Are games too long?

johnny_ultimate

Three quick points to note first:

1. Yes, retail games are rather expensive indeed. It can be a frustrating experience shelling out 50+ euro for a very short game.

2. Some games do benefit from excessive running times. Strategy games, RPGs, dungeon crawlers, (arguably) MMORPGS, games with in-depth high score systems... The list could go on, and some games are designed to genuinely reward time commitment and (in some cases) repetition. Some of my favourite games are 50+ hour epics.

3. Yes, some games are too short. Ones that end before they get going, or genuinely leave you feeling short-changed before you can even adjust to the mechanics. Halo 2, I'm looking at you.

Now, to the counter-argument.

One of the most frequent criticisms in gaming circles is that a game is 'too short'. In general, six hours or less seems to have been deemed as such, and equally games that are perceived as having no replay value in a traditional sense seem harshly judged. It's a mindset that not only penetrates general game discussion, but also critical discourse. And it seems game developers and publishers are reacting to it.

Personally, I can't help but feel this has had a negative impact on games themselves. Having just finished Mass Effect 3, I can't help but feel there was a lot of bloat: the level design - almost entirely built around combat - became wearisome as the game ran on, to the point when the urgency of the opening hours of the game all but evaporated. Similarly, in the last few months I just couldn't bring myself to dedicate anymore time to Dragon Age Origins and its exhausting lack of dungeon variety. Not picking out Bioware as a sole example - there are others, including Dead Space 2 with its unnecessarily expanded campaign and multiplayer 'suite' - but the perceived need to provide more and more content seems to be negatively impacting upon the content itself. And, personally speaking, while I admire Skyrim's scale and ambition, the fact that almost every dungeon plays out close to identically is a real downer.

There seems to be a demand that singleplayer campaign provide better content and more of it. Seems like a catch 22 to me. The result are games loaded with bloat between the AAA content. Something like Uncharted 3 has to balance the demand for bigger setpieces with endless repetitive and somewhat unsatisfying genocide sequences that awkwardly contradict the protagonist's seemingly morally righteous character in narrative scenes. Would the game and story benefit from a tighter, shorter delivery, one has to wonder? Arkham City is another recent example that springs to mind.

Similarly, multiplayer has become more and more dominated by repetition and fluff. Generally speaking I'm not someone who will devote endless hours to MP, as I like to keep moving on to new games with the limited time I have. So it's a shame that most of the time I can't even pop in for a casual DM or two without being assaulted by XP alerts. It's a good thing in some games, but to me it becomes a chore as the rewards are dished out slower and slower in games that never needed it in the first place. Concepts like Prestige mode baffle me - these do not reward skill, they involve excessive time commitment.

This isn't a popular opinion, I know. But looking at other forms of art and entertainment, it seems as if games have significantly misunderstood concepts like brevity. A film or a book can be as long as it wants, and we don't begrudge 90 minute films because there are 4 hour ones. Similarly, it would be unheard of dismiss the Old Man and the Sea for being less dense than War and Peace.

There are hints of a new paradigm emerging, thanks in part to downloadable games at more affordable prices. Journey is the recent posterboy, carrying on a tradition of games like Portal that have provided huge returns in very short periods of time. For me more games like this are only to be encouraged: games free of repetition, games that milk every bit of variety, fun and insight out of their lean playtime. Like a good film, you don't need to jump straight back in on a higher difficulty: once is enough, with a potential revisit a few years hence a promising prospect.

So, any thoughts on this? For me, I think as gamers we need to encourage brevity and tight design. Not every game benefits from subquests, submissions or collectibles (the latter an unfortunate addition in even the likes of Vanquish and Journey). Perhaps we need to demand less rather than more...

Oh look, I wrote an excessively long post on why games need to be shorter. Silly me.

Mr E

Fantastic post.... I think the perfect satisfying single player campaign is very rare. There are so few games that actually pull it off.

Off the top of my head, I'd have to say Darksiders (a good 25 hours to see everything, and no bloat), Borderlands (I played it through twice in single player before I even tried multiplayer), and more recently Kid Icarus Uprising (25 chapters with a difficulty system that provides a huge amount of replayability).

Back over the years, earlier Zelda games (MM, OOT, LTTP) stand out as huge games with tight design and very little bloat.

Hard to know where things are going. Hopefully Journey is the start of something new.

johnny_ultimate

Yeah, meant to mention Kid Icarus in the OP. For a game that's pretty much entirely about shooting stuff (which the characters amusingly comment on frequently) there's a huge amount of content and varied setpieces. That's a game where a lot of effort has been put into a quality campaign, and the results are obvious.

