Are modern games just too long?

I don't know about you guys, but I've got a lot of games that are still unfinished; maybe I don't have enough free time (probably), maybe I'm too jaded, maybe the games just arn't up to it and I lose interest but I would actually prefer some games where a bit shorter. Fable II was actually quite surprisingly short but I don't hold that against it, in fact I felt it prevented it from dragging on.

I don't know how we got to this stage where every game is supposed to take some avid gamer 10+ hours to finish it otherwise it's poor value but personally I disagree. Quanity <> Quality and I'd rather play a shorter, better game than a long poorer one.

Obviously there has to be some baseline here otherwise people are going to feel short changed but I do wish there were more games that I felt sad it was over, rather than almost relieved that it was finally finished.

Darkheart

Well shortish games that are randomnally created are good- like some RTS/RPG games that auto-create the map rather than load a pre-made map. I think even some FPS games have gone the random level route (I believe Soldier of Fortune).

I think people who take the effort to auto-create random maps/worlds will do themselves favours.

Random maps are cool, if things don't become too random and unbalanced. The space stage in Spores is an example that, if you're unlucky, can be too random.

I'm with you on wanting shorter games. I tend to not bother with games that take too long to complete, and often just prefer games I can have a blast at for a short while, and then do something else (like driving games or shooters). For a game to be long, it also needs to have very interesting gameplay and/or story throughout.

I loved Mafia, mainly for the story, but found that towards the end you were getting missions that just felt like ways to stretch out the game. The game would actually have been better without them.

Forever games like MMORPG I feel have very little entertainment value per hour of game play. Seeing people play WoW, it seems like they spend 98% of their time just running from one place to another....looks incredibly boring. So they get 2% of fun, and 98% mindless running around. :)

I find that many modern games are too short and shallow. Case in point, the new Prince of Persia. There is nothing to it and it's finished before you know it. After the first hour of gameplay you've seen almost everything that there is to see, and after the eighth hour the game is over (unless you've wasted time replaying each level to collect all the light orbs). What a hollow game.

I also think that games are too short and seem to be getting shorter all the time, but more expensive. 10 hours is far too short, definitely not too long. I think that games should have around 20 hours worth of game-play at least, but I do agree that the game-play should remain varied enough to keep the player interested.

I remember a conversation that myself and my sister had about the Tomb Raider games, where we both agreed that the original game took an absolute age to finish, but the latest games (Legend, for example) has less than 10 hours worth.

I do replay games once I've finished them though, if they're decent, as I like to test myself by seeing how quickly I can get through it or to see how far I can get before I die without saving ... that sort of thing. So I do get my money's worth in most cases.

Reminds me of the days when `longevity` was considered a very good thing for games, partly because many of them were limited on resources. If a game could have replayability and be something you'd want to play over and over (and maybe in different/random/procedural ways) it could be something you'd go back to and keep playing.

Think about this though - if companies make a game that you can keep playing for a long time ... you aren't paying for the next game they make. It pays for them to have you give as much money as possible and satisfy you as much as possible in as little time as possible so that you'll thirst for more and want to keep buying. If someone made a truly awesome game that you would be so satsified with to play it for years and years, you'd probably not want to buy any more games. By deliberately disappointing you, making their games shallow, selling you an empty promise, and wrapping the game in a blanket of marketing hype, they can trick you to thinking that you are buying something more than you are. And we keep buying into it, it's not their fault.

I think there is something to be said for a game that has true longevity - ie it's great to play it for any amount of time, an amount of times - pick it up and play it for half an hour, play it for hours, play it for days on end.

Well I'm a little oldskool in my tastes, perhaps, but yeah I think a lot of games are too long these days. If a game feels like there's not a rats chance in hell of completing it, I find it offputting. Also, adding complication does not necessarily improve a game. Some modern strategy games actually lose something by giving you too much detail to manage. It just starts to feel too much like hard work!

I think there's quite a mix. I expect a really good RPG to provide at least 40 hours of gameplay and have a rich story.

Whilst with an FPS 8-10 hours is plenty. There's only so much that can keep my interest in an FPS and it has to be outstanding to last the first half hour.

RTS is another genre I like to be quite lengthy, but it needs depth and diversity, otherwise it might as well be 10 hours or less. Rubbish games like spore didn't even sustain my interest for more than an hour despite me wanting to like it. the whole game seemed a bit retarded and didn't find the balance between casual and experienced gamers that it seemed to be trying for.

A lot of modern games lack the substance to appeal to me for long, but that's possibly a lot to do with my own personal preferences)

When I get a new game, the novelty value wears off pretty soon, and so I too have a lot that are left unfinished.
Unlike many years ago when I would avidly play and play and play, even the non-completable games that were just fun.

My age, too, may be a factor.

before my work/life ballance went off kilter, i could still find myself up till the wee hours in startopias sandbox mode, more than dungeon keeper 2 that i just wanted to be better

mega drive games with no save game feature (even long passwords) would always be too long getting back to the point where you were

ive read about the WoW 'grind', how 'playing a game' seems more like taking on a 2nd job (that you HAVE to pay to 'work')

> ive read about the WoW 'grind'

A couple friends of mine are into WOW, and other MMOs, and I just don't get the attraction.

Wow is incredibly situational: leading my WoW guild to victory in Molten Core was probably THE most exciting moment in gaming in my life; however I quit Wow only months later (after Burning Crusade was released) and woudl be very wary of getting into something like that again. However there are real, good benefits too which you hardly ever hear about but should not be overlooked. Although on balance I would urge people to invest in communitys that are more real and long lasting.

