1y ago

What do you think is a good required completion time for video games? What examples come to mind of games that felt just right?

I used to like open world games that would take 50+ hours to beat but I feel like as I get older these games can be intimidating to even start and I often get sidetracked with other games frequently only getting half to three quarters of the way through.

Vanquish took me about six hours to beat and I think that's what I'm looking for these days. I like games that I can beat in one weekend. Eight hours I think is perfect for me.

It's led me to playing some GB(C) and NES games because they often feel a bit more finite.

I don't think I have a minimum. Little Misfortune and Bright Infinite Memory only took me about three hours to beat but I enjoyed the ride. If a game took under half an hour to beat, like some indie games, I might not be as invested or impacted enough to think about it much afterwards.

Edit: I'm not looking for a definitive answer. Just a ballpark.

36 comments

These days (I’m 37) its not about the time taken but whether a game just feels like work.
I know that would be different for everyone. But I pumped 140+ hours into Eldenring. Loved every battle and experience. But most other games after a few hours if it feels more like work than fun then I give up. Time is too precious and I’m already overworked.
I can see why easy mode exists now, I want a sense of fulfilment and experience but I dont want a game to create unnecessary work
- Similar for me. I get maybe 2 hours on a good day that I can actually play games. I'm not wasting that grinding levels or hunting down 200 feathers. I also don't like games that spoonfeed advancement way to slowly in the beginning, I don't want to spend 15 hours in a game just to get to the point where the combat system is actually fleshed out fully.
- I love RPGs. But I inevitably spend more time planning out my character class, organizing my inventory, keeping track of quests, etc. Then I actually spend “playing” the game.
  It’s an enjoyable play style, I mean I’m choosing to do this. But, it means that every RPG game I see immediately becomes a massive time sink. I’m too employed to ever really enjoy an RPG. :(
  
  Ugh this is me with D:OS2 right now. I’m still in Act 1 but I spend more time looking up class builds and reading guides online than actually playing the damn game. I’m probably only going to ever have time to play it once so it gives me major FOMO not being 100% happy with my choices before progressing further :/
- Maybe that's part of the reason why I value shorter games. I know if it does hit a lull I can push through it

I don't have a minimum, and my maximum is negotiable. I've played <5 hour games that felt too long, and >50 hour games that felt too short.
I generally shoot for 20-30 hours, but that's because it seems like a sweet spot where most games with tons of filler are longer. I actually have a category for short games, because sometimes the 2-3 hour experience is what I'm looking for.
- I actually have a category for short games, because sometimes the 2-3 hour experience is what I’m looking for.
  Can you provide an example?
  
  Some that I've played:
  Gorogoa
  Raven's Hike
  Klocki
  A Juggler's Tale
  Donut County
  Chronology
  Golf Club Wasteland
  Portal
  Aer
  Oxenfree
  Titan Souls
  Ittle Dew
  Doki Doki Literature Club
  Thoth
  Nuts
  140
  Limbo
  What Remains of Edith Finch
  INSIDE
  Those were all around 5 hours or less, in rough order from shorter to longer (just pulled up my Steam games by playtime). I have a few more on my list that I haven't played yet but are likely about that length if you want more. :)

Number of hours doesn't really come into it these days compared with how fun the game is for me. I'm nearly 40, and whether or not a game is engaging is most important. I've got about 50hrs into Avernum: Escape from the Pit (a retro style isometric RPG), but I've got nearly 80hrs into Teslapunk, my favourite Shmup(completing the game takes about an hour).I Iove Dark Souls 1 and 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, but eventually got bored of Elden Ring and its open world.
Ultimately how fun a game is combined with how painless it is to get started is what I'm most interested in these days. I don't have enough free time to be worrying if there are enough hours of gameplay.

Really depends on the game. A linear story game is not going to be very long. Then there's sandbox games where you can have hundreds to thousands of hours.
- That user name is fantastic

It really depends on the type of game and how it presents itself.
Some games have a very long and complex story but others might have a shorter story told more indirectly, then there are also multi-ending games which might take longer than a regular story game since you have to replay them. Then there are sandbox games which don't necessarily have a limit on how long they can be since it's dependent on how much you want to put into them.
Ultimately in my opinion there's not really a required amount of time for completion, the thing that I think is most important is whether the games are fun and enjoyable. In the case of story games they can be as long or short as needed depending on how they tell a story.
- then there are also multi-ending games which might take longer than a regular story game since you have to replay them.
  That's something I have a hard time doing depending on the game. Sometimes you can get a wildly different experience like in Fallout NV and see your actions having consequences while you play but a lot of the games I have been playing only are linear up until the ending cut scene.
  
