Am I crazy for seeing long game length as a negative?

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PurpleShyGuy

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Recently Techland boasted that it would take 500 hours to complete everything in their upcoming game Dying Light 2, a statement that made the light in my body known as my soul die a little inside. I've only ever completed two games that took over a hundred hours to finish, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Persona 5. By the end of both of these games, I was battling my boredom as I faced the same enemies and employed the same tactics over and over again. There simply wasn't enough variety to the gameplay to warrant such a long time to complete. In fact, I'm of the opinion that no game should take a 100 hours to complete.

I understand that people want value for money, but bogging down a game with recycled content isn't the way to do it. A shorter game that is paced better and thus offers a better incentive to replay it is more attractive to me. But at 500 hours to 100% Dying Light 2, is anyone actually going to replay it again, or will they just be sick of looking at it?

Every time I entered a Palace in Persona 5, this popped into my head.
Every time I entered a Palace in Persona 5, this popped into my head.

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bigsocrates

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#2 bigsocrates  Online

No. Of course not.

Game "value" is just a concept that sounds good as a bullet point for advertising or a back of the box feature. That's why Dying Light 2, a game that is apparently a reasonable 20 hours in length, was advertised as 500 hours. Executives think that gamers get excited about a game that they can play seemingly forever, and some part of the population might, but many people are turned off by excessive length.

Value isn't defined by "how long it takes to beat a game the first time." If a game encourages replay either through things like alternate endings or playstyles or just being really really fun to play that adds value. There is also value in the intensity of enjoyment a game has. If you have a ton of fun for 10 hours that's better than having a moderate amount of fun for 12, and both are better than being bored and annoyed for 20.

A lot of people are irritated by the excessive length of many modern games. It may be good for people with more time than money, but since games can be gotten very cheaply these days through a variety of means (I am not talking about piracy but rather things like Humble Bundles and Game Pass) there are few gamers that have those issues. Meanwhile many of the 'play forever' games are just variable reward treadmills designed to extract money through microtransactions and aren't actually that fun or interesting.

I also get worried when I hear that a game is super long. I've enjoyed some long games, of course, and there are other games I've gotten hundreds of hours of play from that were mostly enjoyable (including some roguelikes and puzzle games or whatever) but most games don't earn their length.

Open world bloat is real and it's mostly terrible game design. There are some obsessives who enjoy doing the same thing 100 times in 100 slightly different places but based on achievements and trophies they are in the vast minority. I think a disproportional number go into game design though, and that's part of the problem.

I think a lot of the people who made Assassin's Creed Valhalla really thought it would be fun to just do the same things over and over and over until most players gave up out of sheer boredom, but most players did not.

16.27% of players got to the end of the main story in Watch Dogs: Legion on Xbox. That means that the vast majority of players did not want that much content. I bought the gold edition with the DLC and I am in that 16.27% but I haven't gone back to play the DLC missions because I was pretty sick of the game by the time I got to the end of it, and that's without doing a lot of the open world bloat that it offered.

Most games are too long for most players and either companies have metrics showing that the marketing advantage of claiming a game is very long is good business or they just think it is for whatever reason. I think a lot of gamers do have eyes bigger than their stomachs and are excited by the idea of putting 100 hours into a game, even if they only end up putting in 15 and enjoying 10 of those.

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cikame

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#3  Edited By cikame

They did a bad job with that tweet making it sound like 500 hours is normal, it's not, and they have corrected themselves.

When i want a single player story experience i'm hoping it's around 6-12 hours, but i do like clearing all the icons on an open world map so i'm happy to put 40-60 hours into an Assassin's Creed, then there's mindless multiplayer and repeatable games i like to play while watching streams and listening to podcasts, so naturally i'll put hundreds of hours into those.

Occasionally a game will come out that i want to "live" in, like The Witcher 3 or The Elder Scrolls, where i'm expecting to put a hundred hours in but that doesn't happen too often, i'm currently doing that with Red Dead 2 but boy that's a lot of horse riding.
As far as Dying Light 2 goes i'm still not a huge zombie fan but the first was a solid 30 hour game, i'd put another 30 into a sequel.

