Stop Bragging About Your Game's Length | Extra Punctuation

[@jordanj809]

I saw that tweet and immediately commented “This is how we market games now?” Yahtzee did a good job of breaking down that sentiment

[@HUNbullseye]

And they just tweeted another total BS metric: 350k words, 40k lines of dialogue. I'm sure that is a strong statement of quality.

[@jordanj809]

@@HUNbullseye Yahtzee’s story about Sally Marketing seems more true to life than we expected

[@DemonicEngineer]

It's not that new. Bethesda have long been bragging about the length of Skyrim

[@obviousalias132]

AC logo? Ironic.

[@jordanj809]

@@obviousalias132 people really love saying that

[@xbox1445]

The size of the map and duration of a game should make sense with the story. ACIV had a massive map that was FUN because you were a pirate on your pirate ship with your pirate mates, and all the things you do while sailing are going along BEING a pirate. There has been a lot done in name of accuracy that just stops being fun, and filling the map with logos is just tiring at this point when the unlocks don't mean anything or aren't event he coolest looking gear (Valhalla comes to mind). Games should be FUN, entertaining or engaging, not secondary jobs we pay for in money and time wasted away.

[@main_stream_media_is_a_joke]

The most fun that I had in any ubisoft open world game in recent years is Immortals fenyx rising. Fun was literally the first thing that came to my mind while exploring the game world. Absolutely hate ubi open world game design, but thoroughly enjoyed my time with Immortals.

[@Anonymos185]

As much as I love AC IV it's kinda a bad example, since the map is absolutely full of generic collectibles, busywork and repetitive side objectives that change nothing in the game world. The core content is great, but there is a huuge chunk of the game that functions, in your words, as a "secondary job"

[@nobodyreally4749]

@@Anonymos185 you’re looking at it the wrong way, yah it has the collectable bullshit but it’s not like you’re forced to get them it’s just there for padding. The real meat of the world is exploring the open sea, ocean floor, islands, caves , cities and finding treasure so you can upgrade your ship and personal arsenal. It all comes together nicely to give purpose to the entire game, unlike odyssey and the other two Witcher 3 clones that just throw in whatever they can to appease the ceos and marketing teams. I’m always down to diss Ubisoft but Black Flag is one of the very few games to get open world design right.

[@rodlopes4327]

Y'know, I've tried playing AC IV as an adult, having played none of the others, mostly because ppl kept saying it was good. Aaaand I couldn't get past like...1 hour. It felt like the same AC boring bullshit as always. I'm pretty sure I didn't even get to the boat, which was supposed to be the selling point. I am of the opinion ppl who still like AC IV just have nostalgia goggles on, for a time when they expected less from games, or had more patience, idk.

[@enbyrogue3740]

@@nobodyreally4749 I mean, if a student handed in a stellar essay, but they filled it with fluff and nonsense that more than doubled it's length for no reason I'm not granting them full marks. Same thing here, I think the game suffers from having objectives that require such a massive time investment for little reward. Sure, you can ignore it, but that doesn't change the fact that it was intended for you to sink those 100s of hours into it to get OR it was intended to artificially fluff up the game under the assumption that nobody would actually try to finish them. Either one is marks off from me, the industry needs to wash its hands of this obsession with game time and fluff

[@cereal_chick2515]

"...for what we still generally pretend to be an artistic medium..." This really hit me. I couldn't speak to culture generally, but in my own personal little slice of culture, Yahtzee was for some half my entire life the first and loudest proponent of games as art. Who here remembers Yahtzee fondly pointing out that one day everyone over 40 will be dead, whereupon games can take their rightful place as true art? I do. And to see this compromise on what I have always perceived, rightly or wrongly, as Yahtzee's highest article of faith... it's depressing, not least because it's entirely called for given the state of the industry.

[@thevgmlover]

You know what the kicker is, for me, having read this? I just realized that line barely even affected me, and I didn't even bother to ask why. If video games aren't an artistic medium anymore, what are they? At the very least, can they still be considered an entertainment medium?

[@11equalsfish]

@@thevgmlover Video games still fit the art definition, but it's overall not that interesting.

[@MrTrickBrick]

Relative to other forms of entertainment, the industry is young. Movies and TV were experimental, artistic ventures that gained popularity. Popularity leads to industries and jobs built around it. There are inevitably compromises, templates and cliches. We groan at these predictable productions but there are still things we can subjectively deem as "art" - high quality movies and shows are still coming out. I think the "artistic medium" description does have more weight for gaming, as it is based on interactivity. The fact they can make us feel a range of emotions just like with cinema but we were involved in making those emotions happen is really powerful. I just feel we are seeing games fit that same mold as other industries because it has gotten big. Even in the lifetimes of those who are in their twenties can see how it's grown into this way, which might be strange to some but perhaps not feel strange for movies to be like this because it's been like that for much longer. Fortunately, in thanks to the Internet and the cooperation of the big platform holders (Steam, Xbox Store, etc.) the dichotomy between the spotlight that "Hollywood" style AAA games get and the spotlight that indie titles (the ones that we might say are more "pure" and more likely to be true to being "artistic medium" compared to the epic design-by-committee process behind the likes of Dying Light 2) get is not so dramatic as it used to be, and certainly not as dramatic as AAA movies and Indie movies. (Again, streaming services has helped this problem too) This is also subjective though, I do feel for this comment and I do remember Yahtzee making those comments way back when. I just thought I'd look into why it is this way and why it feels so off in recent times.

[@ImCurrentlyNaked]

I guess this shows there has to be some sort level of quality or passion consistently placed within a medium for the public at large to consider it "art", regardless of whether or not the public consider the medium a good way to convey art. The game industry at the moment is failing at this. Actually I feel like pretty much every artistic medium is going this route. Movies feel less... artistic? lately as well, and so much more commercial to me. Actual art (for art galleries and such) seem to have denigrated to just being for high brow snobs with too much money to spend and not for the common people. Or maybe I'm just getting old and cynical.

[@pretends2know]

@@EresirThe1st Here's the dig though: "generic, meaningless, time-wasting slop" doesn't mean they're not art. It just means they might not be GOOD art. To say games aren't art is a step further than what you're even saying.

[@TS6815]

"500 hours to complete all the achievements" Super Smash Bros. Melee has an achievement for playing 1,000,000 Vs. mode matches. One Million matches. does that make Melee a 50,000 hour game?

[@HellecticMojo]

You need 30 minutes per match in that game?

[@TS6815]

You're off by a factor, 3 million minutes, or three mins per match

[@misirtere9836]

@@TS6815 Oh please, every Melee completionist knows that the strat to grind out that achievement is to turn on the flower in stamina mode and give the AI 1 HP so they die in one second. Then you've only got the myriad of unskippable cutscenes to get through. It still takes forever, but not 50,000 hours.

[@patchwurk6652]

@@misirtere9836 ....You do realize that that's a shameless exploit, right? Like that Can't possibly be how they intended anyone to get that achievement. I mean great workaround, but it doesn't really change the obscene bullshit intent of that achievement.

[@aztn19]

If you made the rounds 1min long, then you’d need about 694 1/2 hrs or playing the entire month of February to make it to a million Vs. matches. That’s just too much Smashing lol

[@jordanj809]

I just visited How Long To Beat and even The Witcher 3 only takes 173 hours to 100%. I really want to be in the room with the marketing people of some of these companies

[@starmaker75]

Hell game like persona royal feel exhausting for it’s 120 hour average playtime. 500 hour games that isn’t a multiplayer game like tf2 or a mmo is burnout insanity

[@sluttyMapleSyrup]

@@starmaker75 Even Mass Effect can't milk that much playtime out of people.

[@razvanzamfir1545]

@@sluttyMapleSyrup platted the trilogy in under 100 hrs. At least there were 3 plats to gain for that time. But that would be my very worst, absolute maximum - for a game I love.

[@sluttyMapleSyrup]

@@razvanzamfir1545 Case and point.