  Yeah a lot of times the multi-ending ones don't offer many unique experiences.
  Though there was this one game I played that largely did, it was a Horror RPGmaker game called Red Haze, by far one of the more expansive multi-ending games (so much so that it's actually not finished, there's supposed to be 26, possibly 27 endings but only about 3/4 of them are there) the endings might be short or require a lot of steps, and some changes propagate into later playthroughs, some of the endings also require you to have done other endings for them to work.
  It's a very interesting concept but unfortunately not many games implement multi-ending in this way since it takes a lot more work to do.

- I get what you are saying. I think it also depends on how the game is divided up. If it's just one continuous romp with autosave points it can feel like it's dragging on but if there's clearcut levels and checkpoints I feel like it helps divide up a game into digestible chunks.
  I feel like that's not really present with a lot of open world or sandbox games

I just want to have fun, no matter the length. I love Titanfall 2's campaign and it only takes a couple hours to complete, even shorter than most shooters. People complain that it's too short but I think that's its strength. But a lot of AAA games I've played just feel stretched and bloated like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, where it's just not fun at all between all the tedious things I have to do.

Some games like Ultrakill are short and sweet, but others like Factorio can keep you busy for weeks. Both of them felt right for me, but then again I have quite a bit of free time.
If you like shooters, check out anything from New Blood, Turbo Overkill and Postal brain danaged. Those games are segmented into individual levels, which is great for when you just have half an hour.
- Theres one way to make ultrakill last forever

I like a game I can keep playing forever. I just want to disappear in it.
- Beware of Factorio
- Do you like online games that continuously receive new content? Like subscription based games for example
  
  Why would you get those? Just get a game that never ends, like Factorio. Or a competitive online game with individual servers.
  
  Well, I’ve played GTA online for 10 years and not paid a dime, yet get new content every few months.

I think it's highly dependent on the player. I'm not a completionist in any sense, I mainly play games to have fun. I stop playing them when I stop having fun. I've put down games after a few hours and I've played some for hundreds of hours.
The gameplay loop in that sense is important whether it remains fun and keeps me coming back. Time is short as you get older and I guess I don't really care about beating games.

Generally, I'm not into the "price per hour" reductionism... I'd rather a game was a short, remarkable (bonus: replayable) experience -- 10-20 unless a longer game truly is that long without filler. Can't put a price on having fun 100% of the time!
Sonic 3 and Knuckles takes like 3 hours for an average person to beat.

Wholly dependent on the game. Lots of Indies feel like decent, self contained games ranging from 3-8 hours of gameplay. Gris, Inside, Abzu, Thomas Was Alone, etc.

A session should be doable in 2 hrs or less (a single RTS game). Vampire Survivors nails it for short and sweet but I love open ended creation like Factorio.

Have a hard time dedicating consistent time with a single game because of other things like work. So any long story-driven game is gonna be a pass for me. If I need to remember a town name, map, or a character name and its more than a couple hours, its a nope. I simply have a hard time with dedicating the time to something like that, even if I enjoy it. MMORPGs or anything with dailies have similar issues.
I mostly tend to play games where I can spend a short period of time in a session and it doesn't matter if I come back to it in months. Over the past year or so, beatsaber and Terraria are the games that have fit that bill for me the most. Have over 1500 hours in Terraria and expect that number to probably grow over in bursts over the next decade.
- Been really enjoying games like Hades for the same kind of reasons.
  
  I love Hades, one of my favorites in recent years.
  The gameplay is tight and action packed, the loop is fun, not too long, yet different enough between each run.
  There are still tidbits of story and lore, but nothing that really takes time away from actual action.
  I guess the absolute opposite would be a Kojima game with 45 min cutscenes, which I usually bounce off hard.
  Might be a weird comparison, but the pacing in Hades kinda reminds me a bit of DOOM2016. (Another game I loved.)
  Although a completely different setting and top-down roguelike instead of FPS, I get the same action packed vibe out of it.

I don't think I could pin down a universal number. I really enjoy when a game understands the staying power of its gameplay loop and finishes up before it gets stale.
I've got 180 hours into TotK and I'm not sick of it yet because I discover something new every time I play.
Conversely I 100%-ed Dredge in 20 hours and that felt like the exact right amount of time. Any longer and I'd have been sick of it.
Or we can go even lower with something like Untitled Goose Game, which was under 10 hours and also finished up just as it got old.
So yeah. I'm all about the self awareness of a game with regards to the experience. Whatever amount of time that takes is cool with me.

Mmm i dont think its at all a static number. What matters is trimming it down to whats important. If you can keep bringing in new game mechanics, or exploring existing ones in new and interesting contexts, or keeping me engrossed in the story, it can go as long as it wants. Like, Chrono Trigger is considered a pretty short jrpg, because its very condensed for how broad of a scope it has, but boy is it a great game. Mario Odyssey got some criticism for how many moons are in the game, but i loved getting each and every one.

36 comments