Game length vs. replay value

[Aeolus451]

Shadow1980 said:

Aeolus451 said:
If you like short games, have at it but don't try to convince me that it makes the game better or of a higher value. Replay value adds to game length/overall playtime. In general, short games have less content and total hours of entertainment than long games.

I wasn't trying to imply that short games were better. I was simply stating that I feel that shorter games are more replayable due to the lesser time investment.

 

Spindel said:
A factor that seems to be missed here is that older games are more difficult and had no, or very limited save options. This means that even if you can beat them in an hour or two you probably spent a lot more time the first time you play them.

Someone said earlier in this thread that they can beat punch out in 25 min. I’ll bet that was not the case the first time he beat the game.

Even then, older games, despite their difficulty, were still shorter. When I was a kid, I don't think there was a single NES or SNES game (RPGs aside) that I rented that I wasn't able to beat multiple times just in that one weekend. It probably only took me 2 or 3 hours to beat Mega Man 9 the first time, as opposed to at most an hour now.

Also, it's not like newer games aren't harder the first time. Halo campaigns are highly replayble to be, not being overly long and consistently enjoyable throughout, with little filler or busy work. While I never tracked my playthroughs for the first two games, and my first Halo 3 run was on co-op and thus doesn't count, I played Reach the first time on Legendary. It was a brutally difficult slog that first time, taking me nearly 14 hours to complete, and I died 342 times. But subsequent playthroughs were easier. One playthrough I logged in for purposes of collecting data for a discussion on Halo difficulty levels took me only 7 hours, 40 minutes to clear, and I died only 68 times.

Even when taking difficulty into account, an experienced gamer should be able to beat an older 8-bit or 16-bit game much quicker than they could beat most modern games.

 

Farsala said:

Check out this thread: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=232859&page=1

My personal list: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8622524

My personal list is dominated by NES and SNES games. The only games in the top 20 that I can't beat in one or two sittings are Halo CE, A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy IV, Super Mario Galaxy, and BioShock. Incidentally, they're among the few "longer" games that I can replay regularly.

 

RolStoppable said:
A lot of long games have less replay value because of excessive padding that you won't want to go through again. The idea of the developers with such games is to cater to players who generally don't replay games, and the same group of players is the most likely to sell their games after they've been played through. Essentially, the games are either deliberately designed to drag on in parts to stretch the game's length or there was no incentive to cut parts that turned out to be no fun. Length in and of itself isn't bad, rather it's the development process that leads to results that hurt replayability.

An analogy that works here are drugs. If you look at games like drugs, there are pure drugs and padded drugs that contain other substances to produce higher volume. The pure drugs triggers a bigger rush than the other kind, so they are much more desirable to be experienced again as even small doses can net significant results. To use Mega Man 2 as an example, it's only one hour long on replays, but it's a really great hour. As such, one may find themself replaying multiple short games rather than one long game, because the shorter games have a higher level of purity.

Examples of longer games that are fun to replay are various Fire Emblem titles, because there's no grinding and instead you have constant progress, plus multiple viable strategies and different party compositions. In general though, the longer a game is, the higher is the probability of boring portions, hence why it's much easier for shorter games to achieve good replayability.

I think that contributes a lot to it as well. Each of the Halo campaigns are, as I mentioned earlier, consistently enjoyable from start to finish, with no filler or padding. It's 8-10 hours well spent. Doom 2016 likewise takes a few sittings to beat, but it's consistently action-packed. Meanwhile, Far Cry 4 I haven't touched since beating it the first time. The core mechanics were enjoyable as hell, and I liked the setting, but the copy-and-paste objectives made the game repetitive as hell. It started to feel like I was just going through the motions. After 40 hours, I just wanted to be done with it. Alien Isolation was a solid survival horror title, maybe one of the best in the genre, but the backtracking and padding made the game feel longer than it needed to be. If it took me only 10-12 hours to beat instead of 20, I might be more inclined to replay it.

Even Breath of the Wild, despite its gorgeous setting and solid mechanics, was filled with too much busywork. I think a good chunk of that stems from the use of "Ubisoft towers" for unlocking portions of the map (which were done far better than Ubisoft ever did for any of their games, but still...) and the fact that, instead of 10 to 12 proper dungeons, it had 120 shrines, with only five proper dungeons (and four of those were very similar to each other thematically). There was so much to do in that game, much of it repetitive, that it took me over 170 hours to beat. That kind of time investment (six weeks assuming 3 hours of play per day) means I might replay it one or two more times ever. Had it instead populated its vast world with, say 15-20 proper dungeons, each with its own theme, I might be more inclined to replay it more often. LttP, meanwhile, gets a lot replay value with its 10-15 hour duration and its array of distinct and consistently interesting dungeons.

Do we have the same definition of replayable?