The Friday Debate – Time Well Spent?

I think modern warfare 2 showed that people still want longish campaigns as people complained about its 5-6 hours. Also Fallout 3 is one of my all-time favourites and is an entirely offline game so I’d say there’s still a large emphasis to be placed on long single player campaigns. I mean why not have both a deep online and offline game, can’t we have both?

i wanna see kung fu live on the PS store soon

I want a game with an expansive story, I want to be enjoying the experience throughout but I really hate the thought of shelling out £30-40 for something that is going to have a single player mode that will last less than a couple of decent movies.

Unfortunately these days it seems more focus is being placed on the multiplayer experience more than the main story. This of course extends the game time significantly but it’s not always for the best.

Prime example of a great single player game would of course be Arkham Asylum. That is the kind of experience that I want. Nice long and immersive single player. Assassin’s Creed titles are also prime examples of how well these should be done.

To me it’s got to be long enough to provide a great single player mode. This should be no less than 8 hours on average.

Anyone seeing my backlog would tell me I’m silly, I really do intend on playing them all.. sometime. Personally I enjoy playing games on just about every difficulty and find every secret it has to offer, hence the backlog. Some even still have a wrapper around them. (Yes, shame on me):O

Anyone looking at my trophy list knows that I can get lost in online modes way to easily as well. Warhawk, MAG and Killzone consumed many, many evening hours. Which is were I usually spend my evening hours.

Most ideally I can finish a games story mode in a free Saturdays afternoon, but if the game is awesome I don’t want it to ever end. So say 8 to 12 hours, which is about as long as God of War 3 and Heavy Rain were. (Obviously when going for the trophies you invest a little extra.)

I get games mostly for the story. You can fit a great story into a movie. The only problem is when a game tries to fit as much story into a game and then make it only twice as long.

An example of this would be MW2. If it was a Movie it would have been about 2/3 hours long. I completed MW2 in about 9 hours. At that the story wasn’t very filled out. If it was a movie, it would definitely have more substance.

Ideally a game should last 20+ hours in my opinion. This is due to the story being distilled by action sequences.(who has ever watched an exciting movie where the main character spent an hour killing people from atop a tower *Cough* Inglorious *Cough*)

As MB has mentioned with Peggle, casual gaming doesn’t need a story and that can make them quite enjoyable. The only problem is that they can get quite repetitive.I have completed Plants vs. Zombies so many times know, I am sick of it.

I don’t actually care about how long it takes to complete the single-player mode of a game. As long as it’s longer than 4 hours to complete, i’m not fussed!

i wanna have a game built on the game in the movie Stay alive. a horror game

Uncharted 2 has an epic single player filled with an epic plot and epic characters. A truly epic story that’ll keep you coming back for months or years. (I know i will)
It also has a really great, really addictive online which is great to play, especially with friends.

Red Dead Redemption really shows that you can have the best of both,
A single player story that can have players pumping in 40+ hours and coming back for more,
And the online mode is probably the best of all games, you and yours friends can saddle up, and do whatever you want in the vast frontier of the west. Aswell as the usual deathmatch and capture games.

I think Naughty Dog and Rockstar both show games can have an epic story drivven single player and a fun addiciting online if you put the effort into them,
Fare play to Naughty Dog and Rockstar,

The Disgaea series represents the perfect game length as far as i’m concerned since they have well written, engaging campaigns that last for at least 30 hours(on yor first playthrough with some grinding thown in) and they have near infinite,
meaningful replay value.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Do I need to really go into details?

I much prefer longer games such as RPGs because if I’ve been really eager to play on them I can spend hours with them and not worry that I’m going to get to the end real soon.

Like MB, I like games with variety, games where you can just take a break from the story and go around collecting stuff or playing mini-games, which was why I like Red Dead so much, the lenght of the story and the abundance of things to do.

Lastly, I think a game should be as long as necessary, developers need to think about the story they want to tell, if it’s a short story, don’t try and stretch it over a 60 hour period, make us enjoy every minute that we spend on your game. A short game which I finished quickly but enjoyed thoroughly (Mirror’s Edge springs to mind) is a lot better than an incredibly long one which I’ll never finish.

Lol,I could go all day about game length and how advancing tech is the biggest problem with this.Look at GT5,5 years and they’ve only done 200-300 premiums,although I’ve been convinced for a couple of years PD are on a massive assets drive for the next hardware (GT to launch on PS4 )

I think it depends on the game in regards length.Would uncharted 2 been so well revived it had a 60 hour campaign,unlikely as it would of run out of steam.Would Demons Souls of worked under 10 hours,no.
It doesnt help that games feel easier than they were.No real learning needed,or punishment for failure.

