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[JWK5]

Long games, which is unrealistic because I usually only have the time for short games. I enjoy collecting a library of games I'll probably never get around to finishing.

[2mass]

Short for action games, like first person shooters and racing games. And long for strategy games. Yea, I think that sums it up.

[Gamedragon]

I like the idea of playing a long game but I rarely actually get around to finishing them. So instead I find that I generally play proc-gen games.

[Superb Joe]

[in full mormon hypervirgin regalia] Hello sir, I'm here to talk to you about Transformers: DEvastation

[JWK5]

Preach on, brother Joe!

[readyplaygames]

I think it's more about quality than quantity. The Metroid Prime games can be completed pretty quickly, for instance, yet I will place them in my favorites list every time.

There's other games that are "long" but have stretches of boring gameplay or obvious padding.

And what about sports games? How "long" are they? It really depends on the genre.

[starsrift]

Dunno. Where do replayable games like 4x's and the like fit in? I like "short", replayable games. But I also really dig some RPG's and can sink in dozens of hours.

[Türbo Bröther]

Something I can spend a handful of hours beating but knock on the head in thirty minutes if I can get serious enough.

[Raptor85]

depends on the game, in general i prefer longer games where i wont get to the point of "seen everything there is to see, bored now" that quickly but if it's all repetition without variation or filler i tend to just stop playing and play something else.

[MrBones]

I don't think length is necessarily as important as other factors of the game. Sure, a game may be 30 hours and I can appreciate that, but if it's just a slog or full of filler than there's no reason to play it over a 5-6 hour game that's bursting with personality. Likewise, price can play a part as well. A 10 hour game for $5 is a lot more appealing than a 5 hour game for $10.

[Razz]

I'm lucky to have enough free time to enjoy both short & long games, that being said I find myself losing interest in long games. I think there's something intrinsically more interesting about a game that's short & has a lot of replay-ability (like arcade games), probably because less content means more focus can be put into what matters. although I also grew up on ~i n d i e g a m e s~ which are short simply because the developer doesn't have enough time/money/skill to develop a long game.

but w/e I still play games like dark souls & zelda so maybe it's just good games

[simongregs]

depends on the game, in general i prefer longer games where i wont get to the point of "seen everything there is to see, bored now" that quickly but if it's all repetition without variation or filler i tend to just stop playing and play something else.

Yep, that's the spirit.

[0stasis]

I think the length really doesn't matter. I know time is valuable to people (tell me about it, I either do creative work, or personal projects) but a good game is a game you'll invest time in. Rather it's a few hours, short burts or monster games that take 100s of hours. To me, playing a game is an experience, rather it's alone time on a weekend, or going over to a friends house or play throughs together (I use to do that when I was kid) and if the experience is rewarding, I'll find the time to play it. Because I am invested in the game, this is a game I would play for hours type of deal.

That being said, playing a monstrous game that takes 100hrs or more would be my thing if it's amazing. Back then, I was all about the final fantasy games that took 100hrs. It was long but I love playing them.

Today there's a lot games to play and invest, which makes me really picky. So I end up playing a lot of either short bursts like competitive or games that take around 8-10hrs. And they're great! 100hrs in a game that I play over and over is just as much as an experience as a few hours a day in a long game that took 100 or more.

[s0]

yeah, as long as you really want to play a game, you can make time for it. i mean, lots of people (inlcuding me) watch tv series which are often as time consuming as long singleplayer games, in terms of hours spent. and yet i've never heard anyone say "i don't have the time to watch breaking bad" or sth.

imo theres this weird cultural notion about videogames that you have to somehow binge play them for hours on end when it's totally viable for 90% of videogams to just play an hour a day, the same way you would watch a series on tv.

ofc when games require significant skill as well as time investment it's a different story.

[s0]

Dunno. Where do replayable games like 4x's and the like fit in? I like "short", replayable games.

yeah, that's the kind of games i like. open-ended games you can just dip in and out of at will are also great.

[Superb Joe]

Dunno. Where do replayable games like 4x's and the like fit in? I like "short", replayable games.

yeah, that's the kind of games i like. open-ended games you can just dip in and out of at will are also great.

i agree, Transformers: Devastation is good

[Alec S.]

I definitely prefer shorter games.  (I actually wrote a blog post about it a while back).

Basically, I want to be able to play games like I watch movies or read books: I want to be able to pick something up, get a fulfilling, or at least complete, experience, and be able to move on to the next thing.

I think the expectation for games to be super-long is holding games back to a certain degree.  For one, people are less likely to try new and different games if A) they're a big time investment and B) they've already got a big ongoing time-investment.  In addition to that, it means it's harder to be well-versed in games.  Like, if you want to be a film-buff, you can pretty easily watch a film a day or even just every other day, and by the end of the year, you've got a pretty good basis.  If you spent the same time playing games, if they're long games, you might have played 5 games by the end of the year.


Plus, for a lot of games, I'd want to replay them and try different things if it weren't for the fact that it's such a time investment.  

I would play so many more RPGs if they were all 10 hours long.

[starsrift]

imo theres this weird cultural notion about videogames that you have to somehow binge play them for hours on end when it's totally viable for 90% of videogams to just play an hour a day, the same way you would watch a series on tv.

IMO the distribution services amped this up when they started to display time spent on a game. Steam does it, IIRC XBox does it? and some games do it individually by savefile.

[Superb Joe]

imo theres this weird cultural notion about videogames that you have to somehow binge play them for hours on end when it's totally viable for 90% of videogams to just play an hour a day, the same way you would watch a series on tv.

it's because "gamers" take on two distinct phenotypes, which are functionally identical. 1: children, who play with toys (video games). who have lots of time, because they are children. and b) extremely, severely unemployed adults who are, for all intents and purposes, children of varying degrees of obesity and hairiness, who maintain an unbelievable amount of free time such that they have room in their otherwise barren lives for multiple japanese rpgs, each of which takes over 100 hours of mind numbing menu selection puncuated by improbable hair styles and yelling, like a london fashion show version of a computer course for the elderly.

[Superb Joe]

all of this brings us back to the subject of Tranfsormers: Devastation, which is the only game i have played since 2012. and by god, i completed it in the sole free weekend i had.