Poll - did you want your games to last longer?

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How long do you want your $60 game play for?

  • Thousands of hours, I am still playing "your favorite game here" even today.

  • Hundreds of hours so I get my moneys worth.

  • A little less than a Hundred hours more or less.

  • Much less than a Hundred hours. More than that is just grinding.

  • A few weekends maybe. I have other games I want to get to as well.


Results are only viewable after voting.
Hmm. I want a game to last as long as the creative vision of the creators extends and I think the relentless pressure from gamers for games to last hundreds of hours for no obvious reason has been directly responsible for the cookie cutter approach taken to huge games by outfits like Ubisoft, endless filler content, AND the well-documented problems in the industry of rather insane working conditions.
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Well, I would say the majority of games during the 80s and 90s were not that long. Usually, you can complete most of these games in a couple of hours.

From where I stand it‘s a more recent trend that a lot of players seem to think that games needs to be 40-100 hours or longer. During the 80s no one complained about stuff like that. Besides, at least the bigger releases on PC, Genesis, SNES were pretty expensive, at least in Europe. In general, games are still more affordable compared to the old days. Plus, you never have to wait long for a sale these days.

For me personally, a game should be as long as it needs to be to deliver the story. If it‘s only 10-20 hours long… so be it.
Well I don't know... If you played Monkey Island 2 on Amiga your evening would have become dawn by the time you'd stopped swapping floppy disks to load the cut scenes. :-D
 
As many people have already said above; it does depend. There are many games, which clock in at fairly short runtimes but pack a great story that you're glued to for the duration. It's not always necessary for the game to be long.

That said I do like a lengthy game. However it needs to be long because it's packed with content, because it makes me want to make the choice to explore, to experiment. Not long because it forces you to grind and then has many hours on the clock but very few of them enjoyed.
 
What I'm getting at is that it's not a black or white answer - there's no right answer for this - there are many factors that contribute to the length of time that I spent engaging with said games.

This is exactly my stance.

I can't even answer the poll because of this. I've played 8 hours games that were just plain great and 100+ hours games that I couldn't bring myself to finish and vice versa.

It's all about the game's content and how you manage to keep it fresh throughout. If your amazing story can be told in 8 hours, stretching it to 30 won't feel amazing. You can have innovative, engaging and never before seen mechanics but even they will grow stale over a 100 hours if there is no sense of progression throughout all of it and so on.

It's an impossible poll to answer with it's current choices as far as I'm concerned.
 
Based on the story driven aspect cdpr seems towant to stick to

I don't see this being anywhere close to another skyrim unless they change things
 
To me, one of the ways I look at it is that I need 1 hour per £1/$1 paid to feel like I've got my moneys worth. So I can say I got my moneys worth out of CP77, but it is not a game that makes me want to go back and keep playing it, so I wouldn't say that I'm satisfied with it either.

Some of my most played games I've only ever spent a few pounds/dollars on, but they keep drawing me back in. This game just didn't :shrug:
 
I don't know how to vote, because the answer completely depends on the type of game for me. A hack and slash dungeon crawler or loot shooter would lose me by about the 20 hour mark. It needs to be very entertaining for a dozen hours or so. A game that I can treat as a fantasy life simulator with lots of extensibility through mods, like Skyrim, would be disappointing if it bores me before a couple of hundred hours. For the most part, the only games that I purchase with the expectation of sinking a hundred or more hours in, are strategy games and open ended simulation games. For anything else, I've usually lost any interest by the 50 hour mark.
 
I have other a thousand hours in Skyrim, and about 800 hours in Fallout 4. I even have over 500 in Deus Ex MD. I want games that are both long and are fun to replay. I just don't feel that Cyberpunk is that type of game, hoping for great expansions that make me feel that way.
 
Hmm. I want a game

Well I don't know... If you played Monkey Island 2 on Amiga your evening would have become dawn by the time you'd stopped swapping floppy disks to load the cut scenes. :-D

True, or Indy 4 on Amiga, where you had to swap a few disc while Indy was going a few steps from A to B. And if you couldn’t find a certain disc it would take even longer 😅. But fortunately these ports were rather special cases and not the rule :)
 
I suppose you could look at it in terms of how much reward do you get from other types of entertainment at that price. Um.. so for example a pint in a pub costs me say £4.50, so £60 is about 13 pints...