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PurpleShyGuy

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@bigsocrates: The point you raised about game companies highlighting the length of their games reminds me of a story about how coffee is advertised. When asked, most people said that the richer, stronger kind of coffee sounded better, but in actuality, people prefer drinking weaker, milkier coffee. It's interesting to see a disconnect on what people think they want and what they actually want. Then again, this could be down to companies presenting long games as an inherent plus.

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bigsocrates

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#5 bigsocrates  Online

@purpleshyguy: The games industry is full of examples of selling perceived value that people think they want but actually don't. How many games on the Xbox 360 had tacked on multiplayer that was dead within a few weeks of release even if the game was perceived as good? People liked the idea that they could just play multiplayer after the campaign to keep getting value out of their purchase, but in reality few people wanted to play a B level multiplayer experience when there were a few A games out there.

I think there's also the idea that length makes something more epic, which the makers themselves might believe. The Last of Us Part II is almost twice as long as the first game and I thought that was its biggest flaw. It just droned on, repeating the same story beats or going off on weird tangents. I think it really detracted from that game, and that's far from the only example I can think of.

You see this in some movies too. A movie is more profitable if it's shorter (because you can have more showings per day per theater) but some movies are excessively long just because it makes it seem more epic or prestigious. I'm not saying every 3 hour movie would be better at 2 hours long, but many of them would, and often they're long just because it gives them perceived gravitas, even if it often really just indicates bloat.

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Broshmosh

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It's okay to have a different list of positives and negatives when it comes to game preferences vs another gamer.

You might need to employ a little more willingness to drop something you aren't enjoying.

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Efesell

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#7 Efesell  Online

For the longest while game length was a real end all be all question. Especially if you were an RPG. If you made an RPG and the community found out that someone could finish it in under 60 hours? Sacrilege.

All of that is obviously very silly but I do admit to getting a little irritated with the pendulum swings back too far. There are a lot of reviewers nowadays who adopt the stance of "I am a respectable adult now and I'm going to opine for pages about how this doesn't respect my precious time".

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FinalDasa

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#8 FinalDasa  Moderator

It's a push and pull of different games for different people. If you're in college you might want that $60, 500-hour game to sink into for months at a time. If you have a 9-5 you maybe want a 20-hour game to play at night or on weekend.

Or maybe you just want a multiplayer or open-ended game to play with friends.

I think Dying Light 2 got caught between those desires. Advertising to those players who will sink 500+ hours into it while trying to tell everyone else it'll only take 20 or so to beat the main story.

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Y2Ken

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As someone who tends to lean more towards longer games, either because they offer some kind of long-form investment or because they have a slow-build to their narrative and/or world, I think you're completely reasonable.

Time is precious and if you prefer something a little tighter-paced with less repetition I think that's just fine. Thankfully I think there's a wealth of games at every point along that time spectrum nowadays, and a lot of games offer up ways to get through them quickly alongside systems which support a much longer playtime should people desire it.

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AV_Gamer

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Long game lengths are only negative if the game feels like a grind and the story isn't engaging enough, or the gameplay isn't fun enough to carry those many hours. Personally, when I pay for a game these days, I want my money's worth and a very short game for full price just doesn't cut it. The good thing about games today, is that you can get them in any number of ways, including how long the games last. So you don't have to play the 80-100 hour RPG if you don't want to.

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wollywoo

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I had a similar experience with Persona 5. I quite enjoyed what I played of it, loving the characters and the general vibe. But those palaces were a slog and I stopped playing during the second one.

I appreciate a game that come to a satisfying conclusion before it loses steam. It depends on the game, though. If it's a game I *really* enjoy, like Breath of the Wild, I'm sometimes sad to see it end even if it's quite long.

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FacelessVixen

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#12  Edited By FacelessVixen

Asking that to a proper adult with a souse, kids, and a 9-to-5 job: No.

