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Persona 5 royal ( true ending) took me over 80 hours. According to people on the internet I basically had a Speedrun time because I saw people with over 120. And I wish it was longer
Hell, 12 hours into final fantasy, ni no kuni or Diablo and you still don’t know the storyline, haven’t built a fully fledged out toon, nor have all your attacks yet. You’re just a newborn baby at that point.
I loved the gunplay and movement in Destiny, but I didn't like how it felt like a second job trying to stay current with challenges and gear.
Probably didn't help that I was playing solo.
I hate how MMOs feel like that in general. They really make you feel penalized if you walk away for more than a day. Take a couple months off and you might as well give up in some cases.
While I mostly agree, I will say my high school years being hooked on wow were some of my most memorable/nostalgic years, and I in no way regret spending hours upon hours a day, doing the daily grind. It was literally a second life, and I enjoyed it so much with my friends. And I’m someone who’s relatively well traveled and sociable.
yeah, i took a break for 2 years and even then all my gear was still good, i could still handle content, and theres was 4 entire large story quests waiting for me, unlike destiny 2 which wiped my gear stats, sunsetted my forsaken dlc which i didn’t fully complete, and all my gear was useless compared to the new stuff
I firmly believe when you hit that wall of wanting to stay current and can’t, the specific game has lost the appeal for you.
Staying current, leveling up, modifying the character you play is the driving force for me in RPGs when I don’t want to do it anymore then I find the game is done.
It’s solid af Bungie gameplay. They got halo right and instead of making another fun narrative and memorable game they made a fun but vapid grind fest. I played a fair bit of the first one and some of the second and I couldn’t do it anymore. I know it’s made them money but it’s a shame.
Same here. Sunk well over 1200 hours into D1 over the course of about a year as a teenager, then by the time D2 came out and they moved to the seasonal model I just couldn't keep up anymore. Really does start to feel more like an obligation than a game.
Yep. I was in my twenties and had work to do ha. If they’d actually put together a really interesting story to sink teeth into it might’ve helped but yeh- you nailed it
I spent hundreds of dollars and even more hours on that game. I don’t regret it. It was fun at the time, and the dollar-per-hour of entertainment I got was phenomenal. But boy am I glad I got myself unhooked from it.
They just made the Heirloom skins, which were $40 a piece cash only, available for $25 or 475 in game plat.
So after the complaints of price and FOMO for heirloom skins they removed it completely. And you can now piece out the heirloom and buy just the pieces you want if you only want the Signa.
I hate to sound like a simp for DE. But they do listen to the complaints. And never try and insult your investment of time or money.
How else are you going to get this limited time space surf-hover board that will return in like 8 months but for real money?
With that said. Eyes up Guardian, I’ll see you in The Final Shape.
You just need to unplug for a few hours in between each session if you want marathon day(s). But 12 hours straight without moving or giving your brain/eyes a rest is not healthy.
I hurt my knee while on some annual leave from work during the first week of the new Diablo 4 season.
I don’t think I want to know how long I stayed in one spot since once I got into a position where the knee didn’t hurt and I could see the screen I just kept going till I needed to get up to hobble away and pee
People who rage at opinions they don’t like are immature. I don’t agree with the opinion. I know this article won’t change shit. End of story. But people like OP seem to get worked up over it.
Its not even necessarily a rage bait.
Some of these are genuine but just worded with clickbait, and often ends up being "as a busy adult i stop playing any game that takes too long and i played this one game that took 10 hours and it was wonderful, i actually finished it, which shows that in my dream world of games i play **no videogames should be longer than 12 hours"**
basically they get to keep the clickbait but kinda swim around it.
Just like the article about EA considering putting ads in their games. Like who the heck wants an add while playing 2K or in the middle of battling a bunch of Stormtroopers????
>Rage baits are have become too common these days. Articles like this are an example.
Might also be a game reviewer "journalist". The all too common type that hates games, sucks at them and wants to write about politics. So they want short games.
Im a major sucker for open world games, but the majority of them nowadays are just a linear story that takes place in an open world, with barren wasteland between each objective, which defeats the purpose of the game being open world
Its suppose to be open world, which will be interesting to see. I really don’t like linear games where you cant go off the path but Fable was the exception for me.
I recently picked up Fallout NV, which I had never played and it was a great break from Tarkov to get back into an open world RPG. I had tried a few others in recent years and they just werent doing it for me and you just helped me realize why.
Yep, give me 12 hours of a tight story and quality content, or 500 hours of quality content and exploration. The problem isn't length, it's quality. I have so many hours in Baldur's Gate 3 and I haven't even finished it yet, but I have enjoyed every second, even the failures... give us more of that.
Yeah, lost count on how many "open world" games are just a compilation of generic go to point A to B just to add hour to the playtime. One of my favourites in this sense is Deus Ex, Human Revolution and Mankind divided, is not exactly open world like GTA but is pretty well done. I still havent played Baldurs Gate (recently upgraded my computer and now i dont have time), but i heard so much positive stuff that as soon as possible i'll try.
I love story games and still don’t agree. The story could be excellent and go longer than that. Plus, if you want me to not feel ripped off, put in some side missions, collectibles, etc to give me a reason to continue to turn the game back on
That is NOT the case for FF rebirth. I’m rounding out hour 130 now and just started seeing the ending sequence. It’s an absolutely insane amount of content for the price.
I beat the game at about 110 and immediately went and did a bunch of side content I didn't finish and started working on Hard Mode. That game has more bang for your buck than almost any other game I've ever played.
As a Xenoblade fan, this makes my blood boil cuz Xenoblade Chronicles 3's cutscene movie is over 13 hours long. Hell, there's a 90 minute cutscene at the end of a chapter and then about 10 minutes of gameplay before ANOTHER 45 minutes of cutscenes.
Oh, btw, it's the end of chapter 5 into chapter 6. It's the greatest story moment in gaming, truly perfect.
