How long should a game be?

[Wolf Kanno]

Granted, this varies from genre to genre, but how long do you feel a game should be to do a 90% completion run.

[Dr. Acula]

I like a solid 30-hour game. Any longer and I tend to get bored - which is why it's taking me so damn long to finish Persona 5 Royal.

[Spuuky]

It should be as long as it needs to be, and then it should end.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I'm fine with running the gamut.

I'm satisfied with a 10 hour cinematic action game, a 60 hour open world RPG, and the 5 trillion hour hit MMO Final Fantasy XIV.

More so than games being bloated, I see people wanting shorter games because they just have less time to play them than they used to. Would be interested to see which answer was more common.

[Mr Gashtacular]

i dont mind as long as the narrative and other enjoyment factors is sustained throughout.

although, one good thing about the openworld with tons of optional content is you can usually skip what you want, if you want. particularly on a repeat playthrough

[Karifean]

It should be as long as it needs to be, and then it should end.

Basically exactly this.

[Quindiana Jones]

I like my 10-30 hour games interspersed with "oh jesus fuck how have i spent 487 hours in this game?!"

[cheesesteak]

For me, it depends on the narrative and gameplay. Neither can overstay their welcome. Designing them both to fit in the ideal time amount is something I do not envy for devs. Price obviously is a factor, also. I don't expect a $60 game to be just 3 hours long. Even 10 hours seems like a problem, but I can accept it.

But as for the idea of narrative and gameplay both fitting perfectly into what feels "right", I can give some examples.

If Edith Finch was 10 hours long, I'd probably have lost interest. 3 hours, max, was perfect for it - and really any walking simulator. If a walking sim starts getting in that 4- or even 10-hour range, it likely shifts into a FP horror game. And even then, some I've played or know are ~10 hrs I just can't imagine having to do that gameplay loop for that long.

Then, some RPG's that overstayed their welcome I think usually for narrative reasons - Fallout 4 (not even counting the side content), Trails in the Sky 1, even Yakuza 7 a bit, as much as I loved it (I put 80+ hours into Yakuza 7 and I absolutely adored and loved the game. Still, at times I wished it ended sooner. But that may have been because I was trying to mix in Hades at that time and wanted to finish it before Cyberpunk 2077 released. So my feelings on its length may have been skewed). I definitely think the "overstay your welcome" seems to apply more to JRPG's than WRPG's.

While some genres like roguelikes/lites are sort of...hard to gauge given their random nature, Curse of the Dead Gods is SO random and punishing, it easily overstayed its welcome for me and took TOO long to finish. But then, there are those roguelikes/lites that give the player TOO much freedom like Deathloop and you see non-speedrunning playthrough times ranging from 10-30 hours, all depending on how the player plays.

I dunno...then I think of games like Get Even being just 7.5 hrs, but feeling like a drag.

But, I'll just finish w/ this. If it's a AAA game (which these days are just FPS, RPG, or Action-Adventure, pretty much, right?), I expect it to be 10+ hrs if it's an FPS, 15+ hrs if it's an Action-Adventure, and 25+ hrs if it's an RPG. If it's an indie game, then it really fluctuates based on genre and price, but in general I'd expect about 10:1 ratio MINIMUM of USD:hours to finish. ...and by "minimum", I mean on the hours side of the ratio. If a $10 game takes less than 1 hour or a $20 game takes less than 2 hours at normal play speed, etc, then it's a bad deal.

[Del Murder]

It should be as long as it needs to be, and then it should end.
Yeah there is no set time limit. I put 100 hours into Xenoblade 2 and did not feel like it was too much. Then I put about 15 hours into Tomb Raider and was also satisfied.

I do like achieving 100% completion runs (as in all collectibles & sidequests) but games need to have the right balance of these.