Asking that to someone who doesn't understand the notion of having responsibilities outside of gaming: Yes.

Asking that to someone like me who has a lot of free time due to not having a wife, kids or a regular job: No, 'cause there's other shit that I wanna do.

Also, for those who aren't aware: 500 is the completionist/entirely optional content estimate for Dying Light 2. The estimate for finishing the story is only 20 hours, which works for me.

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Besetment

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Video games are too long.

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ryudo

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Depends on the game. Raiden V is over 2 hours which is way too long for a Shmup. Xenoblade at 100 hours is perfect for that game. Persona 5 is too long for what it is.

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PurpleShyGuy

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@broshmosh: I’ll admit that this is an issue I have with games, this obsessive compulsive need to finish everything. When I want to drop a game there’s this little voice in my head saying “what if there’s something you’ll like later on.”

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bigsocrates

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#16 bigsocrates  Online
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judaspete

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I'm with you. Played 80 hours of Persona 4 and just couldn't go on. Have come to accept I will never finish it. I still think the game is good, but those dungeons were a slog. I was getting no joy out of them.

Two of my GOATs are Vanquish and the first Mirror's Edge, which clock in around 4-6 hours for most folks. Fantastic games start to finish with little to no filler.

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PurpleShyGuy

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@bigsocrates: You joke, but I’m one of those insane people that will play through that 175 hours to get to that part!

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TopCat88

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#19  Edited By TopCat88

I will actively hunt down short games, and use HLTB hoping to see a low number. I have a wife and my first child is on the way, I don't need to be starting 20hour+ games.

One the rare occasions I buy an open world ubigame, I will mainline that shit. Watch Dogs Legion being the last one. (Completed in 27h according to Xbox stats)

GTA/Read Dead are exceptions as I enjoy R* games enough to justify their length and they come out so infrequently I can justify it. If they were annual franchises, I wouldn't bother.

I get that this makes me the outlier (I think) but it suits me.

Also, I love how game pass allows me to "quick look" on my own. Most games I'll play for an hour or so, get a handle on the mechanics and then drop, knowing it'll be rinse and repeat for the next however many hours. Videogame stories are rarely worth seeing through anyway and if something does happen to grab me, I'll finish it.

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SethMode

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To put it simply, no you aren't crazy at all, I agree with you. Although, I would insert the caveat that it isn't so much a games length that bothers me by itself, it's when the game feels like it's bloated/wasting my time/not fun/a chore/whatever that I start to get irritated by the length. The most recent example for me is Spider-Man, compared to Miles Morales. I love both games a bunch, but after finishing them back-to-back, I came away happier after finishing Miles, not just because it was shorter, but because I felt like it was a better overall package. I could engage with all of the side content without it ever really feeling like it was bogging the whole experience down, and it had a cohesive story that was very well paced. Spider-Man, in contrast, had a great story mired by some truly slug-paced segments, entirely too much "stuff" that was WAY too repetitive, and unneeded stealth sections that were pretty terrible and pointless. That all sounds like I'm too negative on Spider-Man, and I'm not, it just felt like those were the growing pains it needed to go through to get to a stronger, more compact package in Miles.

So yeah, I guess that's just a really long way of saying I just don't like when long games start to feel like busy work, or when their plots get mired in trying to stretch out the main story, and that's when I really view length as a negative.

Having written all of that though, there isn't a lot of new stuff (in other words, stuff that doesn't come loaded with nostalgia like Baldur's Gate 2) that is crazy long that I ever really enjoy, because I'm not entirely sure it's always easy to avoid the pitfalls that come with extremely long game length.

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franzlska

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As a kid I would often try my hardest to wring as many hours out of games as possible, especially if I liked them, replaying them/going for achievements/just plain messing around to my heart's content. That said, even at the time I usually just played what I was interested in rather than specifically thinking "Wow! This game is 200 hours I can play it forever!" or some similar idea.

