Do game devs need to respect our time better? Can shorter games be better?

[LegitHyperbole]

SvennoJ said:

LegitHyperbole said:

You can always wait for a sale and I agree but 3 or even 5 hours for full price is pretty fucked up. That's three times the price of a film. There used to be a sweet spot of 8-12 hours for linear games for full price and then you'd get MP tacked on. Idk what happened to those days. 

3 to 5 hours you can play over and over and have a blast.

Golden Axe is about an hour long, we played that together for months! And it wasn't difficult either, just pure fun. (Difficult as in you can hit each other, which made it that much more fun!)

Xenon 2 the same, just an hour from start to finish without doing optional stuff. It was a blast to play through that once a week.

Prince of Persia 1989, 2 hours. But so fun to replay.

Now we have The Last of Us at 15 hours which was pushing it, Part 2 is 20 to 30 hours. It's just too long. I paused my second play through, got fatigued from all the corridors. Same with GoW Ragnarok (20-60 hours), haven't picked that back up yet and probably won't.

This "hours for full price" ruined gaming!

Shorter games are more fun to replay and have a much lower threshold to replay.

I totally agree the last of us 2 is far too long even though it's great and kind of gets a pass but it dragged and Ragnorok is brutal because it's so long and bland at the same time unlike GoW '18 which was perfeclty sized and paced but surely you can see in the opposite direction to and see that those games are too short (if they are full price) doesn't matter about replay cause some people may not want to replay. 

First off, are you sure these games are that short on the first pkaythrough? Like I can beat Sekiro now in 4 hours but that game took me 100+ hours to beat, main + sides the first time. 

If not then how can you justify spending full price on games that short, regardless of replay. What if you were to only play it once, would you see that as a minus? People perceived value differently. I for one can't justify full price for games at all anymore even if I know I'll spend weeks on it and love it before hand and I have become obsessed with finding cheap indies that have massive fun factor that exceeds their low price but I end up spending a lot on those games cause of all the failures I come across but man, Refunct is a fun game with great replay value, infact the whole idea of the fun of the game is knowing how to beat it fast enough as it's a very simple game, even visually basic game that's 45 minutes the first run and 4 minutes at like top speed run. Yes you'll get more out of it than 45 minutes but it is priced accordingly at under 5 euro... 2.99 if I remember correctly and that's great value. To think that this could be priced at 70 euro and you'd be okay with it is mind boggling to me. 

I know I made this thread but perhaps I'm seeing the light a little when it's taken to this extreme. Last year I was so happy with Vampire Survivors releasing at 5 euro and ending up having 70 hours in it, it was so much fun and filled with content. I felt like I was stealing from the devs so I bought the DLC without any intention of playing them. 

Last edited by LegitHyperbole - on 10 January 2025