"No game should be longer than 12 hours"

That article is a load of nonsense. Imagine a 12-hour limit on a racing game!

I agree that some of the story-driven FPS does get a little boring after 12 hours, or a similar length of time. However, I prefer city-building games and historically racing and train sims, and those don't need a time limit.
 
Nearly all the best games take more than 12 hours? remember when you could spend a whole week on a game, now it's like a single sitting.

by 12 hours they probably mean an 6-8 hour long game for normal gamers..

Consume and move on to the next 70 quid purchase, if a games only 12 hours long think of how many you could buy in a single retail quarter to enrich the shareholders
 
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I miss the days of losing an entire week to playing something like Deus Ex (original) and finally coming up for air when I'd completed it. Though these days I just don't have the patience to get that into the details and would probably complete it in half the time.
 
Glanza said:
Depends on the genre of game, I'm happy putting less than 10 in some shorter story linear games but also happy to spend months putting 100+ hours into a game if it keeps my attention.
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Exactly.

Saying games shouldn't be longer than 12 hours is like saying food shouldn't cost more than £3. Literally meaningless without any context.
 
10-20 hours single player games is about the sweet spot for me these days. I feel like it’s enough time to learn the mechanics and get a decent story without too much filler.

Nintendo games tend to be my most completed, they seem to have a good 10-15 hour main set of story/levels but have optional challenges / side quests afterwards for those who want more.
 
Blackvault said:
That article is a load of nonsense. Imagine a 12-hour limit on a racing game!
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Or strategy games, imagine a 12 hour limit on Europa Universalis 4 or one of the Civilization games. Or a 12 hour limit on Elden Ring or God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher or Football Manager or Snowrunner or Oxygen Not Included or Subnautica..or .... or.... the list goes on. That article says more about the author than it does the games imo.
 
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Video games aren't in a crisis, people are repeatedly playing old games because a lot of the new stuff isn't good, it was the inevitable result of companies seeing the Fifa/Madden £££ and thinking garbage makes money. When it is good like BG3 then people buy it. It doesn't require a project like BG3 either, my highest played games are titles like Factorio, Valheim, Rimworld, Satisfactory, Terraria, Dyson Sphere program. These are all small studio indie titles.
 
Depends on the game and how you play it, but most good games are longer. For FPSes at least, around the length of HL2 is about right, that is of course presuming you are not playing it like an ADHD noob who has forgotten they are not speed running Doom.
 
Depends on the game really.

Some games are endless in their design (sports,base building survival games, MMO etc) so you can expect any number of hours.

In the other hand 12 hours is a fine time for a short but well crafted experience.

My ideal time for a single player campaign is about 15-20 hours. Most longer games tend to be too bloated / padded out after that.
 
On a recommendation I've seen on here multiple times, I bought Titanfall 2 on sale recently purely for the single player. (Cost £4.99)

It was indeed excellent fun. But lasted less than 7 hours in all. I'd have been outraged if I'd spent full price on that!

Similarly, I got one of the CoD games free with a graphics card years back, and the same story - single player was fun but woefully short.

I've got no interest in being repeatedly sniped by a load of teenage twitch gamers high on Prime, so the multiplayer shooter scene has no pull for me.
 
I do like shorter games and quality over quantity any time, however some games are so big and there are so many unique things to do that 12h just isn't enough. Also there are games which can take a long time to complete for unexperienced players but on second playthrought things do not take as much time.
 
I think articles like this really show the issue with the universal use of the title "gamer".

Like other posts it's entirely generic specific and whilst 12 hours might be plenty for some games it's far too short for others.

RPG', flight sims, world building games etc may not be everyone's bag, even thoose who play computer games, but there's definitely a market for something you can sink hundreds of hours into and these games don't necessarily require the huge budgets that are causing issues these days.
 
"Metro reader feature"

Aka random plebs send in articles that they publish from time to time, it's just a random crap opinion put on the website of a free newspaper.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at [email protected] or use our Submit Stuff page and you won’t need to send an email.
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We should hold a competition to see which of us can get the most ridiculous take released on the Metro website.
 
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Dark Light said:
Depends on the game and how you play it, but most good games are longer. For FPSes at least, around the length of HL2 is about right, that is of course presuming you are not playing it like an ADHD noob who has forgotten they are not speed running Doom.
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Funnily enough i'd argue HL2's length was what weakens it in my scoring of it. Good game, tremendous for the time, but no soundtrack or story to fill those hours.


Haggisman said:
It's a stupid article on a stupid site, written by a moron... if people didn't want games longer than 12 hours, they wouldn't buy them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I want to believe it, but as mentioned in a GD topic, brand/image/marketing trumps logic and manipulates a person's preference or choice.
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As others say, some games good, some bad, length irrelevant. Metal Gear Solid was what, 3hrs ish on first play through?

Total game time is just a poor measurement.
 
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