Especially nowadays, the longer the game the less likely I am to actually play it. I still don't go for the idea of needing [x] many hours out of a game, and actively steer away from series that I perceive as "long for sheer length's sake", even if I still turn around and dump a hundred hours into something completely random. But at the same time, a lot of the more time-expectant games that have caught my eye end up sitting in my Steam library for months before I bother to open them, and even then I'll sometimes start them, get a ways in, and never finish them despite enjoying myself.

I think there's something to be said for games that take their time because they have somewhere to go with it, but in the past few years a lot of my favorite experiences with games have been more "bite-sized" games no longer than five hours to play through. I feel like a good percentage of games could benefit from redirecting themself towards a more compact experience like that, if it weren't currently difficult because of how games are tangled up in weird player expectations of "time per dollar" and the marketing traditions of the past that make some people view headlines like "500 hours long" as exciting instead of terrifying.

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#22  Edited By Grandstoat

Understandable, I have a tendency to 100% things I get to max value out of them because I can't afford too many games, but even then I always find myself not really enjoying the slog after several hours of farming achievement(s). Replay value is infinitely more important than the actual length of the game for me, I've got like 50 hours or more in DQ11 and can't find the motivation to finish the game even though it is still kinda enjoyable.

Meanwhile, I've played hollow knight like 6 times and Paper Mario 64 around 4-5 times because they're great and can be played differently.

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Leviathan_Dive

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Not at all. Game length has been a selling point for a long time, so they tend to put a lot of padding in games.

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berfunkle

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#24  Edited By berfunkle

My solution is to not play ( buy ) many games. Unfortunately, I haven't time in my life to spend hours in front of the TV playing, but I still love JRPGs. Last year, I spent months on Xenoblade Chronicles and a few years ago, I spent months on Persona 5. Sure, I'll try a game out here and there on Game Pass, but unless it's a JRPG, I usually won't finish it. Even though I'll spend months on a game, I don't think it's hurting my enjoyment. To each their own I guess.

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Justin258

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Five hundred hours is an absurd amount of time to ask out of players. I think that if your single player game clocks in at over 50 hours, you should seriously take a look at the stuff you've put in there and see if it justifies its length or if there's anything you can do to tighten that up. As has been pointed out, Dying Light 2 doesn't actually take five hundred hours to beat.

That said...

I don't have a wife or children, but I do have a full-time job and a house so my time is less limited these days than it was a decade ago, when I was in college. What I've come to realize is that as you get older and get more responsibilities, your gaming habits fall one of two ways - either you are more interested in playing a lot of smaller, simpler titles or you want to play a handful of longer, more complex titles. For me, it's usually the latter. I do enjoy some shorter, simpler games, yes, but you can't get much mechanical depth out of something that takes six hours to beat. I get more satisfaction out of having a good understanding of a game than I do playing something once and then never touching it again.

In any case, I think it's healthy for everyone to realize that once you have some responsibilities, you no longer have time to do everything you want to do. You have to figure out how to pick and choose what you want and what you're going to let go, and that includes video games.

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csl316

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No, long games can lose any sense of pacing. Last of Us 1 vs. 2 demonstrates this pretty well.

I keep hoping that Game Pass keeps development from filling out full price "value," and brings the focus back to non-bloated games. I always felt like a game over 20 hours was reserved for an RPG, so it's been a pain in the ass to try and keep current on new games nowadays.

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Nodima

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Really depends. If i enjoy a game world, its characters or its gameplay I'm generally game. The Last of Us Part II has been cited a lot in this thread and while I agree from a narrative standpoint that it's a bit bloated, and I do specifically remember fatigue setting in at a certain point, that fatigue was extracted as much from this expectation that I was about to be extremely disappointed in some story beat very shortly, not realizing that I'd experienced that story beat, like, 10 hours ago because I was just good enough at avoiding spoilers to have no idea what was infuriating so many.

