The length of games today, ey?

johnny_ultimate

Well just finished King Kong in a weekend - excellent game but only around 5-6 hours long. Length has never really concerned me before. But this was very short for my liking, especially after paying 60 smackaroons. Now, I know many people say "Bring it back" but I want to hold onto it, as Ill probs play it again at some point, especially after seeing the movie.

But what do you all think of the length of games today? Too short? Too long? Just right? Would you rather pay 60 euro for a 40 hour long good game, or for a 6 hour long excellent game?

Placebo

im not sure, theres so many games out there that i never play any through to the end, infact i havent completed a game since super mario in snes
or if you could 2D fighting games then 3rd strike re-release on ps2

ObeyGiant

I like King Kong. I like the length of it too. I don't get to play games for longer than a couple of hours each week because of work and other commitments, and so these kinds of shorter games appeal to me. I don't think I'd stick through King Kong if I didn't see that I was making visible progress in it.

Mad Mike

I actually prefer "short" games. 5 hours is a bit too short but 10 to 15 hours is just perfect for me. I like to be able to finish a game and I just don't have time to finish a 60 hour epic. A 10 hour game will consume almost all of my spare time for about a week - and that's with my wife complaining about how much time I spend playing games.:rolleyes:

What I don't like is paying €60 for 10 hours of entertainment so I avoid the latest releases. I'm a PC gamer and you can get fabulous value if you wait a few months. I don't know if the price of console games falls as quickly.

Kiith

it really depends on the game. examples, max payne 2 only took my between 7-9 hours, which isnt much, but it was still one of the best games i've ever played, while my morrowind save had well over 60 hours played, and i loved it. also thought halflife2 was perfect length too.

honru

Most games today are way too lengthy imo. I just prefer shorter games although usually I do not pay full buck for them.

mp3guy

Most games these days are either a good 6 hours or MMORPGS which go on forever, theres no happy medium.

johnny_ultimate

Kiith wrote:

also thought halflife2 was perfect length too.

Yeah, that and Resi 4 are what Id hold up as perfect length

Rnger

Fable i thought was perfect length (but o' so flawed but thats a different story...)

ShiverinEskimo

The only thing too short in half life 2 was the piggin ending. what a load of ****e - but yea the game itself was spot on.

(i know i'm a year too late - just got a pc good enough to play it so i'm not long finished it)

Zombrex

johnny_ultimate wrote:

But what do you all think of the length of games today? Too short? Too long? Just right? Would you rather pay 60 euro for a 40 hour long good game, or for a 6 hour long excellent game?

Since the wider cultural adoption of games in the late 90s (the Playstation effect) it has become harder for modern game designers to design games lengths that appeal to everyone. I read in Edge that most games are never finished by main stream player, due to other interests and work.

But if you make games shorter you alieanate hard core games who can easily finish a mainstream game in a weekend that might take a main stream player 2 or 3 weeks.

Rhyme

Half Life 2 was a great length... spent a bit too much time playing around with the gravity gun though. A good example of this is Timesplitters 3 which i bought last Tuesday and had completed story mode by Thursday, granted that was on easy mode. Ive now had it a week and im clearing up the little unlockables. A fantastic game... but too short. Maybe its quality over quantity these days, which isnt a bad thing but if i pick up the best game ever that last 2 hours ill be annoyed.

DonkeyStyle \o/

I find a lot of them too short... although in fairness, creating more and more detailed play environments must take a huge amount of man-hours and hence budget.
Where as with something like the original 2d Mario games, you could probably lash out a decent enough level in an hour.
Anyone know the development cost of HL2? I'd be interested to hear it!

1huge1

sure isnt the new zelda for the gamecube supposed to have over 100hrs of gameplay woah but you know its gonna be top class

1huge1

Rhyme wrote:

Half Life 2 was a great length... spent a bit too much time playing around with the gravity gun though. A good example of this is Timesplitters 3 which i bought last Tuesday and had completed story mode by Thursday, granted that was on easy mode. Ive now had it a week and im clearing up the little unlockables. A fantastic game... but too short. Maybe its quality over quantity these days, which isnt a bad thing but if i pick up the best game ever that last 2 hours ill be annoyed.

timesplitters 2 is a lot longer than you think
once you complete easy mode theres so much more and theres loads more to the levels on mediom level
ive had it for 2 yrs and still havent got 100%

Balfa

Heh. My save game on FF VII is over 30 hours now, and I haven't even reached disc two (out of three discs) yet!

