100+ hours as long as the game is fun and compelling. However, I will never start a game that long unless it's either extremely well received (Witcher 3, Elden Ring, RDR2) or I know 100% I'm going to like it (AC: Odyssey after loving Origins).
 
Depends on the quality of content the game offers.

In general i think games got to long nowadays. Would be better to have a shorter game but with higher replay value.

Sure. If a game is fun and the quality of content remains consistent throughout I can easily do with 100 or even 200+ hours.

And even if there's inconsistencies in quality and other stuff, if the game world is very enticing and the gameplay loop is addictive I would again not mind spending a long time with a game.

I would add that it's kind of personal and depends on quite some aspects if a game is to long or short, but that goes without saying..

It's also difficult to say yeah 10 or 20 or 100+ hours is *perfect* because if I get bored is that because of the game or me? Others may want a game I lose interest in halfway go on even longer etc.
 
Depends, but I like shorter games in general.



RPGs/JRPGs/Metroidvanias need to be HUGE toh.
 
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It's annoying when you're a juggler and you like *deep* games like The Witcher 3, Nioh 2, Soulsborne etc. Those are really meant to be completely invested in; story wise/complex mechanics etc.

Perhaps that's why I love GT7. It's deep but also pick up and play.
 
Heavily depends on the game and what it tries to be. Most important to me is that a game respects my time. Both can be true for a tight Call of Duty campaign and epic journey like Pillars of Eternity. Where I tune out is when a game is clearly designed with filler content or GaaS revenue models in mind to cater to some engagement metric.
 
7-9 hours is fine by me. Hellblade being a perfect example.

I couldn't imagine making my way through these 100+ hour titles.
 
Maximum 10-15 for the main single player campaign, add maximum 20 hours more of secondary/extra content and other stuff to complete trophies.

With only a few exceptions, I skip or rarely complete games with over 40 hours long main SP story.

Looking at completion percentages in trophies, devs are wasting a ton of budget and resources on including a ton of content and repetitive stuff that most people don't play. It would be better if they chop half of the content and spent this money instead on a different game. So with the same money they spent on a long ass game that most people don't complet, they'd have instead two AAA games that way more people would complete.
 
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5-10 for most is good enough to not overstay. 15-20 for something with great gameplay. JRPGs if they are good 30-50+. Visual novels 5-20 is ideal but 40+ if it has multiple good routes.
 
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