[@MelMelodyWerner]

in fairness, they did actually quantify what they mean by 500 hours for "100% completion". I read in one interview that that's 500 hours not to get all of the achievements, but 500 hours to beat it *_and_* explore every little nook and cranny of the game. which on its own, I don't mind personally. a lot of people don't have a lot of disposable income for games so the idea that they can spend $60 for what will probably be a pretty decent slab of nebulous cOnTeNt--while by no means noble on the behalf of Techland*--is pretty harmless. while I agree with a lot of people here that I prefer shorter, more focused experiences, there are games where I just want to get lost in their worlds and turn them inside out. I think about The Stanley Parable, which you can see the majority of endings for in a few hours, but I wanted to see all of the little bits of dialogue and look at all of the details in the environments cuz I dug the game so much. and that's what the Techland people have specified is how they got the 500 hours number--exhausting all of the dialogue, and looking at every little detail in this massive open world that has different path ways depending on your story choices, as Yahtz pointed out. which means that the 500 number to me isn't all that special for Dying Light 2 per se, Techland are just the first people who said that a game like that can take 500 hours to dive into all of the little minutiae of it. *Techland are a vile company, just like fucking every major Polish games studio now. so don't take this as me trying to defend them by any stretch

[@Leesworth]

As a wise owl once said, "I'd much rather play a 5-hour game worth going through twice, than a 10-hour game barely worth playing once"

[@nickrustyson8124]

10 hours isn't even that bad

[@habere]

joy my beloved 🥰🥰🥰

[@pn2294]

@@nickrustyson8124 nah it’s pretty short

[@WagnerKoop]

Superliminal

[@RyanBlakeKain]

I think there's something to be said about *having enough depth* to play for 500, 1000, etc, hours, but that's not something you can completely quantify, nor is it the same thing as having so many tasks that it'll take you 500 hours to do them all.

[@suzumes6738]

I try and stop when I quit having fun. For some games that's a few hundred hours like mount and blade, or elite dangerous, for others it's only a couple hours like jedi fallen order or just cause.

[@deebzscrub]

Completely agree that this was likely just some marketing person looking for buzz words. Advertising a game's length never really made sense, even back when review outlets pretended it did. How long a game takes to finish does nothing to indicate the quality of that game. Any garbage can be padded out AssCreed style with copypasted side missions all over the map.

[@Percival917]

Do you not remember anyone complaining about their expensive games taking only ten hours to beat back in the PS3/360 era?

[@deebzscrub]

@@Percival917 I do, yes. Doesn't change my thoughts.

[@Percival917]

@@deebzscrub Dude, money doesn't grow on trees. When your budget is limited, you're gonna want to get a game that can last you until you can get the money for another game. And unless a ten-hour game is endlessly replayable, then it's not gonna last until then. Value for your money matters when you pay money for anything, ever, and a short game with no replay value does not provide value for your money, while (non-padded) long games and even endlessly replayable short games, do.

[@deebzscrub]

@@Percival917 That's a fair point. All I'm really saying is that length of a game is not an inherent measure of quality. Never has been and never will be.

[@natanlevine]

As a boring adult with small kids and responsibilities, this marketing actively deters me from buying a game. My free video gaming time is super precious and I'm going to invest it on self-contained, quality experiences. Not waste it away on some ridiculously large open world map full of glorified fetch quests.

[@ristoherranen816]

This could have been my comment. When I saw the 500 hour boast, I instantly thought "that is not for me then"

[@Gna-rn7zx]

Yeah, really shot themselves in the foot with that one. Must be why they "clarified".

[@251TheMechanizedSingfantry]

Show me a story driven game that lasts less than 10 hours, and I'm all over it. No sandboxes for me thanks

[@Liindir]

@@251TheMechanizedSingfantry Titanfall 2's campaign was so good it still gives me erections that can penetrate the gates of heaven, and it took about 4-5 hours to finish it.

[@ethan8942]

The Witcher three is what people should reach for but I have yet to see anything on par since the Witcher three came out

[@arthurdurham]

I had this exact feeling when they announced this. It's gotten to a point where I have given up on so many games early on or midway bc it's just a ton of store brand "content" and now I prefer to play small indie games. . I kind of miss the days of when the original came out that the size of the gaming business and the tech only allowed games to be so big. So they were forced to have some limitation. Ubisoft for instance could only have so much pointless side content. Now that we have gpus that can basically render an entire living reality and games are allowed to be 100gbs of data, it just feels like they throw everything against the wall hoping it sticks. Some devs still manage to make it work, the last 3 open world games I actually finished the story and most of the content were Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, and Red Dead 2. The first 2 having an extremely fun and well crafted combat systems and the latter having even the smallest of details painstakingly crafted. But even then (except for RDR2 which its world and all the features is the point) I still wish the other games were smaller. I tried to replay them but I forgot how much tedium there is to do side stuff to get resources for upgrades. And that's not even getting into all the fake cutscenes they add now where you have to push forward to walk slowly so you can't even skip through the boring parts or each side activity requires a set up every time you do it. And while I loved Dying Light, it already suffered from a lot of lackluster side content. Now that the sequel has 500 hours of it I can't imagine even 80% is great. And for a series that having more resources and upgrades is essential to survival, I already feel bored by it.

[@Axelstation]

One of the best games I've ever played is Silent Hill 2, an experience that'll run you roughly 5 hours. The length is a fraction of so many other games, but it's stuck with me for years due to how well-crafted and impactful everything is. I wish that kind of thing was still valued, regardless of how much time you can squeeze out of a game.

[@Percival917]

That sort of thing is far easier to value, in our current economy, at a smaller price point that only exists these days for download-exclusive games, like a lot of indie titles.

[@Axl4325]

As a kid I got obsessed with the megaman games, I managed to finish Megaman X 1 in 3 hours. Still an iconic game not only for me but for many, and it could have been artificially longer but thankfully they did not do that

[@ThecrazycakeEATAH]

Yahtzee playing through P4G three times is an interesting mental image. Truly a man of culture with superior taste.

[@jasonblalock4429]

This has really become a little saga. First he was nagged into playing P5, which he discovered to his surprise he liked. Then he reviewed P4G, but he spent most of it complaining about it not having all of P5's QOL upgrades. Then he said in some later video that he completed P4G and liked it once he gave it more of a chance. Now it turns out he's played it three times! LOL.

[@kirant]

@@jasonblalock4429 - It's so weird hearing Yahtzee putting P4G in the same "mindless relaxation" games as Stawdew Valley and FTL. Not that I mind as a Persona fanboy all the way back to 2, but it's just weird given it was a complete shock when Yahtzee didn't hate P5.

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@kirant Yeah, I actually tried to replay P4G a few months ago, but I just couldn't stick with it. It was 90% the same content I'd already seen, just completing a few more social links and picking a new waifu. Got bored midway through. Not sure how much someone would have to be zoning out to play through it three times in less than two years.

[@jmurray1110]

Skipping dialogue certainly helps It’s the only way I platinumed 5 and I haven’t picked royal back up since I bought it back in October

[@RaspyCh]

@@jasonblalock4429 what video was it where he said he completed through p4g?

[@Horvath_Gabor]

I feel that game length is one of those things that have a completely different significance for people depending on their age. For a student, a game with 500 hours of playtime sounds amazing, because they have lots of free time, but not a lot of money, so a single game with that much content would be definite selling point. However, for a working adult, especially someone with a family on top, would look at the same number and would avoid it like the plague, because if they had about three hours to play games per day on average, it would take them months to finish it, and by that point they would be just burned out on the game. For someone like that, shorter games, rogue-lites, or even multiplayer or mobile games where you can get your kicks in a short session would sound much more appealing. Using myself as an example, I work a pretty tiresome job in healthcare (so, extra-tiresome in the past two years), and while in the past I absolutely adored long-ass CRPGs and JRPGs, nowadays whenever I look at something like the new Pathfinder games, I would really like to play them, but I know that I will have to stop playing halfway because won't have the time, and when I do have time again, I would be lost without any idea where I was and what my goals were, and then get confused and not have any fun, so I'd avoid them and play something simpler, like Hades or Warframe.

