What is your ideal length of time to beat a video game?

15-20 hours. I'm getting a little burnt out on long open world games.

I remember when I used to love 50+ hour JRPGs back in school/college. Nowadays I don't have the time or the patience to spend that long on a single player game...I find that most of them are relentlessly padded and waste too much of my time, and I'd much rather play something that's shorter and better paced. Not to say I don't occasionally enjoy a longer RPG, but I definitely skew a lot more toward shorter games in other genres.

With having less free time and having a huge shelf of games I still need to play (not to mention enjoying multiplayer stuff like Overwatch and League as well), I find that I've developed a fairly short attention span with games in general, and I have to really get invested to devote a huge chunk of time exclusively to one game. But overall I feel like I get more out of a 10-20 hour, well-paced adventure than I do with a 50 hour game with a glacial plot and a lot of filler.

And I'm just getting tired of massive open-world games in general, so I'll probably dip back into some older stuff to cleanse my palate after I finish God of War.

It really depends on the game. If it's still engaging at 40+ hours, then bring it. On the other hand, I appreciate a 2 hour romp. There is no "ideal" for me other than the game achieving what it is trying to achieve.

I guess a big factor for me these days is: "what am I playing this game on and when/where am I playing it" I have gotten into some games I would not have normally because they are shorter and I have a Switch. If I didn't, some of these shorter games would have been ignored because when I am at home, I am playing longer, bigger games. At the same time, I no longer buy short games on Steam because I have a ton of them on the Switch, and I can play them anywhere.

I guess I don't have a set ideal. I have a range.

Rowsdower said:

Between 10-15. I can go up to 20 if the game is really engaging.

Kingdom Hearts being 40+ hours just for the main story is making me sweat.

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Are you talking about the first one? I replayed it on normal difficulty a few months ago and it took me 25 hours to beat the main story.

Around 15 hours or more, don't mind if a game is longer since I'm not obligated to finish it on the day I've bought it.

I get really annoyed if I can beat the game within the first week of owning it unless it was an incredibly good experience (not counting weeks when I can really binge and play several for hours at a time). I feel like 12+ hours is nice, but once games get too long (30+) they also have to find that good experience to balance it as well.

I have three ideal game lengths.

I love love love 2-4 hour games I can finish in a single session. I basically need one of those now and then to feel I got a complete experience in between all the longer stuff. Think stuff like Journey, Life is Strange episodes, Never Alone etc.

I really like 8-11 hour games I can finish in either one long all day session, two evenings, or a weekend. Uncharted trilogy etc.

For longer games my attention span really struggles if it's more than 20-25 hours. Unless it's incredibly compelling and I have the urge to stuick with it, which is rare. Mass Effect was perfect, you can main story it in 20 hours, with 43 hours if you harvest every side scrap of data. Sleeping Dogs for the open world was just right, with 100% taking 45 then 35 hours on my two runs, but you can main story it in 15 if you're impatient.

For me, anything longer than 25 hours and I often get distracted at the 12 hour mark. Especially JRPGs where it is ALWAYS at 12 hours. I go to fire it up again, but instead of thinking "I'll play alllllll day and finish this" I think "I could play this all day (again) and still not finish this" and that's daunting AF. It can even be a good game that I'm enjoying, but if I can play it from morning to night for a full weekend and still not finish it? Yeah, I'm going to be looking for fresh distractions. I think part of it is that I'm often very story orientated in games, and anything longer than 25 hours and the narrative just isn't going to be dense enough or compelling enough to sustain it.

That said I'm not against larger games you can forever dip into. I still have a Just Cause 2 save file that once a year I fire up and lose a whole day to as I slowly crawl towards 100% while I clean dat map.

Whatever The Order:1886 was.

I'd appreciate 10-12 hour games at 39.99 Thank you.

Enough time where a story can unfold, no need for grind fillers and dead storylines to get extra hours into a game. Cheaper on development for designers and faster turn around for new games and series!

Ideally five to ten hours depending on content.

About 10 hours is my sweet spot. I have to admit, I'm also drawn to shorter games that are over when they're over nowadays, though I of course pepper that with some longer games and some constants in the rotation (like online games-as-service type deals).

I should note that I don't associate a game's length with its value much at all. If it's good experience and I can afford it, I don't really care how many hours worth of content it offers.