It doesn't tend to matter too much at the end of the day. People say ICO is one of the best PS2 games even though it's usually finished under 10 hours (and I'm looking forward to playing it when it's rereleased). MGS3 took me almost 30 hours, MGS2 in the high teens. I wish Zelda games kept count, but I'm sure I was over 30 hours (maybe 40) on Ocarina Of Time. I enjoyed all three about the same.

I think if I was paying per game (I rent most of my games from blockbuster) it would matter more to me, and six hours seems a bit low, but if it's not something I'm hugely looking forward to (like King Kong) and I know it's short, I might rent it and play it through in a weekend and thoroughly enjoy it.

Maybe as we move to next gen consoles, the play length will come down slightly as developers try to counter the fact that each area is going to take longer to create. Though some developers are far better than others at reusing content (like how zelda games fit so many side quests etc. into little villages, and it really makes the villages feel a lot bigger than they are).

Balfa

1huge1 wrote:

timesplitters 2 is a lot longer than you think
once you complete easy mode theres so much more and theres loads more to the levels on mediom level
ive had it for 2 yrs and still havent got 100%

Well that's exactly the point. Maintstream gamers are more likely to finish the game once and be happy with it, whereas hardcore gamers will want to redo it in all its modes and varieties and find every secret, etc. And in fact, each group of gamers is going to have a different meaning for the word "finished", as well.

But then again, most mainstream gamers tend to buy open ended games like racing, sports, etc. rather than heavy story driven games.

danniemcq

hang on some people are sayin they'd rather pay 60+ quid for 5 hours gaming??? or a weekend?

what the hell no wonder this is Rip Off Ireland

satchmo

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Anyone know the development cost of HL2? I'd be interested to hear it!

Around $40 million apparently :eek:

I agree, I think Half-Life 2 was the perfect length. Kept me coming back night after night, but didn't last long enough for me to get bored with it, which usually seems to happen with every game sooner or later. Considering the price of new PC games I don't often buy them when they first come out (maybe twice or three times a year) but even when buying them cheaper a while after they come out, I prefer it if they don't take too long. I don't really seem to have that much time these days to devote to gaming, so I like being able to play through a game and see what it has to offer without necessarily having to spend 30 hours on it. As said above, Max Payne 2 was probably the one game that struck me as being very short, and even so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

ShiverinEskimo

wasn't a lot of that down to the fact that the source was stolen and had to be completely redisigned to preserve integrity?

satchmo

Well I think that figure does include the development of Steam, which the source code theft might have affected alright... but HL2 was in development for almost 6 years altogether, with a team of 40 full-time developers plus however many support staff. Add to that equipment, office costs, voice talents, marketing, Gabe's pizza bills, and a whole bunch of things I can't even think of, and I doubt the code theft made much of a dent in the development cost in the grand scheme of things.

BlitzKrieg

it in my opinion comes down to the type of game.


single player only
I expect a RPG or a RTS to be very long.

i'm putting it at least over 8 hours if the player plays it perfectly. (i.e no getting stuck on missions, or loosing battles.)

Platformers should be at most 3-4 hours perfect player, as the appeal is replayability in these games, these are the sort that you should complete over a weekend, but you keep coming back to it. Such as the Mario games where you can complete it, but the real appeal is going back playing the most fun levels and *secondly* getting all the stars, (or similar in the old sonic games, the emeralds) Unlike say a RPG or Strategy which should be slogged away at for an insane amount of time, then left for anything between a month to a few years, before hitting it again.


Adventure games, Metal Gear Solid and other story oriented games. Difficult to judge, as the appeal is hand in hand its unique gameplay and excellent story, one must not drag the story to thin and keep the gameplay fresh. MGS and some adventure games have the advantage of replayability if the level design is done well, so can risk the 3 hour limit. While Adventure games can either be frustratingly difficult while also 3 hours, or focus more on different plot ways creating multple routes, therefore have 3 hours X 2 etc.


FPS

Difficult to judge. Doom3 got boring, Most of Raven's games ended before they got really good. I'd agree the 2 half lifes (more the first one) are the perfect length. It falls more down to level design then length, if the team can design an interesting enough level for the length, then go ahead. But the doom3 pitfall of

after hell same crap same walls

can be stupidly annoying. But for arguments sake, i want a FPS to last 5 hours thereabouts straight, which would be a week of my time at my standard.