[@kyatsuka]

@@lracseroom8286 speak for yourself mate, time management is an art

[@jjthe]

Maybe high-school students have a lot of free time but college students definitely don't. School alone takes up more time than a full-time job. On top of school most college students have at least a part-time job. My free time skyrocketed once I graduated

[@Percival917]

Multiplayer? MULTIPLAYER? I hope you mean with the spouse and kiddos. Because going ONLINE to commit to a game you not only cannot pause, but also cannot walk away from for the duration of the match sounds like a HORRIBLE idea for someone with shit going on in their life. I could hardly stand online multiplayer as a high school student, playing against others who no-lifed games I wasn't even interested in playing enough to get to that level of skill. Why would I bother with that garbage as a college student or father, when I can walk away from a turn-based RPG without any consequences, or just pause virtually any other game to deal with my family's or my schoolwork's concerns?

[@GhostOfSparta305]

5:27 is a crazy good point. I’ve become wary of games that seem made only to be checklists or time-sinks, because if you do actually 100% them…you’ve gained absolutely nothing of value.

[@ducksauce2696]

Telling my your games is 500 hours worth of content is a good method of scaring me off your game instead of selling me on it. Geez I often doubt whether I should boot up a 40-50 hours since it's such a huge time investment. And most big games don't have the variety, depth or skill ceiling to be interesting for longer than 10-20 hours anyway..

[@andrewmurphy2093]

I agree completely. "Hundreds of hours of content," sounds more like "you'll never finish the damn thing," to me. I'd much rather take a shorter game I know I can punch out over a weekend or two these days.

[@Horvath_Gabor]

Those huge content-sinks are generally for kids and students with lots of free time to burn. Once you have a job, family, and other things that burn your time for you, suddenly those playtime-numbers no longer sound nearly as appealing.

[@ianjohnston5205]

​@@Horvath_Gabor Even if I had the spare time for 500 hours of game, I'd still be scared off by this. So many open world games these days are full of boring commutes and grindy copy-pasted filler that I seriously doubt it's going to be 500 hours of actual fun. I'd still rather spend all that free time on, say, 50 games that are 10 hours each instead.

[@Nefariousbig]

@@andrewmurphy2093 I mean if literally the only thing you care about is 'completing' games then great but what if you enjoy actually playing them? Why is having more content to play bad? People really need to get over this idiotic idea that taking more than a couple sessions to complete a game is bad. All you're going to do is buy a different game and play that in the exact same free time so what is actually the difference?

[@andrewmurphy2093]

@@Nefariousbig It's quality over quantity. A large portion of time spent in super long games is basically just "hold forward until we say stop." Is that fun or engaging? Not really. It's rarely "more content" as it's usually "more busy work between the fun bits." If I'm going to be using my free time between work and sleep to play games, I don't want that time to be spent doing boring, repetitive tasks in those games.

[@erakfishfishfish]

I find games that take less than 10 hours downright refreshing these days. It’s too bad they’re mostly indie games and not AAA titles. Gato Roboto, for example, is a nifty little Metroidvania that can be 100% completed in under three hours on your first play through. I guess that’s why I’ve been sticking to bite size games lately, like Hades and Fall Guys. I find myself losing interest in RPGs pretty quickly these days, despite loving them in the past.

[@Percival917]

But indies can get away with that because they're not charging seventy fucking USD for their games. That's how they get away with being 20 hours long or less. That's why game length was such a big deal in the PS3/360 era, when we got so many short-ass AAA games that companies unironically expected us to be content with paying 60 USD for. I don't wanna spend every weekend blowing through the same campaign until I have enough money to buy another retail game (unless there's some way the game makes every playthrough fresh and exciting, like a deep combat system you won't fully grasp on your first playthrough.) I want my game to offer value for my money, and because of who I am specifically, I don't wanna rely on online multiplayer to get more time out of the same game.

[@erakfishfishfish]

@@Percival917 that’s a fair point, but only if all those extra hours are actual quality hours, and not mindless tedium, fetch quests, etc. Then again, I grew up in the 8- and 16-bit eras, where NES games cost as much as $50, and SNES games went as high as $80. That’s about $130-$160 when adjusted for inflation! Mega Man 2 could be beaten on the day of purchase, but worth it. Super Metroid could be beaten in 6-10 hours on the first play through, but worth it. I’ve been conditioned to base a game’s value on its quality more than time spent playing it. (I’m not knocking long games mind you. Final Fantasy VI is perfection in my book.) Adding nonsense to a game to make it play longer reminds me of a line from The Good Place. “I've come to really like frozen yogurt. There's something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.”

[@patchwurk6652]

@@Percival917 "But indies can get away with that because they're not charging seventy fucking USD for their games." ...Wait, why did you phrase it like people are Forcing AAA games to be massively obnoxiously long over-priced shitpiles? Like they don't HAVE to charge 70 bucks, they don't HAVE to make games longer than the Bible with fuck all to do. People don't pay for length, they pay for Fun.

[@mystereoheart2579]

the biggest takeaway: yahtzee's played persona 4 three times all the way through

[@Horvath_Gabor]

Considering how dismissive he was of JRPGs in general and the Persona games in particular in the past, it's more than a little hilarious. I'm happy for him though, P4 is one of the best games ever made, padding and some odd design decisions be damned.

[@Dice12K]

I imagine it's also because it's on Steam because he probably would've played P5R multiple times instead if it wasn't a hostage on the PS4.

[@nintendoentersoft]

@@Dice12K I'm legit curious as to how Yahtzee would react to the Persona 2 Duology and Persona 3 if it ever gets released to a more modern console than the PSP. Cause on one hand the lack of the vibrant energy in the core gameplay that helped him overcome his usual distaste of JRPGs is even further diminished than it was in Persona 3 and even moreso in Persona 2 IS and EP. But on the other hand, Yahtzee likes a depressing story and Persona 3 certainly delivers in that regard even if there are elements of uplifting overcoming of adversity through the depression so I'm wondering which side would win out. And Persona 2 is so bonkers in the sense of being heavily Lovecraftian and zany conspiracy theory inspired I imagine it'd certainly give him some things to talk about if nothing else.

[@nintendoentersoft]

@@ichijofestival2576 Oh yeah, even if I fully expect Yahtzee to not like what Persona 3 and 2 Duology brings cause besides a sad story they don't have what Yahtzee's looking for to bring himself to like a JRPG game, an outsider view on how nonsense the face value stuff is should at least make for a fun video.

[@CerulianHimmel]

More like speedran it. 160 hours for three plays? That's a little over 50 hours each play through. I've misplaced my PS Vita so I can't look at my actual hours, but I'm pretty sure I'm at around 70 hours on my second run, and I got the bad end the first go (it was after Heaven, and I chose the bad option). And that's with me straight up murdering bosses and taking a single day to get to the top of the set because of late-game personas.

[@MoronicRoc]

This is what needed to be said. Length doesn't matter too much, but overall quality does. I don't really play long games (with the exception of Dark Souls which I'm just getting into), rather shorter campaign games that will be very replayable (like Metal Gear Rising, Half-Life 2, Ultrakill, Undertale, Titanfall 2, the individual Bungie Halo games, etc.) with exceptions being OneShot (a short game that isn't really replayable, but makes up for being insanely good story wise and still great gameplay wise), Hollow Knight (which took me 13 hours to complete my first playthrough, which says more on how I play games rather than the gameplay length), and Team Fortress 2 (my most played game [at 1500 hours] besides maybe Minecraft, which is a multiplayer game rather than a singleplayer so of course it's going to be focused on keeping my attention). So yeah, good video.

[@NerdyHillbilly]

The real reason it's 500 hours to 100% is because they use copy paste filler and intentionally made it a complete grind fest to sell time savers and claim "it's optional" and "player choice" knowing full we'll they intentionally made it a slog so you pay up in frustration to play the game the optimal way. Same as modern ubisoft games (by the by physical, mental and Saxuall abuse along with crunch is still going on) But I guess most still don't talk about about exploitative micro transactions. systems out of fear.

