Why I Rarely Complete Long Games

[shwisha]

One of many reasons why I like retro games is due to the fact that you can beat many of them in an afternoon. I'm not sure when it happened but apparently if a game isn't 20 hours long "everyone" gets all upset. I on the other hand much rather have an awesome <5 hours experience and be done with it.

Seriously, a 20 hour game is like someone telling you there's this awesome movie in the theaters but it's 5 parts which are 4 hours each. Would you really go see that/those movies... and if you did would you finish it? I would bet you'd more often than most go see the first 1 or 2 and stop there... that's what it's like with me and most long games.

I love games and there are even games I think are amazing that I haven't finished due to this problem (Half Life 2). I start them, I play them, I play some more but eventually my interest moves on to something else... I think it's even hard now days when there are just so many video games on so many platforms that are awesome. How can I be expected to finish them all?

I feel alone but doubt it when I think I haven't finished 90% of the games I've played... even that number is generous.

[samsonlonghair]

I'm with you, Shwisha.

This has a lot to do with the genres of games I play too. I avoid RPGs partly because they are too long. I prefer a nice platformer, beat 'em up, shoot 'em up, racing game, or arcade game.

[noiseredux]

on the flip of your movie analogy, there are people that "binge watch" entire seasons of shows in a week or two.

I have no preference for long game or short game. I just want a game I enjoy.

[Exhuminator]

In general I prefer games that don't waste my time. I don't care how long or short they are, as long as they are well designed. I mean, I'm okay with a 100 hour long JRPG, if the pacing, content, and fun factor stay consistently engaging. But I can get upset with a 10 hour JRPG if there are obvious artificial contrivances put in place to bloat game completion time.

That said, I'll admit, if I'm looking for a game I can beat in a day, I'll typically trawl the 8 and 16 bit waters for that.

[ElkinFencer10]

In general I prefer games that don't waste my time. I don't care how long or short they are, as long as they are well designed.

This is how I feel. I normally don't do RPGs often (unless I'm on a serious RPG kick like I am now) because I consider most grinding (at least if I have to spent more than an hour MAX grinding between dungeons) to be a waste of my time. Killing dozens of identical mobs just to be on par with enemies in the next area is not good game design; it's a lazy way of making a game longer just for the sake of making it look like more bang for your buck. If an RPG is really great, though, I'll sink as much time as I need into it. I spent just over 60 hours on Xenoblade Chronicles, and all I did was the main quest. I spent about 80 hours on Xenoblade Chronicles X, and there's still LOADS of side stuff to do. I spent almost 100 hours on Fallout 4, and...well...it's Fallout. =P In none of those games, though, did I feel like I was wasting my time. What I was doing was always fun and meaningful. Take some RPGs - even EXTREMELY well received and respected ones like Final Fantasy III and Phantasy Star II - however, and I feel like the grinding was just tedious and a waste of time. The games might otherwise have been fantastic, but the grinding was a completely waste of my time. Some games make grinding painless - Moe Chronicle and Hyperdimension Neptunia, for example - but if you asked me why I don't mind grinding in those games, I couldn't tell you.

[winds]

On the top of my list for what I usually play a game for these days, is story. I find the sweet spot for a well told and paced story is 10 to 15 hours. With that said I do enjoy both longer and shorter games. As i've aged though, I do get a little put off when learning a game is 100+ hours. While I wish I had the time to enjoy and immerse myself in such a long game, my free hours are just too few and far between to truly get into it.

[BoneSnapDeez]

My favorite genre is RPGs but I tend to gravitate to those that strive for brevity.

I think it's worth noting that many retro RPGs - especially action RPGs - would now be considered "short" by today's standards. Games like Ys, Faxanadu, and Lagoon take less time to complete than, say, Assassin's Creed, God of War, or Halo.

I typically can't handle the long modern games of today. I simply don't have enough hours in the day. Something like Persona 4: Golden would take me 6-8 weeks to complete, which is just too much time to dedicate to one single gaming experience. Also, I find that many long games are complacent in their design, eventually falling victim to cut-and-paste padding in an attempt to create something "epic."

[isiolia]

One of many reasons why I like retro games is due to the fact that you can beat many of them in an afternoon. I'm not sure when it happened but apparently if a game isn't 20 hours long "everyone" gets all upset. I on the other hand much rather have an awesome <5 hours experience and be done with it.