Even Zelda, alas, can be guilty of excess. I love Skyward Sword, I really do. But even there there are a handful of repeated dungeons, bosses and repetitive tasks (the 'dusk' sections, for example). Personally, I found it easy to forgive given the huge amount of content elsewhere, but yeah even that could have been honed down somewhat.

Mr E

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Even Zelda, alas, can be guilty of excess. I love Skyward Sword, I really do. But even there there are a handful of repeated dungeons, bosses and repetitive tasks (the 'dusk' sections, for example). Personally, I found it easy to forgive given the huge amount of content elsewhere, but yeah even that could have been honed down somewhat.

Yeah that's why I specifically said the earlier zelda games. I still haven't finished Skyward Sword - I'm finding it a bit of a slog, tbh.

ShadowHearth

If you feel that game is too long, then its a **** game to begin with, if you played the game and really enjoyed it and then it ended way too fast, then it was a good game. I have newer ever said about my favorite games: It was the RIGHT amount of time, because every single game, which i LOVED ended way too fast.

example: WITCHER 2, when i finished it i said: " FFS, that was fast! WTF?! ACT 3 was very short!!!". Then i checked that i played it for 30 hours and did not even do all side quests and focused on main q most. that was only one side of the game too, because after chapter 1, you got 2 separate stories.

Sabre0001

Considering the packed release calendar and how I find myself being time poor sometimes, I love a single player title that clocks in at 8-12 hours.

Agricola

Great topic. Personally, I do find a lot of games too long. Aside from the whole debate about bloat and needless flab in games, my problem is that the kind of games I like are all 25+ hours of content. I just don't have the time or inclination that I had years ago to put in the regular hours to get through these games in a reasonable time. So what happens is I end up spending weeks getting through the one game and eventually get sick of the sight of it.

This is happening to me now with Deus Ex HR..... heresy I know! Its a class game, but im a month at it now and I just want to see the end tbh. For this reason, when I pick up the odd game that has a tight SP campaign which allows me to blast through it in 8-10 hours, I feel good to be able to put it back on the shelf and tick the mental box in my mind for "done"!

Having said all that, I realize the problem is with me and I don't want anything changed. I was obsessed with Skyrim for 3 months and put nearly 200 hours into it. This was achieved quickly cos it was like no other game Ive played in years. But the majority of titles, dont hold my interest like that. I wouldnt have changed anything about Skyrim though.

So yes I'd agree devs should cut out bloat and just give us the best content they can. However long that keeps us in front of the TV, we have to deal with that ourselves.

calex71

All fair points, just to throw something else into the mix as it's becoming more relevant of late, while looking at where games are going we are getting more HD reissues and collections and can see where gaming has come from.

With the recent Metal Gear and Silent hill reissues released, i asked myself , I've played these before many times over yet I was willing to pay for them again and put in even more hours into something I'd done already and a story I could likely recite line for line by now.

OK they now have achievements but I have current gen games on my shelf that have achievements too for replaying on higher difficulties etc. that I can't bring myself to even contemplate playing again

I really can't say what old has over new, I mean metal gear 2 is a short game too but I could sit down and happily replay it for the 50th time today.

I would feel short changed by a new game lasting me a weekend, but I would feel equally peeved at tacked on multiplayer and padding. I guess what I'm saying is if a game is truly AAA+++ then I should come away from it feeling the same no matter it's length. Shadows of the damned being a recent example of one I finished in 2 nights, but thoroughly enjoyed but I only paid €5 for not the €50 it was on release, and it did occur to me had I paid 50 for it would I have felt the same way about it ?

The other thing that occurred to me of late is we are older now, and can buy within reason and wallet limits any game we want when we want, back in the day that involved either nagging mammy / having a birthday / or saving up, so have games become somewhat less of a luxury and more..... "disposable" not the term I want to use but can't think of a better one at the minute

Like are we in a way happy to get a game over and done and on to the next one?

Varik

Mr E wrote: »

Off the top of my head, I'd have to say Darksiders (a good 25 hours to see everything, and no bloat),

Darksiders does that thing were you'll see the doors lock until you've beat a wave or 2 of enemies, not saying it's a bad game or anything and i just got it in the spring sale off SEN.

Grumpypants

Games like films or even a good dinner should leave you satisfied but wanting more. that's a hard thing to do and doesn't really relate directly to lenght but rather the experience.

something like journey or limbo are quite short, big budget games like the recent darkness 2 was not too long either but they felt right.

