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What is your ideal game length?

8-15 hours
Age 33

Shorter but replayable or open-ended >>>>>>>> Longer but never want to play again

My interest just flat out cuts off after around 15 hours unless the game is absolutely captivating.
 
I don't really understand why anyone would prefer a shorter game to a long one as long as they both remain equally entertaining until the end. No one is forcing you to play when you have better things to do.
 
Anything over 20hrs puts me right off, anything between 5-20hrs is usally perfect for me depending on the game.

RE4 = 16hrs
MGS3 = 16hrs
Metroid Prime = 18hrs
Echoes = 16hrs
Ico = 7hrs
SotC = 9hrs
God of War = 9hrs
Half Life 2 = 12hrs

All of those were the perfect length for me, none of them felt too short but they all ended before I wanted them to end.
 
syllogism said:
I don't really understand why anyone would prefer a shorter game to a long one as long as they both remain equally entertaining until the end. No one is forcing you to play when you have better things to do.
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Not true, you are kind of forced in a way. Let's say you play 20 hours of a 40+ hour game and end up taking a break for a few weeks or more. By the time you come back you've probably forgotten a lot of plot points, forgotten what your immediate objectives are, have to re-learn a lot of the tricks and skills you developed over the first 20 hours... pain in the ass. I have a shitload of half finished RPGs on my shelves for this very reason.

Yeah, sure, this would all be different if 15-20+ hour games were gripping the whole way through, but how many are? A fraction. A developer can achieve everything they want to in a video game of 20 hours of scripted play or less.
 
I've never had such problems. Do you seriously forget all that in a span of a few weeks?

If we are talking about shorter games of greater quality, then this topic is completely understandable, of course.
 
20 hours or total replayability ala mario kart. I'm 26
 
I've never had such problems. Do you seriously forget all that in a span of a few weeks?
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For games like RPGs, especially ones where you're free to wander wherever you want (ie, not FFX), it's fairly easy to forget exactly what you were up to the last time you played. I've been playing ToS lately, and there's a few times where i'd have been completely lost if it wasn't for the synopsis feature, even after just not playing for a couple of days (my habit of saving the game while flying around randomly on the world map doing sidequests probably doesn't help, though).
 
33 here, and my opinion has definitely changed over time. As with many others, I don't have as much time to dedicate as I once did...but I'll always make time for a LONG game (20+ hours) if it's something I feel I can't miss (the next Zelda for instance).

But there is another factor that I believe has had an impact on me...and that is the amount of disposable income I have.

As that has increased I don't feel short changed any more if I buy a game I enjoy that is over quickly. When I had a lot less money, and therefore when each purchase was a more critical decision length was much more important as I'd know that I would have no more money for another game for some time. I still look for bargains, and will often still by off the net to get a game cheaper, but i don't worry about the cost. Therefore it it's short but I have enjoyed it then great (Condemned as an example...and I didn't even find it that short)
 
10-20 minutes. I'm 27, and I still crave short, dense, arcade-style gameplay above all. I appreciated longer "quest"-style games quite a bit in the NES/SNES/Genesis days, but beginning with the Playstation I've mostly reverted back to a very low tolerance for drawn-out stories, fluff, padding, etc. I'm pretty much the epitome of the "I want to play the game" guy, the exception being when the dialogue is totally hilarious, like in MGS1-3.

As for an upper length cap on quest games, I'd say 10 hours is pretty much my breaking point. I consider a game hugely flawed when it takes significantly longer than that to finish when played straight through (barring optional side-quests or whatever).
 
Depends on the genre. I'm fine with warioware only taking two days of casual play to beat because the replay value is nearly infinite.

on the other hand
I want my turn based tactics games to be long with lots of optional maps.

Games like WOW' that require your utmost commitment and arent conducive to pick up and play gaming are not desirable to me. Life comes first, gaming should just be a casual hobby.

Im 19
 
I beat MGS2 in 12 hours, MGS3 in 14 hours and RE4 in 18 hours. Those were pretty much the perfect game experiences for the gen, so I guess my answer is that I want a game of the highest caliber that lasts anywhere from 10 to 20 hours.
 
