Everything Is Overrated: Long Games

Game length is a touchy subject for a hobby as expensive as gaming. When you’re putting down $60 or more for a game that cost millions to develop, you expect a certain amount of content to be there. Everyone has an idea of how long games should be, like “open world games should be at least 20 hours” or “it’s okay if hack n slash games are only 4 hours as long as it’s repeatable on higher difficulties”.

I’m of the opinion that value should be about more than just hours taken to complete, though.

Most games outstay their welcome

There’s a point where even good games lose their appeal for me simply because they’ve been going on too long. Take Black Flag for example: while it’s arguably the best Assassin’s Creed game and has a massive list of improvements over its predecessors, it goes on for so long that even the awesome naval combat becomes a chore. Doesn’t help that the lacklustre story couldn’t carry it through those last few tiresome hours, either.

But even then, there’s GTA V. It may be a game with a fantastic story from start to finish and rightly deserved all the 2013 game of the year awards it won (or 2015, amirite PC gamers?) but by hour 25, I was only playing it for the sake of finishing it. Unless the game in question is The Witcher or Dragon Age (or any other RPG) there’s just about no reason it should take 31 hours to complete its campaign. Especially so when chances are the story isn’t even half as good as either of those titles.

Quantity over quality sucks

The challenge developers of open world games seem to be setting themselves these days is, “How many hours of gameplay can we cram into this using as little effort as possible?” Side objectives that involve collecting 700 doodads, climbing 200 watchamacallits, collecting 400 other doohickies and killing 1000 of each type of whatshisname isn’t “gameplay”, Ubisoft. It’s called padding. I happily did all of it in Assassin’s Creed 2 and Far Cry 3 because they were new and mostly bearable and I didn’t know any better but come on. All of your games are basically the same now.

That’s not to say Ubisoft are the only ones guilty of this. Oh no. The curse of every open world game seems to be to have a massive, gorgeous world full of nothing interesting to do. The Witcher 3 received a lot of (deserved) praise for filling its world with side quests that are interesting, varied, and actually matter to other parts of the game. Perhaps other developers will follow in their footsteps.

Length ≠ value

This is where the obvious comment about penis size goes. Seriously though, a lot of people seem to have this idea that a game needs to have a certain number of hours to justify its price (which is true to some extent) but I feel like this isn’t always true. Yes, a $60 title with no multiplayer shouldn’t be over in 2 hours, but this perception is the exact reason games are padded with meaningless, bullshit “content”.

I’d much rather play a focused 6 hour game with a fantastic story and fun, dynamic gameplay than a 40 hour slog through mundane content and a story that’s been stretched far beyond what it should’ve been. I know I’m talking about extremes here but whatever. Games that go on for too long suck. As long as a 6 hour long game can make itself worth the asking price in more ways than just length, I’m sure nobody will have any complaints.

Besides, if time is value and value is all we’re looking for, everyone may as well just buy Guild Wars 2 and never play another game again. I paid R500 ($40) for it back in 2012 and I’ve put in over 1200 hours since. That’s just 40c ($0,03) per hour!

Or how about Terraria? It cost me just $10 and I’ve played it for, like, 500 hours. At $0.02 per hour, you simply can’t beat it in value for money. Imagine if I’d bought it on one of those $2 sales it tends to go on every few months?

I’m fucking terrible at finishing games

Okay, this one’s probably just me. It’s totally relevant though. In the last few months I’ve started but never finished The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, The Wolf Among Us, BioShock: Infinite, Batman: Arkham Origins, Darksiders 2, Lords of the Fallen, Shadowrun Returns, and probably a ton of others I can’t remember off the top of my head. The way it usually goes is I’ll not be able to play for a day or two, then completely forget about it for a week and then just never get back to it. I’m the worst.

My Steam backlog is so long I’ve made myself stop buying new games altogether. I use howlongtobeat.com to figure out if a game’s too long for me to bother playing. I honestly can’t remember the last time I actually finished a singleplayer game because I spend all my gaming time playing MMOs, MOBAs and roguelikes. Cavie’s Life, The Universe And Gaming column this week is motivating me to get back to my backlog, though. There’s hope for me yet. And yes, this paragraph had a point. I think. Somewhere. Maybe. Let me know if you find it.

Yes, I really have spent 1200 hours playing Guild Wars 2.

Seriously though, developers: it would be nice if you could stop stretching games out with pointless padding. Imagine The Office hadn’t ended with season 9 and continued onto what would be season 11 by now. It’d be like Scrubs all over again.

Games need to set out to do something and then end. If that thing is an immersive open world experience, fucking do it. No more half measures. Get some Witcher 3 all up in it. If after all that it ends up being 8 hours long, so be it.

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