Since the dawn of time, gamers have found themselves waging wars of words and carrying on conflicts of colloquialisms over innumerable issues eternally bonded to the very source of their every pleasure, pain, love and hatred - video games. One such debate centers around game length, and how much time can be squeezed out of any given title. Some argue in favor of maximum duration, and some harp on dollar-per-hour comparisons, but in the end, isn't it the quality of the content that matters most?
As games have evolved, one important focal point of developers has been to create more elaborate and enjoyable experiences for the gamer. Early on, this was easily achieved by increasing the size of the game. This description can be taken quite literally, as the earliest games took place entirely on one screen. Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and others never left the confines of the field defined by the screen's boundaries, but later games, such as Super Mario Bros., placed characters in a world that could extend far beyond the stimuli provided at any given instant. This sort of expansion provided a much more interesting space for gamers to explore, but also served to establish the concept of finite beginnings and endings in video games. There were now measurable lengths to games, and inevitably, each gamer would have a very real perception of a game's conclusion, completion, or outright cessation - especially when the game managed to tell a story concluding with the words "THE END" displayed in big, blocky letters. "I beat the game" became a common phrase, meaning "I finished the story," but implying, "I needn't play this one anymore."
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