I can appreciate why some games are short.

The same applies to film. You may think you have enough material and footage for a half-hour short but it ends up being enough for fifteen minutes, or you just don't have enough dialogue. That is why preparation is key.

But look at a game like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. That game took me 40-ish hours to beat the first time through because the story was well prepared. But you then look at Heavenly Sword and see that that game was only five hours long. Is that subject to a lack of preparation? Probably not. As good as TP was, it suffered from some sidequests (like the bugs) or fetchquests that prolonged the game. HS dismissed those and just kept you enthralled in the action. While the HS developers could have planned out a whole bunch of sidequests and everything, they felt their game was better off without them.

So I don't think a lot of these games released today are short because the developer wasn't expecting them too because a lot of preparation and talent is behind the making of a lot of these games.

As an aside from these specific games in question, the game sword of the berserk on dreamcast HAS to be the shortest and dumbest game ive ever played. i went to EB games, bought it the day it came out as I had seen the anime before and figured cool well maybe if it sticks to the story somewhat itll be pretty good. I beat the entire game on the hardest difficulty in about 2 hours... so i returned it to EB games right then.

Can't believe it though, some games are probably short due to rushing to production and distribution :[

Actually most short games are designed that way so a adult with a job can just play it and not bother to find over 20 hours of free time to enjoy a game.

A great example is Portal.3-4 hours.Probably the best expirience with a game i ever played.Heavy Rain is supposed to be like that too.But so many different ways to play you can multiply the time of play by playing again differently

Yes, absolutely. I write stories and often times I think that I've written a long epic chapter, when it actually turns out to be a few paragraphs long.

Well, I've recently taken a game design course in college, and our final was to design a game, which means that we have to build a game from the ground up (minus graphics). We had to describe what's in the game, what levels there are, what the player can do, etc. Now, it didn't hit me until I started writing out the levels, but what people don't realize is that on paper, a level can seem to last about an hour when you're describing all the events, etc. However, once you actually put it into action, it'll only take maybe 30-45 minutes. So, I figure that some games today are just short because the developers, through presenting the game design documents, thought that a certain event in the game would take longer than it actually plays out to be.Legendaryscmt

the OP brings back memories of earlier gaming generations when they used to plaster projected game length across advertisements as part of the sales pitch. They were always grossly exaggerated. For example, I remember the original Blood Omen being billed as over 100 hours long. Took me 14. So where did that number come from? Maybe it's as you say..they drew up the estimate based on what they had on paper. But a lot of games did this..said they had x amount of hours of gameplay and never came close. Always wondered where those projections came from. Just optimistic?

I do think that a game's length is in most ways determined by the "fecundity" of the game's design. Some games are deeper conceptually so that a wider variety of experiences can be accomodated within the game's framework. You end up with a longer game because of it. I mean to say that what you can do with a Heavenly Sword is far more limited than what you can do with a GTA. Certainly you can make a 40 hour Heavenly Sword, but far before that 40 hour mark the gamer is going to say to himself "i've done this far too many times already." Much about the length of a game is determined before you even get to the actual level design.

Most of my favorite games are very short:

Radiant Silvergun can be beaten in under an hour, same with Gradius V.

ESPgaluda, Dodonpachi, Ketsui, and Ikaruga can each be beaten in under 30 minutes.

Portal can (and has) been beaten in under 40 minutes.

A single run in a puzzle game can take maybe 3-5 minutes; 20-30 if it's Tetris or Lumines.

Zone of the Enders 2 can be beaten in under an hour.

Devil May Cry can bet beaten in 90 minutes.

It's all about the replay value. Making a game that gives the player an adrenaline rush is more appealing to come back to if they know they can beat it in one sitting.

Most of my favorite games are very short:

Radiant Silvergun can be beaten in under an hour, same with Gradius V.

ESPgaluda, Dodonpachi, Ketsui, and Ikaruga can each be beaten in under 30 minutes.

Portal can (and has) been beaten in under 40 minutes.

A single run in a puzzle game can take maybe 3-5 minutes; 20-30 if it's Tetris or Lumines.

Zone of the Enders 2 can be beaten in under an hour.

Devil May Cry can bet beaten in 90 minutes.

It's all about the replay value. Making a game that gives the player an adrenaline rush is more appealing to come back to if they know they can beat it in one sitting.

Although I do agree that length is not the only qualified personally I am a gamer that has zero intrest in "beating a game" and even less so in one sitting. So I guess it depends on what they are trying to market.SEANMCAD

One thing that kills a lot of longer games for me is gratuitous amounts of backtracking. Artificial extension of a game that would be much shorter if not for the arbitrary cancer of running back and forth through long, lifeless hallways just to retrieve a key or item of some sort. Speaking of arbitrary cancer, RPGs with excessive grinding, especially when you're essentially paying $12-15 a month just to perform this chore.

I do enjoy slower-paced atmospheric games, like the Silent Hill series, but even then I wouldn't replay it more than once a year (maybe a few times the first year, if I'm going for all of the different endings).

My main point is: If they're making a game that's more than 10-20 hours long, it had better be either nonlinear, or incredibly high-octane... and even an all-action game would get old if it was too long. As fun as Devil May Cry was, would you really want the game to take no less than 30 hours to beat? Would you really want Portal to take 5 or more hours to beat instead of the usual 2 hours? (or 40 minutes, if you're Korean) As much as I love shoot-em-ups, I wouldn't want a Gradius or R-Type game to run over 2 hours in length. Certain gameplay mechanics are best kept in moderation, because while blissful in the heat of the moment (like No More Heroes' finishing moves, or Radiant Silvergun's hyper sword attack), they would get old if the game dragged itself out too long. I, for one, couldn't stand Okami after the 20th hour or so, because the brush gimmick's novelty had worn off and the game was starting to show its true colors with no noticable difficulty increase and incredibly lackluster storytelling. Please,if you're going to keep me around for another 20 hours, at least make yourself interesting and unique. It sure was a pretty game to look at, though.

