Excellent, Excellent point.

I was talking about a single player experience, I don't have nearly as much of a problem with multi player games. Though even then I bounce around more than I should.

It's not just you. Here is my current gaming playlist.

All Pro Football 2k8
Viva Pinata
Portal (ignoring the rest of the Orange Box for now)
Just Cause
Beautiful Katamari
Halo 3 MP

All of those games can be played in sessions under 45 minutes (an online game of APF2k8 being the longest solid block of time) if I so choose.

And looking at that list that feels like a mega-ton of games that I just don't have time for. Especially when I toss in Catan, Carcassonne, Backgammon, etc.

But yeah, I'd rather pop into Portal for an hour, or Katamari or goof around in Just Cause or Viva Pinata than play something long and drawn out that I can't jump back into after a week off.

That is why I'm distinctly not looking forward to Mass Effect and have never touched Oblivion. I have no use any longer for games that require large chunks of my time. I even gave up on Jeanne D'Arc and along with it any hope of playing any other Strat/RPGs on the PSP. I just don't have the time for them. Between reading, hanging out with my wife, work, exercise, etc. I have roughly 3 or 4 hours of free time per night. And since not all 4 hours are going to be spent gaming, that doesn't leave much gaming time. Which means that many games are completely out. Straight off.

Assuming I want to have a happy wife.

Not me, if the story is engaging I like long games. I loved Oblivion and the original HL2 and Bioshock. I dont usually do the "average" game time. If a critic or someone on here says it takes 20 hours, I usually add at least 30% because I just love to play the game and I spend time exploring every knook and cranny within the game.

I am really not liking the HL2 episodic releases. Although I love the game and I think the story is very engaging... I honestly would have liked Ep1 and Ep2 to have been released together instead of separate. I am actually going back to play Ep1 again because I heard Ep2 was so short.

But thats just my play style. I have a life, full time (55 hour/week job), house, dog, girlfriend(s), 3 ice hockey leagues etc etc and I still enjoy the full storied games along with open-ended games.

PAR

hmmm... long games..
How about Ron Jeremy in Cuddly Cooterville? Or Ron Jeremy Meets the Bearded Clam! Cool games, with the possibility of being.. *ahem*.. long...

Shutting up now.

Sweet mother of god do I agree with this. When I see the back of the box say "40+ hours of gameplay!" I break into a cold sweat.

The annoying this is how practically every game is accused of being too short by so many other people, no matter what the genre, no matter what the subject matter. It's almost as if there's some weird standard that games are always supposed to be long and padded with filler. It's infuriating when I'm playing a game that literally takes me forever to complete, pissed off at all the backtracking, grinding and/or fetch quests, only to go online and have everyone complaining about how it's not long enough to justify the price.

And of course I find I have to focus on only one game at a time, because sometimes I don't have enough time for weeks on end, and then I come back to the middle of a game, I don't remember what was going on and how the gameplay works and find it too intimidated.

Never mind that a large portion of people I know who complain about how short games are also tend to be the type who never actually get around to completing most of them.

I don't know. I play a lot of the long games like jRPG's, but when the schedule is ugly I just play them in 45 minute hunks. And it usually is ugly between jobs and kids and etc. You just have to not be under the impression it's going to get done soon.

As long as I have the ability to save whenever I want, I don't give a rat's ass how long the whole game is if I'm always having fun playing it.

I for one would like a 50-hour rollercoaster thrill ride of a game. Unfortunately most games just settle into a few basic mechanics that keep repeating over and over, blow their wad at the intro sequence and then force you to crawl through a lot of ducts until you reach the ending that was clearly a result of a laughing gas leak next door to the developer studio.

Seriously.. it's rare to see a game that consistently entertains without falling into a rut. In that sense, considering the developers' limited resources and/or imagination, I guess it would make sense to make a game shorter. I'd rather have a 10-hour edge-of-my-seat experience than a 50-hour cybernetic cockroach slugfest.

Ideally, of course, I want a 50-hour of consistent, imaginative entertainment with an ability to save and load at any point and an easy reminder of what my objectives are whenever I choose to resume playing.