As I’ve got older I’ve started to prefer games like Trine,or Joe Danger over monster game like FF13.The reason being it’s all been done with these big games,were at a stage were the only real advancements in big budget games are how the stories are told and how we connect with characters.But most of that is outside of whats really important,gameplay.
Most of these games wont be remembered or played in 15 years time,but I’m convinced Super Mario World will still be as great as ever,a game with no story but relies on perfect game mechanics.

A game’s length is called into question when you consider replayability. One 8 – 15 hour storyline can turn into a good 36 hours + of going back, collecting trophies / secrets (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Arkham Asylum etc come to mind), or even exploring different story paths and side missions (Heavy Rain, Fallout 3, GTA).

Of course, to want and go back, the story needs to first and foremost be interesting and fun. If it’s neither of these then the length of the game means absolutely nothing really. Whether you’ve just finished a dull 6 hour campaign or struggling through a dull 40 hour campaign, you’re not gonna want to relive either any time soon.

I would personally pick Half Life 2 as a perfectly lengthed and paced game, it’s not exactly the longest story (though what action games are?) but it’s such an intense experience that the ending comes as something of a relief.

I prefer long (well not 100+ but like 30~50 depending on gaming style side-missions/stories) single player modes. Replay-ability is welcome.

I don’t really care about multi-player unless it is like Burnout Paradise, that multi-player is awesome.
(and I hate it if the multiplayer depends on broken match-making systems as you see them more and more these days).

But most of all I want to enjoy all the time I put in a game and think “wow” as much as possible! (sure some frustration because of difficulty is okay )

And short games should be really cheap because I want bang for my bucks .

GT5 has set the bar! Will be spending a few thousand hours with it until GT6 releases.

Just as David Cage said, I personally prefer 8 hours of pure epicness than 15 hours of the same stuff.

But when it comes to an open-world game, variety is the way to go. Or an RPG, different endings and choices are the way to go; I have 103 hours on Oblivion and 68 hours in Fallout 3. Both of them because of different storylines.

Demon’s Souls, it has 2 endings, and the game is short for an RPG, but the replayability value is huge and already did the game 3 times and have 55 hours in it.

Games like Hitman, the replay value is insane! Blood Money is an awesome game, and I think I’ve beat it 5 times. And I’m always going back to it, to see if I can do a hit in a different way.

Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that there is no perfect game length. Every game has it’s own length. RPG’s tend to last longer than 15-20hours, FPS games tend to last 8-12hours (Though it took me 19 hours to beat BioShock) Open-world games tend to last longer because there is more possibility in doing more stuff in there.

I’d take quality over quantity any day of the week.

The Mega Drive games I still own are really only three or four hours of gameplay but they’re the ones I find myself going back to over and over again. The same is true of Oblivion and of Bioshock. Heck, even games like Tetris, which have no ‘length’ per se, manage to be greater time sinks than games that have a lot more to them.

The secret for developers is to find the formula that can allow even relatively repetitive actions to assume greater depth and, therefore, enjoyment.

But of course from a buyer’s POV I must say games like GT5 look a lot more tempting for the amount of content there is for your money.

Personally I use a simple equation:

Between 75p to £1 = 1 hours gameplay. That’s single player only mind you. Multiplay is still considered a bonus item in my games library.

Anything with 30-40 hours SP campaign is the sweet spot for me.

Yep, forgot to mention Heavy Rain too. I played that so many times. I only got one trophy to make it Platinum but it is so time consuming!… It’s the see all endings or something trophy.

With the PS2 I was almost playing JRPGs exclusively I played game with the average length of 50-60 hours. I played very few other genres.

With the PS3 and the lack of quality JRPGs and in my opinion RPGs in general this generation I had to expand the games I play. Uncharted series and Assassins Creed are some of my favourites this generation.

I am still not a multiplayer person I usually get bored after an hour or two so a good long single player is very important to me. I say 25-30 hours is decent. I love collecting stuff like the feathers in Assassins Creed 2.

I hope TGS this year shows a few RPGs (eg Suikoden VI) and I hope for Okami MOVE as well.

I’m not bothered about length so long as it’s appropriate for the game.

I think Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is a good example of appropriate length for what the game was, it was over in about 6 hours on a first playthrough but the story was told and paced perfectly within those 6 hours and it didn’t go on for so long that it ever got boring at any point and even though it was short it was definitely replayable.