Age 32 over here.
The greater the game the more play time I'm willing to invest in it consecutively. Which brings me to my dilemma. Longer games that are great enough to keep me playing are rare and I can only afford at most 1 hour on weekdays and a little more on weekends. Usually I peek a little into a newly bought game and then it sits on the shelf for some months. Eventually I manage to finish about half of the game, then it sits some more. Even if it's a good game like FF6, SH2, SH3, KH and such. I know Valis' problem all too well. Even if I've got some time to spare I shun away from the half-finished games because getting into it again makes you feel awkward. I'm pretty not into RPGs and RTS games anymore for that reason, in spite of liking those genres.

Needless to say I played much MUCH more when I was a kid at school. As long as the game kept me interested, it could theoretically go on forever. Then I took a break for many years, but restarted playing a couple of years ago. I remember practically being glued to the screen at times. This has also changed and I'm not all that excited over games anymore. They're fun, that's all.

To make a long story short, I can finish a 8 hour long game even if it's not that awesome. 20 hours is ideal but the game has to be one of the all-time greats, such as Zelda, MGS3. If the game is slightly below great like MGS2 or so, I usually can't finish it without taking a break, but that's my fault. Shorter games such as fighters, rhythm games - no problem for me.
 
I like 100 plus rpgs. My tastes have not changed much since I was young though my life is alot different then most.
 
I think 40 hours should be the de facto standard. I can put 60 into alot of games but some storylines just don't stretch well past the 40 mark. Baldur's Gate 2 is an awesome exception though.



I'm 26 as well.
 
Depends on the type of game and how good it is. King Kong is about 6 hours long, but it was one of my favourite games of 2005. So I'd rather have a good quality game that keeps its quality high than a game that's long and drawn out because they wanted to make it last longer

Most of my adventure games last about 15-20 hours though and I'm happy with that atm

I'm 22 btw
 
10-15 hours

Eternal Darkness had a perfect length. Took my 13 hours to get through it and afterwards I didn't felt that I was cheated (see Max Payne 2, great but too short game and Unreal 2) and during the game I never wished that it would soon end, which happens in close to every RPG.
 
For most games I would say 20 hours or a little bit under that. The MGS series is a good example of perfect game length for me.

But if they are RPGs or games with a lot of explorations I want at least 40Hrs and if they are really great I can go for more than that. If the game actually gives me an incentive to unlock new stuff then i will do it. Good example would be Skies of Arcadia with great exploration elements, or Suikoden with all the characters you can unlock.

Bad examples would be Final Fantasy's, I almost never want to unlock everything in them for some reason. <shrug>

Oh and I am 20.
 
About 20 hours gameplay or so in an action orientated game is ideal. I pretty much never replay games so once it's done, it's done. Handheld games are a different category though.

Also, I'm 34. As I get older, I've noticed that I have no interest in RPGs anymore, but I probably sank 100 hours into GTA:SA.
 
30 years old here. As with most gamers getting older, I tend to shy away from the longer games due to time contraints of life, etc. I think the last true console RPG I got into was Knights of the Old Republic. Actually had a couple nights where I damn near pulled an all nighter. I tend to learn toward the shorter action games as well... but I never really was the most hardcore RPG player to begin with.

I've noticed a different phenomenon though. I tend to really go after the portables anymore. Even the longer games and RPGs have quick save options that allow for very convenient play sessions. I'll play them a lot while sitting with my wife at night watching TV and such. It works out really well since I don't have to ignore anyone by holing myself up in my game room for hours on end.
 
40+ hours is just too damn long. I only finished DQ8 because I had to for a review
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Where do you review Drinky? I think you didn´t like the "videogame journalism" thing anymore. I would like to read your texts.

My job as freelance journalist has the advantage that it gives me lot of free time. The bad thing is that I profited that time to get a degree in journalism and both combined can be exhausting sometimes.

However I think the appopiate time depends of the game. If the game is really worth, I will get time under stones if neccesary.
 
As long as possible without getting totally repetitive. Action games? 20 hours for each would be nice. RPGs? 50 hours should be an absolute minimum.... to complete the /story arc/. There should of course be at least that much left over to complete all the extra odds and ends. Anyway, I'm a fan of longer games, but I can see how others aren't. I don't sleep much, so if I'm bored I can put down a ten hour game in a single night. Leaves me rather underwhelmed.
 
Unless it were some sort of epic thing, 20 to 25 hours is fine. So RPGs and large adventure or action-adventure games are exempt from that time limit. I'm 21 years old for the record. But a game's worth to me is largely based on the same thing, and it isn't the time on the clock; it's always replay value.
 