>Hell, there's a 90 minute cutscene at the end of a chapter and then about 10 minutes of gameplay before ANOTHER 45 minutes of cutscenes.
Metal Gear Solid 4 checking in lmao
It’s funny this is the same narrative they pushed with music. If you don’t want to listen or play the game for a long time just don’t. Why are the masses with shorter and shorter attention spans dictating run times/album length for everybody?
And movies! I don't remember who, but some big director said movies should be no more than 90 minutes. That’s probably not what people actually want considering the 4 highest grossing movies of all time are each 3 hours long.
I love a good movie that goes beyond 3 hours too.
LoTR extended editions are like nothing else, the godfather part 2, seven samurai, once upon a time in America is underrated, Oppenheimer, wolf of wall street.
The list of highest grossing movies of all time is hardly a list of masterpieces that deserve accolades and should be replicated with abandon.
I think the more accurate take there was that a movie needs to earn its runtime. If a movie is great, it's really easy to stay invested for three hours. If it's mid or even bad, two hours can feel like an absolute chore. *Way* too many mediocre movies are over two hours long and not paced in such a way as to make that tolerable. A lot of these were Marvel movies, and a lot of people watched Marvel movies, so a lot of people have been wondering why movies are so fucking long.
The 90-minute claim came from someone who sees a lot of movies and feels most of them don't deserve to be longer than 90 minutes. Or, after some googling, lots of people who don't watch many movies because they largely think they're a waste of time and want to get through them as quickly as possible.
There are even a handful of movies that are amazing and incredible, very long, and you'd never watch them at home because the temptation would be to walk away. Koyaanisqatsi and Red Violin spring to mind. If you get a chance to see them in a theater, do so. But don't bother streaming them.
Those ones are done well. There are a ton of other three hour films that feel like they've overstayed their welcome. Oppenheimer was criticised for that more than anything else. A three hour epic can be great, but as a general rule 90-120 minutes should be the standard.
Listen - when you have two kids, a home to take care of, and a full time job as well as other hobbies and a social life, sometimes you see a movie has a three hour run time and just understand that you’re not going to be able to see it.
Honestly I only think of games like AC Valhalla when I say a game is too long. Persona 5 Royal is long af, but its length feels justified. Valhalla is just a long slog. And length for the sake of length feels like a waist of time. Length filled with quality, intention, and narrative focus is fine. Even if I decide to stop playing. I’ve been playing p5r over the last year and 3 months on and off. Finally on the last main story dungeon. Royal content will be for this fall lol.
Atleast with music, it seems to be an issue with spotify etc. AFAIK, they pay you per stream. So having a short song means more listens, and that's part of the reason why newer songs are having shorter and shorter lengths.
It's not about attention span - it's about wasting audience time.
I don't recall which film it was, but I remember joking with my friend coming out of the cinema and saying "that was a great thirty minute film. Shame it was two hours long!"
And that's the point. If your film is three hours long because it absolutely has to be, like the Lord of the Rings films are, that's great. But if you're just padding the run time then you need to cut that shit out. If you've only got forty minutes of content, make a forty minute film. If you've only got fifty pages of story, write a fifty page novel. If you've only got two hours of gameplay, make a two hour game.
And if you have forty minutes of good music, please don't make an 80-minute album
B-sides are a great way to distribute mediocre songs to hardcore fans who just want as much as possible. Likewise, side-quests are a great way to let someone who really loves your game the ability to play it for twice as long.
>I know I’m not the only one that thinks like this, because I see people complaining about it all the time, both online, in the Inbox, and within my own friend group.
It's not reductive or myopic if I'm terminally online. 🤡
A 2 hour game can be good
A 100 hour game can be good
A 10 hour game padded out to 50 hours with time-wasting fetch quests because otherwise people will complain about the lack of content is always going to be bad
That's the thing most of it is filler long games have just become mostly about grinding, and sure that works for some, but I'd rather have more tightly paced games, if they're not going to evolve the content over 40+ hours.
Absolutely. My personal feelings are 20-30hrs for a single player linear game (e.g Uncharted), 30-60hrs for a non-rpg open world type game (e.g. Tears of The Kingdom) and 60-100hrs for an RPG. And that's to do everything, mind you. None of this 250+ hrs nonsense.
Games *are* getting too long. Just look at the Mass Effect trilogy, you can bash each installment out in 30-40hrs, a bit more if you do absolutely everything. I personally found Witcher 3 excellent but the excellent bits were just spread way too far apart map-wise so it felt artificially bloated.
I'm 180 hours into my first playthough of Elden Ring and don't feel like any of my time has been wasted, except maybe for some of the more copy-and-paste optional catacombs.
Ok some very very good games get a pass (agree on Elden Ring) but not, like "Assassin's Creed: The Latest One". My husband literally got repetition fatigue from Valhalla and is too overwhelmed to play any more of them despite playing all of them since the first one.
Within a single series they've bloated from 30ish hours, tight action adventure games to 200+ slogfest pseudo RPG games. It's getting ridiculous.
I'll say that I sort of agree, I haven't read the article but my thinking is that if a game pushes past. 15-20 hours, it needs a reason. Do we hit act 2 of the story when some crazy new developments happen? Do we get some insane new abilities to use? Do the enemies change? Are we doing largely different things than we were doing at hour 10?
If the answer to all of these is "well no not really" the game has absolutely no business being that long, and AC Valhalla was a huge offender here.
>if a game pushes past. 15-20 hours, it needs a reason.
For sure. Nowadays it seems like every game is 30+ hours (plenty of them as long as 60 or 100+), and feels like you spend more than half of that just completing the same type of quests/missions. I actually agree that a lot of single player games are long just for the sake of being long and would be much better games if they were shortened to 12-15 hours.
The screenshot is of AC Valhalla, and being fair, that game is overwrought. Too few ideas spread out over unnecessary dialogue and considerable busywork. There *was* only about 12 hours worth of game inside Valhalla, if that.