Fallout 3 I sunk 70 hours into and that felt right too but gta or red dead I got to 40% and got bored it just had too many boring missions.

Medal of honor a game I adore and played through again this morning is a game slated for being short but I love its pacing, it's near perfect, yet at release people called it boring.

on the other hand homefront did short change players with a 4 hour campaign.

I do have to play a lot of games so a game I can get played in 2 nights is often a god send and if it fits everyt
hing into a 6 hour experience then that's fine by me.

As long as the game feels right then it is right.

johnny_ultimate

ShadowHearth wrote: »

If you feel that game is too long, then its a **** game to begin with, if you played the game and really enjoyed it and then it ended way too fast, then it was a good game.

Have to politely disagree with you on that one, ShadowHearth. I'd still consider a lot of overlong games quite good games, albeit ones that fail to reach their true potential by being overlong. Uncharted 3 I already mentioned: there's a great game somewhere in there, but it's just so chock full of inane shooting sequences that it feels like a much lesser game than it should be. I'd say the same about Dead Space 2, where the corridors full of enemy spawning points grew tiring well before the end.

Similarly, Arkham City. I love the open city and mechanics, but there's simply too many utterly pointless distractions in it. Why have to repeat a mission seven or eight times - say, the races to stop the phone killer - when there's nothing new that wasn't there first time around? Similarly, why hide some of the game's most inventive missions - Riddler ones - behind increasingly time-consuming collect-athons? It's still a good game, but one that would be a much better one if they had dialled back on the ****ty little trophies or identikit mission design. Compare this to the comparatively sparcer Arkham Asylum, which is a far tighter (and better) game in comparison, where even the collectibles are inventive and fun. The ones in AC were mind-numbing.

That's basically why I wanted to start this discussion: is the demand for more, more, more actually making games considerably worse than they could be? IMO, yes, and that's why it's one worth having a debate over

calex71 wrote: »

Shadows of the damned being a recent example of one I finished in 2 nights, but thoroughly enjoyed but I only paid €5 for not the €50 it was on release, and it did occur to me had I paid 50 for it would I have felt the same way about it ?

Speaking of Suda, No More Heroes is a superb deconstruction of this very issue. In forcing the player to engage in purposefully repetitive and increasingly frustrating menial tasks to unlock the 'good' stuff, Mr. 51 cleverly satirises game developer's efforts to plump up running times with trivial tangents and unwanted nonsense. It may not be 'fun' in the traditional sense, but it provides different sorts of rewards. He's one of the few developers willing to explore such topics, and does so with an infectious sense of humour (although sometimes his actual gameplay leaves a little to be desired).

ShadowHearth

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Have to politely disagree with you on that one, ShadowHearth. I'd still consider a lot of overlong games quite good games, albeit ones that fail to reach their true potential by being overlong. Uncharted 3 I already mentioned: there's a great game somewhere in there, but it's just so chock full of inane shooting sequences that it feels like a much lesser game than it should be. I'd say the same about Dead Space 2, where the corridors full of enemy spawning points grew tiring well before the end.

Similarly, Arkham City. I love the open city and mechanics, but there's simply too many utterly pointless distractions in it. Why have to repeat a mission seven or eight times - say, the races to stop the phone killer - when there's nothing new that wasn't there first time around? Similarly, why hide some of the game's most inventive missions - Riddler ones - behind increasingly time-consuming collect-athons? It's still a good game, but one that would be a much better one if they had dialled back on the ****ty little trophies or identikit mission design. Compare this to the comparatively sparcer Arkham Asylum, which is a far tighter (and better) game in comparison, where even the collectibles are inventive and fun. The ones in AC were mind-numbing.

That's basically why I wanted to start this discussion: is the demand for more, more, more actually making games considerably worse than they could be? IMO, yes, and that's why it's one worth having a debate over



Speaking of Suda, No More Heroes is a superb deconstruction of this very issue. In forcing the player to engage in purposefully repetitive and increasingly frustrating menial tasks to unlock the 'good' stuff, Mr. 51 cleverly satirises game developer's efforts to plump up running times with trivial tangents and unwanted nonsense. It may not be 'fun' in the traditional sense, but it provides different sorts of rewards. He's one of the few developers willing to explore such topics, and does so with an infectious sense of humour (although sometimes his actual gameplay leaves a little to be desired).

But here is the broken in the root of gaming. People judge on game how good it is by hours spent in to it. I newer even checked how many hours I spend in games untill recently.
Problem is that games are not too long, just that some developers put in filler to make it it longer game.
If game is good, then I want it too last as long as possible, if game is feeling like " FFs, when it will wrap up ", then maybe it's not that great to begin with? That's the point I am making.