The games I’ve spent the most time on over the years have been mostly short 4-10 hour games that I find so much fun to replay, like those old Capcom games, Resi 1-Code Veronica, Dino Crisis 1 & 2, Onimusha 1-3 and Devil May Cry. I love RPGs and don’t mind spending 80 hours enjoying a good story with a memorable cast but the only thing is the longer a game is the more likely it’s going to have issues with pacing at some point, but there are RPGs where I haven’t felt the pace drag or the need to spend a gazillion hours grinding, it’s just that I’m wary of starting a 60-100 hour long RPG if I’m potentially going to have to do something repetitive and unforgiving for 10+ hours of gametime.

Quality over quantity every time.

Optimal game length is dependant on the game. It’s not about hitting a certain number of hours, it’s whether a game has explored its mechanics properly; if it hasn’t it’ll ‘feel’ too short, if it descends into repetition then it comes across as too long.

People often try to drum up a time versus cost equation, but I think that price is only a factor if a) you’re thinking of buying a game and haven’t actually played it yet, or b) the game didn’t fulfil its mechanic potential. If you play something that hits all the right notes and doesn’t leave you feeling short changed, you aren’t going to hold a grudge against it game you thoroughly enjoyed just because, say, it cost £15 rather than £10. It’s all about individual titles living up to their worth, not meeting some preordained quadratic criteria.

James I’ve invested 100 hours plus into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Now that’s time well spent

I like games that have multiple campaigns where you would play as a different character for each campaign. It meant that you would have plenty of single player game play, but it wouldn’t have 1 campaign that could drag on. As long as you keep things fresh, and make sure the player is always entertained.

Some games you can just keep going back to because of the insane amount of content. I still play Gran Turismo 4 and the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

For the money games cost these days, I’d like somewhere between 40-60 hours for single playthrough, including exploration and side missions, etc.

Though, honestly, I could have spent that time in Red Dead Redemption just staring at the scenery.

Anything less than 30 hours for a first time through is a bit disappointing when I’m shelling over £40 at release. £1 per hour seems reasonable to me.

I for one expect a game to have a great length in the story. Not just length either but variation.

Great narrative and drive throughout is important for me in a game. A shortish experience, with little to no replay value to boot I just don’t have the time of day for like Modern Warfare 2 for example (add to the fact I’m just not interested in it, I saw footage of the terrorist bit and thought it was appalling, no nuance there at all). It’s also why I will never pay to play online because frankly, I might have a game here and there of kz2, but in the end I hardly ever go online. The most online play I clock is on Fat Princess. That shows how seriously I take my online gaming.

The only exception I’ve found for me is Uncharted, even though it’s on the shortish side, it’s so lean, and so damn fun, that u can play it again and again, it will never lose it’s charm. GOW aswell. For the most part, I prefer Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Persona, Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex and more along those lines.

So all up I would say on average I expect between 30-40 hours with a leaning towards even longer games. I can afford this as I’m pretty selective in my gaming habits.

The 1st level of Pac-man

I like something that I can play multiple times ( trophy whore lol ) so games like Uncharted, Assassins Creed and The like are ace.

my absolute fav has gotta be simple fun addictive games. PSN style! Trine = a must, Joe Danger and such are insta-classics that DEMAND replay!

But then I’m also guilty of throwing away countless hours of my life on the Battlefield 2 and MW2 multiplayers!!

As long as I can teabag someone after sniping them from miles away on a S&D mission, I’m happy

Oh and Final Fantasy 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 lol need I say more …

The quest for the Gold chocobo and the Knights of the Round in 7 probably ate 30+ hrs and I FILLED the sphere grid in 10 haha 120+ hrs

I feel so dirty lol

8-10 hours minimum for a game I’ll play all the way through but then trade in. But it’ll have to be a good game (Heavy Rain, God of War3, etc).

But then again something like Ratchet and Clank will keep me going for a good 20-40 hours to get the Platinum (and just because it’s sooo much fun).

Then at the other end you’ll have FFXIII, Fallout 3 and Burnout Paradise all of which I’ve put 50, 100 and 200+ hours in respectively.

So for me there is no answer. So long as the game gives me value and fun (and the definition of that will vary)

I don’t believe there should be a set length on a game, it’s all about pacing.

Arkham Asylum did this very well, keeping a good pace throughout the game with new set-pieces and events before things become too slow, always giving you incentive to keep playing. Similarly with Resident Evil 5, you’re always encountering new epic set pieces and twists at every turn.