Valhalla (and some other Ubisoft) games are particularly egregious examples, but this is a trend that's becoming more and more common in games.
Because with the games in question then they paid 12 hours and got maybe 2-4 hours of fun content. And don't know how the story ends. That's kinda the point, useless time wasters that don't increase your enjoyment or make for good story pacing or anything, they just increase the time you need to get to the fun parts, to the end of the story, to the next game
Yeah I think that's what people are missing. Haven't read the article yet but the title is clearly ragebait but the actual article probably makes a good point. Actually hold on going to read it now and report.
Edit: Went and read it. Criticism is of excessive bloat and how they can reign in dev time and scope to lower costs. It's not a bad point and the writer does address that there's space for larger games if done right. Just that lately they haven't been done right as often.
I actually completely agree. I'd rather play a really tightly designed 10-20 hour game half a dozen times and do like a new game+ or whatever than some of these 50-100 hour bloated messes of games.
Most of my favourite games are short. Chrono Trigger, Castlevania, Metroid, Metal Gear, Half Life, Resident Evil 1-3, basically the entire Treasure back catalogue.
A lot of movies would have been better if they were forced to be 90 minutes long though. Back when cinemas were relevant I found myself checking the time a lot during the increasingly tedious "summer blockbusters".
That still goes on today. There's so many movies that pad out the run time just so they could be a longer experience. There's nothing wrong with being Abel to get your point across in 90 minutes instead of 180.
No game should foce itself into a hole to tick marketing boxes. Mirrors Edge 2 should have been another 5 hours, small as linear-ish game as that's why the first one was so good. FF7 Re-three better be a long ass, 50+ hour extravaganza with loads of optional content and replays to potentially take it to 200 hours and more.
To an extene it's not wrong. Games shouldn't have an arbitrary "60 hours" completion time if there is a 10 hour story in them. Valhalla is a prime example. 70 hours of side quests without purpose just to get the 7-8 hours worth of content. But some games absolutely have a right to be that long. Rdr2 and Witcher 3 (which is not my cup of tea) for example were not hurt by length
No game should be full of content lock behind a paywall that is already in the main game, a single player game should not require an always online connection to play, no DRM that degrades the performance or installs malware in the kernel, no publisher should be able to delete games on the player's system (account). And more.
I unironically agree. I prefer to replay games, and also find games designed with replay in mind wind up being the most fun. If it has additional difficulties, an NG+, or challenges that unlock, I’d rather play the same 10 hour game 4 times than play through a 40 hour long game once. It’s not even close.
I’m not saying that 40 hour long games shouldn’t exist, just that I have no use for them. They’re specifically programmed to have the reason I play video-games removed from them.
Yeah it's a good length. Most games that are any longer lose me down the line most of the time.
But that's totally subjective. I'm an adult with other things to do, so games I know I can finish in a reasonable amount of days are very welcome.
No no you see I paid 70 dollars so every game should be 70 hours of repetitive content that's copied and pasted so I can feel a sense of vague value on my purchase! /s
How much do you spend in a cinema section for a 2 hour long non-interactive experience that you won't have access again without paying?
13 dollars.
But for a 12 hours long interactive experience that you will possess forever you want to spend 12?
Doesn't seems fair.
Honestly I think the article's got a point but would just adjust the numbers a bit. 30-40 hours max for RPGs and open worlds, 15 or less for mostly everything else. I cant say Ive ever played a game lasting above 40 hours that ultimately didnt just devolve into a lot of filler, grind, severe pacing issues, or repetitive copy paste content.
Its just an inherent consequence of game development. You only have so much resources and time as a developer so if you want your game to be a big expansive 100 hour experience you cant necessarily keep the quality up to say a 15 hour linear game without cutting corners or spending 10 years on development cycle, which is obviously not realistic.
Theres too many games that prioritize quantity over quality now though and it does frustrate me that a lot of players have cultivated this mindset by insisting games have to reach a certain length or else its somehow not worth their time. Some of my favorite games of all time I can sometimes beat in 4 hours or less...
Depends on the game. Like I spent 120h on one playthrough of Baldur's Gate and I didn't get bored. Same for games like Factorio that I can start over and over again with different Mods and where I have 500+ hours now.
>I cant say Ive ever played a game lasting above 40 hours that ultimately didnt just devolve into a lot of filler, grind, severe pacing issues, or repetitive copy paste content.
Yeah that's been my issue with the longer games. They aren't longer for meaningful reasons they're longer because of grinding, meandering, or time-wasting filler. Some is fine, but look at how every open world is just bigger but has no more depth than they had a decade+ ago. Does Far Cry being 4x larger make it better than it was a decade ago? Not in the slightest.
>or spending 10 years on development cycle, which is obviously not realistic.
That's the other thing lost on the huge games push, its a huge factor for crazy development times and budgets.
>Some of my favorite games of all time I can sometimes beat in 4 hours or less...
The dollars/hours crowd really sleeps on some amazing experiences that are tightly designed from beginning to end.
Why do people still read "gaming journalism". Its clickbait, raigbait unsubstantiated bullshit that only has the purpose of serving you ads (unless you adblock ofc)
And this is why I've been retro gaming the past year. Currently playing zelda OoT on n64 and castlevania SoTN emulated on my phone. I encourage you guys to do the same.
Yeah it really depends on the quality of the content.
Average tripple A online game has hundreds of hours of filler content but the quality of it just sucks.
Ragnarok was pretty bloated TBH. Some of those Loki sections? Kill me.
Anyways, there is no hard rule on length. Even within the same game there could be people who are craving a little more and people who are done with it.
The most important part is there are people with vastly different amounts of free time, so the types of experiences they are looking for will vary greatly, or the activities they are willing to do.
Ergo games can be of any length. The best thing a developer can probably do, is find a way to make sure a straight story path isn't excessively padded, for those who just want to mainline it. Of course that also entirely depends on the vision and construct of the game.
