Videogames report - Does size matter? What's the sweet spot for the length of a campaign?
- Posted March 23rd, 2013 at 08:23 EDT by Steven Williamson
- 10 Comments
There’s an unusual obsession with size among gamers, who more and more frequently are posing the question: how long will it take me to complete this videogame? We see it often on gaming forums way before a title has been released. “How many chapters does this game have?! How long will it take to finish the campaign?!” almost like every extra second is seen as a unit of currency and the longer it lasts for the more “value” is gained from it.
This infatuation with size has passed over to gaming media channels too who are eager to let their readers know just how long a campaign will take to finish. Only this week, IGN and other videogame websites report: ‘The Last of Us: Single Player Campaign's Length Revealed’, like it’s a major news story that people are desperate to know about.
Demon's Souls - 300 hours+ of gameplay
Even in developer interviews, journalists are keen to get the scoop on how long the fun will last for. There’s a video interview over at Grey Viper that showcases this trend well as the interviewer uses a great opportunity to ask the guys at EA DICE anything he wants, yet concludes with the flaccid question: “How long is the game? Can you talk about how long the campaign is?” You can’t really blame him; his question is driven by public demand and they want to know the numbers.
But why are people so obsessed with the size of a game? Didn’t someone once say that it’s what you do with it that matters? Shouldn’t the enjoyment of a game be down to the consistency in its quality throughout, rather than its length? We’ve all seen the detrimental effect of this obsession with length through the release by publishers of videogames that have a fleshed-out single player campaign that drags on for no apparent reason and deviates in quality.
The most recent example of padding out a game is with God of War: Ascension. Though it’s a great action-adventure, there’s a fair chunk of boring platforming and pointless on-rails sections that do nothing but break up the pace of an otherwise chaotic and enjoyable title. Here, it seems, the developer has compromised on quality in order to add on more length and give the perception that it’s released a single player campaign that offers value with a 10-12 hour campaign. Strip out the unwanted chunks of offal though, and we’re down to eight hours.
Rogue Warrior clocked in at a disappointing four hours
We also see developers creating tacked-on multiplayer components to try and make up for what gamers may deem to be a “short campaign.” Perhaps the publisher puts pressures on a the studio to create an additional multiplayer offering so that these extra hours worth of gameplay will appeal to gamers hunger for getting “value for money?” We see it time and time again though; these multiplayer add-ons are often rushed. How many poor/average multiplayer’s have we seen in the past few years? Far too many to count.
In a bid to find out why people have this obsession with length and to discover what the sweet spot is for the size of a videogame, we reached out to the PlayStation community and our own members of staff to gather their thoughts. As it turns out, we were quite surprised with the findings as it does seem that gamers really do care about videogame length much more than we initially thought and some even actually buy a game based on its length.
While posing the question "How long should a videogame single player campaign last for?" we were quite surprised to discover that only a couple of people said that they weren’t really bothered about length and that it was the quality of the game that mattered. Everyone else believed that length really does matter and that the sweet spot should vary per genre.
U.S. Managing Editor Timothy Nunes uses the known length of a videogame to work out where playing it will fit in with his own schedule.
“Shooters should be about 8 hours long with about 2-hour leeway, RPGs about 50 with 10-20 hour leeway, and action-adventure around 15 with ... (continued on next page)
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djschief
- 9:11am EDT - March 23rd, 2013
- 1
I agree to an extent. It depends on the game and its replay value. I can only play a shooter for so long so the 10-12 hours seems about right. For action games it is tough because it depends on the game. Some action games you don't want to end, and that is the same for some RPGs. I do love my Demons Souls and Dark Souls and have poured numerous hundreds of hours. Everyone is going to have different opinions on this one.
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Eliphaz Levi |
Eliphaz- 9:17am EDT - March 23rd, 2013
- 2
I agree wholeheartedly with these views. Including the tackiness of tacked on 'filler'. There are exceptions of course a Great game can be whatever length suits it. But the majority of the time I use a value per hour formula myself.However, in general I rarely buy games at release anymore, finding $60.00 value in a 6-10 hour game is tuff. When I'm making more $ its easier, but over the last few years I've really slowed in purchasing titles at release. Only if I really want to support the Dev, or if theres a multiplayer component that either I 'm concerned about falling behind in, or worried there might not be a lasting community 6 months down the line, can I validate not waiting 6 months to save 50% on a full retail release, mind you I still buy new. I've found my gaming $'s stretched by this approach & iI get to experience alot more games then I would buying @launch. It really works out too how much you value your time, how much you value your time gaming and what the mean is, in my current financial state I'm @ about the $5 a hour mark(making indie and psn titles a great value btw), though, there are always exceptions ...
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TOM2x
- 10:11am EDT - March 23rd, 2013
- 3
I actually agree with the person who uses the formula. The way I look at it, to go to a movie, it would cost about $30.00 at least (with snacks and whatnot). And that lasts about 2 hours maximum. So considering that, if a game is $60, if it lasts at least 5 hours I can't really feel ripped off. And BTW, going to a movie you're not "Getting anything" so to speak. At least I can re-play the game if I want. And if you consider a game like Skyrim, then that to me is like infinite value!
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Cyn
- 10:24am EDT - March 23rd, 2013
- 4
Don't really understand the tone of this article. Struggle to believe you expected a different repsonse. The reason people care is because over the past decade developers have been playing something called: Who can ship the shortest game with the least amount of content for £40
I can see why reviewers have a different outlook than normal gamers though. They probably just want the game, any game, to be over ASAP with very few exceptions. -
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- 3:42am EDT - March 24th, 2013
- 6
Ultimately the older we get the less time we have for idle gaming and other forms of entertainment be they movies or television, and you dont want to feel like you're wasting your money when you're already potentially wasting time, so you have to be concerned with what you're sinking your money into, and if you aren't getting a fair value in terms of bang for your buck then what's the point? There's no end to the number of things we COULD be spending our hard earned money on, if the game industry expects us to spend it on games forever then it needs to be worth that money, letting value slip isnt allowed in any other industry why should gaming get a pass?
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