/rant

Most of my favorite games are very short:

Radiant Silvergun can be beaten in under an hour, same with Gradius V.

ESPgaluda, Dodonpachi, Ketsui, and Ikaruga can each be beaten in under 30 minutes.

Portal can (and has) been beaten in under 40 minutes.

A single run in a puzzle game can take maybe 3-5 minutes; 20-30 if it's Tetris or Lumines.

Zone of the Enders 2 can be beaten in under an hour.

Devil May Cry can bet beaten in 90 minutes.

It's all about the replay value. Making a game that gives the player an adrenaline rush is more appealing to come back to if they know they can beat it in one sitting.

Zweihand

Shoot 'em ups really don't count as short games. You need to play them for dozens of hours in order to beat them. Sure, Ikaruga only has about 30 minutes of content, and if you're good enough, that's what it will take you to beat it, but still, I logged 50h into it before completing it.

You're right, though. I much prefer a short, really condensed experience to a long and filler-based game. If anything, gaming these days needs more games like World of Goo, Portal, Panzer Dragoon Orta (shorter, more condensed games with minimal repetition and really high replay value), and less unchallenging 15h games where you repeat the same couple actions over and over again (mostly "shoot that unchallenging enemy", these days).

Developer's really don't make in-depth design documents anymore, so that's an invalid argument.

On the other hand, the design document for Grim Fandango, as written by Tim Schafer, is out on the internet. Go read that.

I think mabe the focus on finishing the game in general is what makes the approach wrong for some games. Sims, SimCity, Civ3 and really even some games that technically have an end like Morrowind are not really meant to be experienced as a state of "finishing" the game. My game background started with Pen and Paper RPG (D&D) and that is another example of a game that really doesnt not ever have an end. I guess my point is this, if you do not enjoy the process of "getting there" then you most likely will not like it once you get there either.SEANMCAD

[QUOTE="Zweihand"]

Most of my favorite games are very short:

Radiant Silvergun can be beaten in under an hour, same with Gradius V.

ESPgaluda, Dodonpachi, Ketsui, and Ikaruga can each be beaten in under 30 minutes.

Portal can (and has) been beaten in under 40 minutes.

A single run in a puzzle game can take maybe 3-5 minutes; 20-30 if it's Tetris or Lumines.

Zone of the Enders 2 can be beaten in under an hour.

Devil May Cry can bet beaten in 90 minutes.

It's all about the replay value. Making a game that gives the player an adrenaline rush is more appealing to come back to if they know they can beat it in one sitting.

ReddestSkies

Shoot 'em ups really don't count as short games. You need to play them for dozens of hours in order to beat them. Sure, Ikaruga only has about 30 minutes of content, and if you're good enough, that's what it will take you to beat it, but still, I logged 50h into it before completing it.

You're right, though. I much prefer a short, really condensed experience to a long and filler-based game. If anything, gaming these days needs more games like World of Goo, Portal, Panzer Dragoon Orta (shorter, more condensed games with minimal repetition and really high replay value), and less unchallenging 15h games where you repeat the same couple actions over and over again (mostly "shoot that unchallenging enemy", these days).

Truth. Same here for the 50-hour mark on being able to one-credit clear Ikaruga, too. Reviewers tend to thras shmups though because they don't get the concept of "high scores", thus they credit-feed through it, oftentimes don't even bother to dissect the scoring system, stamp it with a 5/10, and move on to the next game. Look at Castle Shikigami 2, huge series in Japan (the land of the viable arcade scene) but utterly shat on by most review sites, including this one. Greg Kasavin was (IMO) the last great reviewer on GS, because he gave short adrenaline-pumping games like Gradius V, Ikaruga, and Orta the chance they deserved, plus he appreciated Otogi which makes him awesome in my book. 8) 10 or so hour game, but the sheer variety of level design, tight controls, and beautiful environments kept things mixed-up enough, IMO.

I felt Viewtiful Joe was god's gift to platformers, because the puzzle solving was ingenious and incredibly varied, while the boss fights were formulaic in that Mega Man sort of way. On a note of this year's 2D games, though, I'm liking the increased "level creator" mode trend. Bangai-O Spirits' level editor was incredibly robust and, for a solid month after clearing all of the regular stages, I spent all of my gaming time creating custom levels, for 2-3 hours a day. N+'s level editor (particularly on 360, where it actually has some semblence of a community) was fun to tinker with between having your ass handed to you by the game's harder stages, and Blast Works' level creator tools are DISGUSTING. As in, "you'd better have a lot of time set aside for an innane time sink" disgusting. And by disgusting, I mean fun and incredibly rewarding.

Level creation has been around since forever on the PC gaming front, but it hasn't been until recently that console/portable games have been given this type of luxury, with some exceptions like ye olde Tony Hawk or even the debug mode from Sonic 2 (less of a "level creator", more of a "place objects and torture Tails" game, but still, it was a start). IMO more console games, short and long alike, need modes for editing/creating levels, puzzles, movelists, bullet patterns, etc, etc., and an efficient way of sharing these creations.

/rant