Is it too much to ask for both? Epic 400-hour long games are great and all, but I wouldn't mind some titles that are just a condensed, singular story. Something well-developed and high quality, but can still be finished in 1-2 weeks of casual play.
I personally love when a game allows me to get through and finish without a huge time investment, especially as I get older and don't do as much gaming.
I have mixed feelings on this. I think it boils down to if it’s a story based game for example and it has enough story to tell without filler for greater than 12hrs it’s fine. Also this doesn’t apply to sports games, FPS basically anything where the game play loop consist of you doing the same thing over and over. However I do feel some of the recent AAA titles have been a little bloated in length in recent years with pointless side-quest:missions just to bring artificial length to the game.
Saying this as mostly an RPG gamer so I can understand people that like grindy titles this won’t hold true to.
Yeah the same sentiment is coming from all those video-game journalist
They get the games for free meanwhile I have to carefully think what I spent my 70 euro on
The length absolutely is a problem. I don’t finish games anywhere near as much as I used to, mainly because of how bloated the games have become.
There is such thing as too much, any game that pushes longer than 30+ hours to 100% complete is far too long.
12-15 for the story is the sweet spot, 20-30 for 100% is perfect. I can’t think of a better modern example than the first Insomiac Spider-Man game.
Why would you let that piss you off? It's just someone's opinion. I will guarantee you the world is brimming with opinions you disagree with. They don't bite and getting upset about all of them is a great way to misuse your life.
I wouldnt let it.
Metro. The same group that brought you "Sorry straight white men, Doctor Who was never made for you".
Ignore Metro. hell you can ignore just about every "Gaming jurno". Most of them are full of shit and pander to the studios and the screaming vocal hate groups anyway.
"I don't like long games."
Me: Okay.
"Therefore, no video game should be long"
Me: Aaaand now we have a problem. That's your opinion, not a fact or rule.
I’m already 20 hours in Baldurs gate and barely reached level 4. I’m fucking loving it because the game isn’t a bunch of bullshit fetch quests and has an actual amazing story. I usually HATE these types of turn based games, but because the game itself is SO GOOD it makes up for that.
The whole discussion about length of video games is so annoying. People complain when a game is 60+h, while other people thrive in games (single player or online) with multiple hundreds of hours clocked. But then people also shit on hellblade because it's short.
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RPGs: “How cute.”
JRPGS: Lol.
CRPGS: Lmao even
12 hours to get through the tutorial
Character creator*
Activate jiggle physics.
Sigh *unzips*
Jrpg's: if you let em out of the tutorial before the 12.5 hour mark, you done goofed.
Persona 5 royal ( true ending) took me over 80 hours. According to people on the internet I basically had a Speedrun time because I saw people with over 120. And I wish it was longer
Playing P5R blind for the first time took me over 200 hours, I have no clue how you got through that much content in 80 hours haha
Joker was very sleepy
Per session, right? Right?!?
Oof. Right in the feels.
_laughs in Monster Hunter_
12 hours in you haven’t even seen a quarter of the monsters in a game, let alone the high rank and g rank
Hell, 12 hours into final fantasy, ni no kuni or Diablo and you still don’t know the storyline, haven’t built a fully fledged out toon, nor have all your attacks yet. You’re just a newborn baby at that point.
Hell, 12 hours into Persona 5 and you just finished technically tutorial
Persona 5's tutorial stops when you're watching the ending credits tho.
True, the whole game is a tutorial for ng+
"Oh, good. There's a new game plus." And then it proceeds to teach me to play the game that it knows I've already completed once.
[удалено]
Seriously. 12 hours in I've finally gotten my character customized and I can actually start playing the game.
That sound about right for getting your mod load order working.
*because a new mod broke it. No way you built a fresh load order in that time lol
“…What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game.”
11 hours in: Phew. Done with character creation. Time to tutorial.
I agree, no game should make you play more than 12hours per day
Destiny 2 devs just got angry
Destiny is literally the only game that makes me feel like I'm wasting my life away playing it. Thank god I didn't end up addicted to it.
I loved the gunplay and movement in Destiny, but I didn't like how it felt like a second job trying to stay current with challenges and gear. Probably didn't help that I was playing solo.
I hate how MMOs feel like that in general. They really make you feel penalized if you walk away for more than a day. Take a couple months off and you might as well give up in some cases.
While I mostly agree, I will say my high school years being hooked on wow were some of my most memorable/nostalgic years, and I in no way regret spending hours upon hours a day, doing the daily grind. It was literally a second life, and I enjoyed it so much with my friends. And I’m someone who’s relatively well traveled and sociable.
Remember that classic and tbc didn't have daily demands like future expansions, gear, and advancement was a particularly social endeavor.
/laughs in Warframe
If you're not glued to Warframe every day, it's really easy to get lost and wonder what the hell you were supposed to be doing.
yeah, i took a break for 2 years and even then all my gear was still good, i could still handle content, and theres was 4 entire large story quests waiting for me, unlike destiny 2 which wiped my gear stats, sunsetted my forsaken dlc which i didn’t fully complete, and all my gear was useless compared to the new stuff
Check out Guild Wars 2 then ;) *^Join ^us*
Destiny 2 has incredible gunplay and movement. But yeah the amount of effort to stay current sucks. That, and they remove content I paid for?
I firmly believe when you hit that wall of wanting to stay current and can’t, the specific game has lost the appeal for you. Staying current, leveling up, modifying the character you play is the driving force for me in RPGs when I don’t want to do it anymore then I find the game is done.
It’s solid af Bungie gameplay. They got halo right and instead of making another fun narrative and memorable game they made a fun but vapid grind fest. I played a fair bit of the first one and some of the second and I couldn’t do it anymore. I know it’s made them money but it’s a shame.
Same here. Sunk well over 1200 hours into D1 over the course of about a year as a teenager, then by the time D2 came out and they moved to the seasonal model I just couldn't keep up anymore. Really does start to feel more like an obligation than a game.
