Paddington Game Lengths

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I thought The Last of Us was easily twice as long as it needed to be. The whole Pittsburgh (was it Pittsburgh?) just dragged on on forever. It really wasn't until the Winter section that the game bothered to work in a couple of gameplay tweaks and finally picked up the pace.

As for padding: In a fast paced spectacle shooter which aggressively pushes you ever forward and regularly blocks your way back (Uncharted, Killzone, Gears, ...) I'd actually say that sticking around looking for pointless collectibles is very much not the normal way to play the game. I'd wager most people want to experience the story and the thrills before bothering to look behind every bush for haphazardly scattered doodads.
 
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It's subjective. Personally, I find the collectibles annoying. I find it stupid to be trapped in a burning building and yet, instead of running for the exit, loitering around looking for trinkets. It's a story breaker, but one I tend to participate in because it's there! However, my views don't represent everyone's. It'd be wrong of me to say collectibles like that are padding. They may be redundant for me, but not for others. So in determining a game's length, we can only describe what it is for ourselves given our play styles and preferences. That's why play lengths have a range.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
If you can afford to, that's great. For a lot of folk with limited disposable income, they need long-term entertainment from their game investments, so play length counts for a lot. Being a teen on a London estate, £50+ on a few hours is very poor economy. Better to buy GTA or COD and gets of replayability. Much like for food - for some people, $200 on a once-in-a-lifetime meal is worth it, whereas for many, the food is a means to stave of starvation and they wouldn't consider anything so expensive. For them, $200 would have to get an annual pass to an all-you-can-eat diner.

From a dev POV, I expect being able to serve both ends of the spectrum is the ideal, unless you are an Artist. Then you don't care about financial reward and just want to craft the best possible experience for the niche that'll buy it.
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I agree. If you have limited money to spend, you're going to try to get the most for your money. I don't have a problem with that. I just don't buy into the idea that a short game is inherently bad or negative. For me, it's the quality of the experience that makes a game worth the money. That can be 5 hours or 100 hours. Portal was an incredibly short game, and it was offered as part of a bundle and sold individually for cheap, but if it was a $60 game it would have been worth it, to me. It's just that good. Quality over quantity. I feel like trying to optimize every gaming dollar I spend for hours/$ is kind of like the fast food of gaming, where you're just trying to get a lot of food for cheap, rather than good food. Maybe that's why people are so crazy about "objective" reviews and metacritic, because it's part of some larger plan to get the absolute most hours of gaming for each penny spent.
 
Collection hunting is one of those things that split just about any game fanbase. I think they are most unfair for the OCD players, who just have to find everything and in the end they hate game for it. But at the same time they are great for some who happen to get most while playing normally and then add bit of time after the final boss (or second run) and find the rest. One of my few 100% done games (as in get all achievements on steam) is LA Noire. The game that I imagine most players would hate to 100%. For me it was really no big deal at all, as i loved to drive and run around 40's Los Angeles. I didn't find everything on my own, but because I wanted to see if I missed any interesting locations, I checked the rest too and I'm happy that I did.

Collecting anything should always be optional, as in - it's possible to get to the end of game without collecting or grinding. Most modern games I've played allow this. Opposite side of it is the fact that ingame money, gear or upgrades rarely matter and difficulty has to be left for players to moderate. One of the big complains of Assassin's Creed series is the fact that fights are really easy. I looked bit into it and found out that I play the game very differently then those players. They use their full arsenal (including stunning bombs) on every encounter or counter everything. I guess it's logical because in the past they probably have played the games where they had to use everything in order to beat the encounter. That's never been true for me (outside MMO raid bosses). So they are right and I'm wrong, because I make the game just the right difficulty for me. This skews my perspective of the game and in the end while we play the same game, we don't really play the same way. But then there are those masses who buy these AAA games and thanks to research and controlled playtests, the game difficulty and lenght is just right for 'em. Thus it's easy to see why there's vocal group of players who absolutely hate laundrylist design and padded modern open world games.
 
I know a guy who was doing acheological digging many years ago, and he got really passionate when Uncharted came out, all he cared about was the treasures. My reaction was "The what? The treasures?". He said the things found are exactly what was supposed to be in those areas, and that the dev REALLY did a good research. He finished his second game with all of them. We should never assume people have the same passions. Sometimes a treasure hunt is a cheap trick, sometimes it's well researched and part of the charm of the game, even if few gamers have the knowledge to appreciate. (I didn't, btw)

I'm wondering if there might be something similar about 1886 for anthropology geeks, but I'm no expert...
 