I do agree on games being over flooded with non needed stuff and making them longer then they should be, but that's not games fault, but developers who thinks he can get away with such crap.
I newer understood those claims " omfg I already spent 60 hours in skyrim nom nom nom". Yeah you did, but how much of it was rehashed and copy pasted content, which made you replay those 60 hours.


Bottom line - people should stop judging how good game is by hours played, so them maybe developers will stop putting in filler content?
I finished bioshock 1 once and it was enough for me to come back to it only after a year, then buy it on pc too ( had Xbox version first ). It is in my top 3 favourite games of all time.

noodler

calex71 wrote: »

With the recent Metal Gear and Silent hill reissues released, i asked myself , I've played these before many times over yet I was willing to pay for them again and put in even more hours into something I'd done already and a story I could likely recite line for line by now.

OK they now have achievements but I have current gen games on my shelf that have achievements too for replaying on higher difficulties etc. that I can't bring myself to even contemplate playing again

Excellent point. I worry I will buy MGS HD and SOTC HD but never actually play them for the same reasons.

calex71 wrote: »

I would feel short changed by a new game lasting me a weekend, but I would feel equally peeved at tacked on multiplayer and padding.......

The other thing that occurred to me of late is we are older now, and can buy within reason and wallet limits any game we want when we want, back in the day that involved either nagging mammy / having a birthday / or saving up, so have games become somewhat less of a luxury and more..... "disposable" not the term I want to use but can't think of a better one at the minute

Another excellent point. When I was younger I only bought games I knew would have decent lifespans. These days, I have more money, the internet has made games cheaper (especially if you are willing to wait it out)....length might not be as necessary as it used to be.

Potential-Monke

I don't think i've played a game that felt too long. Too bloated, yes, but never too long. I love getting hooked on a game, spending hours at it and realising you're going to be late for work because of the 10 extra minutes you started 2 hours ago. I dislike grinding in games, but a game can have grinding in it if it adds well enough to the game.

I'm currently playing thorugh Risen, and i'm very surprised and delighted with it. It's an unusual RPG which has definite no-go areas (but is still fun to play, unlike you Dark Souls (i really have it in for that game!)). There are enimies which i bolted away from at the start which i can now defeat without losing too much health (Ashbeasts), and it's a joy to not be God for the whole game. Plus, there's no grinding.

Also, short single player games can be epic fun, like Enslaved or Portal. When done right, a short game can trump a long one. But there are definitely games that are too long, and it's mainly due to fluff and grinding that these games get labelled so.

GaryIrv93

when I finished Uncharted: Drake's Fortune I though it was a great game, not to long or too short. When I got to Uncharted 2 though the game just seemed to go on and on without end. Can't remember exactly how many chapters were in it but I just got sick of it and never completed it, mainly due to it's lenght. It was a still a pretty good game, but it could have done with a bit of a shortening in my opinion.

Kirby

I hear people complain about the shortness of certain games and I don't get it. Its about entertainment. Not length. 5 hours of fun is better than 25 hours of boring slog.

One of my favourite classic games is Super Probotector on the SNES otherwise known as Contra III. It only has six levels. But they are six GREAT levels and the fact that you could finish the game in about an hour didn't stop me from playing it over and over and on hard mode and with only 3 lives over and over. It was FUN. And you could do it with Co-op. Double the fun.

And thats not to say that only games with replayability are good. There are certain story games that I might only play once but am satisfied with them because they are enjoyable.

People complained Bioshock was too short. I found it a grand length. They could've even cut some of the filler levels. In my eyes that applies to alot of games. Portal wasn't too short. If you play it in one sitting its the perfect amount. I played Portal 2 in one big sitting and was burnt out by the end. Especially in the boring cave bits. Longer doesn't necessarily mean better. People need to get that.

Maybe I'm an oddity but I've never thought a game was too short. I've thought DLC and expansion packs were too short on content and length.....but never a retail game anyway.

sarumite

I maybe the kind of gamer that is part of the problem. I like the idea of 8-12 hour games. I played through bulletstorm in just over 6 hours on a rental and really enjoyed it. The problem is I don't have the money to pay €50-60 for a 8-12 hour experience and there are only a few games I would be bothered replaying. If I could get a 8-12 hour game for €30-40 on release then I would consider buying it. Obvioulsy a few months later you can get it for that price, but usually by then it has slipped below the radar and I am playing something else. I really wish there was a middle ground between the donwloadable games like Journey and the big blockbuster games like ME3 to be honest.