With God of War 3 as a prime example, some of these games are terrible value for money. Don’t get me wrong God of War is one of the best games of 2010, without a doubt, but after the main campaign is complete there’s very little to do. When you compare the 10-12 hour, €50 campaign of this to say the 30-40 hours of content you could get from a game like Joe Danger for €15, it really makes you question the direction some game companies follow. Games these days seem to be more about production values and epic set-pieces than actual content.

This is where Nintendo is trouncing the competition (Sorry Sony). Super Mario Galaxy 2 for example has great graphics for it’s system but nothing when compared to the PS3 yet still it packs so much content into one game, it’s lack in visual quality is made up for with its content and re-playability.

The 2 games with the perfect length surely have to be Warhawk and MAG. The length is entirely up to you. If you get bored, you quit when you want, if you love them both you play Warhawk for 2000 hours and MAG for 400 hours like I have done.

The PS3 is a next-gen console. To me, online gaming IS next-gen. Single player modes are still great and welcomed but for a game to have any sort of replay value it needs an online mode. Games are too expensive to only play them for 8 hours and never again.

I like to know what to expect – some games deserve the attention – like Fallout and Oblivion, but then a game like Batman was a brilliant length – and had the puzzles as well.

I like to plan what I play around my time off work. Saying that 3D dot game heroes has interrupted my schedule…. still time well spent I’d say!

Uncharted 2 had a great game length. I played it 5 times through and it was sweet! I don´t care for multiplayer but I didn´t mind because it was watching your faverite movie again and again.

Mafia 2 is way to short. When part one is a open world game I expected the same but with better graphics and a awesome story and lots of replay value. Unfortunately the game looked terrible on the PS3 (as that is happening so often) and the game was short and liniar. There is no replay value and I don´t expect to buy any DLC because the game should have been longer. Biggest disapointment ever.

I loathe long games. I like to actually get to the end of a game in a reasonable amount of time and not take too long rather than be trudging through a real lengthy one that takes up so much of my time that I get sick of it.

Replayability is certainly a lot better than overall game length. I’ve played Uncharted 1 and 2 all the way through even though they’re not relatively that long but they’re just so enjoyable I love replaying them and the multiplayer has made the second one even more replayable though it means nothing if the core gameplay wasn’t just so damn incredibly well done. It’s still the only action game I really enjoy online. Nothing else comes close and I’d quite happily pay for it all over again given the amount of hours I’ve put into it and enjoyed it immensely.

@9 Personally I felt Red Dead Redemption was a disappointing pile of crap. Dull and ultra easy story mode (felt like I spent at least two thirds of the game just riding the horse and only ever got killed by the numerous game glitches) and a multiplayer mode which seemed good at first but quickly got very old and tiresome. An absolute waste of time and I sold the game as soon as I finished the story mode and got my trophies though couldn’t stomach enough to get the platinum.

hey hey

deathspank !

perfect length for the price. It DID feel a little short but in all honesty the actual game quality far exceeded the price.

R&C Quest for booty.

my first real best game under a tenner. after numerous playthroughs i could do it pretty fast and again for the money the game quality was exceptional

Peggle, Joe Danger, fat princess(not played)

games like theese arent time restrictive and have a huge repeat play consideration. but for price they are just awesome.

i still play blast factor randomly

heavenly sword, god of war, uncharted, etc

these, while short offer value in their exceptional quality of gaming. unfortunatly for sheer length they suck on value.

if i didnt factor in the trade price id feel cheated for alot of titles

The time I spend on a game tends to be dependent on if it has a good hook or not. Recent titles that have grabbed my attention, for more than a few hours here and there, are…
Final Fantasy 13 (I just wanted to see more of the mythos they had developed for the story),
Bayonetta (a joy to play just because of the fluidity of the combat),
Demon’s Souls (a brilliantly excuted change of pace and challenge),
SSF4 (despite my amazing inability to win),
Final Fight: Double Impact (my favourite arcade game ever with added Magic Sword to boot)
Braid (nuff said)
and MAG (the only online FPS I can play for longer than an hour).

I find that as long as the main concept is simple, but well executed, tend to keep me coming back for more.

[DELETED] i forgot Just Cause 2.

while reppetative i did manage to get lost on a chilled out afternoon just randomly exploring and sniping generals .. … . . with a helicopter

Just Cause 2 has to be my “perfect” balance of “do story” or “do what you want”

I can play for under and hour or many hours. I can’t play as long as my sister who uses an Xbox 360, though. She’s on it for 5 hours straight.