[krissy]

about 5 feet 12

[Spuuky]

12 what

[Vyk]

Cannot stand games where the narrative takes more than 70 hours. Sure there are games like Skyrim and Dark Souls where I've clocked 300 hours, but that's over multiple characters. I've tried Xenoblade 1 twice, and got burned out about 65 hours in both times. Some games just overstay their welcome. Something can be said for proper pacing, and Xenoblade sure needs that, but on the whole; there's so many games to play that I would like to get on, one game taking dozens upon dozens of hours is just greedy and needless. This is why I cannot stand MMOs and timesink games that are designed to just eat up your time without respect. Like Live Service games. Never ever. 30-60 hours for RPG, 10-20 for adventure game. Those are my ideals. Especially when properly paced

[Del Murder]

I can agree that the story part should not be beyond 30ish hours, and maybe 50 for an epic RPG. Fine if you have over 100 hours of engaging content, quests, upgrades, etc. but t he main story told in one game can drag on if it goes too long.

[WarZidane]

There's really no upper limit for me. If someone out there manages to make a 100 hour long FPS campaign that stays interesting, all the more power to them :p
I loved every minute of the 40 hours I spent on one playthrough of The Last of Us 2 for example, and also every minute of the near-200 hours I put into one playthrough of Trails of Cold Steel 4.

Conversely, I also felt more than satisfied with things like Uncharted 2 and 3's 8 to 10ish hour campaigns and recently, Metroid Dread's 10 hours.

So yeah, as long as the game stays interesting to me, it really doesn't matter. Though I will say I like my RPGs long.

[Del Murder]

One of these days I'm going to try one of those Trails games that you mention every other post, WZ.

[Spuuky]

Trails games are just from the alternate dimension in which everyone still made the exact kinds of game they made in the mid-90s, but with bigger budgets

[Karifean]

Trails games are just from the alternate dimension in which everyone still made the exact kinds of game they made in the mid-90s, but with bigger budgets

Pretty accurate; it's a series that wears on its sleeve that its biggest inspirations are Suikoden and Xenogears and games from that era in general, while adding its own Falcom flavor. But that's giving a lot of people exactly what they're starved for =P

[Spuuky]

Hey I didn't say that was bad, I am a Video Game Boomer so I love mid-90s games

[Vyk]

That's so bizarre, because I did not get that impression from them. The high school rom-com anime tropey archetype shenanigans ruined it for me, and I never felt like anyone was very well fleshed out beyond a stereotype. And I have enough trouble tolerating games littered with stereotypes, it's a whole other bag of problems with teenage high school stuff. I tire of both, and when put together it is almost impossible for me to enjoy. Persona games are one of the only exceptions and I still won't hesitate to rag on them for that. I didn't really get any 90s, Xenogears, or Suikoden vibes from Cold Steel. Though Sky was definitely a 90s throwback with more writing. I can't honestly say it's better writing, but certainly more of it. I wish the combat and pacing were better so it wasn't such a slog. I put about 20 hours into both series and couldn't get over the hang-ups

[Spuuky]

I would not say Xenogears, really. That is kind of a different animal. But it is sure a lot like Breath of Fire games, or Lufia games, or Final Fantasy games of that era, or Suikoden games.

And yeah a lot of the characters are very trope-y. But, uh, so are a lot of 90s JRPG characters...

[Karifean]

Well to elaborate a bit at least, it's not exactly "like" it but I do think it takes inspiration from it. Your mileage may vary but I at least don't think it's *entirely* a coincidence that our protagonist is an amnesiac orphan that occasionally goes berserk and ends up piloting a kind of legendary mech. Also this is going into Saga now but the dynamic between the Noble Alliance, Enforcers, Reinford (Alisa) and Osborne also kiiinda has vibes of the Ormus, Testaments, Vector (Shion) and Yuriev dynamics. It does a fairly good job not making its inspirations dominate it much though I think, it is very much its own thing.

The Suikoden side is more straightforward though, Kiseki/Trails in itself being a series where every (major) entry takes place in a different country with its own political structures and trifles, with some characters and plot threads intersecting. Cold Steel in particular also having you gather up allies from around the world and bringing them into your base of operations. It's not "the same" of course but I think you can get what I'm getting at I hope.

[krissy]

ten minutes

[Loony BoB]

It should be as long as it needs to be, and then it should end.
Yep.

I like 1 hour games, 10 hour games, 100 hour games, 1000 hour games...

[Christmas]

2 decades ago? It should be more than a hundred hours gameplay?

Now? A few hours and endless DLCs that will cost ya. Just look at FF XV when it was first released. :(