I see a lot of talk about the length of games these days, and it often seems to be the deciding factor in whether or not folks buy a game, regardless of how good that game may be.

So, ignoring price and any one game or genre in particular, about how long do you prefer your games to last? Do you find yourself losing interest in games after a certain point? Obviously for many folks the answer to that depends on the aforementioned factors, but for the poll just a rough average.

I find myself leaning towards 20-25 hours for most games, maybe 30 if it's an RPG or action/adventure. Besides the occasional exception, 40+ hour games wear me out and I can't really play 'em like I used to, but that might be because I have such a large backlog that after a while I wanna move onto something else.

How's about you?

Dungeon Siege 2 is too long

EDIT: But still awesome

I noticed I finish most games between 10-30 hours. Games which take a long time, say 40 hours +, I lose interest quickly, especially if the main quest moves too slow. This is a bit different for sandbox games, in the sense that I can get bored very quickly (20 hours), or I may play it a lot more.

As long as it isnt pointless drawn out length (repidition, level grinding etc) I want the game ot be as long as possible. i can easily rack up 100+ hours in any bethesda game....but not everyone can replay like i do.

Depends on what the game is like. Morrowind can never last too long.

Deus Ex had a nice length, a bit over 20 hours even after many playthroughs. As long as you don't rush it. The first playthrough usually takes longer because you're still figuring things out. The gameplay was more or less the same throughout the entire game (if you sticked to the same approach all the time) and if that would've gone on much longer that may have made it repetitive, but it didn't last too long and the story and level design kept things interesting until the very end. And it was very replayable too.

Dragon Age got boring after a while because it was full of filler combat, one fight after another, and after a while only the story points in between of those were interesting and couldn't come soon enough. I think I'm about 30 hours in and I look forward to finishing it now, it has been long enough. And I don't intend to replay it soon. But I have a Fallout 3 character going for over 80 hours and I'm not bored of it yet.

Depends on the game's content. Something open world like Oblivion and Morrowind I can easily play for hundreds of hours (provided its good of course). Other games with excellent stories and gameplay like Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect I can easily enjoy for a long length of time as well (eg, I've completed Origins more times than I should admit, and have easily played it for more than 100 hours). That being said, not all RPGs are great when they're long, The Witcher for example felt very drawn out, and I found myself forgetting what I was meant to be doing and just following map points.

Some games though I like short.Most FPS games would get extremely tedious if they went for 30 hours, as would a game like Dungeon Siege (which was repeditive after 5 minutes).

Usually when I play a game for the first time I take things slow, exploring everything and getting the best experience as possible. Of course, when I play something for another time, I usually go faster, as I'm used to the mechanics and know what I'm doing.

Hmm, it depends on the content of the game. Like in GTA: IV, when you're doing essentially the same few missions over and over again (drive somewhere, shoot some people, escape the police) not even cutscenes can make me want to do that for hours on end. That said, I can just free roam in GTA: IV for hours, having fun with the physics and stuff. I think Fallout 3 was about the right length for the style of game: if you did all the side missions, all the MQ and explored the entire map in one playthrough it dragged a little too much, but usually that kind of thing takes me at least 2.

Edit: Weird, Robbio and I started with pretty much the same sentence

Doesn't really bother me as long as it's fun to play.

This is a Bethesda forum, isn't it?

Bethesda's open world RPGs are known for playthroughs that last hundreds of hours.

There are lots of great games by other studios that are fun and designed to be completed over the course of a weekend or two.

Nothing wrong with that, but I've played several hundred hours of Oblivion during the last few years and haven't even finished the main quest. My first playthrough of New Vegas lasted 160+ hours.

I'd definitely lose interest if a Dragon Age playthrough took 100 hours. Or I'd spread the playing time out over a longer period of time and keep forgotting what I was doing.

Depends on the genre, I would like all games to be atleast 15 hours.

It doesn't matter too much to me how long a game is so long as there's a reason for it being that length and I'm getting my money's worth.

