Why I Rarely Complete Long Games

[Ack]

Samson, do you have the same issue with books, long movies, television shows, or other forms of entertainment? Or is this just specific to video games?

It's more of a generalized short attention span. It's just more pronounced in video games, because some folks have the idea that a ten-hour game is "too short" for them. For instance, I have never really sunk my teeth into Deus Ex. You know why? The tutorial takes more than an hour. If I'm not having fun within an hour, why waste my time?

I don't like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies for the same reason: They're too darn long. The fact that every one of these movies gets an "extended cut" on DVD baffles me. A cursory google search indicates that Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movie runs 3h 48m. Who the hell says, "three hours and forty-eight minutes is too short for a movie; I need to buy the extra-long version!" By the way, I really like the Rankin and Bass animated Hobbit movies. You know why? They're not too long.

I had the same problem when I tried to read Lord of the Rings come to think of it. I read the first hundred pages, and they hadn't even left the shire. Seriously. Tolkien wasted a hundred damn pages blabbering on about the habits of hobbits, and the genealogy of hobbits, and the funny words they use, and pipeweed. After a hundred pages the story hadn't even begun, so I put the book down and read a Hemingway book instead.

You know how people talk about "marathoning" a show on Netflix? I think that's nuts. I can maybe stand to watch three or four episodes in one sitting, then I have to change my focus to something else.

How do you find the time to play an eighty-hour game anyway? Are you orbiting a little to close to a black hole where the massive gravity is altering time?

We tend to only play in bits and pieces over time, or we manage to sustain our attention in it for marathon sessions. Perhaps it grabs us and holds our minds, or we work piecemeal. Either way, we keep working until we get through it. Just about everything worthwhile takes some amount of time, after all.

Do you do a lot of work on the Internet? I wonder about your inability to sustain attention after a short period of time. Has it always been like this?

[fastbilly1]

A cursory google search indicates that Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movie runs 3h 48m.

I'd assume that's the extended cut's running time?

Theatrical: 178 min - 2 hour 58 minutes
DVD Extended Edition: 208 min - 3 hours 28 minutes
Bluray Extended Edition: 228 min - 3 hour 48 minutes

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/tec ... tt_dt_spec

LOTR movies are a special case though, they filmed them with the Extended in mind, but had to cut them down for theatrical. Very few movies are made that way.


But back on topic, I fit in long games (over 10 hour campaigns) by the hour here two hours there system, while playing other games. But exceptionally long games (like 30+ campaigns) are rare for me to fit in.

Now I will plug alot of time into a shorter game if it is one that fits my gameplay style - Over the last six months I plugged in 200 hours into Payday 2.