I don't personally buy short games. 30 hours need to be guaranteed. Which is why I often cannot play indies. I like to get invested into games, even if they are endless (WoW, LoL, JRPGs)

I wanna pay money to have fun. If a game is fun, it shouldn't matter how long it is. As long as it's addictive fun. Splatoon...I'm looking at you.

For something action packed like Uncharted, Metroid or Tomb Raider, I like them to be in the 10-15hrs ball park.

Something more adventure RPG orientated like Zelda or Mass Effect, I like in between 25-35hrs.

And shooters, around 10hrs is fine.

For a AAA game I expect more in the way of quality of experience rather than length of time. It's no use having a 50hr game that was poorly made with nothing interesting to do in the world besides walking from A to B for 2 hours.

When a girl tells you size doesn't matter, it's to make you feel better about a small penis.
When a gamer tells you size doesn't matter, it's to make themselves feel better about the side of their games.

Put it another way, who, at all, would complain if Halo 5, MGSV, Order 1886, Destiny, etc, had more story to them?, nobody, on the contrary, everyone would label it a positive. So if we all virtually unanimously agree that more story and a longer campaign is better, it seems unfathomable that we couldn't agree that a short story or campaign is worse, but people do, because it's a defense mechanism.

Frankly, Id rather games with a story to tell, do so with a minimum of 8 hours, and not spend those 8 hours on cutscenes, bulletsponges or retracing steps through old portions of the map (yes, im looking at you, ODST).

It depends on the genre and how polished is the game.

I'll just use one franchise as my example (all opinions, of course)

There's a sweet spot balance between gameplay and story. MGS3 hit it perfectly in my opinion. MGSV had too much gameplay (and padding). MGS4 had to much story.

I feel like 8 - 14 hours is perfect. I have only ever been interested in a handful of games up or past the 20 hour mark. To me, anything beyond 20 hours has just felt like level grinding, or repetitive things like multiplayer.

However, I would never critisize a game for length after having been a gamer through the early 90's. Lots of $85 gems from that era that lasted no longer than 3 hours, but the replayability, and excitement made the games worth going back and playing time and time agin.

I'd be more than happy if a game lasts between 10 and 20 hours, but for me, the longer it lasts, the better, especially if it gives me more reasons to come back and finish the game and keep replaying it over and over again.

£2 an hour. So around 20 hours plus. This could through multiple playthroughs and what not. Which is why I don't mind paying less for games I know won't last as long.

A game with less than 30 hours in play time is a waste of money, 50-80 hours would be ideal.