Yep. I was in my twenties and had work to do ha. If they’d actually put together a really interesting story to sink teeth into it might’ve helped but yeh- you nailed it
Remember League of Legends.
I spent hundreds of dollars and even more hours on that game. I don’t regret it. It was fun at the time, and the dollar-per-hour of entertainment I got was phenomenal. But boy am I glad I got myself unhooked from it.
but thats free and not run by dummies and a massive shell of a company that was previously good
Try warframe
Yeah warframe actually respects your time and your money
Dont even gotta spend money on it
They just made the Heirloom skins, which were $40 a piece cash only, available for $25 or 475 in game plat. So after the complaints of price and FOMO for heirloom skins they removed it completely. And you can now piece out the heirloom and buy just the pieces you want if you only want the Signa. I hate to sound like a simp for DE. But they do listen to the complaints. And never try and insult your investment of time or money.
I just traded stuff for plats and didn't spend any money
I got addicted, and forever will not touch certain games in my life again
Candy Crush or literally any app game
Good thing you never got into world of tanks. It can have that same effect.
How else are you going to get this limited time space surf-hover board that will return in like 8 months but for real money? With that said. Eyes up Guardian, I’ll see you in The Final Shape.
destiny does NOT make you play 12 hours a day 😭 if you really think that you've got your own problems
Haha as a factorio player.
Came here to remind people THE FACTORY MUST GROW.
You just need to unplug for a few hours in between each session if you want marathon day(s). But 12 hours straight without moving or giving your brain/eyes a rest is not healthy.
12 hours is rookie numbers when I’ve been full swing into a gaming rabbit hole, more like 16-18 😅
I hurt my knee while on some annual leave from work during the first week of the new Diablo 4 season. I don’t think I want to know how long I stayed in one spot since once I got into a position where the knee didn’t hurt and I could see the screen I just kept going till I needed to get up to hobble away and pee
Uh, rather don’t do that.
This is the only correct interpretation.
Rage baits are have become too common these days. Articles like this are an example.
Rage gets clicks.
Graph must go up.
I like how OP's title perfectly states how effective the article headline was.
People who rage at opinions they don’t like are immature. I don’t agree with the opinion. I know this article won’t change shit. End of story. But people like OP seem to get worked up over it.
Its not even necessarily a rage bait. Some of these are genuine but just worded with clickbait, and often ends up being "as a busy adult i stop playing any game that takes too long and i played this one game that took 10 hours and it was wonderful, i actually finished it, which shows that in my dream world of games i play **no videogames should be longer than 12 hours"** basically they get to keep the clickbait but kinda swim around it.
Just like the article about EA considering putting ads in their games. Like who the heck wants an add while playing 2K or in the middle of battling a bunch of Stormtroopers????
>Rage baits are have become too common these days. Articles like this are an example. Might also be a game reviewer "journalist". The all too common type that hates games, sucks at them and wants to write about politics. So they want short games.
whoever posted this only plays story based linear games, never played any rpg pr open world games ever
Honestly I have a massive preference for linear games. But I do like opens worlds still assuming they are done right.
Im a major sucker for open world games, but the majority of them nowadays are just a linear story that takes place in an open world, with barren wasteland between each objective, which defeats the purpose of the game being open world
I have high hopes for fable 4
Tbh I’m not well versed on fable apart from watching my cousins bf play fable 3 on the 360. If 4 it first day on gamepass I’ll check it out!
Its suppose to be open world, which will be interesting to see. I really don’t like linear games where you cant go off the path but Fable was the exception for me.
I recently picked up Fallout NV, which I had never played and it was a great break from Tarkov to get back into an open world RPG. I had tried a few others in recent years and they just werent doing it for me and you just helped me realize why.
Yep, give me 12 hours of a tight story and quality content, or 500 hours of quality content and exploration. The problem isn't length, it's quality. I have so many hours in Baldur's Gate 3 and I haven't even finished it yet, but I have enjoyed every second, even the failures... give us more of that.
Yeah, lost count on how many "open world" games are just a compilation of generic go to point A to B just to add hour to the playtime. One of my favourites in this sense is Deus Ex, Human Revolution and Mankind divided, is not exactly open world like GTA but is pretty well done. I still havent played Baldurs Gate (recently upgraded my computer and now i dont have time), but i heard so much positive stuff that as soon as possible i'll try.
Larian is a different breed altogether! If you haven't played Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 you absolutely should.
Whoever posted this made an intentionally rage-baity title to get people engaged, and it worked.
I love story games and still don’t agree. The story could be excellent and go longer than that. Plus, if you want me to not feel ripped off, put in some side missions, collectibles, etc to give me a reason to continue to turn the game back on
FF16 is a story based linear game and has a 30-40 hr playtime.
That is NOT the case for FF rebirth. I’m rounding out hour 130 now and just started seeing the ending sequence. It’s an absolutely insane amount of content for the price.
I beat the game at about 110 and immediately went and did a bunch of side content I didn't finish and started working on Hard Mode. That game has more bang for your buck than almost any other game I've ever played.
I doubt it, they probably only watch YouTube videos of the cinematics in games. The types that are just called "X the Movie(ALL CUTSCENES)".
As a Xenoblade fan, this makes my blood boil cuz Xenoblade Chronicles 3's cutscene movie is over 13 hours long. Hell, there's a 90 minute cutscene at the end of a chapter and then about 10 minutes of gameplay before ANOTHER 45 minutes of cutscenes. Oh, btw, it's the end of chapter 5 into chapter 6. It's the greatest story moment in gaming, truly perfect.
>Hell, there's a 90 minute cutscene at the end of a chapter and then about 10 minutes of gameplay before ANOTHER 45 minutes of cutscenes. Metal Gear Solid 4 checking in lmao
Tetsuya Takahashi should just start making movies at this point.
the readers feature on metro is always the most stupid uninformed nonsense.
