Or a bit of both...

Exactly, also @firebush03 you two have it. 40 -50 hours is the upper limit even for some games that are a 10 unless the game is so blazingly good that it can hook you very deeply and has a beyond great core gameplay and/or narrative hooks and a gameplay loop that is exceptional like Elden Ring, like The Witcher 3, like Stellar Blade. Some manage it on core gameplay alone like Destiny but for games that don't have that X factor like Assassins cred games or the like, they really would benifet from reducing hours, perhaps they'd even be able to achieve that X factor by focusing on a more concise experience and have more time and recourses to work on the stuff that matters, I hear Assassins Creed Mirage is one of the good ones. 

Can you imagine playing a survival horror for 50 hours? Or a Doom or COD... nope. Lies of P is the main one I point to, if this game had ended at 70% of they way through and not made the end game content so frustratingly difficult, I'd have rated it highly but in pursuing that last 30% or 10-12 hours and the way they designed the content to slow you down and prevent you from progressing cause they clearly wanted to elongate the game, it fell so drastically for me, like from a 9 to a 6. Same with Metaphor, game was an easy 10 up until the latter half and then that last stretch of mind numbingly drawn out and again, they designed the final encounter in a way that made the side content a nessesity. I pity the people who got to the end of Metaphor and didn't do the side content cause they'd probably have to restart the entire game to finish it. 

Depends entirely on the game. I can easily spend 100+ hours playing through a game like Elden Ring, but with some other games I might begin to lose interest well before I get even 10 hours in. Then there are games I still consider great, but which would have greatly benefited from significant cutting down, like Xenoblade Chronicles or Dragon Quest XI. I enjoyed both games, but I probably would have liked them even more 15 to 20 hours shorter. Obviously, some games like 2D platformers, horror games, FPS games, and various others generally work best somewhere between 10 to 20 hours long, and trying to stretch the content further often ends up feeling frustrating and annoying.

Well, yes. It depends on the game of course, but I think there is a general trend towards making games longer and putting more "fluff" into them, which doesn't improve the experience. Resident Evil 4 Remake for example is longer than the original, but that doesn't make it better. The new set pieces often felt like padding, so why put them in there? Just so you can claim the game is "20 hours long"?

It often feels like buying a game is this huge commitment where you have to put hundreds of hours into it in order to have the most fun, especially with AAA titles. It's like you have to adjust your life to accommodate for some titles, and I don't have the time for that these days. I don't want to propose or enter a longterm relationship. I just want to have some fun.

I like big games. I don't mind spending months on them, as long the gameplay loop is still fun and engaging

I will otherwise ask if devs are respecting my money. 70 USD for 10h gameplay is too expensive imho

Robocop Rouge city does it perfectly. There is the main game which isn't long, probably 10 hours but then there is a load of side content that you can choose to do that feels as if it is main mission stuff and extends the gameplay to about 20 hours. Same goes for The Witcher 3, all the side content is of such high quality that it feels like main quest stuff but it's also completely ignorable if you want a faster playthrough. Stellar Blade again, another perfect example as is From Soft games.

Good check pointing, save anytime, no roadblocks requiring grinding is the first thing that comes to mind to respect my time. The worst is feeling like I'm being held hostage by a game because you can't save and continue later. Hence I'm not a fan with Souls games, can't even pause them...

Instant retry (not having to watch the same cut-scenes, same dialog, walk all the way back etc) is respecting my time. And older games definitely did not do that. Exceptions of course like Half-life, that respected your time to the max with instant save/load anywhere. Tombraider the same (to the fault of accidentally saving while in mid jump to certain death instead of loading oops)
Thus no extensive game over screens, long load screens and other nonsense.

I rather have a shorter game with NG+ than games with busy work to pad for length.

Adjustable difficulty at any time is also part of respecting my time. (If you can't balance the game, let me balance it myself) Instead of grinding for a boss, let me adjust the difficulty and move on. GoW was great for that. Lower difficulty for certain boss fights, put it back up for regulars. That kept fighting against regular enemies interesting/challenging enough without bosses becoming a roadblock. PoE2, fun in co-op, but not respecting our time, having to grind the same levels over to get past certain bosses, which then makes the levels after trivial until the game catches back up to out level. Luckily it seems better balanced in ng+ (cruel mode)

Bloat is harmless as long as it can all be skipped. If you really get into a game then the bloat feels fine like in BotW and TotK. Yet if it is essential to do all the side quests to be able to finish the game, then no.
Repeated bosses is a big no for me though. I don't want to see the same boss again, not as a regular enemy later or combined with other bosses, or with multiple of the same. Zelda is guilty of that too. If I want to fight them again, I'll do it in ng+.


I can't say shorter games are better in general since VR games are shorter and guilty of all the above just as much. The current trend seems to be reaching 10hr play time with repetition, bad check pointing and cheap deaths :/

You wouldn't like Metaphor, it hits all those points and more and all side content is basically a nessesity even if you lower the difficulty in the last fight it takes like an hour and a half. 

I have a low tolerance for modern games that waste my time at this point. I've never made it out of the tutorial section of RDR2. Just let me play the game already instead of wasting my time.

I think you may be talking about onboarding there, it's a tutorial but I agree, that section needs to be condensed and the game does waste your time after that, like slowing you down in camps, having long animations to pick things up and what not and a whole section of the game that serves little purpose but to set the player back and add content but all in all that game is a 10/10 masterpiece and worth all the little hassles.