[@damianabregba7476]

It's just stupid marketing for that binary choice system like in witcher 2. But this time it takes into account more choices or combination of choices. Just 3 choices gives you 8 combinations for final ending and that gives you 67 hours per one and you need all of them to have that 100% so that number have 0 meaning and i see no reason to belive that amount of copy pasting will be involved from that message alone.

[@gamerjuice2239]

have you played the first game? just curious

[@kellymurray7831]

Just got back into ZP and absolutely loving this series

[@DMBLaan]

Personally I'd rather play a game with an expected 20ish hour time, that way even if its bad I won't have invested so much time into it I feel like I have to keep playing. And if it's good I can play it again later without having to worry about too much time sinking.

[@ZodiacEntertainment2]

The older I've gotten, the more I can appreciate a game that just gives you the experience it wants to provide and then ends. Maybe with some fun side content for the truly dedicated. I've got a job and shit to do, I don't have time for a 100+ hour long open world game.

[@DMBLaan]

@@ZodiacEntertainment2 yep, I technically have the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to invest it into every game

[@ZodiacEntertainment2]

@@DMBLaan Ye, especially since there are so many time-tested classics I haven't gotten around to yet.

[@Asahamana]

Here's a great example of a game that has a perfect game length: The original Half-life, only about 5 hours long and no-one has ever said it was too short.

[@narcozero8410]

5 hours long ? Yeah if you’re speedrunning it maybe ! First play Takes almost three times as long !

[@jes3788]

Portal also. Takes 3 hours but it's about the best 3 hours in any game I've ever played

[@Assassin5671000]

You are comparing open world rpg's to a firs person shooter where the idea is to be only a main story and gameplay. I get your idea though I also would like for rpg's to scale down there worlds a bit and make less side content . I don't want to spend a lot of time just traveling around a big map with meaningless side content.

[@h4724-q6j]

Half-Life is not 5 hours long. It's 15-25 hours on a first playthrough, and some parts do really drag.

[@tristandpc]

Every half-life I've played averages 10 hours. It was only as long as it needed to be.

[@miserablepile]

I am loving these extra punctuation videos! I've been yearning for this style of regular, direct discussion of the industry at this level of scope since the days of TotalBiscuit.

[@BreakingBlake1]

I’d take a 10 hour masterpiece over 500 hours of watching numbers go up.

[@Exkhaniber]

This discussion reminds me a bit of the XBox 360 game "Prototype". I had a lot of fun with it. I played it through multiple times, increasing the difficulty each time. I did a lot of "faffing about" each time, did side missions, killed time at random. Tried to keep one-upping my own high score for a single battle. And after all of this, I checked on my achievement progress. One of the achievements was to kill like...I forget the specifics now but it was like "kill 4 million zombies". And after four playthroughs, a lot of faffing about and side missions each time, I was still only about 12% of the way through. I couldn't believe people would be insane enough to grind out enough time to get it but I'm certain some did. It boggled my mind to think about the sort of time commitment you'd have to make, to do one singular thing to the repetitive exclusion of all else available in the game, to get that.

[@BrickInTheHead]

a couple years back I ended up doing a complete 180 on my opinions on the value of length in a game. I used to look at games that could be completed in 20 hours or less and going "PFFFT" and looking for those sweet 60-100 hour epics. now I am an adult with a full time job, a commute, and other life responsibilities. I value games that value my time, that get the good stuff in and out in under 15 hours and don't overstay their welcome. I often find that these 100+ hour epics rarely include novel gameplay mechanics. There's nothing particularly interesting about them. They're mostly all the same open-world sandbox stuff that just wastes your time. The games with interesting and unique ideas that are worth playing are often titles that are completed in under ten hours, or are roguelike-style (FTL, Hades, etc) where a single playthrough can be completed in under an hour and then repeated ad nauseum because the gameplay is just so engaging. The best, most interesting, and memorable games I've played in the past 5 years have generally all been relatively short games produced by non-AAA devs.

[@JorntWagenaar]

Quite simple really. Just make a "500 hours played" achievement and the 100% completionists will have no choice. 1.1k likes? Wasn't that good of a joke, was it? Thanks anyhow;)

[@clev7989]

Don't give them ideas!

[@starmaker75]

Yeah if don’t do a 100% the game crashes and gives a middle finger for not doing a 100% run

[@draketheduelist]

That's just a recipe to screw the achievement by pausing and walking off. I did the same thing when playing Super Smash Bros Melee to unlock Mewtwo (which only required _twenty_ hours...).

[@RaylaEclipse]

Fallout 76 had a challenge for playing 760 hours that rewarded you with premium currency, and it was a pretty small amount all things considered. I liked that game more than I should have and I don't think I could ever get even half that amount.

[@thrownstair]

The Stanley Parable has an achievement called "Go Outside" where you have to not boot up the game for five years (and another achievement which is literally unachieveable without save editing). Superhot: Mind Control Delete has a similar thing near the end where you leave the game running for two hours - it used to be eight hours before the players threw a fit and they made it shorter.

[@Dodsodalo]

"The only people who try to get all the achievements are psychotics." Shots fired by Yahtzee at the Completionist there.

[@Haverlock]

I mean he isn't wrong

[@Derik64]

I'm pretty sure Jirard would be like "well.........yeah.."

[@cautr2190]

I'm a completionist and he isn't wrong lol But I try to avoid games that take hundreds of hours to do that to begin with

[@sluttyMapleSyrup]

@@cautr2190 At least games like Shadow Complex and Bastion had the sense to keep their achievements directly related to things players of the games/genres would already be expected to do.

[@Hriskataaa]

there's this ONE game everyone has in their own hearth, for which every single piece of side-stuff brings joy to our hearth... I'd get it if you'd want to be the Completionist there, sure... For me, Jedi Outcast and Dead Space, I guess Mass effect's trilogy too, but that's only because I cared about it (story-wise) and enjoyed a lot going through it (gameplay-wise). In other words, it takes something really unique to make you do this, something you do over years & years of replays... I can assure you, THIS IS NOT IT and even if you'd spend the time doing it, you won't like it. If there will be a good side of this game, that you'd enjoy a lot, you'll forget about it & start resenting it. Just play the game, cause you enjoy it and it brings you some kind of happieness / fulfillment and NOT because someone challenges you, that ya can't complete it in one lifetime...

[@VeraTheTabbynx]

One of the finest video game campaigns I've ever had the pleasure to play, that of Titanfall 2, clocks in at a grand total of... 6-7 hours. It was exactly as long as it needed to be. It told a full story, fully explored its gameplay concepts and level design without wearing them thin, and spent exactly none of its time wasting yours. I am in the middle of my 8th playthrough. On the precise opposite end of the spectrum, one of the longer games I've completed was Watch Dogs 2. I actually just sat thinking for several minutes trying to remember how long it was, because my memory of it is a haze of nonsense. Nearly the entire campaign, save for a small handfull of missions where the baddies actually show up, is basically total nonsense, random scenarios strung together with the thinnest overarching plot trying desperately to tie it all up. The characters have no character, the gameplay is repetitive, and nearly the entire campaign is padding, not to mention the insultingly lazy side missions. I played through it once, decided all the side content was too grindy and boring, and have not touched it or even considered playing it since. Length is not a very good indicator of quality, and many forget it is very much possible for it to be too long. I can only take so much before it stops being fun and becomes painful. If you're bragging about length, that indicates to me you have nothing of any actual value to show for and I should look elsewhere. Take notes, boys.

[@thegreatgoobert5847]

Was watch dogs 2 really that bad? I've only played watch dogs 1, and that was a mediocre game with hints of greatness

[@VeraTheTabbynx]

@@thegreatgoobert5847 WD2 has that it was actually fun and the protag wasn't a brooding edgelord with the personality of a damp rag. Despite that, the story is total nonsense and every character I can recall has only one defining personality trait, with the exception of Wrench with 2. It's a perfectly fine game to enjoy and I don't blame anyone for doing so, but I will call lazy writing and filler content where I see it

[@FrenchyMcToast]

It's generally accepted that a full price AAA game has a certain amount of hours it needs to hit before it's considered a good value for it's cost. While your opinion on where the line is may very I'd say for a linear experience around 20 hours is good enough. At some point though this idea seems to have become warped so that instead of a minimum threshold it's that the longer the game the better, forgetting that diminishing returns is a thing.