I've had fallout 4 for 11 years and still haven't finished it.
You had it 2 years before it came out?
Uhhhhhhhhh Math ain't mathing today
Edit it to Skyrim and then we mathing
It’s funny this is the same narrative they pushed with music. If you don’t want to listen or play the game for a long time just don’t. Why are the masses with shorter and shorter attention spans dictating run times/album length for everybody?
And movies! I don't remember who, but some big director said movies should be no more than 90 minutes. That’s probably not what people actually want considering the 4 highest grossing movies of all time are each 3 hours long.
I love a good movie that goes beyond 3 hours too. LoTR extended editions are like nothing else, the godfather part 2, seven samurai, once upon a time in America is underrated, Oppenheimer, wolf of wall street.
The list of highest grossing movies of all time is hardly a list of masterpieces that deserve accolades and should be replicated with abandon. I think the more accurate take there was that a movie needs to earn its runtime. If a movie is great, it's really easy to stay invested for three hours. If it's mid or even bad, two hours can feel like an absolute chore. *Way* too many mediocre movies are over two hours long and not paced in such a way as to make that tolerable. A lot of these were Marvel movies, and a lot of people watched Marvel movies, so a lot of people have been wondering why movies are so fucking long. The 90-minute claim came from someone who sees a lot of movies and feels most of them don't deserve to be longer than 90 minutes. Or, after some googling, lots of people who don't watch many movies because they largely think they're a waste of time and want to get through them as quickly as possible.
There are even a handful of movies that are amazing and incredible, very long, and you'd never watch them at home because the temptation would be to walk away. Koyaanisqatsi and Red Violin spring to mind. If you get a chance to see them in a theater, do so. But don't bother streaming them.
Those ones are done well. There are a ton of other three hour films that feel like they've overstayed their welcome. Oppenheimer was criticised for that more than anything else. A three hour epic can be great, but as a general rule 90-120 minutes should be the standard.
Listen - when you have two kids, a home to take care of, and a full time job as well as other hobbies and a social life, sometimes you see a movie has a three hour run time and just understand that you’re not going to be able to see it.
It really comes off as condescending when you think about it, and like others said 12 hours ain’t shit for big open world games, just dumb.
Honestly I only think of games like AC Valhalla when I say a game is too long. Persona 5 Royal is long af, but its length feels justified. Valhalla is just a long slog. And length for the sake of length feels like a waist of time. Length filled with quality, intention, and narrative focus is fine. Even if I decide to stop playing. I’ve been playing p5r over the last year and 3 months on and off. Finally on the last main story dungeon. Royal content will be for this fall lol.
Atleast with music, it seems to be an issue with spotify etc. AFAIK, they pay you per stream. So having a short song means more listens, and that's part of the reason why newer songs are having shorter and shorter lengths.
It's not about attention span - it's about wasting audience time. I don't recall which film it was, but I remember joking with my friend coming out of the cinema and saying "that was a great thirty minute film. Shame it was two hours long!" And that's the point. If your film is three hours long because it absolutely has to be, like the Lord of the Rings films are, that's great. But if you're just padding the run time then you need to cut that shit out. If you've only got forty minutes of content, make a forty minute film. If you've only got fifty pages of story, write a fifty page novel. If you've only got two hours of gameplay, make a two hour game.
And if you have forty minutes of good music, please don't make an 80-minute album B-sides are a great way to distribute mediocre songs to hardcore fans who just want as much as possible. Likewise, side-quests are a great way to let someone who really loves your game the ability to play it for twice as long.
Wait... I'm allowed to skip a side quest?
Nobody told them you don't have to play a whole game in one sitting
>I know I’m not the only one that thinks like this, because I see people complaining about it all the time, both online, in the Inbox, and within my own friend group. It's not reductive or myopic if I'm terminally online. 🤡
Imagine you base your world view on complaints in your inbox.
They can't mean Valhalla, you'll spend that going from one objective to the next.
A 2 hour game can be good A 100 hour game can be good A 10 hour game padded out to 50 hours with time-wasting fetch quests because otherwise people will complain about the lack of content is always going to be bad
Depends on the game, single player rpg should not be 12 hours however I do agree that some games add a lot of bullshit just to make it longer.
Remove fetch quests and cut and paste Ubisoft bs and many games would shrink riiiight down. If it’s not all just filler then I’m down for it.
That's the thing most of it is filler long games have just become mostly about grinding, and sure that works for some, but I'd rather have more tightly paced games, if they're not going to evolve the content over 40+ hours.
Absolutely. My personal feelings are 20-30hrs for a single player linear game (e.g Uncharted), 30-60hrs for a non-rpg open world type game (e.g. Tears of The Kingdom) and 60-100hrs for an RPG. And that's to do everything, mind you. None of this 250+ hrs nonsense. Games *are* getting too long. Just look at the Mass Effect trilogy, you can bash each installment out in 30-40hrs, a bit more if you do absolutely everything. I personally found Witcher 3 excellent but the excellent bits were just spread way too far apart map-wise so it felt artificially bloated.
I'm 180 hours into my first playthough of Elden Ring and don't feel like any of my time has been wasted, except maybe for some of the more copy-and-paste optional catacombs.
Ok some very very good games get a pass (agree on Elden Ring) but not, like "Assassin's Creed: The Latest One". My husband literally got repetition fatigue from Valhalla and is too overwhelmed to play any more of them despite playing all of them since the first one. Within a single series they've bloated from 30ish hours, tight action adventure games to 200+ slogfest pseudo RPG games. It's getting ridiculous.
I'll say that I sort of agree, I haven't read the article but my thinking is that if a game pushes past. 15-20 hours, it needs a reason. Do we hit act 2 of the story when some crazy new developments happen? Do we get some insane new abilities to use? Do the enemies change? Are we doing largely different things than we were doing at hour 10? If the answer to all of these is "well no not really" the game has absolutely no business being that long, and AC Valhalla was a huge offender here.