So a couple of evenings is about right :beer:

I know what kind of bullshit is that, 4.50 for a Carlsberg and going up to 5.20 for Estrella in my local pub as well (I do night shifts in the bloody place too) it's embarrassing...
 

"POLL - DID YOU WANT YOUR GAMES TO LAST LONGER?"

"How long do you want your $60 game play for?"

Depends on the game.

I prefer RPGs, and those most times take a couple of days to complete.
Also like adventure and action games, and those most times can be completed in a matter of hours.
Used to play fighting games, and most times was done playing within 30 minutes.
And all of them were bought for €60, ($72).

Take RE5 and RE2R. 2 games that were €60, same brand, same developer, same way of playing. Am never a speed-runner. Playing normally, I need 2.5 hours to complete one story playthrough of RE2R, whereas 10 hours to complete the story playthrough of RE5.

Then take Cyberpunk 2077. Pre-purchased for €60. One playthrough consists out of completing all main jobs, side jobs and gigs, maybe 1 or 2 hustles, and can last to over a week, playing between some 3 - 12 hours per day.

The amount of playtime offered by Cyberpunk for €60, despite not knowing exactly how much that is, I find perfectly right. That's probably because the game never feels like (endless) grinding, or being repetitive. Not in the least, actually.
I do find that all side jobs and gigs should be required to progress and complete the main story, and not optional. But that's me.

RE5 offered loads of fun. Its story was very entertaining. Was the first RE with a player controlled or AI partner. Played it lots a times, and remains my all time favorite RE game. So for that game, €60 was well spend.

Not so for RE2R which was not much of a remake. Lots of content, ideas and cutscenes of the original were left out, and the game is just too short. Definitely not worth €60. And RE3R...

So, to me RPGs are correctly priced, whereas fighting games and action games are horrendously overpriced.
I'd say, 30 - 50 playing hours for €60, is well spend.

Voted: "Much less than a Hundred hours. More than that is just grinding."
 
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Most of my favorite games are on the longer side, with most spanning over 100 hours to complete fully and some of them are basically infinite experiences if I want them to be (for example: Borderlands 2). But honestly: Game length is a very relative thing. A game can be 2 hours long, but those 2 hours are among the best you ever had. And that can very well be worth it. And the Witcher 3, as great as it is, had some story parts that felt as if they dragged a bit. At least for me. So you could have trimmed it down by 10 hours, probably more and the story alone would still have been very much worth the full asking price.

I don't want or need any game to be any specific length, I don't need quantity hours as much as quality hours. And if a game can do both and have me enjoy it for dozens or even hundrets of hours, that is just all the better, but if a game can't then it shouldn't force it and play by its strengths, be that for 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 or 500 hours.

But that is a problem of modern triple A games, they often want to be long for the sake of being long, with some of the worst offenders being the modern AC games. They aren't long because the story demands it or because they have the depth to be fun for that long. They are long for the sake of being long, often trying to waste your time just to have you spend money on time savers. And sorry to be harsh, but that is just bullshit and a tradition that needs to die.
 
It depends of the game. A shooter is kind of ok at 6h, an action game around 25h, a rpg should have around 100h, etc.
 
It varies a bit for me depending on the type of game. AAA single-player rpgs of the sort that I most enjoy? 100-200 hours, easy. There are exceptions, of course. I couldn't begin to assess the total hours I've probably spent playing and modding and playing again games like Skyrim and a couple of the Fallouts. Other sorts of games, I have fewer expectations and just play them for however long it takes to go through the entire thing. I'm not a speedrunner, never seen the point of blitzing through and missing most of the side content of anything, so my playtime expectations are somewhat short of completionist most of the time.
 
I remember games in the 80s that often would last 300 hours or more like Ninja Gaiden or Super Mario Bros.