I'm not sure that the problem is necessarily in game length but density. It's kind of like a Tolkien novel. Obviously there's a good story in there, but he takes way too long to tell it. Games should be handled similarly; if there's a story to be told, tell it, but don't drag it out or compress it for the sake of hitting some magical number of hours.

In general, when we're talking a game with significant replay value (like a multiplayer game), I like to get at least 1 hour for every dollar I spend. I know it seems like 60 hours from an X360 game is asking for a lot, but that's why I don't buy a lot of games for retail price. I set this standard with a certain assumption of density, though: I expect the game to lead me through at what I consider a casual pace. That being defined as things lasting just long enough that I don't get so bored of them that I stop playing. Some games, like Bioshock, fell significantly short of the dollar/hour ratio (which would be 45 hours in Bioshock's case since I got it from Liongames.com, the pride of the gaming jungle), but that game was so dense and well crafted, I feel it was worth it.

So if a game is well crafted, rich and dense, I have no problem with it going on for hours and hours and hours, even if I never actually finish it. I feel satisfied with my play experience. Long games that are significantly more spread out (like many, many BioWare games) aren't quite as filling so I need some more time to get that same satisfaction.

I surprise myself, because I can see how long games give the most bang for the buck, but honestly I dont usually have the time or attention span to get through them. Too many new releases, and I am always finding my prime 'play' time to be at night, as the family is tucked in bed asleep... a time when unfortunately I am usually getting tired also.

I can say for sure that a major game turn-off for me is a long game with multiple endings. I think its why I stopped playing JRPGs for example, where its more common to see a game where you can invest a good 80 - 100 hours of gameplay in it, only to have missed things. The completist in me, just cant deal with that level of investment. Sure you can start over to re-experience it, but I never have the attention span for it. Oblivion was the rare RPG that I finished, but I think it was because if you focus on quests, sidequests, guild quests etc, instead of random content, it still probably only clocks in at anywhere from 30 - 50 hours max. Once you really go exploring the world, it can be endless I suppose.

MMORPGs strangely dont cause this reaction, even though they are generally pretty open ended. At the sametime, I'm done with them for quite a while I think...(well until WoW expansion 2)

I like a shorter game, where I can go back and play through it again, maybe at a harder difficulty, maybe just to experience content or challenges I missed along the way. 360 achievements have probably been a reason I know prefer these shorter games too, because they reward along the way and also encourage me to go back.

That right there is my biggest time killer. Still to be honest i like a good story. If the story is engaging then i'm hooked till the end whether it's 30min or 30hrs. I'll keep going back to visit and savour the ending.

Indeed. Except on my commute I get to listen to podcasts, ride my bike and read. So it's fun.

Same here. I see a game being described as long and that's not a virtue to me. I literally paid $60 for Orange Box almost solely to play Portal, knowing full well I may never play HL2. So I don't go for the idea of "getting my money's worth". If the game is fun and semi-replayable and I can afford it, then it's worth the money. Extra gameplay hours are just a chore at a certain point.

I count on those rare occurrences, say, the fiancee visiting her family for a weekend, to knock off huge chunks of game. I think that's how I got through KOTOR and KOTOR 2. Otherwise, save points are pretty forgiving these days. I had to play Bioshock in small pieces... I think I finished a good month after most people.

Serenj, I don't think it's just time constraints. I'm a single mom with four kids and two jobs. But I still play the longer games.

I think it has a lot to do with expectations. Like Slumberland, I have no illusions I'm ever going to finish a game first. It took me something like two months to play through Final Fantasy XII. Since I don't have that self-percieved deadline hanging over my head, that 10 hour limit doesn't bug me.

Also, game style is important. A twitch game is a lot harder to pick up and put down for me, because of the physical skill ramp up to get through it. If it's been a bit and you don't remember by reflex which button it is to turn the flashlight on, in the last level you don't get those extra seconds to find it before you get your face gnawed off by a grue. The longer games tend to have mechanics that aren't quite so physically based, like turn-based RPG's. In that case, all I have to do is remember Jodo the Flatulent told me that the furmflanger I was trying to find for that innkeeper gal in Coddlewade is up in a cave on Mt. Ennui. Make a note when I shut it off so I can look at it before I turn it back on next time and I'm all good.

Fixed.