Regarding longevitiy I think it IS tricky, for example you can complete Nebulus in about 90 minutes however to complete this game took months of work to gain the required skills. My defination of longevitiy is: as long as the game is still engaging me, so I still want to play it, then that is enough and as I said before, quality is always better than quantity.

Darkheart

For myself I find regardless of the length of the game I rarely finish them, as I lose interest in them after a few days usually, and don't spend all that long playing them at a session. Funnily enough the games I play the most are the ones I create myself. The only genre I did enjoy playing to the end are adventure games, but there aren't so many of these around any more.

Might be a bit OT but i found Another World was really great, i just recently played the 15th anniversary version (didn't play the first version), but found it was awesome. Still kinda wondering where the story ends after the game ending.

I tend to not buy games that don't last me a long time. 25+ hours (in game time) or it's just not worth it. The only exception to this turned out to be Black & White 2 which was an impulse purchase.

Even the short RPGs like FFX-2 and Crisis Core I don't regret as much as that game.

I think it's more a case of the gameplay dynamic not lasting longer than 2 hours in most cases. By 'gameplay dynamic' I mean how challenges are presented. Most 'casual' games are outlasting AAA titles simply because they offer more longterm playability in an easily digested format.

Games like Left 4 Dead are bucking the AAA trend because of the variation in each play through thanks to the 'game director' approach to presenting challenges and rewards to each player, in the form of spawning monster or health packs. Indie games should embrace this approach to maintaining player interest.

It depends on the game, I think -- a short game with high replay-value is no problem at all, but a short game with little to no replay-value sucks.

A computer campaign being short is no problem if it also contains a two-player head to head mode, since that way you can still get a lot more gameplay out of it.

The worst game length I've come across so far: wii Monkey ball banana blitz. My son got this a while back. I'd never played the monkey ball games, but still managed to finish the single player 'campaign' in a whopping 15-20 minutes, tops.
It also has some 'party games' which I guess eleviated the shortness a bit, but those are greatly hit-and-miss. Some okay-ish, other blatantly bad.

Hmm. My son cracked Fable 2 this morning, albeit as an evil person. He's alreadt tried doing it again as a 'good' person. However, if there was to be a Fable 3 I'd personally appreciate a longer game... even vicariously - I'm playing it myself and am nowhere near completing it. But my gameplay hours are somewhat more constrained than my sons - and rightly so.

I can't see the attraction to MMRPG type games, they tend to be boring to the point of nauseum. A real shame because I love a good SP RPG so long as it has a bit of depth and interesting story. Something like Blade of darkness in a MMO would be my ideal. Amazing to think that game is almost 10 years old and had blood dripping down stairs, pinning people to doors with arrows so they hung there, weapons that you had to build strength and experience to use thanks to the stamina bar, something that also made for strategic fighting with shields that had a purpose since a powerfull stroke with a heavy weapon required some skill and energy to use properly.

Probably too much effort for most modern games, where its all about simplistic combat or dumb combos that a 4 year old can play instantly.

@AdrianT blade of darkness sounds pretty immersive.

Agree.

Apparently since graphics are better now, there's no point in adding the value of gameplay to modern games.

..yup..they are short and thats why im looking for some nice story telling games, rather than shot everything you see..

This comment pretty much sums up the situation from my perspective.

In most cases I think games are shorter now unless your talking about MMORPG's.

I noticed this with the new adventures from Sam&Max, each episide took me only a few hours to go through while the original Lucasart adventure games took long to complete all the puzzles in the past.

Also Half-Life becomes shorter each episode. Half life 1 was huge and took me a long time to go through, Half Life Opposing was still long, but a bit shorter. Blue Shift took me only a few hours to complete and was extremely short compared to the previous two. Half Life 2 was at least big again, but you could complete it fast because of the hovercraft parts, and episode 1 and 2 where also just some hours of gaming for me to complete them.

I find ten hours is short. On the other hand, I like monolithic (Valve's word!) games, I only play one at a time, buy them very infrequently so I tend to look for something that delivers a lot. Half Life and Half Life 2 are a good length, in my opinion - the Episodes ended just when I felt like they should really be getting into the action.

Especially in the Episodes (lemme whine, I don't have many games) I thought length was a weakness because Half Life focuses so heavily on storytelling and player-training (you can tell I played for the commentary...) that the whole thing felt like one long buildup to the final battle. Except that one battle really isn't a payoff by itself; they felt like they needed another eight hours of combat, the way HL2 really only takes off after you get the gravity gun several hours into the game. Except then the Episode ends and the next chapter in the next Episode is back to "This is how you press a button, Gordon".

I keep going back to Morrowind. Probably unpopular with Blitzers, since it's all content and no gameplay, but... if you think of it less as an experience, and more as a work of visual art... it's very inspiring. Really fires me up to do some coding of my own after seeing such a beautiful piece of work. And I've never had the problem of replay value yet, since I've been playing it for four years (on and off, obviously) without having to do the same thing (same beginning missions, obviously).

It's the other side of the gameplay/art coin, really. Art needs a little more space to express itself - not so much that it's obviously made with TES Construction Kit, but I don't think less than eight or ten hours is enough to get a sense of immersion in a properly crafted environment of the sort Half Life is famous for, and certainly more than that is needed if you want to create a real sense of that environment changing with the course of events. Detail is meaningless without giving the player time to appreciate it.

Well, i just played Fantastic4 silver surfer on the WII (the GF bought it for us to play as we like co-op RPGs) and we completed it in perhaps 5-6 hours on normal diff.

To say we were dissapointed was an understatement. Ive never played an action/RPG/BEU with so little story and substance. Not even the XBox bastardisation of Baulders Gate was this bad.

So i have to say, no. Not always.