[@phyrexian_dude4645]

This is why appreciate what Nier: Automata did with is HUD selection on narrative Arc and Mission after clearing the entire game once. At that point you had basically played the game twice (from diffent point on view but humor me here) and for the completionist its a godsend that they just said "look buddy, we open everything for you. You can finish eveything you missed, do it on any order you want and repeat it indefenetly without the need of a full reset. If you do decide to go for the chore of basically 100% the game, we will reward you with something special." Doing that 100% clear takes up to 50 hours and, personally, its damn worth it. But when you give me that "500 hours" of content to 100% something, it better be the fucking best 500 hours of solo experience of my life to do them, cause no one on their sane mind its going to burn more than 20 days of their life for the same bloody copy paste fetch quests which takes 100 hours, 200 hours of moving from point A to Point B while killing X amount of enemies, 100 hours of grindy crafting in betwen, 50 hours of tutorials and introduction of systems and 50 hours of actual plot.

[@CamilleDumasfille]

Nier Automata also lets you buy missing trophies for reasonable amounts of in-game currency. This is the greatest game feature ever deployed.

[@addi543]

Longest time I’ve put in a game was Fallout: New Vegas and a lot of that was because of how engaging I found the characters and writing were

[@ozhowlett]

For curiosity I had a look up how long a game like destiny is, its main story is 11 ish hours, its +extras is 56 hours and its everything run is 519, but that's everything, ranking up to highest level, doing all the DLC, but what a game like Destiny has is the fact you are playing it together with friends, people can play a game for hundreds of hours, but in most cases it's either your comfort zone game as mentioned, or its something you do with people to socialize, what the team behind dying light two have forgotten is that no one playing on there own is gonna want to do that for 500 hours

[@bluecoin3771]

Do game marketers just assume we’ll only buy 1 game ever in our lives? When we say “if you were on an island with only ten games,” you do realize that we’re not actually going to said island. I have a backlog I would like to return to.

[@ramp8536]

For Dying Light in particular, it was probably a sensible thing to boast about at the time, considering how "working-class consumer" the game is. It's the kind of game people with a launch day PS4 and a slightly-above-minimum-wage salary would buy, so the assurance that the game has a load of content is good for someone looking for their dollar's worth. As someone who loves the first game, I have confidence that at least a third of that 500 hours will be meaningfully unique, plus the gameplay of Dying Light is quite a bit more compelling to me than, say, the modern AC games so I personally will play it for more than it's worth.

[@Chaylubb]

I have 32 hours of playtime on the first game, and I genuinely can't see how a sequel could add over 150 hours of unique content. Don't get me, it's a good game, I just don't see how any singleplayer game can have 500 hours of gameplay and continue to provide a unique experience

[@bartz0rt928]

One of the first games I bought was Baldur's Gate 2, which definitely boasted of its 400 hours of gameplay (though they also mentioned you wouldn't be able to see it all in one playthrough because of character requirements. A more reasonable figure for a single playthrough was 100 hours, they said).

[@BisAlmighty]

Assassin's creed odessey literally broke me. I just couldn't finish it because of the grind.

[@Kris-wo4pj]

It took me almost a yr inbetween other games (i beat all but 3 yakuza games in less time) and i didnt get all the little bs then they added that fucking free story pack that happens with valhalla to promote valhalla's new dlc and their new weird mmo lite assassin's creed game and i just uninstalled valhalla and refuse to touch it. Not even half way thru valhalla and i got like 40 hrs in and i dont wanna anymlre.

[@Oxtocoatl13]

Same. And that game had promise! The world was beautiful and there was compelling enough story buried somewhere in there. It just... Never seemed to end. Not only were there just too many things to do but the narrative branches out those annoying checklists and never gets to any kind of satisfying ending. Find your family? Great, now go uncover and kill like 50 masked targets around the world. That's done? Well you still have to find these poorly explained magic thingys that you only get by killing mythic beasts and... it just doesn't end. Ever. Just endless grinding.

[@BP-dn9nv]

A lot of people have been demanding that the next Elder Scrolls game should have multiple provinces, as that's the only way to make the map bigger than Skyrim's. That's not true, as games like GTA 5 and Fallout 4 have been able to beat Skyrim's map despite only taking place in a single city and the surrounding countryside, but even if it was, it'd be a bad idea. If Bathesda doubled up on provinces, they'd have to spend more time getting everything in there and they'd have less time to spend on making the individual provinces stand out by adding interesting quests and lore detail into them. They also seem to forget that Morrowind is considered the best game in the series despite having the smallest map and that Daggerfall and Arena are considered not as good as the rest despite being much bigger than the others.

[@creatortray]

That photo, i don’t know if it’s a poster, or the box art, but it makes me miss judging by the cover.

[@dylanhendley5003]

though I do agree with most of this review, I think there's plenty of room in the market for this kind of "mind numbingly long" experience. Some people do enjoy this, and there are 1000s of game developers out there making shorter and tighter experiences. I think a lot of game criticism these days comes with the unintentional effect of homogenising the industry. The huge, big budget, AAA games with 500 hours of filler can coexist with the 3 hour indie with a meta storyline that's an allegory for depression. Take Dying Light 1 and Dead Island for example, the predecessors. Ireally liked the gameplay, and enjoyed just playing the game while having a tangible filler goal, even if I didn't complete it all, I never felt bad about it cus there was so much, but i also always felt like I had something I could come back to If I wanted, there was no harm done by the filler content. That isn't to say some people don't misuse that, like Shadow of War.

[@willowarkan2263]

Yeah but it shouldn't be a main selling point. like if it were more in the vein of you'll want to play it for 500 hours, that would at least show some confidence in it. Then even if it's just repeating 5 hours of gameplay 100 times, it means you are there for the game and not the game drawing itself out in order to keep you there. I guess it's the difference of advertising a really long tunnel that you are expected to walk through once, compared to a tunnel of unknown length that you want to keep traversing for the same amount of time. Just feels like they didn't have confidence in it, imo.

[@RaylaEclipse]

I recently got back into Hitman with the most recent trilogy, and I think the way they do their games is pretty good when it comes to time. Each game is pretty short, with maybe an hour spent on each level if you play it carefully and don't just shoot your way to victory, while there are so many routes and challenges to complete that you COULD get a hundred hours out of them if you really wanted to. I think a game's core experience should be shorter and concise, while the side content and replayability should be how you get those extra hours out of the truly devoted. I enjoyed grinding Hitman 3 challenges out after a quick and enjoyable core experience a lot more than slogging through the dragged out campaign of Assassin's Creed Valhalla for sure.

[@SolaScientia]

Same. Hitman (all 3, but I just call it Hitman) is the game that I have the 3rd most hours in because of how often I return to it to try challenges or an escalation that's been a problem or just messing about on a mission. It's one of my go-to games for when I just need to relax. All the side content is great and I enjoy replaying certain missions that I have a soft spot for. Even when a mission took me an hour to complete it didn't feel that long and I thoroughly enjoyed myself the whole time. I don't mind a long game if I'm having fun nearly the whole time and it doesn't feel like a grind, and at the same time a game that is long can feel short because of having fun with it.

[@DatMageDoe]

According to HowLongToBeat, a "Completionist" run of Dying Light 2 would take approximately 96 hours. Just 404 hours less than advertised, no big deal.

[@signa8]

That was one beef I had with the detractors for Metroid Dread. Comparatively, it's a short game, and that supposedly was enough to upset a few people because of its price tag. However, the game is so good, I played it over and over, basically learning to speedrun it because it's just that much fun, regardless of its total length. There's a much better chance of me getting 500 hours out of Dread in my lifetime than an open world faffing simulator like Dying Light 2.

[@jess648]

another thing that pissed me off were people saying its a bad game because it was 2d

[@signa8]

@@jess648 When the excuses are that weak, it's a sure thing that those commenters weren't interested in buying it in the first place, and are just trying to justify it to you for some reason. Like dude, if you aren't interested, just say so. Don't pretend that 2D is the reason. I remember when Okami got ported to the PC, there were a vocal few people that said it was a no-buy on a $20 game because they didn't redo all the animations to support 60FPS in a single player game.

