How long should videogames be?

You get one hour, five nights a week, to play the latest game you’ve bought. The game should take you X hours to play. Do you care what X is equal to?

For me, the answer is yes, but not in the way you might think. A few years ago, when I had more free time, I didn’t mind long games that could take me 40+ hours to get through. These days though? It’s almost not even an option.

I am mostly talking about singleplayer games here, as multiplayer is a whole different animal. Yes, it can give you a bucket-load of hours to play, but you don’t have to commit to them. There is no end goal to multiplayer; it just keeps going and most matches only take about 10-30 minutes of your time. Play a round, get what you need out of it, and stop. For singleplayer games however, there is a purpose, which takes a time commitment to get through.

So here is the problem; between work, cooking meals, cleaning the house, and spending time with my partner; finding time to commit to games has become incredibly difficult. It is for this reason that I like my games the way I like my liquor, short and neat. OK, in reality I am allergic to alcohol and cannot actually drink liquor, but the point remains the same. Give me a game with a really solid 6-10 hours experience and I am a happy man. One thing I have learnt about myself is I like to consume lots of games rather than get too consumed by a single game.

So, it would seem that as life moves on things tend to switch around. Before, I had plenty of time but little income. Now, I have sacrificed that time to get the income. Hurrah! I can buy pretty much any game I want on a whim but... finding the time to play it is another story entirely. This sucks, because I love role playing games like Mass Effect, The Witcher, etc, but when I think about Skyrim coming out later this year... I know for myself it is just not going to happen.

The next question surrounds our investment into a game vs how much we actually paid for it - again this possibly changes with age, place in life, amount of disposable income. If you’ve paid $120 for a game, do you expect it to be a certain length or do you measure the value based on the quality of the experience? It is the age old quality vs quantity question but for everyone the answer is different and there is no wrong answer. When Portal 2 was released, I heard a lot of complaints that an eight-hour singleplayer experience was too short for a fully priced game.

In cases like that, do we simply ignore the quality of those eight hours? For some, is it really that black and white? Does a certain dollar value have to equal a certain length of time otherwise the game isn’t worth your money? I loved Portal 2 and it was worth every cent I paid. The experience of that campaign was something special and to a level of quality you do not get to see very often. Is that a sign of the times, or simply a reflection of my changing situation; that the idea of spending $120 on a game isn’t a soul crushing concept to my wallet?

Finding the 8 hours to play Portal 2 in one or two sessions, without getting “the look” from my girlfriend... that's my challenge.

Source: [http://www.3news.co.nz/How-long-should-videogames-be/tabid/418/articleID/218631/Default.aspx]