Amnesia, for instance, lasted about six hours, maybe less. However, it was one of the best games of 2010 for the experience it imparted. I was only happy with it, though, because it cost ￡12.

CoD4 cost me ￡45 and its story lasted me approximately the same amount of time as Amnesia. But that didn't matter because the multiplayer had me hooked for over six hundred hours.

In singleplayer games, as long as the story is good enough and the product is not overpriced for the amount of enjoyment I get from it I'm happy. In games with a multiplayer component, as long as the multiplayer is worth playing I don't mind - there's theoretically infinite hours of entertainment there. However, I only tend to regularly play the multiplayer of a few games at a time. For instance, at the moment I'm playing Reach (another short game with multiplayer that made up the value for money) and NFS Hot Pursuit. BioShock 2's multiplayer - while not unenjoyable - is going to absolute waste and I wish that they'd kept it as a single player game.

I know its been said before, but it depends what kind of game, and how good the game is

In sandbox games- 140 hours or more

Shooters- 8-12 hour story mode. but usually there story modes are like, 5 hours

2 - 5 minutes.

Generally, no preference, it depends on the game.

Great minds think alike!

It entirely depends on the game in question. I'm fine with a game being as long as the story needs it to be.

If it's less then 24 hours then the game is short.

Depends entirely on the game.
I played red faction for a good bit, but got bored quickly due to repitition, borderlands got boring quick, tenchu z got boring quick, bioshock 2 go boring quick, etc.
has atleast 72 hours, and it has great replay value, if the game is fun, the longer the better. The moment it stops being fun, its too long.

It takes me on average to beat a zelda game in around 40 hours. Even though i beat it in that time frame, i crave for more. The black ops campaign was terrible imo and i got bored after the first mission. I got bored of oblivion at around 300+ hours and got bored of New vegas at around 100 hours.


depends on the game.

I'd want my games to last longer than 20 hours at the least..

I spend a lot of time on each game that I play, usually 30+ hours for action games, shooters, etc., and hundreds of hours with RPGs. I hold a grand total of 900 hours over both Persona games on the PS2, to give an example. As for game length preference, it largely depends on how much I like the game. Games that are potentially hundreds of hours in length but will never play for that long include ones like Dragon Quest 8, Star Ocean 3, most Final Fantasy games, and Fallout 3. Note that I love a lot of Final Fantasy titles and Fallout 3. It's just that those games don't attach me to them as much as, say, Persona does. As for DQ8 and SO3, I really don't like them much.

My bare minimum for any game is 20 hours. As in, if the game's single player campaign does not last me at least 20 hours on a standard playthrough, it had better provide replay value or I'm going to be one pissed off gamer (IE, I dislike a lot of shooters due to a generally very short play time and virtually zero replay value offline). I value quality, but I do not want developers to focus entirely on quality and forget to make it last. I'd rather they strike a balance.

I like the length of a game like Fallout New Vegas. It only takes maybe 15 hours to complete the game if you ignore all side quests and do fairly little exploring, but it can be played for hundreds of hours if you find that your really like the game.

At least 200 hours of game play. Any less and it doesn't last long enough.

I want the biggest bang for my buck, I voted for 100+. Concise, shorter games are good too, but it seems the games that take forever to beat are the one's that I love the most. :fallout: / morrowind

I like about 40-50 hours for games that allow me to go at my own pace and have some small element of open-worldness. Okami took me about 45 hours. For Warriors of the Lost Empire, I've spent over 150 hours across four characters, and I'm still not bored with the game yet.

Again, it all comes down to quality vs. quantity. Some games do both at the same time, others are short and sweet, and some games add filler and fluff like back-tracking and fed-ex quests (*coughNWNcough*) that just waste my time.

EDIT: I voted "no preference" because it really depends on the kind of game. I would expect a game that has side-quests and exploration to last me longer than a more linear-style game. And some stories are long and need a lot of time to tell than other stories.