[@sinksinkswim]

Expect a slew of authors to market their novels by giving you the page count, doesn't matter if it's all size 32 font or not.

[@francoisbertrand7612]

4:10 laughed out loud at "more spunk than fabric" nice one.

[@erwinlimawan3158]

I appreciate Yahtzee making the Killer7 reference.

[@countesschewi2399]

This is what happens when you just take the phrase "it's too short" out of context - with AAA games at least, most people complained about short games because they were shelling out $60 on the damn things so wanted something worth the pretty high asking price.

[@christophernoneya4635]

Having played dying light 2, I'd say the concerns were both accurate and innaccurate. The open world is massive and filled with busy work like clearing outposts, climbing radio towers (not the fun parkour kinda climb, more the same timing puzzle copy pasted and then slightly shifted around), but the sidequests (that are telegraphed to the player) are actually of surprising quality, but perhaps my expectations were just low. Would I say its worth 100%? No, most of that is filler. But I think I can say in this case, I'm glad the 500 hours was just deceptive marketing. For once, the game is better off for it being a lie because i was done with the game around 25

[@thumpercomet3856]

To be fair. It makes sense that it has 500 hours worth of content. It has, after all, been in development for about 37 years.

[@penguinguy9820]

Okay, I love Zero Punctuation, don't get me wrong. But I'm really liking this Extra Punctuation stuff, maybe even more.

[@eadbert1935]

This is besides the point, more of a rant about the howlongtobeat website 4:43 having played hollow knight myself, i'm very sure that getting the embrace the void achievement (and ending) will take most people more than the 16h apparently added for 100% (112%) completion of the godmaster dlc. i have 82 hours in the game and according to most people, that is pretty reasonable for getting 112%, but i haven't achieved the last ending. getting there apparently adds about 20 hours from where i'm at right now, just because of the difficulty to get there.* *it's an all-boss mode that takes "regular people" about 45-60 minutes to get through the first time. but every time you die, you have to start over, so you'll have to do about 30 mins of repetition before actually returning to the difficult part. And they add an improved version of the usual final boss at the end, which people tell you you'd need multiple hours of grinding in practice to defeat regularly so let's say you have 10 tries to get to that point, so >300mins (6 hours) then you have to take another 5 hours of practice to defeat this boss in isolation (you can't do that before reaching her the first time) then you'll probably still need 5+ tries to actually defeat her at then end of the all-boss run, just because she's that hard. now, as you take the full time to through, i'd say we need the 45-60 mins for every try, adding another 4+ hours. and that is after you've had to do the 4 quarter-of-the-bosses runs to get there, probably also taking 10-20 hours. how could they ever think this thing only take 16 hours? (and a total of 58)

[@JovialMantis]

I love long story modes, girthy world maps and a big backend of hidden lore

[@bainbonic]

My favourite game took me 8.5 hours, and my second favourite took well over a thousand. Length doesn't matter, quality does.

[@Twitchy_McExorcism]

"I'm sure there are a lot of games that take hundreds of hours to get all the achievements. That's why the only people that try to do it are psychotics." It's not like we do it with _every_ game, there aren't enough hours in the day. I only go for 100% when I've played the game for a while, gotten an idea of what there is to do, looked through the achievements, and determined whether or not 100% is something I could feasibly accomplish, even if it takes months. I do this because I used to be insane enough to attempt it with every game, but then I had that realization that comes with having a bunch of achievements/trophies/whatever for a game on one console and not another, knowing I _have_ the achievements, but it not being recorded _everywhere,_ so I stopped caring as much. Then I spent like a hundred hours trying to 100% Saint's Row 4 (because I really liked that game), which included completing every mission in co-op. Tall order for someone with no friends who play the same games. After something like two years of random idiots and cheaters, I found that I still had a bit less than half the missions left, deduced that randomly dropping into the missions I needed was a roulettle game rigged against me, and finally gave up. And this was before the Steam version got fucked. Since then, I've sworn off 100%-ing any game that has even a single multiplayer-only achievement (assuming it's not something ridiculously simple, like "participate in 3 matches" or "put a hat on your custom character"), so when the rare game comes along where I actually _can_ get all of the achievements, I kind of feel like I _have_ to. ...This does sound a teency bit on the psychotic side, now that I read it back. Incidentally, 100%-ing Persona 4 Golden only took me 85.9 hours, so I don't know what the deal is with Dying Light 2.

[@denisonsmock5456]

I'm often worried by games boasting about their length. Because even if the central gameplay loop is extremely engaging, it won't mean jack if there is no variety. Pacing is another element. How is the pace of the game from hour 2 to the 50th hour?

[@derekanderson8271]

I love how it sounds like publishers are almost afraid to give him review copys at this point.

[@Roronoa2zoro]

Wouldn't surprise me if they are. Honest criticism is marketing's kryptonite.

[@drowningin]

Now that I am older with countless super long games I've never beaten. I am sooo happy when a game is around 10hrs. They feel sooooo much better. No extra padding. They implement exactly what they had in mind then it's over. I used to love RPGs, but the genre has become something where the story doesn't even really start until 15+ hours in, and by the time you are at the 100hr mark you think wtf is even going on? This is boring. WRAP IT UP!

[@Oxtocoatl13]

Yep. It was different when I was a teenager who never did his homework. Now that I have even a little bit of adult responsibilities, I just don't have the time to sink six hours into some gargantuan open world that often, and my interest will die quickly if things don't progress. I guess they've just reached a point where production is so streamlined that making tons and tons of samey stuffing is easy, and think they have to put it in there to justify the increasingly stiff price of AAA games.

[@jasonblalock4429]

I'm pretty sure if 'how long to hit 100% completion' is the metric, then The Stanley Parable is the winner. That takes 43,829 hours to get all the achievements.

[@treebush]

small crafted worlds/maps are always the most memorable, just think about it Theres a reasons why Shadow Moses, RE mansion and RC police department, Yakuza locations, Hitmans locations are so lasting in our memories

[@AnimatronicBadgerlord]

When I see "This game will take 500 hours to complete!" I sit happy in the knowledge that this is why I don't complete games. I finish some, beat others, but rarely RARELY ever complete a game. I find that there is a sweetspot for games, go too long and I'll never want to replay it. Go too short and it better be the best couple hours in existence, and sometimes they are. But for big open world madness games, I find that if most of the content is shallow empty copy paste, I have no interest in doing it. There are rare exceptions where the side content is so good I seek it out. Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima, Dark Souls series etc... but it's few and far between.

[@flyinggondolaproductions]

I feel like after Final Fantasy VII became a massive hit in '97, suddenly game length bacame a hot talking point. From what I've seen, game length was rarely something mentioned or criticized in game reviews prior to that, but became amore frequent point in later ones. Then like anything else that becomes a talking point, such as how realisitic the graphics are, became a standard rather than an element of design for developers

[@Arexion5293]

It's not about how long the game is, it's about how much of that time is quality content worth experiencing and how replayable it is. A short game that is nothing but quality content is easily worth replaying, and a long game that makes sure most of the game is all about its best features, is well worth going through. The length of a game becomes impressive only when that time is genuinely worth it. Souls games for example are about 20 hours when played through for the first time, and most of that time is that core experience that tends to be well designed. Not only that but they have plenty of replay value and their online functions also add yet another layer of longevity if the player finds that aspect of it enjoyable. One can easily get hundreds and even thousands of hours out of those games if they enjoy the core gameplay enough.

[@SkellyHertz]

I was a little miffed when a friend told me the estimated playtime for Elden Ring's critical path, but this has put it into perspective.

[@Tillyard86]

It’s funny how you talk about the “before times”, as in before everyone was dying, and then show a still from the scene in Life of Brian that has the “I got better” line.

