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Khuutra on 19 February 2011
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CGI-Quality said:
Khuutra said:

So, uh

Is this from somewhere, or did you write it?

Edit: Nevermind

Talk about the article - I'm interested in people's thoughts on this.

Yeah sure.

As to point 1:

The question is not about hour-per-dollar ratios, it is about the amount of entertainment you receive. Entertainment density varies between media, genre, and games. Trying to draw a parallel between game prices and movie prices per hour is fallacious.

As to point 2:

Horse feathers. THis is about content, not hours. You want a 10,000 page book that's awesome? Try Steven Erikson's 10-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is some of the best speculative fiction ever written and will easily weigh in at 10k pages when it ends this month. Never boring, never tiring, always awesome, because its content is compelling and something is always happening.

More, long games can have long and compelling content too, it's just harder to make. Twilight Princess clocked in at 50 hours for me on my first playthrough, but I was never bored with the game. Similarly my brother played Oblivion for 100 hours on his first save file and was never bored with that either. The thing that makes this part of the article pointless is that extended content can be compelling for dozens and dozens of hours, so presenting length as an inherent advantage one way or the other is ridiculous.

As to point 3:

Me and the wife have played ME2 for about 320-350 hours at this point, totalling about ten complete playthroughs (or more, it's gotten hard to keep track). Mass Effect 2 is a beefy game, but that doesn't subtract from how fun it is to play through again because it offers variety of content, and many ways to experience it.

On a related note, I never picked up God of War III again after platinuming it. Length is not a good indicator of replay value.

I agree with the article in principle (Vanquish is a short game, shorter than any mentioned in the OP, but it is arguably the best game and best value released last year) but the points made here are not a good or cognizant argument for the validity of short games as an investment of time or money.