I'm pretty good at just dropping games I don't like, so when games are a lot, I tend to appreciate it if I'm into what they're selling. I think the Yakuza series has been a good example. I really loved devouring just about everything in Zero, Kiwami 2 and now 5 Remastered, but found the side stories either too obscured or repetitive in Kiwami 1, 3 and 4 so I just mainlined the stories and called it good. Likewise, while games like Horizon or Ghost of Tsushima could be reasonably accused of having "too much", the basic act of pressing buttons and seeing things happen in those games is so satisfying that I find the breadth of activities and mediocre traversal opportunities to be an offering to spend more time doing a thing I like even if it's not the optimal version of that thing.

The last game I played that I actively considered "too much" was Middle-earth: Shadow of War. While that had a generic sense of satisfaction at every turn, at some point it offered me so many different ways to approach it and have that generic fun that I had to throw up my hands and say "enough!" And even that was after 25 hours...elsewise, I dunno...Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shadow of the Tomb Raider offered far more than necessary, but the "press button, do thing" was satisfying enough in those games, along with the graphical marvels and musical satisfaction, that I put 44 and 39 hours into them respectively.

But I also couldn't, wouldn't ever say I'm swayed by game length. I held off on Mass Effect: Andromeda for years not just because it was so poorly reviewed but because I heard it had a ton of content that wasn't that interesting...then I finally played it and logged 81 fucking hours. So...

I suppose the final caveat should be I work a lucrative-enough-for-me part-time job in the service industry so my hours are all out of whack and I rarely am able to make plans with people outside of shambling into the industry bars after work, while I've had enough relationships flame out of my own accord that I'm pretty content to pursue the single life and have come to really enjoy my time alone on days off, which means a lot of long, all-day gaming sessions while listening to podcasts or music. I have barely any chores or responsibilities outside of showing up to work at my scheduled time, doing my management duties and closing up shop. So volume in a game isn't daunting at all from a time perspective, other than as I'd just said getting worried that a game has so much content and will be just tolerable enough that I consume way too much of it for no obviously beneficial reason.

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schizogony

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These days? You can streamline to the end, or you can take fifty billion hours hours to click a bunch of stuff.

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infantpipoc

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#29  Edited By infantpipoc

No you're not. I put 80 hours into Skyrim a full decade ago and it burnt something inside so much that I found myself unable to finish Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild. Now it does not mean I don't play long games, I put more than 200 hours into Fire Emblem Three Houses and 100 into Hades if my Switch clock was to be believed. But I can feel dread just to think about an "epic" like Starfield.

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SethMode

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@infantpipoc: This is wild and so understandable. I sunk WAY too many hours into Skyrim that I felt were unsubstantiated in the long run, but I still loved Witcher 3 and BOTW. Read Dead Redemption 2 though I think is that game that "broke" me...at least as far as open world stuff is concerned. I liked Fenix Rising enough in concept but I definitely reached a point in that where I felt like I was ready to scream "JUST BE OVER" at the screen.

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sombre

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When you're in your teenage years/early twenties and have no responsibilities, long games are fine

Now that I'm in my thirties with a real life outside of games, if a game is longer than about 12 hours, I just don't play it. And even that'll take me two weeks

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wardcleaver

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Yes, you are crazy. Seek help.

Just kidding, of course. I think FinalDasa expressed my sentiment. It really depends on where you are at in life. Also, I think some people only play 1-2 games per year, and want something that they can sink hours into.

I know people who only play Elder Scrolls games and have sunk close to 400 hours into just one of those games across multiple playthroughs.

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mach_go_go_go

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God no.

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PurpleShyGuy

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@nodima: That idea of playing a game just because there's content left to do really does resonate with me. One game that springs to mind is Metal Gear Solid 5, which my opinion of got worse the more I played of it. After I'd finished all of the side missions in the game, I had to ask myself if I actually enjoyed doing so. If I had just stopped at the end of the main story, I would likely have had a better time.

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Shindig

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When I look at my backlog, the longer games get pushed to the side. There's going to come a time where I'll have nothing but RPGs left. Even with the RPGs I do tackle, I take the option of using emulators, if possible. Anything to speed the process up.