johnny_ultimate

You see I don't think there necessarily is a singular sweet spot we can apply, that's sort of my point. You can say 8-12 hours, but games like Dead Space 2 or Uncharted 3 are around that length and - IMO - feel wholly overdone, with increasingly diminishing returns as the hours wear wearily on. My argument would be that we need to look at games on an individual basis: Journey needs to be 2 hours long, Vanquish needs to be 6-8 hours, Bayonetta needs to be 12-15, Dark Souls needs to be 40-50, Persona 3/4 need to be 70-100 (to pick a few games I think get the length and balance dead-on). When you look at something like FFXIII, then, the first twenty hours of that could easily have been done in five hours given the huge lack of variety or gameplay development. Similarly, the lulls in many of the games I mentioned in the OP could have been tightened down to create 'great' games that are short rather than 'good' games that are long.

I don't know if it's possible to have this discussion without 'cost' coming into it, but I'm thinking more from a gameplay and design point of view. If we ignore how much a game costs to buy - a hard thing to do, granted - then we're in a better position to look at how the community's demand for long games has an adverse effect on the games themselves. Because, after all, we don't discuss a film based on criteria like how much the cinema ticket cost. If we stop treating games like products, then we'll be able to critique and appreciate them in a more sensible and mature way than we currently do. And, perhaps, the games themselves will be better.

Retr0gamer

6-8 hours is absolutely perfect game time for me.

I'm a big fan of RPGs but I find that many of them are way too long and full of bloat and padding. I think RPG developers, western and japanese, should take a look at two games, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Mother 3. Both games are able to tell an expansive and epic storyline that is not only a match for most RPGs but probably better, yet PDS clocks in at 17 hours while Mother 3 a little over 20. They do this by cutting out all of the useless padding that is in these games and I feel they are all the better for it.

Of course there's games that do need to be 50+ hours long, dungeon crawlers like Persona, Etrian Odyssey or Dark Souls, but I feel that most games would benefit having the fat trimmed. It actually keeps the pace of the game up and it's a more enjoyable experience I feel. I also felt games like Uncharted 3 dragged on way too much at times.

One thing to note is that developers do want to keep people playing games for a long time to limit second hand sales. Just like back in the 80's when they added levelling up to Dragon Quest to combat second hand sales a lot of developers are adding needless fluff to pad out games for the same reason. It's just a pity that the majority of the time it's to the detriment of how enjoyable the game is.

Varik

Personally i don't think a game can be too long, it can be bloated with unneeded content dragging it out or some section being sparse which could have had more time given to them but the actual length can't be too long ( too short maybe if it's a game that at most will take you 5 hours to do everything and they have a €45 price point).

But the time that is needed to sit down and accomplished something can be too long; mobile games are best when they don't need you to sit there uninterrupted for an hour to get anything done, the Vita seems to have learn something from the PSP on this with games having shorted missions/levels individually for bite size gaming. If the only option for a a game of multiplayer required you to sit there for 1-2 hours then someone ****ed up.

sarumite

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

You see I don't think there necessarily is a singular sweet spot we can apply, that's sort of my point. You can say 8-12 hours, but games like Dead Space 2 or Uncharted 3 are around that length and - IMO - feel wholly overdone, with increasingly diminishing returns as the hours wear wearily on. My argument would be that we need to look at games on an individual basis: Journey needs to be 2 hours long, Vanquish needs to be 6-8 hours, Bayonetta needs to be 12-15, Dark Souls needs to be 40-50, Persona 3/4 need to be 70-100 (to pick a few games I think get the length and balance dead-on). When you look at something like FFXIII, then, the first twenty hours of that could easily have been done in five hours given the huge lack of variety or gameplay development. Similarly, the lulls in many of the games I mentioned in the OP could have been tightened down to create 'great' games that are short rather than 'good' games that are long.

I don't know if it's possible to have this discussion without 'cost' coming into it, but I'm thinking more from a gameplay and design point of view. If we ignore how much a game costs to buy - a hard thing to do, granted - then we're in a better position to look at how the community's demand for long games has an adverse effect on the games themselves. Because, after all, we don't discuss a film based on criteria like how much the cinema ticket cost. If we stop treating games like products, then we'll be able to critique and appreciate them in a more sensible and mature way than we currently do. And, perhaps, the games themselves will be better.

While I agree with what you are saying, there will probably always be this problem. It's basically the equivalent of an 'album filler' in music. The feeling is that you need to include these so-so tracks to pad out the overall package otherwise it is harder to sell as people may feel it is short on quantity regardless of the quality.