20 hours seem to be the magic number.

20 hours for the first play through, at least another 20+ hours of replayability or extras if I like it enough to go through it again.

Some games this isn't applicable, but for your standard mission/action type deal it should hold true.

Some stuff like racing games are more just... X hours; there is no core, but instead hundreds of hours of extras. Unlocking the majority of important options shouldn't take longer than 20 hours though.
 
It's not so much a matter of length in and of itself, as the kind of gameplay that's offered during that length. I spent 70+ hours on SMT: Nocturne, but that was okay, because about 68 or so of those hours offered new experiences. (It took me two months to get through that game, by the way, playing every evening.) And I've probably put at least 100 hours into Europa Universalis II for similar reasons. On the other hand, out of the 60 hours total I spent on DDS1+2, fully 20 hours of that was tedious level grinding, and that's time I wish I could get back.

Now, with DQ8, I'm finding that though I was initially excited to play it, after 30 hours it's not quite worth my time. Similar to what others have said, if I have 45 free minutes in an evening I can watch an episode of 24, read a chapter of a novel, read an entire comic, or listen to an act of an opera on CD--or I can trudge through an unchanging virtual landscape repeating the same task over and over again with minor variations until the game deigns to grant one of my characters a tiny stat bonus. If the game delivered a similar intensity of experience with all the other activities that are competing for my attention, then sure, I'd be on board with that. But DQ8 doesn't. I don't think I've played it in about a week, and I doubt I'll ever finish it.
 
I generally go a few days without gaming before going on a gaming binge, but on an average week, I probably play games an average of 7 - 8 hours. That means it will take me nearly 3 weeks to complete a 20 hour game! RE4, MGS3, etc. were great because I could beat them in under 15 hours and move on with my life.

Sometimes, I'll get a Saturday or Sunday where I'm not busy, and I'll sink my teeth into a really good game and complete it in one or two sittings, but those days are increasingly rare. This is why long RPGs don't work for me anymore -- their stories are generally convuluted as it is; I don't need the rigors of time slowly erroding whatever understanding I have of them over a 2 - 3 month period.

20 hours is a long time: I say this as a 19-year-old with a relatively free schedule (school, sports, work, and friends). I can't imagine how things will be in 4 or 5 years when I get out in the real world.

edit: I STILL WANT ZELDA TO BE LONG THO!!
 
I dunno, I don't think I really care. I pretty much only play RPGs these days. My DQVIII save ended at about 110 hours in the middle of January, and I started it a few days after it came out in November. That averages about 2 hours a day, which isn't true because there's no fucking way I played it every day. I usually take my Sat/Sun mornings to put a few hours into games I'm playing. And I play about 3 to 5 games at the same time (right now Suikoden IV, DMC3, Alundra, Legend of Heroes, FFIVa) so it takes me a while longer to beat some, but I do feel like I accomplish more. But RPGs really give me a sense of accomplishment, and for example, DMC3 right now is feeling like a waste of time. Also my Gameboy Micro lets me take care of my GBA library at work in bathroom breaks, haha.
I'm 23 and work 40 hours a week.
 
Hmm, I'll just post what I said in the VP thread, since it's more relevant here...

I am 23 and work Mon through Thu, 10 hours a day, and take Masters courses on Fri. After I finish my masters (which will be in the summer, hopefully), I will switch back to a 9 hour day Mon through Thu, with a 4 hour day on Fri. So I usually play games on Sat or Sunday afternoon before hanging out, or on portables during lunch. Soon I'll be playing Fri afternoon too, since there's not really anything going on then :P I am currently single so that means I currently have a lot of free time ;)

I will have to agree with Jack, although 30 hours is my personal sweet spot. Too many games pad themselves out with meaningless subquests, fetch quests, long cinemas with lots of contrived dialogue (I don't mind shallow characters if the story moves pretty quick, but I hate when games spend lots of time attempting to characterize characters by increasing the amount of useless banter... Arc the Lad 3, here's looking at you!) and slow plot exposition. This seems to be more of a problem in the 32 bit era, lately I've been preferring to play older RPGs... not too much in the way of long cinemas, you can get in and out of battle quick, dungeons which are long but don't take hours to trek through, and a sense of accomplishment that you're moving through the game.