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glots

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I don't automatically dismiss a game if I hear it's over 30 hours in length, because I still enjoy playing long games if they really click with me (even if I wouldn't have minded some content being cut of the already mentioned RDR2 and TLOU 2), but I definitely can't be bothered with games where the content around the story is mindnumbingly boring and repetitive anymore. Mafia 3 is maybe the best recent-ish example for me, where the story *barely* got me to suffer through the whole "capture this area and then do it again and again and again" gameplay the latter half of that game was filled with.

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Junkerman

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@purpleshyguy: I dont think its crazy at all. As a married dude during COVID with 2 kids my time is at a premium and being not being able to finish a game, or never being able to try a different game because I only get 0-14 hours a week to play on games is pretty daunting.

I also find it ends up coloring my experience to the negative if a game gets boring before I get close to finishing it.

Seems kind of weird, maybe its just me - but if I had fun for the first 20 hours and then still have 80 to go I tend to look back on that game with a lot more negativity then a game I maybe had lower highs with, but was ultimately able to finish it in a timely manner.

The big thing with these long games is that they're generally just repetitive boring games. Thats not our fault as gamers.

So often these days I often find myself lamenting if my glory days with games are behind me because I'm not having fun - but then I encounter a truly good game that I ~do~ sink a bunch of time into. And when I look into why this game was so much more fun than that game I generally come to the same conclusion. The gameplay loop doesnt wear thin before its ultimate conclusion.

Mileage may vary obviously based on personal preference.

Personally I come to games for the interactive narrative, or at least the illusion. I wont sit here and try to sell someone on telltale games being some genius miracle of player agency and narrative - and say what you will about the gameplay itself, but when the credits role after a few short hours I dont have nearly as much 'dead air' as say Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

Most of the 'gaming' I do these days is just interactive novels on Steam, hit or miss but the ones that are good are actually quite good.

It makes me wish there was a Persona 5 without the JRPG combat. I think I'd be all for a 100 hour stretching epic story if the ratio of gameplay to narrative was better laid out. I dont know who wants to spend hours and hours fighting the same 3-4 variations of monster squads just to have to do it again and again until the TV burns out.

If someone were to say to me this new Mass Effect is a hundred hours long - I'd be pumped if it was a hundred hours of high octane space adventure and narrative and cutscenes and Garrus. But if 85 of those hours is scanning for minerals and collecting dog tags and asari matriarch writing I would argue you have a 15 hour game on your hands.

TLDR; Brevity.

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epgpx

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No, you're not alone. I like short games too. When I was younger, I would have enjoyed the longer game but now that I'm old I prefer shorter games and have the satisfaction of beating it quicker and move on to the next one.

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Undeadpool

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Ah, the old "were JRPGs actually long in the 16-bit/32-bit era, or just padded to fuck with needless grinding and hurdles?" question. If you don't ask it, your tastes aren't evolving.

Eventually, if your life follows a typical arc, you'll have more time than money in your adolescence, so games boasting of incredible playability and replayability are at an incredible premium, because regardless of what you get, you spent all your quiblets, space bucks, or quaatlus (whatever you kids use for currency these days) for the month on it, so it BETTER last.

But eventually you start working, start earning your own money, and you find yourself in the position of having more money than time and regardless of how much you have, you can't really "wait however many hours for a game to really get good."

I remember that dawning on me with Final Fantasy XIII, which people said you "just had to get through the 30 hour tutorial/intro, and when the game opened up it got REALLY good," and...I dunno, something about playing an entire game length of content before getting to "the good part" didn't appeal anymore.

It's one reason games like The Witcher 3 stand out so much: there's an absolute metric fuckton to do, but the game doesn't take its time getting "good," it ebbs and flows with some heavy story content, and optional, lighter side stuff. Ditto the Yakuza games, though at a very different pace and more extreme tonal shifts.