I think with regard to modern games, it often comes down to pricing (and even then, quite a lot of them come in at the 10-15 hour mark). There are plenty of highly lauded, more recent games that are fairly short (incidentally, Kotaku even had a post about that this morning).

The main angle to consider, I think, is how much repetition a game is designed for. Plenty of older games may only be 30-60 minutes long if (and it can be a big if) you can avoid getting a game over and being forced to restart.
It might take putting tens of hours into them before you can actually do that. Or the point might be to play for score, meaning shooting for a 1CC, etc.

Seriously, a 20 hour game is like someone telling you there's this awesome movie in the theaters but it's 5 parts which are 4 hours each. Would you really go see that/those movies... and if you did would you finish it? I would bet you'd more often than most go see the first 1 or 2 and stop there... that's what it's like with me and most long games.

If the alternative is watching the first 5, then 10, then 15 minutes of a single movie over and over and over again until you can recreate every scene from memory...

Most of those 20 hour type games are a lot more accessible. If there's a focus on length, it's because there's less and less of a question of if players can beat the game, but simply how much game there is to experience. Might still be paced badly or overly padded, but developers have less reason to force players to familiarize themselves with every last pixel.

Personally, I find starting back at level 1 every time to be a lot more discouraging than knowing there's 20 hours of game. That isn't fun for me. I want to pick back up where I left off. Past that, it's a lot more about how well the game is done.

That said, seeing 60, 80, 100+ hour playtimes for some games does become a turnoff. It's less that I won't ever play something that much...just that it's a lot to commit to going in.

[SonicTheHedgehog]

This is how I feel. I normally don't do RPGs often (unless I'm on a serious RPG kick like I am now) because I consider most grinding (at least if I have to spent more than an hour MAX grinding between dungeons) to be a waste of my time. Killing dozens of identical mobs just to be on par with enemies in the next area is not good game design; it's a lazy way of making a game longer just for the sake of making it look like more bang for your buck. ... In none of those games, though, did I feel like I was wasting my time. What I was doing was always fun and meaningful. Take some RPGs - even EXTREMELY well received and respected ones like Final Fantasy III and Phantasy Star II - however, and I feel like the grinding was just tedious and a waste of time. The games might otherwise have been fantastic, but the grinding was a completely waste of my time.

This is dead-on! I totally agree with you.

I go in waves with RPGs. Right now -- like you -- I'm really hooked on them, so I've been playing through a lot of them. Other times though, they're just not appealing at all. And the only reason I ever find an RPG unappealing is because of the time sink.

It's funny that you mention Phantasy Star II, because I'm playing that right now. And yes, it's grindy as hell. (The first game is even worse when it comes to grinding.) I finally said "fuck it" one day and decided I'm okay with using throttling/fast-forwarding on emulators in RPGs. I refuse to use use save states (at least in any exploitable manner), but fast-forwarding just feels like I'm trimming the fat and removing grinding from the game entirely. It makes some of these old games so much more bearable!

I used to feel really guilty about it, but I finally came to peace with it. There's only so much time I have for gaming. I don't want to waste it mindlessly grinding.

[SonicTheHedgehog]

I'm not sure when it happened but apparently if a game isn't 20 hours long "everyone" gets all upset. I on the other hand much rather have an awesome <5 hours experience and be done with it.

I agree, I've noticed this too. Lots of people complain about short game lengths; it seems to be a particular point of contention with campaign mode of FPS games. That I sort of understand, because it does seem like annual versions of FPS games are just mindlessly churned out anymore.

Here's what I find humorous though: generally speaking, retro games were short as hell! I played through Ren and Stimpy on Genesis the other day and it lasted me 20 minutes. TWENTY. I beat the game in 20 minutes. To think my parents dropped $50-60 on me back in the day!

What strikes me about playing through old games is how short they usually are. Very frequently, they don't have much content. What they do have is difficulty, and the difficulty makes that content last a long time. It's almost a form of artificially adding content to a game.

Like, say a level, if played perfectly, takes 2 minutes to complete. Well, it might take you 30 tries to beat that level. There are only 2 minutes of content, but you got 60 minutes of playtime out of it. Extrapolate that out for the number of levels a game has (and factor in running out of lives/continues), and a really short game can last a really long time.