FF4 I finished on GBA in 12 hours (granted I knew that game like the back of my hand)... and yet it seems so much goes on in just that 12 hours - there's such rapid pacing... unlike a game like Baten Kaitos, where it takes about 30 hours to start to get to the interesting stuff.

Then again, there are some games, where it seems the time just flies by while playing. DQ8, I can't believe I've been playing for over 40 hours, for instance. Xenosaga, on the other hand, only took me 35 hours to beat, yet the game was so slow paced and painful it feels like it took over 100.
 
Wario64 said:
I usually play games while posting anyway. Like right now, I'm playing FFX-2

tsctsc
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That's like people who throw a movie on while they clean their house.

For me, the game should be around 10 to 15 hours. I have to feel like I can finish the game in a moderate amount of time. And like any game I play, it has to be exceptional, or have some point of interest. Metroid Prime 2 perfectly describes my argument- can be finished with 10 hours, but has just the right amount of interesting devices to keep me hooked. MGS1 and RE2 fall into this category as well.

And I do feel like I'm wasting my time with most RPGs. Endless random battles just don't interest me. Especially when I can't see what's attacking me.
 
It depends because I'm a bit of a fanboy when it comes to Zelda games, for example, or especially Mario games, since we have to wait so long for them.

Lately, I prefer games in the 10-hour range, though. I'm for the whole "short but sweet" game length, mostly.
 
I like to finish the games I play, so for that reason, I prefer them to be shorter. I don't mind long games as long as the pacing is good -- but games with endless filler shit definitely need to go. FFIV Advance was a reminder to me that long isn't necessarily bad, as long as the game can keep your attention the whole way through and allows you to quit out virtually anytime (long breaks between save opportunities in this day and age is another huge NO).

My tastes have evolved as I've gotten older. I'm less tolerant of shit these days, but at the same time I'm more accepting of genres I might have skipped over when I was younger. Naturally I have less time for casual gaming, but I'm fortunate to be in a position where I need to play games in order to do my job, so I'm playing stuff on pretty much a daily basis, even if it isn't always the game I want to be playing the most at that particular time.

I'm 30. I've been gaming regularly since I was 5.
 
Probably 30-40 hours. I can spend about 15 hours a week on a game, and I want to atleast get 2-3 weeks of play time on a game if I purchase it. I'm 18.
RE4 was fine with me because I just had to replay the game, even if it only took me a week or so to finish.
 
8 1/2" cut

kekekeke

No srsly, I would have to say between 15 and 20 hours, or along the lines of recent Metal Gear Solid games. I haven't played Snake Eater yet, but I thought MGS2 was one of the greatest games ever made.
 
12-14 hours tops.

I don't know why game developers have this thing about making games that last 50 hours and what not. Why not just save all your money and make something short and tight? Most games cant keep my interest from beginning to end. So really the shorter the better. SOTC was absolutely perfect length for me. Same with we <3 katamari. Short games that were a blast to play from beginning to end.
 
Action/Adventure games - 10 to 15 hours.
RPG's - At least 30 hours, maybe 25.

I'm 25 BTW and don't have as much time for games as I used to because of trying to make them, but I still want a lot of play time out of the ones I do buy.
 
I don't screen my game selections based on length. I spent 2 months pushing through DQ8 on a paced schedule which only really meant I didn't get to experience X number of whatever releases in that same period. On the flipside, I dropped Riddick(6 hour game?) at about the halfway point given my lack of interest, same with Gunstar Super Heroes. It's all relative, I don't plan to shoehorn a game into my playtime simply for the sake of variety, or a quick turnaround. Though it does tend to bother me when a game inflates length with uninteresting filler, RR6 is somewhat guilty of this.

I'm 27 BTW.
 
Before I loved my games to be as long as possible, but now, I think 10 hours is a good length of time. Kameo has been bashed about being too short, but really, I would've started to get sick of it if it were any longer.
 
sky said:
QFT!
Somewhere around 10hrs of awesome is just right for an action/adventure type game. I just want a fun experience. I couldn't care less about replayability, any more.
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10 hours with no replayability?! How in the hell can anyone think like this? Any short game I don't want to replay I consider a really shitty game. I don't care if it's even a budget title. It's like throwing hte game in the garbage after you are done with it.
 