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styx971

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#42  Edited By styx971

@purpleshyguy: i don't think your crazy for it . i used to love long games , the longer the better .....but that was before everything was so long . i used to lean towards rpgs and open world games but these days i just don't love them like when i was younger . if i was still working i would think its cause i got older and had a more limited time due to working , but i've been unemployed for the majority of this stupid pandemic with nothing but time on my hands, i expected to catch up on my rpg backlog but most of the time i can't bring myself to want to , and the times i do i often jump off of them after a bit. i really think it depends on the game tho , after the 40hr mark in AC:valhalla i was annoyed and ready for it to be over which took me another 60 hours , but yakuza 7 took me about 80 hours and i didn't mind at all , and lost judgement took me around 60 ( tho i didn't do everything). i also started factory town earlier this month n beat all 8 campaigns within about 13 days with 60 hours on my steam counter ( podcasts to catch up on so perfect choice!) ..considering all this i feel like its not the length of a game but the game itself. even still tho i find myself also dreading longer games half the time and actively look on HLTB to see how long it'll take and if i even want to start it , most of the time i've been choosing smalling things all the while games like P5 FE:3H and DQ11 sit on my backlog for years ..

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Ginormous76

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@purpleshyguy: Nah. These days, if I see a game where HLTB says it is 10 hours, I'm more likely to try it. Heck, if a game says 5 hours or less (and is not a fully priced game), I'm really willing to try it. I enjoy variety, and I enjoy finishing games. These days, even a 20 hour game sounds too long (Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy was a HUGE exception, it was only about 1 hour too long). Now, if it's an RPG and will only take about 20 hours, I'm more likely to be ok with that, because that's a short RPG. I still love RPGs, but I don't have the time I did when I was 10 to play them all the time.

Now, I have a decent amount of disposable income. For someone who doesn't, being able to play one game for 100 hours is a huge plus. However, if someone is in the position to have a console, but not a lot of disposable income, they should get an Xbox & game pass. Heck, you don't even need a console to play Game Pass. You can do it on your smart phone or tablet. Even if you pay the full monthly price of GP, you get SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much game time. If GP existed when I was a kid, that's all I would have ever played.

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monkeyking1969

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There is no right or wrong, just what you like. If you don't want a long game than cool. I like some games short, and some I can tolorate if they are long...I just don't have the time I used to have for them.

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TaunT

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No, that's fine. If you don't like it then you don't like it. For me it's not that big of a deal, it just means I am less likely to finish the main story. I might still come away saying I like the game, it's just that I like the first 20 hours of it.

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#47  Edited By Ravey

100-500 hours to complete when a lot of it might not be very fun is kind of ridiculous.

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shinofkod

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Honestly - it all depends on the game. I've certainly had more than a few games I've invested that amount of time into, but very rarely would I go into a game intending to invest that amount of time.

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Humanity

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Honestly - it all depends on the game. I've certainly had more than a few games I've invested that amount of time into, but very rarely would I go into a game intending to invest that amount of time.

Yup. Some games are so good I don't mind playing for dozens and dozens of hours. Some games I've played that were 4hrs long and I couldn't imagine them being any longer. The problem exists when a game that has no business being long is made so artificially.

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takashichea

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#50  Edited By takashichea

I actually wanted Persona 5 to be a longer game because I felt it was too rushed at the end when we gained new party members or lose them - we didn't have enough time to give them depth and such especially when they are grieving. Because of how Persona 5 is entrenched with 12 month calendar, you couldn't do much.

Another example - Three Houses - one of the Houses was awfully shorter than the other houses. That was a disservice for fans who like that House.

I actually don't mind long games as long as the story and characters can still add on despite gameplay can be a chore. Once a game finishes its story, that is it. A lot of newer games felt unfinished for me in their story.

I have no idea how I spent so much time on old Pokemon games despite those games not having long stories. I was just trying to collect all the Pokemon and raise them up to lvl 100 when I was a kid with ample free time.

Now as an adult, I don't have the luxury of time to enjoy games. For some reason, I became a trophy hunter for the PS games. Once I finished it, I moved on.