[@TheComedyGeek]

I used to pay attention to gameplay length as one factor towards what game would get me maximum bang for minimum buck. But then I realized that it was that most deadly of things, a metric even the money and marketing people could understand. only their min/max equation read "how to get the most game for the least money" and that definitely ran counter to my interests as a gamer. It's a formula for crap, is what I am saying. It's a particular hazard for me because my favorite kind of game is the open world mega-game loaded with substantial quests like Skyrim, the Fallout series, and of course. the god-king of them all, Witcher 3. And those often have very high play lengths because they are so chock full of stuff. So it's hard for a semi-informed gamer like me to know what games have lots of legit content and which have merely padded out their play length with mind numbing filler. That's what Metacritic is for, I guess.

[@kingsleycy3450]

When I was 8 I wished Pokemon Silver's campaign were fifty times lengthier. Of course it was silly to think that was feasible, and that the game wouldn’t run out of good ideas past the 20th hour mark. The idea that more is always better is juvenile.

[@treebush]

its horrible, you can play pokeromshacks that add all the regions and such and you realize how much the games drag on and pacing of the games are very dated and bad

[@C0C0L0QUIN]

@@treebush yeah. An rpg can have a few extra challenges and secret bosses after hitting max level, but getting 36 more medals with your level 100 perfect EV godly team makes absolutely zero sense. Is just a chore unless you start a new team each time, and for that you could just actually play the other game.

[@Percival917]

Pokemon GS is already one of Pokemon's lengthiest entries, and thus an incredible value for the money. But it also shows that you can't really go more than, say, three regions in a Pokemon gane without having to balance a whole chunk of the game around level 100 pokemon, or a new level cap entirely.

[@Vixorous]

A wise owl once said a 5 hour game worth playing twice is always better than a 10 hour game barely worth playing once.

[@Skimmy404]

500 hours is fucking mental. That's about a month of non stop playing

[@deusexvesania1702]

Marketing aimed at the quarantine gamer generation, lol

[@xcellentcreations3312]

Gonna be honest, I agree with yatzhee, I mean, i love dying light and am hyped for dying light 2 (and no doubt preparing for yarzhee to rip it a new one with funny jokes) but 500 HOURS?! That's 20 days!! Thats just gonna make completionists go insane!

[@hereskyubi3333]

Especially for speedrunners.

[@atlashugged2591]

20 days* if you don't have other responsibilities like work, sleep, food, literally anything else. Then there are some times where I just don't want to play the same game every waking hour for 20 days straight. I think even for the most focused gamers that *can* play one game for hours and days on end, it'll still take a few months to complete to 100%. For the normal human being, expect years, and that's just absurd.

[@hereskyubi3333]

@@atlashugged2591 Amen 🙏

[@xcellentcreations3312]

I sincerely hope they meant getting a 100 percent completion!

[@hereskyubi3333]

@@xcellentcreations3312 They did, but it's still ridiculous.

[@henseltbrumbleburg3752]

I agree, but 'journalist' need to also stop asking about game length. I've seen so many intereviews with the question "How many hours will this game be?" But glad to see you tackling this issue, you've always been right on the money

[@theescapist]

We ask about length because it’s a good SEO search item for traffic. People wanna know.

[@henseltbrumbleburg3752]

@@theescapist That's fair enough, but it kind contributes to the problem imo. I feel there's better questions to gauge how much content is in a game than hours. As stated in the video ones time with a game can vary greatly depending on their motivation. Better questions in my eyes can be, is their optional content, how many quests/missions are in the game, does the game have multiply outcomes and is it replayable. These questions completely depend on the product that's being enquired on. Though if the motivation is, as you state what people are searching for, it's more about changing how people gauge what makes a game worth their money. Either way, thanks for the reply, it was an interesting response. :)

[@CAP198462]

YC:“Does it have a moment where the hero loudly shouts the villain’s name like in wrath of Khan?” YC: maybe… YC get out of my office Techland.” 😮

[@SubSpace-bs5fr]

Yahtzee using the beloved greedy saleman at 0:42 👌

[@julesmasseffectmusic]

I cannot imagine if they used that as an advertising trick during the commodore 64 era. Green Beret: IF you make to check point 3 that takes 4 minutes to get to and your a legend. Wizball: this game has no end Gyrus: Get to earth after 8 years of trying, restart at beginning. Wonder BOy: See how many different heads we can put on the boss monster at the end of infinate cut and pasted levels.

[@CyrusBluebird]

I'm reminded of RuneScape and how after a while it stops listing "hours played" and starts listing "days played"

[@Fernando-ek8jp]

Josh Strife Hayes has a good video about the "It gets good after 1000 hour" excuse

[@Dom9606]

please god just give me a high quality 10-20 hour game with replayability and I'm happy

[@highwind1991]

Yeah I would not spend 500 hours on any game let alone Dying Light 2. Every once in awhile I replay shorter titles but if it's a huge title, it's mainly one-and-done for me because I usually complete it (basically main quests and side quests if they're good) and that's it. There are far too many games I want to play for me to stick to one for too long

[@pahnazd]

Honestly, with how my life changed these past few years (mostly in regards to the amount of time I have to play games... and the willingness to do so), seeing a 500h playtime is more daunting than something to look forward to. Well, as usual then - no pre-orders, I'll wait for reviews of both reviewers and players, and base my buying judgment on that.

[@caimansaurus5564]

I kinda wish these had chiller intro music. The heavy metal sound kinda clashes with this more chilled-out, thoughtful format versus ZP

[@xanthousizalith5641]

Right now the game with the highest amount of hours on *my* steam profile is Dark Souls 3 with 320ish hours and 100% of the achievements completed. I've alse spent some time modding the game and have also beaten the game around 50 times, fought gael about 20 and honestly, the only reason the hours are so high is because for a long time that was the *only* game on my steam profile that wasn't Stardew valley which I only bought to play with my friends. However if Dark Souls 3 was plopped on my plate now, I doubt I'd break the 150 hour mark, much less something like 300 hours. I'd never get all the achievements and I definitely would not have modded it as much as I did because at the end of the day, the only game that takes that much time are games which incorporate real time. No one is actually going to spend 500 hours on Dying Light besides the nutters who become obsessed with it or the people who only have that game on their profile.

[@jessegoonerage3999]

I generally prefer shorter games. Some of my favourites stick with me because I can actually complete them in a reasonable sitting. I feel like I can appreciate a game more when It has more contained, unique and varied levels and moments, rather than an endless slog of samey objectives. I can recall more moments that made me engaged with a game like Undertale than I can with a game like Marvel's Spider-man, even though both are great experiences because the game doesn't bog itself down with menial artificial lengtheners like forced stealth segments or collect 'em all objectives. Additionally, I think games like the Hitman franchise, and Metal Gear Ground Zeroes can get away with hiding a lot more secrets/goodies in each individual segment when they're contained spaces that only take a half hour to complete at most. I think the only game I can recall that has done length well is the Witcher 3, and I think that has more to do with its structure feeling more like a series of short interactive stories tied together by an open world, rather than an 8 hour long story. On the other hand, we have Red Dead Redemption 2, which, while a solid game that on the surface is quite similar, but none the less is seriously bogged down by long stretches of empty open world, and a story that, while compelling, can admittedly feel pretty meandering and directionless at times.

[@noa_9863]

As Bilbo said, when asked about the video games he had played: "I've played half of you only half as much as I had liked, and half of you I played twice as much as you damn well deserve."

[@joshsmyth130]

I found that, the time I started to not enjoy massively padded and ridiculously long games, is the same time I started to truly understand the concept of mortality and that life is only so long. And now I need to run to the store, cause this thankfully reminded me that I'm running low on Ritalin and need to be able to sit still for more than 10 min.

[@F4fn1r13]

My heart did a little leap at the random Killer 7 mention. Good memories. Weird good memories.

[@killroy713]

If all games boasted about "length to full competition" defined by doing and seeing absolutely everything do you know what that would be for say, Elite: dangerous? 4 million years Point being you can make a game where you can do the same slightly differently 4 billion times and say it hundreds of hours of "content"

[@LanceThumping]

Flip side: Don't make your game too short and especially not too short without sharply cutting it's price. I've played at least one game recently that could've used a little tweaking of the difficulty and some lengthening out just to make the gameplay more satisfying.