I'll add to that that the treasures in Uncharted were so beautifully rendered that there was some interest for me in discovering them. They weren't just mundane list-ticking. But I do wish there was an option to disable collectibles on first run throughs. ;)
 
Billy Idol said:
If we rate entertainment values as length per money, I get this:

A typical movie (1.5h) costs 11€ where I live. Longer movies cost even more. Thus, about 7.33€ per hour.

A new typical game costs 60€. So, if the game offers more than 8.18h of entertainment, it is in this measure a better value than movies.

A typical book costs 15€. Thus, if it takes more than 2h to read, it offers better value in this single discipline than movies and games.

Thus:

Books >>> standard games > movies

Books >>> movies > short games.


(Of course, this does not factor in which makes more fun and such thing...it is just one number, but still a funny one imo :))


Btw, the prices are different in the US, right? How does it compare?
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They charge you more for a longer movie ? In the states its the same cost. I can pay anywhere from $6 to $18 usd for a movie and that's dependent on if I see an early showing before 1pm and then if I see an imax 3d movie (that being $18). however I mostly see a movie for $10 bucks in nice comfy power reclining seats. Doesn't matter if its a 1 hour or 3 hour movie


If a game is only 5 hours to beat for me I'm not going to spend the same on it as I would a 20 hour game or a 30 hour game
 
If a film cost 280 million to produce, should the ticket price be 10 times more than another film that cost 28 million to produce?

Why does a sushi meal cost as much as 50 boxes of Kraft Dinner? Don't you get less food for your money?
 
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Short bad games don't bother me at all. LOL.

But short great games irk me. There is always a moment of disappointment when I realize I am near the end of a great experience. That feeling of that moment is usually excerabated if a game is unusually short.

But a great experience is a great experience. At the most I might choose another compelling more meaty experience and wait for a sale if the game in question was released close to other titles I have interest in buying.
 
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eastmen said:
If a game is only 5 hours to beat for me I'm not going to spend the same on it as I would a 20 hour game or a 30 hour game
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And by that logic, you will not pay the same for a 20 hour game as a 100 hour game. I'm picturing your spreadsheet where you have game length in a formula that dictates purchase price. "The Internet says Tomb Raider takes 8.2 hours on average to finish... that works out to $42.75!".
 
A week after release, a game that is short is easily found used for half price though... the value tends to settle down to what people are willing to pay.
 
DrJay24 said:
And by that logic, you will not pay the same for a 20 hour game as a 100 hour game. I'm picturing your spreadsheet where you have game length in a formula that dictates purchase price. "The Internet says Tomb Raider takes 8.2 hours on average to finish... that works out to $42.75!".
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Depends on the game , I've played a 100 hours of civ 5 and it only cost me $60 which is a great deal. But there have been games where I've played countless hours like ultima online that cost me $50 + $10 a month for 6 years that I played the game.

So for longer experiances as long as they are good I'd be willing to pay more. For tomb raider I purchase them on steam for like $15 bucks because while I will have fun with it , its just not a must have purchase and I can wait for it to be cheap
 
Much better reference data here : http://howlongtobeat.com/

Includes different averages and rushed/normal/leisurely completions of main story through extras to completionist, and includes separate speed-runs. Some examples

Alan Wake (story + extras) - 6:40 rushed, 13:21 median
GoW (main story) - 6:30 rushed, 9:00 median
Uncharted (main story) - 5:33 rushed, 8:46 median
Tomb Raider 2013 (main story) - 8:00 rushed, 11:00 median
Bioshock (main story) - 8:40 rushed, 12:00 median

I guess everything other than 'rushed' is people indulging in padding and the minimum game time is the actual 'game length'. ;) Shame it doesn't have difficulty modes listed.
 
Scott_Arm said:
Weird. Tickets for movies here are flat rate.
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If shorter movies are cheaper, it'd be a better solution. A fixed rate either subsidises the longer movies (paying too little for long movies), or generates more profit for the cinema (paying too much for short movies). In the UK, price isn't affected by film length. That presumably follows a tradition of theatre productions where the theatre needs a fee for the night regardless of production length because it generally can't switch back and forth between acts.
 
Isn't that kind of site victim of ballot stuffing?
This won't work for any game that has a playtimegate controversy attached...
 
I think the major concern for TO is replayability. It's probably an ideal candidate for Sony's streamed/rental service. There's no multiplayer or coop much else as far as we know. I expect lots of second hand disks to do the rounds!
 
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