Pimpbaa said:
10 hours with no replayability?! How in the hell can anyone think like this? Any short game I don't want to replay I consider a really shitty game. I don't care if it's even a budget title. It's like throwing hte game in the garbage after you are done with it.
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i dont think hes referring to wanting to play it again, i think he means extra shit included to make you replay the game over and over.
 
Pimpbaa said:
10 hours with no replayability?! How in the hell can anyone think like this? Any short game I don't want to replay I consider a really shitty game. I don't care if it's even a budget title. It's like throwing hte game in the garbage after you are done with it.
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I disagree. I basically never replay games; I just move onto the next experience.
 
Shorter games -- ideally with some replayability -- are ideal. I would say that 10-15 hours is preferable, though I would go as high as 20-25 for a really special game. It's also very important that I can play it in short bursts, since it's tough to fit longish gaming sessions into my schedule.

The other critical factor is difficulty. I'd like a game to have a decent level of challenge, but it should ramp up reasonably and not be TOO hard at the top. I simply don't have time to spend hours practicing fancy moves or getting patterns down -- gaming is supposed to be a fun diversion, not work.

(I'm 31, since you're tracking those metrics.)
 
20 hours top, whatever genre, to complete the "main quest". Anything more and I start losing plot details (play time in a typical day: half an hour / one hour, from 23:00 on).

Replayability is a definite plus. If achieved through online features, not so much, because keeping up with a community is time consuming and if you play the game outside of the launch window you are at risk of not finding many people online playing the game.

Age: 35.
 
eXxy said:
I disagree. I basically never replay games; I just move onto the next experience.
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Do you have a waning interest in games, or just play them for the story? I mean a classic game is something you can come back to again and again. To just throw away a game after you are done, just seems more like a casual gamer thing to do. Every one of my most memorable classic games have been ones I have played to death. I can't even remember all the games I played through once and never again.
 
JackFrost2012 said:
So that's my question to you: what is your ideal game length? why? and finally how old are you, and has your opinion changed as you've gotten older? I'm especially interested in this last piece of data.

Thankee.
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Good topic.

Ideal game length nowadays is about 10-15 gameplay hours. If the experience is good all the way through, or even better, has replay value, then I could give a hoot about overall critical path length being short. It differs from genre to genre, too. The 10-15 hour time would be for something like the ubiquitous "action adventure" genre. RPGs longer, shooters shorter.

I'm 31... in addition to a full-time job and girlfriend, I have a lot of other interests in my life that reduce the amount of time I have to play videogames. I'm not in junior high, high school, college, or even my early working career anymore.

Nowadays, games like DJ Max Portable, Lumines, Mario Kart, Mushihimesama, Ouendan, etc. are preferred over RPGs and other lengthy titles. So I guess after thinking about this, it has more to do with whether I can get a quick game in here and there, complete a few, and still feeling like I'm accomplishing something. Point Blank gave me this feeling back in the PS1 days, and I still go back to that game every now and then.

Every rule has its exception, though, so this is more just a general feeling than a set-in-stone way of how I see things.
 
30-70 hours to beat it or "complete" it (e.g. it takes maybe eight minutes to "beat" Smash Bros., but dozens of hours to unlock everything), with endless replay value. If I get anything less than three times as many hours out of the game as the number of dollars I paid for it, it's not "ideal." It can still be great, just not ideal, i.e. Tales of Symphonia and Star Ocean 2--thanks to their endless replayability spawned by fun battle systems--are infinitely superior to Wind Waker and Final Fantasy 9, however great they may be.

And I do prefer a "tighter" experience--usually it's just that thing which breeds replayability. I've beaten Chrono Trigger probably twenty times because it just never lets us or has a slow moment. Games can only get away with sidequests or bonus levels that don't unlock anything or other types of padding if the core gameplay is awesome enough, which is rare.



Edit: Just noticed the other part of the question. I'm 21. When I was younger, I preferred games a little shorter, I'm guessing partially due to a shorter attention span, but moreso to the fact that my parents bought the games for me. Now I demand as much value for my dollar as possible, not just in gaming but everything else--there's exactly one movie in the world that I'd pay as much as $10 for; I buy food from Costsco or the 99-cent store, not a supermarket; etc. I do buy games new rather than used, but that's because 1) I don't trust price-gouging companies like Gamestop and EB Games to keep them in good condition, 2) I definitely don't want to financially support said companies, 3) I do want to support the game developers, and 4) I'm practically OCD about nice-looking game cases.
 
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