Vampire Chicken said:

Are you talking about the first one? I replayed it on normal difficulty a few months ago and it took me 25 hours to beat the main story.

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No, talking about Kingdom Hearts 3.

I like a solid 10-15 hour game. But I also like RPGs, so I keep playing these 50+ hour games >_<

I liked the Mass Effect trilogy, they were 25-40 hours each for me. That's about right if I'm really enjoying an RPG.

6-10 hours for me.

Best experiences I had this gen are from indies and I've never could have predicted that. I liked them before, sure, but nowadays I can't spend 30+ hours on games anymore. I can't seem to finish games I loved earlier like God of War, The Witcher or even Zelda.

Probably the best experiences I've had where Indies ( Inside, What happened to Edith Finch, Life is Strange etc. ) some Nintendo games ( DK Tropical Freeze, Treasure Tracker, Odyssey ) arcade-like games ( OnRush, Nex Machina, Sonic Mania etc.)

My backlog of this gen is crazy. I've bought 34 games this gen I've rarely touched. I'm 47 and always bought every game I thought was interesting, but I've stopped doing that recently and I can tell you it feels good. It saves money, but even more important, I don't get so frustrated anymore, by looking at games I will never play. Should have done this way earlier.

Depends on the game but 10-12 hours is pretty good for like an average action game.

For an RPG 40-50 is my sweet spot.

10 hours or less is preferable for SP games. DOOM is something that comes to mind. I remember really enjoying the game the first handful of hours, but when I hit the 8-9 hour mark(at the end basically) I burned out because it felt repetitive. I never finished it, nor could I force myself to. I had enough.

Long RPG's are out of the question. I just don't have the time. They consume too much time when I can be moving game to game.

Depends on the genre. After around the 50 hour mark though, with almost any game, my interest basically jumps off a cliff and I'm just going through the motions to get to the end. I actually prefer games between the 15 - 30 hour mark that have some replayability instead. This seems to be antithetical to the current trend of "more is better" open-world plague.

arbok26 said:

For example The Witcher 3, the narrative or the plot thread is actually pretty basic, its to find Ciri. But there are parts they could easily have truncated, for example when Geralt gets to Novigrad and has to do the quests for the four kings of novigrad. Or even when Geralt gets to Skellige, it's literally a second narrative arc as the velen/novigrad feel very different to skellige.

I actually thought The Witcher 3 suffered from some poor pacing as the first half of the game is incredible, and the second half is just very good compared to the first half.

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It did. The simple fact that it was open-world killed the pacing and clashed with the overall narrative too. And yeah, Skellige was basically "Let's pause our regularly scheduled adventure for this not so brief intermission". Both of the previous two games were a far better experience in that regard.

15-25hrs depending on the genre

I don't have a shitload of money to spent on games, so I want a game to last me a while. 40-50 hours is my sweet spot. Don't mind shorter games, but I'd like replay value or DLC bring or up to having spent 40 hours with it. Shorter then that and I feel bad for spending 60 euro's. Once they discounts, it gets easier to buy shorter games.

Don't have any preference. I take my time anyway.

It took me 15 years to beat Terranigma.

Don't really care as long as I'm having fun.

Taking into account that the game is awesome and keeps introducing new elements and gameplay ideas to keep things interesting: 60 hours maybe?

Few games are able to stay fresh that long though, if any. But that doesn't mean I don't want them to.

arbok26 said:

Same. I've bought lots of games when they've been significantly discounted, but they kind of pile up without me noticing. That is what I alluded to in the OP, I can't justify a Switch or an Xbox One X when I have a PS4 and PC that covers 90% of the games I want.

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Too bad. My switch is the single reason my backlog is almost non existent. Being able to play wherever, whenever, really helps knock out games during downtime.

Length doesn't matter to me, pacing is much more important.

10-12 hours is the sweet spot for me. Anything longer better be worth it.

arbok26 said:

Same. I've bought lots of games when they've been significantly discounted, but they kind of pile up without me noticing. That is what I alluded to in the OP, I can't justify a Switch or an Xbox One X when I have a PS4 and PC that covers 90% of the games I want.

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Maybe I should have gone that route too, although the Switch has a lot to offer if you like Nintendo games (which feel completely different from other devs ) or shorter, arcadelike games to play on the go.

