What is your idea video game length?

What is your ideal video game length to completion for Main + Extra?

  • Under 5 Hours

    Votes: 1 1.4%
  • 5-10 Hours

    Votes: 5 6.8%
  • 10-20 Hours

    Votes: 31 41.9%
  • 20-40 Hours

    Votes: 27 36.5%
  • 40-80 Hours

    Votes: 5 6.8%
  • 80+ Hours

    Votes: 5 6.8%

  • Total voters
    74

BossLackey

Gold Member
For me, it's 10-20 hours. Feels like the sweet spot.

A full story can be told, you can fully explore the mechanics of a game, but it doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I'm slowly backing away from longer games because I just do not have the attention span to dedicate 40, 80, or god-forbid 100+ hours to ONE video game.
 
Depends on the type of game. I don't mind spending hundreds of hours in a game like Elden Ring or RimWorld.
 
10-20 hours for me. I like the idea of 40+ hours, but there needs to be a lot of care to gameplay, writing and world building. Majority of 40+ hour games are only 40+ hours because they're littered with a bunch of slop to make them this long. I don't need or want that.
 
Voted 20-40 hours since that's a good average. Some longer JRPGs I love so much that even after 100 hours, I don't want them to end. Similarly, some games can start to feel like a chore before even the 10 hour mark.
 
10-20 hours for sure, if i get to around 8 hours and i check online how many more missions or levels or whatever structure it has and i'm not halfway through i'm already pulling the plug, nobody's got time for that.
 
10-20 hours for sure, if i get to around 8 hours and i check online how many more missions or levels or whatever structure it has and i'm not halfway through i'm already pulling the plug, nobody's got time for that.

This is EXACTLY me.

Who the fuck has time for games that are dozens and dozens of hours long!?

Like, truly, I do not understand.

If you're a kid with no money and a ton of free time, Persona 5 Royal sounds great.

Outside of that, I don't get it (and I've tried many times to) 🤷‍♂️
 
I really like long games. (if not made artificially long with fetch and nonsense stuff). Games under 10hrs I usually dont even consider buying/installing.
 
10-20 personally for the vast majority of games. However for dungeon crawlers I don't mind if they reach hundreds because I start those games with a "this is going to be a constant grind, repetitive enemies, advancing a little and backtracking a lot, one bad step and whole party is wiped and have to start from scratch" mentality. For other games I start them thinking they are "unique", unique environments, skills, enemies, plot, etc, and when they start repeating stuff it makes me really tired mentally. Take Devil May Cry, it's a "6 hours" game according to HLTB, just 22 or 23 stages, but they had like 4 bosses and they came again and again, 3 times each, so I grow tired, it's not a surprise or a shock but utter boredom.

Oh, and HLTB statistics, don't even get me started with them, statistics are so fucked up, since only hardcore people use it it says a game lasts 10 hours and completionist (I guess with a guide) takes 20 hours, but it takes me 20 just to finish the game. So I take completionist as my target time to finish the game. And others report the "in-game time clock". Sure, I finish the game in 5 hours and 45 minutes according to the in-game clock, but it doesn't account all the times I had to reset to load a file so in the end I spent 12 or so hours, over twice.

I try not to spoil myself looking at how many stages there are available, I like that being a surprise. However some games I felt they could have been better with less stages.
 
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I really like long games. (if not made artificially long with fetch and nonsense stuff). Games under 10hrs I usually dont even consider buying/installing.

To me, these shorter games feel more "concentrated".

Long games (outside of a few exceptions like Elden Ring) feel like they're taking 20 hours of content and spreading it over 80 hours of game.

I'd rather have a bowl of flavorful soup than a bucket of broth water.
 
Where is the 200+ hours option?

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I am semi-retiring games now for the last few years because they're so long to get through. But I keep buying them anyway.

Anyway, a 10-20 hour experience would be nice. For JRPGs, I think 30-40 is plentiful provided they keep me engaged and not full of samey sidequests.
 
10-20 hours is the sweet spot for me. I will make exceptions for longer games that really suck me in, but that hasn't happened in many years.

I still enjoy some games that run 30-40 hours, but I typically will ignore most side activities to keep the experience relatively tight. I still find myself impatient with long cutscenes, though, which games in this range often have.
 
RPGs/JRPGs: 60 - 100 hours is the sweet spot.

Everything else: 20 - 60, depending on the game.

Less than 20, and I really don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth these days.
 
There is no sweetspot... there is the sensation a game is NOT making you do repeated tasks or showed repated contents/quests for the sake of pretending it's longer than it should have been. It that regards, i believe Astrobot and Elden Ring are very good examples of that. Totally different durations, but when the game starts to feel stale, it's in the ending/near the ending.
 
10-20 hours is my sweet spot nowadays. It's the perfect length. But as I prefer RPGs, I often tend to play games that are around 20-40 hours long. It can be cumbersome sometimes but I usually manage since it's a genre I love. If it's over 50 hours I tend to zone out and drop it. 100 hours are very rare. It needs to be GOAT quality like Elden Ring, The Witcher 3 or Tears of the Kingdom if I'm gonna play long games like that. Otherwise it's a big nope.
 
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To me, these shorter games feel more "concentrated".

Long games (outside of a few exceptions like Elden Ring) feel like they're taking 20 hours of content and spreading it over 80 hours of game.

I'd rather have a bowl of flavorful soup than a bucket of broth water.
Nah, there are also "good long games". And I play also lots of simulation type games as well (Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program, Kerbal Space Program, X4, Planet Coaster...such stuff) where you can get lost yrself for hundreds of hours.
 
I don't have a preference. If they give me quality and no filler, I will be glad there's lot of it.

Silksong and E33 has lots of top quality content. On the other side of the spectrum you have Ubisoft. I'd pay the same price for a refined AC experience instead of a 100-hour slop.
 
10-20hrs is good enough for me.
Recently Mafia Old Country and MGS3 Delta hit that wonderful sweetspot. At my max 60hr is pushing it.
 
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Depends on a game and genre. I'd say around 10-20 hours for shooters and action adventure games, but with tactical games, Yakuza's or racing games with good career modes I'm happy when it's 50+. 100 hours is usually enough no matter the genre.
 
For most games I'd say 10-20.
For RPGs I think the main story being 20-30 with another 10-20 of optional side content is great.

I don't have a preference. If they give me quality and no filler, I will be glad there's lot of it.

Silksong and E33 has lots of top quality content. On the other side of the spectrum you have Ubisoft. I'd pay the same price for a refined AC experience instead of a 100-hour slop.

Yeah I agree.
My problem with long games isn't really that they are long, it's that the vast majority of them feel like they run out of steam way before they are actually over
 
Depends on the type of game. Like Last of Us part 2 I felt like it dragged on a bit too much. Some strategy game or rpgs I can play endlessly. A standard PS style single peer game make that 16-20 hours and I'm good with it.
 
It really depends on the type of game and how good the story is. If it's an RPG like Dragon Age, with a large world to explore, interesting characters and a good amount of side quests, you can't really expect it to be finished in less than 15 hours. I recently completed Dragon Age: Origins and it took me almost 70 hours, which felt like a reasonable amount of time for what it offered.

For more linear games with less exploration and depth, I think something around 10 to 20 hours is ideal. Anything longer than that really needs to have an exceptional story to make the extra time worth it.
 
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