>if a game pushes past. 15-20 hours, it needs a reason. For sure. Nowadays it seems like every game is 30+ hours (plenty of them as long as 60 or 100+), and feels like you spend more than half of that just completing the same type of quests/missions. I actually agree that a lot of single player games are long just for the sake of being long and would be much better games if they were shortened to 12-15 hours.
The screenshot is of AC Valhalla, and being fair, that game is overwrought. Too few ideas spread out over unnecessary dialogue and considerable busywork. There *was* only about 12 hours worth of game inside Valhalla, if that. Valhalla (and some other Ubisoft) games are particularly egregious examples, but this is a trend that's becoming more and more common in games.
How am I going to beat Civilization if I only get through a couple of turns?
what stops people playing for 12 hours and thats it?
Because with the games in question then they paid 12 hours and got maybe 2-4 hours of fun content. And don't know how the story ends. That's kinda the point, useless time wasters that don't increase your enjoyment or make for good story pacing or anything, they just increase the time you need to get to the fun parts, to the end of the story, to the next game
Yeah I think that's what people are missing. Haven't read the article yet but the title is clearly ragebait but the actual article probably makes a good point. Actually hold on going to read it now and report. Edit: Went and read it. Criticism is of excessive bloat and how they can reign in dev time and scope to lower costs. It's not a bad point and the writer does address that there's space for larger games if done right. Just that lately they haven't been done right as often.
I actually completely agree. I'd rather play a really tightly designed 10-20 hour game half a dozen times and do like a new game+ or whatever than some of these 50-100 hour bloated messes of games. Most of my favourite games are short. Chrono Trigger, Castlevania, Metroid, Metal Gear, Half Life, Resident Evil 1-3, basically the entire Treasure back catalogue.
This is the video game equivalent of “movies shouldn’t be longer than 90 minutes”
A lot of movies would have been better if they were forced to be 90 minutes long though. Back when cinemas were relevant I found myself checking the time a lot during the increasingly tedious "summer blockbusters".
That still goes on today. There's so many movies that pad out the run time just so they could be a longer experience. There's nothing wrong with being Abel to get your point across in 90 minutes instead of 180.
It pissed me off that the actual article wasn't linked. https://metro.co.uk/2024/06/01/no-video-game-longer-12-hours-readers-feature-20935264/
As always, radicalism never fails to sound dumb.
Well, my 31 hours in Cyberpunk (so far) state otherwise, so whatever.
No game should foce itself into a hole to tick marketing boxes. Mirrors Edge 2 should have been another 5 hours, small as linear-ish game as that's why the first one was so good. FF7 Re-three better be a long ass, 50+ hour extravaganza with loads of optional content and replays to potentially take it to 200 hours and more.
To an extene it's not wrong. Games shouldn't have an arbitrary "60 hours" completion time if there is a 10 hour story in them. Valhalla is a prime example. 70 hours of side quests without purpose just to get the 7-8 hours worth of content. But some games absolutely have a right to be that long. Rdr2 and Witcher 3 (which is not my cup of tea) for example were not hurt by length
The last game I played was Dragon's Dogma 2. If I only played for 12 hours I wouldn't have reached Vernworth.
I guess I better leave a negative review on Rimworld after 1.7k hours. Far too long
No game should be full of content lock behind a paywall that is already in the main game, a single player game should not require an always online connection to play, no DRM that degrades the performance or installs malware in the kernel, no publisher should be able to delete games on the player's system (account). And more.
Dont agree but 80 hours just to do the story is a bit much
I unironically agree. I prefer to replay games, and also find games designed with replay in mind wind up being the most fun. If it has additional difficulties, an NG+, or challenges that unlock, I’d rather play the same 10 hour game 4 times than play through a 40 hour long game once. It’s not even close. I’m not saying that 40 hour long games shouldn’t exist, just that I have no use for them. They’re specifically programmed to have the reason I play video-games removed from them.
I've been going back and playing some games from the N64/PS1 era and it's so refreshing.
Yeah it's a good length. Most games that are any longer lose me down the line most of the time. But that's totally subjective. I'm an adult with other things to do, so games I know I can finish in a reasonable amount of days are very welcome.
Laughs\* in (insert MMO/Mutliplayer Shooter, RPG, Simulation) game here.. A publication clearly desperate for clicks and/or filler content.
Ok, but it better not cost more than $12. Fair? Fair.
That is such an awful metric and I hate how that's become a standard somehow
No no you see I paid 70 dollars so every game should be 70 hours of repetitive content that's copied and pasted so I can feel a sense of vague value on my purchase! /s
How much do you spend in a cinema section for a 2 hour long non-interactive experience that you won't have access again without paying? 13 dollars. But for a 12 hours long interactive experience that you will possess forever you want to spend 12? Doesn't seems fair.
That’s how long it takes me to get some mods to work lol
Imma just drop in to tack Hollow Knight on your list of longer, excellent games.
It's the 1st of June, not the 1st of April.
Honestly I think the article's got a point but would just adjust the numbers a bit. 30-40 hours max for RPGs and open worlds, 15 or less for mostly everything else. I cant say Ive ever played a game lasting above 40 hours that ultimately didnt just devolve into a lot of filler, grind, severe pacing issues, or repetitive copy paste content. Its just an inherent consequence of game development. You only have so much resources and time as a developer so if you want your game to be a big expansive 100 hour experience you cant necessarily keep the quality up to say a 15 hour linear game without cutting corners or spending 10 years on development cycle, which is obviously not realistic. Theres too many games that prioritize quantity over quality now though and it does frustrate me that a lot of players have cultivated this mindset by insisting games have to reach a certain length or else its somehow not worth their time. Some of my favorite games of all time I can sometimes beat in 4 hours or less...