I don't regret buying the Xbox One, but I only play my racing games on Xbox . Next gen I'll probably go for the PS5/ Nintendo combo alone (due to exclusives). I can't handle 3 consoles nowadays.

It really depends on the format of the game. Breath of the Wild had me hooked for 80 hours and I loved almost all of it. In general though, I prefer something about six hours. I think keeping a game interesting gets exponentially difficult as it gets longer. I think for a gameplay idea to stay fresh past six hours is really fucking difficult, and a lot of games pad this out with filler that often isn't as fun.

doesn't matter as long as i'm having fun. if the mechanics and systems of a game are worth exploring and experimenting with then it can be as long as it wants. but if it's just a cookie cutter clone of an established form of gameplay then it better not overstay its welcome.

I love it when a sp game wraps up in 6-10 hours. Most games don't have enough going on to be interesting for a large amount of time, but they get stretched out anyway because nowadays you need at least 20+ hours of content (Alien Isolation/God of War I'm looking at you). It's only in rare cases where you actively want to spend more time with the game and postpone going for the ending. I had that with Hollow Knight, which offers a great sense of discovery, you want to see every inch of the map.

I love games that have the confidence to offer you a story you can finish in one sitting, but never recycle ideas, like Inside.

It depends, sometimes I want them to be like 7-10 hours long, but if it's an epic RPG I want them to be 50+ hours.

8-15 hrs

For RPGs 50-100 hours
For everything else, 8-10

Creamium said:

I love it when a sp game wraps up in 6-10 hours. Most games don't have enough going on to be interesting for a large amount of time, but they get stretched out anyway because nowadays you need at least 20+ hours of content (Alien Isolation/God of War I'm looking at you). It's only in rare cases where you actively want to spend more time with the game and postpone going for the ending. I had that with Hollow Knight, which offers a great sense of discovery, you want to see every inch of the map.

I love games that have the confidence to offer you a story you can finish in one sitting, but never recycle ideas, like Inside.

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both great examples. inside and hollow knight have the perfect length for what they are (i wouldn't be mad if hollow knight was longer tho)

Uh, depends on the game. I'll happily play anything from under an hour to 100 hours if it's good.
Though the longer a game gets, the higher the risk that it is (badly) padded and can't actually sustain its length becomes.
I.e. Xenoblade Chronicles is a looong game, and part of that length comes from infuriatingly bad side-content. This is a game where less would have been more.
On the other hand, I'm happy to spend 60-80 hours in a Trails game, gobbling up every optional thing that exists, including talking to all NPCs all the time, every time.

I'm caught up in survival games like Minecraft, Ark, Age of Conan, and now No Man's sky again because I hate when games end.

It depends on how many ideas the game has and the execution of its pacing. Sometimes 20 hours is far too long, sometimes 20 hours isn't long enough.

30 hours for an RPG is the sweet spot for me, that defines which ones I'll bother to replay and which feel like they could do with a hard edit. Having said that, I'm pushing 40 with a young family and RPGs are my favourite genre, I don't begrudge people that want 50+ hours.

40-50 hours, aka I can easily squeeze 100 from it.

10 Hours is my ideal length.

10 hours is perfect for me.
But all the games I want to play are long ass RPGs.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It would be 8 to 10 hours which would allow me to finish it in two weeks.

7-12 hours is very suitable for me,
but when it comes to rpgs around 30 hours is perfect for me nowadays.

Around 10-15 hours. Those are hard to come by nowadays with so many open-world games that take 50-100 hours to complete.

If the game is good I'll continue to play it until I get bored.

The games with extended life, looping, collecting etc. I usually stop unless it's fun like Dragons Dogma, but even then it gets past it's shelf life.

Open world games: ~30 hours is the ideal playtime for the story. I don't mind playing longer for side activities and quests. No time limit for that.

Linear games: ~15 hours is good enough. Maybe a bit longer if and only if the story needs time.

Multiplayer: At least 500 hours. If I don't see myself investing 500 hours in a multiplayer game, I most likely won't bother playing it.

Ghos said:

6-10 hours. ~15 if it's reaaally well-paced.

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This.

Way too much filler these says, I want streamlined games. Most of the time at least. Because once a year I dive into a huge game like Witcher 3 and enjoy the hell out if it. So it depends a bit.

Never ending is my favorite length. I like to be in control when my character's story ends.