Sport games/fighting games. Single player length should have almost 0 effect on the appeal. i'd say an hour max to play through. then 2 hours single player max (more if multiplayer oriented ala smash brothers) to unlock everything.


Mutliplayer should not have any real definition of length.

ObeyGiant

danniemcq wrote:

hang on some people are sayin they'd rather pay 60+ quid for 5 hours gaming??? or a weekend?

what the hell no wonder this is Rip Off Ireland

I'm saying I'm willing to pay 60+ quid on 5 hours of quality gaming. I bought Ico full-price when it first came out, finished it in 8 hours and don't regret it for one second because those were some of my favourite 8 hours spent playing a videogame.

Likewise, I just finished King Kong in what must be a similar amount of time. It wasn't as spectacular as Ico, but well worth the E50 I spent on it.

The money also goes towards the sense of accomplishment of being able to put a game back on the shelf, finished. I think I'd rather pay a premium for that sense of accomplishment than pay a lot of money for the hundreds of hours of a game that I'll just never get to see.

Pugsley

The problem with the arguement of 'games are getting shoter as maps are more complex', is that companies simply need to hire more (or better) mappers, an example of excellent mapping is Quake4, some of the area's are simply breath taking, and the amound of detail in a lot of the area's is simply insane. Then you have the fact the game is the guts of 12 hours long, most FPS's dont have half the mapping talent of Quake4, or last as long. (btw, I thought Quake4 was excellent,

apart from the last boss, what a let down

)

koneko

Quality over quantity, for the most part, applies.
12 hours is a good length for an FPS, you don't want them to be too long, some games seem a little too short at 12 hours but if they were any longer it would probably take away from the experience or end up making the game worse. I like it when an FPS leaves me wanting more, but wasn't so short it makes you angry. Then again, even if a game is really short, if it's a great great game, it's a flaw I'm willing to overlook, especially if it has replayability or multiplayer.

I disagree on QuakeIV though, I'd rather have a short good game than 12 hours of dulldulldull (needless to say I haven't bothered finishing it, too many other good games out that require my attention )

Maximilian

Quality over quantity is right. Best example I can think of is LucasArt's Full Throttle from a few years back. Superb point 'n clicker but it was over in a weekend.

The game was so good though, I didn't mind not did I feel cheated in any way.

If the game is short and crap however......

Kiith

i still think that any game should be a minimum of around 10hours long. anything less, and its a bit of a rip off.

DonkeyStyle \o/

ObeyGiant wrote:

I'm saying I'm willing to pay 60+ quid on 5 hours of quality gaming.

Go to an arcade then.
I want something that'll keep me in a trace for weeks, ala GTA:SA.
Games with no replay value IMO need to be looong.
Screw pointlessly detailed maps, after the first hour the whole visual wow-factor is gone anyway.

johnny_ultimate

I think with FPSs, it's hardest to judge the time limit. Im in sixth year, and so only have around an hour of gaming a day, maybe two at weekends. But under that restrictive timescale, ive completed 3 FPSs in as many weeks (Halo, Kong, Far Cry Instincts). Which Id estimate is around twenty - twenty five hours of gaming. But in all the above just as it seemed the game would drag, it ends. Which perhaps is the best way to decide on the acceptability of the length. As long as a game is excellent for however long it lasts, it's the best way to measure if it was an appropriate length. It's games such as Destroy All Humans - which are nifty at first, but drag within two or three hours - that are the real concern - games which are longer than many, but lack the quality.
Basically, my point is, quality over quantity, but a bit of quantity is nice as well.

Monty - the one and only

way too short...hard pressed to find any game that lasts me more than 8hrs in single player....
quake 4 - 7-8hrs total
Call of duty 2 0 8 hrs
FEAR - 3 days
Black and white 2 - 5 days
hl2 - about 2 days....
GTA: san andreas Still not finished( not really trying to either)


Fear being the best of the above by a long shot, still go back to playing it, quake was in all honesty, good, but really didnt have anything that made it special. Call of duty was enjoyable, but too short compared to its predecessor..B&w2 was enjoyable...hl 2 was also good. GTA well its ammusing for a while and gets old...good when bored.