Darksiders was the perfect length for a solid singleplayer action adventure. I don’t remember exactly how long it was but well north of 10 hours. Went on a total binge and finished it in 2 sittings, but it can be enjoyed on a much longer period of time too.

Then ofcourse pure arcade-style games are a different thing altogether. Me and a friend have spent dozens upon dozens of hours grinding our way through the Super Stardust HD co-op leaderboards. So easy to lose track of time when you’re playing that! It’s 4AM before you even notice.

You cannot make an optimal game length mainly becasue each game is unique. For example having a long legth FPS game would get extremly boring. Even if there was a broad range of weapons, you’d still get bored of doing the same thing. Killing AI.

Whereas in a RPG like FINAL FANTASY or FALLOUT, the lengh of the game needs to be long. It keeps the player intrigued. But to create an lengthy game requires a LOT of planning. If it was a long game that just followed the same main storyline, it’d get boring.

In my eyes, a good game doesn’t have online fetaures. It is soley developed around the main story/campaign. But then again.. how long do gamers ACTUALLY spend playing the game.

If its a long game (40+ hours) i tend to find i’m looking a CGI’s most of the time whereas a short game (-40 hours) usually see,s me actually playing the game more than watching CGI’s.

Straight to the point.. you can’t put an ‘optimal game length’ on a game. If you did, then you know when it’s going to end before you even get there which would make it pointless kind of.

PS: This… I talk to much ^^
PSS: If a Xbox blows up… how many people care… yep.. you guessed it… none ^^

I find that judging it based on length alone is oversimplifying. Rather than doing that, I just base it on the overall experience. I’d prefer paying for a 3 hour experience that’s bound to be unforgettable over a 60 hours of doing the same thing over and over again.

Flower and Portal are short, but brilliant. I have only played through them once, although I think I’ll replay them in the future. But even if I don’t, and even if they were 50 bucks, they’d be worth it. Of course pricing them like that would be crazy, but they provided a more intense experience than most games out there.

I can enjoy a short game, whether it’s something like Flower and Portal, or a simple PSN game. But I can also love a long RPG. It’s more about the gaming experience itself. Then, it’s just articulating that with the price.

It depends on the time of game. I’m quite content buying a FPS that’s under 8 hours, because with them not introducing anything new, and being rather linear, that’s all that I can stand.

However if the game is not linear, I expect over 50hours for the main game and side quests, or at the very least enough depth (through collectables and whatnot) to warrant in excess of 50hours of re-playability.

I’m kind of funny I guess because I often quite games when I realise they are coming to a close. Where the game begins to lock down and shift from a non-linear experience, into a linear experience (perhaps because that’s the only thing I have left to do), I often quit. Even if I do very much enjoy the game.

Trophies always add value to a game whatever the length, because most of the time your re-playing the game just to achieve them.

I would say that recently, games have gone down in length. And I really dont like that. I love to play long good RPGs, and TBS games. 40+ hour singleplayer is a must. Reminds me.. got to pop Disgea 3 back in the PS3 soon, Or Agarest.. (altough the second menchoned is not as good as the first)

Metal gear solid 4 has lots of replay value just trying to get everything its so fun but near impossible.

Demon,s souls is the same but harder and more rewarding at the same time so it differs.

Depends on the game and Genre, clearly you can`t have an RPG with 10 hours required for a play trough.

For an FPS I`m fine with around 10 hours. For Action Adventures probably 15-20 hours, especially games like Uncharted 2 or Arkham Asylum could have gone on and on for me

But what I hate is when developers come up with a short story that would probably take 2 hours maximum to tell and try to make an 8 hour long game out of it and just stretch the game to make it longer because the story would not allow a longer game.

I believe the real issue with game length isn’t just a matter of developers making a long story, but making a game worth loving. I think that most time isn’t really spent on replaying games, but just carrying on at different points to help unlock trophies.

There is no love for a game if you only play it to get the trophies rather than just playing it for the enjoyment of playing. For me this is ironic because I think trophies are designed to give people a reason to replay a game, yet my favourite and most replayed games are previous generations, or early into this generation so not patched for trophies. I have beaten MGS4 nine times, plus have three more plays required for all 40 emblems in the game, yet my most played trophy game is probably Uncharted 1/2 with three plays each, because I did something by not playing the games on hard from the start.

It’s getting worse now, because now multiplayer is being added to everything, with extra trophies piled on top just for people to play it.