[@RoseAlchemist22]

I've been playing Dying Light at least once a year since it came out in 2015. 7 years and I'm still only at 435 hours.

[@RetroMaticGamer]

I can Speedrun Mega Man 2 in 35 minutes flat, but it's still my favorite video game ever. 35 years and I STILL sink time into it whenever I can. If your game's selling point is that your game takes hundreds of hours to complete, all I hear is, "our game isn't fun enough to want to play again and again for years on end." And that's sad. Even Skyrim didn't advertise on the basis of its length, and it's fucking SKYRIM.

[@kidanarchy2105]

As someone who mainly plays AAA games, bigger is not always better. I'm playing through Night In The Woods for the first time and its a million times more engaging than 90% of the games I've played lately. Might have to check out indies more often.

[@ultgamercw6759]

My first reaction was "That's way too long". The only game I have triple digit playtime in is tf2 and the main reason for that is because it's a game I play with my friends to catch up casually or pop in if I just want to shoot something. Most of my other playtimes rarely ever go over 30 hours. Id rather have a shot well crafted game that's packed with fun and interesting things to do than to grind for 100s of hours.

[@gamerjuice2239]

Good thing Dying Light 2 has coop and all of that content is for people that want to do everything across multiple playthroughs.

[@SolaScientia]

The only games I have over 100 hours in are the original Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on Steam, because I love that game and it was my go-to comfort game so I clocked 540hrs in from doing multiple playthroughs of the whole game and because nothing else caught my attention then. I have over 300hrs in Coloring Pixels, because it gives me something to do when listening to podcasts or something (I get fidgety and need something to do when listening to something that requires me to pay attention so I can't read or something while listening). I have over 100hrs in Hitman on the PS5, because I replay missions, mess around with escalations, and because it's also a go-to comfort game. I can start it up, pick a mission/escalation/etc and turn off my brain for some fun fucking around with giving myself certain personal objectives. It's fairly low-stress compared to, say, Bloodborne. As with Yahtzee, a lot of the games that I have replayed a bunch are ones that aren't that long. BioShock Infinite has a lot of hours, but I love that game and have played through it a bunch. Same for Portal 2. Length definitely doesn't equality. The side quests in KoA are rather fun for me, personally, so I don't mind all the running around, but it's also the only open-world RPG game that I've logged that many hours in so far. I've come to the conclusion that I really have to love a game, or use it as a distraction for when listening to podcasts or music, to clock in a ton of hours on it. Or it has to be a FromSoftware game in which numerous attempts at a boss will be the main reason for logging so many hours in the game; looking at you, Bloody Crow of Cainhurst even though you're optional. The only games I bother trying to platinum/100% are games that are fairly short or it's fairly easy to do. It's not terribly fun to have to make sure I do or don't do something in just the right away in order to 100% a game. I know I'll log a ton of hours in Elden Ring, but it's an open world FromSoftware game. Those hours are going to be from exploring, doing all the optional small dungeons for weapon arts and special stuff just because I'm curious about what I might find in whatever hole in the wall/ground I come across, and from dying a lot to whatever fuck-off big dragon I piss off or whatever. The hours won't come from a bunch of faffing about side quests, since FS games don't really have side quests like other games (thank fuck; could you imagine escorting some helpless NPC to the Oeden Chapel or Firelink?). FS in the Taipei Game show video said it'll be 30 hours if players focus only on the main path and bosses without really exploring the surrounding areas. They thankfully didn't specify how long it would take to do everything possible in the game. 30 hours is about on the money for the other titles if one doesn't die a shit ton.

[@pancakes8670]

I know a dude who has 3,000 hours on Skyrim for Switch. Bit off topic, but thought I'd mention it since we're talking about how many hours you typically play a video game I love him to pieces but he's one of those dudes where Elder Scrolls is the only thing he knows

[@Tralfazz74]

I've played a total of 12 hours of Undertale. Undertale has consumed probably 400 hours of time in my head, because those twelve hours were worth remembering

[@Guardian-of-Light137]

Now i'll make a somewhat small counter argument. (Keep in mind it's late where I am so if I don't make a lot of sense it's fine ignore me.) If i'm going to get a game. Generally i'm going to want stuff to do besides the main quest of course. Stuff that won't require more than maybe 2 or 3 playthroughs at most. So if they can fit 500 hours worth of content into this game then sure i'll be down for it. If it's at least fun to do. A monumental task to be sure. But not unachievable. If the game just gets to the end and says that's your lot start over if you want to do anything else. Rather than just letting you continue in "sandbox" mode. I'm going to get a bit annoyed. I'm not saying I want every game to be ubisoft sandbox GOD no. I couldn't think of a worse fate for gaming as a whole other than EA. But I don't want to be done with the entire game by the afternoon is I guess my main point here. But I also don't want the 20-500 extra hours of content to be crap either. Look we all know what Dying light 2 is really going to be when it says you can shape the world to your choices. And that there will be 500 hours worth of content. We've been burned to many times not to know. But as long as the game is still enjoyable and doesn't make that 500 hours boring to do then i'll get around to it sooner or later.

[@AriZonia]

I think something interesting is that the only game I've played that is over 500 hours, in a single save/copy is a multiplayer party game that I've been playing since 2015, meaning it's only RECENTLY cracked that mark due to play sessions only lasting a couple hours at a time. In terms of JRPGs, which obviously last an hour and a day, I think I only barely have 200 in my multiple save files of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, with XC2 and Torna added for good measure. 500 hours is a god damn slogfest at that point. That HAS to be full on padding since even the longest RPGs take about 200-300 hours to get True 100%.

[@MoreLikeDanny]

This would make a perfect accompanying piece to go the Josh Stife's "100 hours to get good" video

[@ShatterPalm]

To reiterate on his point here, I can think of very few games i've sunk more than 500 hours into. I've beaten Borderlands 2 from level 1 to level 72 OP6 on seven seperate playthroughs and 1 to 80OP10 on another, totalling in around 600 hours or so, to say nothing of just fucking around in Digistruct peak afterwords for fun. Dark Souls? I know the game forwards, backwards, upside down and sideways. I've played Dark Souls 1 more times through than I have every other game in the series combined, and if that doesn't clock 500 hours I'd be stunned. Top game for time sync for me was Team Fortress 2, because I played it for multiple hours daily all through highschool and through the first two years of college. That was on my old, now dead steam account, but if I remember correctly it had to have been north of 1200 hours. Those are really choice, really specific games that gelled with me in a way most games I've played do not and many simply CAN not. Do the marketing departments for these games seriously think higher play times matter so much that they'd make a boast like that even with the qualifiers and still seriously think its a good idea? Honestly for me its like movies these days, all two and a half fucking hours long. Would it kill someone to make something a clean 90 minutes and change again? Not everything needs to be this massive epic, it just has to get the damn point across in less time than it takes for me to finish a damn bucket of popcorn.

[@HopeisAnger]

In the last ten years I have spent more than 80 hours on exactly one game. RimWorld. 3,781 hours, and counting.

[@MightyManotaur22]

This same thing applies to movies. I remember when they said the new Batman would be like 3 hours long and people were like "yay, awesome!" One of the biggest skills in writing is "killing your darlings," ie removing things you love that don't suit the story or characters. Creators aren't doing that anymore. They're leaving everything in and it leads to a worse product overall.

[@edwardgyan9749]

I get your point but just because a movie is long doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain a quality story.

[@MightyManotaur22]

@@edwardgyan9749 I never said it doesn't.

[@Percival917]

IMO, three hours works better for something you can watch at home and pause whenever the fuck you want, rather than something you have to commit to sitting at the theater for. Any longer than 3-4 hours, and you're better off just making a TV show.

[@thrownstair]

The one game I have on Steam that I've played more than 500 hours of is TF2. And that was over the course of four years. Dying Light 2 will have to be as good as cognac tiramisu being fed to me by Scarlett Johannson on a mother-of-pearl caviar spoon to warrant me needing to savor every moment.