Tend to enjoy games that last 2days plus and generally find anything thats shorter a disappointment...thats just me

rainbow kirby

It all depends on the game really. None of the 2D Metroid games are more than about 6-8 hours long (and that's if you suck at them, a brain-dead monkey could beat Metroid Zero Mission in that time!), but they're some of the finest games ever made. Same with something like Ico, it's short but beautiful. On the other hand, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker felt too short at 20 hours, and Fable and Jade Empire also felt far too short.
For certain games, replayability is all. Especially games like Mario Kart, where you can fire through the single player in a few hours, but multiplayer will keep you going forever! I've mentioned Metroid Zero Mission before... it's extremely short, but fantastic. I've played through it 37 times (at last count) and I can beat it in 51 minutes. But those 51 minutes will be freaking sweet!

DonkeyStyle \o/

Final Fantasy 7 ... 99+ hours

mp3guy

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Final Fantasy 7 ... 99+ hours

Thats pretty bad, i finished it 44hours both times through

ObeyGiant

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Go to an arcade then.

Is there such a thing as "quality gaming" in arcades any more? Or is that only for 14 year old girls on DDR?

Kiith

mp3guy wrote:

Thats pretty bad, i finished it 44hours both times through

ya, but that without getting all the cool stuff.

The Gnome

I think donkeystyle brought up a good point, would people rather a long game with no replay value or a relatively short game with a high replay value?

Personally I love a good long slog at a game but there's always the let down that once it's finished knowing that it won't be enjoyable second time around.

JCDenton

Is that 6 of one and half a dozen of the other?

I mean, replaying a short game would possibly make up the same amount of overall time spent playing a longer game, and yet the entertainment value of both would be similar?

I think the real point is that (for me personally anyway) length doesn't matter. It's how good the game is in the first place. Case and point being Max Payne 2, or to an extreme degree - something like Tetris, maybe.

i_am_dogboy

I think the length of a game has no bearing on the final quality of the game, but maybe when I'm out in the real world I'll appreciate shorter games more. Fallout 2 was a very good length, 20+ hours, and I reckon I've played it 10 time or so since I got it. But I didn't really notice that it was longer than say, beyond good and evil, except for the extreme bloodshot eyes resulting from my crap old monitor. If a game is really good, you probably won't think that it's too long/short while playing it, a great example of this is baldurs gate 2, I couldn't count how many hours I played that game in the 2 times I played through but still I didn't think at any point that I was playing too much.

The only real problem for me with short games, is when I buy a really good but short game, after I clear it I end up going on a game buying spree, which has resulted in a lot of not very great games being in my collection.

DonkeyStyle \o/

ObeyGiant wrote:

Is there such a thing as "quality gaming" in arcades any more?

Couldn't tell you... haven't been to an arcade in a good few years... but think of the money comparison... I mean, I bought a SNES and StreetFighter2 so I wouldn't have to spend €60 for 5 hours of gameplay.

mp3guy wrote:

Thats pretty bad, i finished it 44hours both times through

As Kiith said, you probably won't have bred a golden chocobo in that time, or killed all the weapons... I took my time with it, chewing and tasting before I swallow
Actually the timer stops at 99 hours... so it's more than that... then add on the second time playing it through, which was a bit of a rush job, I faced sepheroth way before I was ready and lucked out by surviving his crazy 10-minute-long summon with like 10hp left!
I've been thinking of playing it through again lately... so I'd say I'll break 200+ hours... that's some insane value for money... almost as good as what I got out of HalfLife and it's free mods.

Malafus

johnny_ultimate wrote:

Length has never really concerned me before. But this was very short for my liking, especially after paying 60 smackaroons.

This is a shocking development.... 38 replies without someone quoting this....

DonkeyStyle \o/

Malafus wrote:

This is a shocking development.... 38 replies without someone quoting this....

Hmm, you're going to have to spell this out for me, I'm a bit stupid.

steviec

I spent over 100 hours on all the Final Fantasy games, but I do find I have less and less time these days. I'm not sure I'd be able to do the same with FFXII.

On the other hand I did clock up an ungodly number of hours on World of Warcraft over Summer, which partly contributes to my not wanting to spend too long on anything.

One game that has it perfect is Civilization. You can tailor a single game to last from about 3-12 hours, and it's infinitely replayable. I think I'd like all games to be like that. Games that centre on a story simply can't be infinitely replayable though, and as much as I love Final Fantasy's I think more condensed games would suit me better these days. My most recent game complete was Fahrenheit, that was just about right, it wasn't too long and it was interesting the whole way through, and I was never stuck on a bit making no progress. There's also multiple endings so I'd consider playing through again when I get a chance. As story driven games go I think it got the balance right.