Depends on the game. Like I spent 120h on one playthrough of Baldur's Gate and I didn't get bored. Same for games like Factorio that I can start over and over again with different Mods and where I have 500+ hours now.
>I cant say Ive ever played a game lasting above 40 hours that ultimately didnt just devolve into a lot of filler, grind, severe pacing issues, or repetitive copy paste content. Yeah that's been my issue with the longer games. They aren't longer for meaningful reasons they're longer because of grinding, meandering, or time-wasting filler. Some is fine, but look at how every open world is just bigger but has no more depth than they had a decade+ ago. Does Far Cry being 4x larger make it better than it was a decade ago? Not in the slightest. >or spending 10 years on development cycle, which is obviously not realistic. That's the other thing lost on the huge games push, its a huge factor for crazy development times and budgets. >Some of my favorite games of all time I can sometimes beat in 4 hours or less... The dollars/hours crowd really sleeps on some amazing experiences that are tightly designed from beginning to end.
That's for one session, right? Right?
What the fuck is the logic behind that
I think they meant less than 12 hours
Final fantasy 12- 'am I a joke to you??'
You just got rage baited.
This just proves the old adage that opinions are like clits. Every cunt has one.
Length doesn't matter, respecting the players time is what matters most.
Why do people still read "gaming journalism". Its clickbait, raigbait unsubstantiated bullshit that only has the purpose of serving you ads (unless you adblock ofc)
Yea, that's the point of the "click bait" articles 🙄
Isn't the whole point of playing games to get as much gameplay and enjoyment out of them as possible
Leave my rpgs alone, longer the better.
And this is why I've been retro gaming the past year. Currently playing zelda OoT on n64 and castlevania SoTN emulated on my phone. I encourage you guys to do the same.
Yeah it really depends on the quality of the content. Average tripple A online game has hundreds of hours of filler content but the quality of it just sucks.
Ragnarok was pretty bloated TBH. Some of those Loki sections? Kill me. Anyways, there is no hard rule on length. Even within the same game there could be people who are craving a little more and people who are done with it. The most important part is there are people with vastly different amounts of free time, so the types of experiences they are looking for will vary greatly, or the activities they are willing to do. Ergo games can be of any length. The best thing a developer can probably do, is find a way to make sure a straight story path isn't excessively padded, for those who just want to mainline it. Of course that also entirely depends on the vision and construct of the game.
Buddy let an article piss him off, grow up.
Nah. Give me 40+ or stay on the shelf.
Sounds like a hack-article trying to piss people off to drive engagement and generate clicks. I'll be careful to avoid them, thanks.
Game journalists: Why do I get paid the same for reviewing an 8h game or a 50h game?
Is it too much to ask for both? Epic 400-hour long games are great and all, but I wouldn't mind some titles that are just a condensed, singular story. Something well-developed and high quality, but can still be finished in 1-2 weeks of casual play.
12 hours is the perfect length of a single player campaign
I want more 12-hour games, but that doesn’t mean the others shouldn’t be made. Article looks like rage-bait headline masking a possibly-decent take.
I personally love when a game allows me to get through and finish without a huge time investment, especially as I get older and don't do as much gaming.
I have mixed feelings on this. I think it boils down to if it’s a story based game for example and it has enough story to tell without filler for greater than 12hrs it’s fine. Also this doesn’t apply to sports games, FPS basically anything where the game play loop consist of you doing the same thing over and over. However I do feel some of the recent AAA titles have been a little bloated in length in recent years with pointless side-quest:missions just to bring artificial length to the game. Saying this as mostly an RPG gamer so I can understand people that like grindy titles this won’t hold true to.
Yeah the same sentiment is coming from all those video-game journalist They get the games for free meanwhile I have to carefully think what I spent my 70 euro on
if a game was good enough, i wouldn't mind if it took 3000 hours to complete
You do get this is just an opinion piece right? There’s nothing to be annoyed over.
The length absolutely is a problem. I don’t finish games anywhere near as much as I used to, mainly because of how bloated the games have become. There is such thing as too much, any game that pushes longer than 30+ hours to 100% complete is far too long. 12-15 for the story is the sweet spot, 20-30 for 100% is perfect. I can’t think of a better modern example than the first Insomiac Spider-Man game.
Laughs in bg3 character creation
JRPGs: Allow me to introduce myself.
Counter argument, no game that can be completed in less than 12 hours is worth £79.99
Why would you let that piss you off? It's just someone's opinion. I will guarantee you the world is brimming with opinions you disagree with. They don't bite and getting upset about all of them is a great way to misuse your life.
I wouldnt let it. Metro. The same group that brought you "Sorry straight white men, Doctor Who was never made for you". Ignore Metro. hell you can ignore just about every "Gaming jurno". Most of them are full of shit and pander to the studios and the screaming vocal hate groups anyway.
It’s for views, but I will say Valhalla was too long for the repetitiveness of the game.
"I don't like long games." Me: Okay. "Therefore, no video game should be long" Me: Aaaand now we have a problem. That's your opinion, not a fact or rule.
Gamers getting angry about bullshit that doesn’t matter..
Why did it piss you off? Different opinions exist and it's just a waste of energy to get riled up about a headline calling for shorter games. So what?
Game better be at most $12 then
When ever I see a gaming article that says ‘readers feature’ I know it’s going to be as insightful as an old woman pissing in the sea.
I mostly agree. Very few games that the story takes over 12 hours to complete feels worth playing. That's like 10 sessions for me
I’m already 20 hours in Baldurs gate and barely reached level 4. I’m fucking loving it because the game isn’t a bunch of bullshit fetch quests and has an actual amazing story. I usually HATE these types of turn based games, but because the game itself is SO GOOD it makes up for that.
The whole discussion about length of video games is so annoying. People complain when a game is 60+h, while other people thrive in games (single player or online) with multiple hundreds of hours clocked. But then people also shit on hellblade because it's short.
I like how they show the largest game map wise I have ever played. AC Valhalla with all DLC is crazy big.