However some people claim they now want LESS time with their games? Somehow I find that hard to believe especially at $60 a game where games in the 80s were $20.

I mean if you are play a mobile game I can understand that. But that is just another example of why I think mobile games were not much help for traditional PC games.
I feel like I can't truly answer this.

Let me clarify by listing my top played games (approximately)
- Starcraft II (all episodes plus comptitive play)
thousands and thousands of hours in online matches, playing the campaign, making my own missions and models. Infact, the full lifespan of me working/playing with the game started during the public beta of Wings of Liberty (2010), and I still make my own stuff to this day. So there's a lifespan here of 12 years
total costs: approximately $250 / $300 for 3 games, dlc and cosmetic stuff usable ingame.

- World of Tanks
Essentially a free to play game, current battlecount: 16362 (not counting special events) --> closing in on the 2000 hour mark all in all.

Then comes a huge gap.

- Cyberpunk 2077: approximately 400/500 hours I think
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: close to 350 hours.

But, and that is the most important part, these games can't be properly compared.
 
I don't care how long the games goes, I want a worthwhile experience. If the developer has enough material to fill 100 hours, fine. If not, I rather have a shorter, condensed game with a great story then endless fetch quests.

Modern Warfare 2 single player was only 6 hours or so, I used to play this on one day. But the story was so extremely good and dense that I never felt betrayed.
 
Depends entirely on the game... But then I don't ever pay $60 for games (even this one was only £35 pre-order, for me). If I was a console owner and was forced to spend stupid money on games every time I bought a new one, I'd probably hardly buy games. Thankfully, I own a PC and I buy games as cheap as £2 and as much as £40 or so and the longevity I expect is always dependent on the type of game I'm buying. I've finished some amazing games after only a few hours and I was very happy with those.

Portal and Portal 2 combined was fewer than 50 hours total between the two. Two of the best games I've ever played.

This game, I sank 80 hours into each play through roughly (up to four now) and I was very satisfied after my first play. The length of time one plays a game for isn't, in my opinion, nearly the most important metric when measuring value. MMO games can sink thousands of hours and ultimately be souless and empty but they're designed in a way that necesitates hundreds of hours dedication, with hooks designed to keep you addicted. They're not necessarily more worth the money.
 
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If I was a console owner and was forced to spend stupid money on games every time I bought a new one, I'd probably hardly buy games.
What I have always disliked about games often is than an older game never worked on a newer console.
I still have a game for PS2 and several for PS3, but they are now basically useless, eventhough I'd like to play Dead Space once again. (as an example)
Other than that I never had this urge to get every title that was new or advertized largely. I always just picked something very now and then. But I do the same for PC.
The games I play on PC (other than Cyberpunk) are over 10 years old.
 
It's always easy to be "seduced" by a really long game to be honest, especially in terms of RPGs. But for me The Witcher 3 felt too long and I abandoned my first playthrough somewhere after the return to Kaer Morhen. It just couldn't keep my interest. I did replay and finish it though (along with the DLCs that had come out).

Cyberpunk 2077 felt pretty good to me length-wise.

But all in all, I just want a good experience. And hopefully one I can return to later on and find new things.
 
My personal opinion is $1 for 1 hour
So if I pay $80.00 for a game and get 20 hours game play
I will not pay $80 to that company again
I will wait for the next game to be $20.00 on Steam or GOG

CDPR always delivers more then I expected in this regard and its one of the main reasons why I still pre order their games

Contrary I have a hard rule for EA games that I will not pay more then $10.00 for their games (and that must be the GotY version where all DLC is included in $10.00 price)
This is because EA got greedy and intentionally tried to nickle and dime its player base with 30 minute DLCs and garbage like that.
Now they are on a $10.00 list for me

But over all my Rule of Thumb is 1 hour content for $1.00
If a developer meets that,
im happy value wise.

One of my favorite games of all time actually drove me crazy over this topic.
Jade Empire
I loved that game
the story, the visuals, the characters
for the entire 23 hours it took to complete start to finish :(
Paid $60.00 for the game at release and took 23 hours to complete
Ultimately I was so disappointed and left unsatisfied with the experience
 
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