How long should a game be?

[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.