Are AAA Video Games Too Long? | Slightly Civil War

[@theescapist]

Show after podcast: soundcloud.com/user-944993929/are-aaa-video-games-too-long Watch today's Slightly Civil War episode - Should You Preorder Games? - www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/should-you-preorder-video-games-slightly-civil-war/

[@bobvella7228]

you mentioned portal, didn't that start as a student final project?

[@markhackett2302]

How about this: *for a AAA game* if it is under 20 hours it needs to be justified as to why it is so short yet still warrants the moniker "AAA game", if it is over 60 hours it needs to be justified as to why it is so long. A game that anchors on "multiplayer with token campaign" should have the multiplayer be entirely sufficient (therefore the campaign is nothing more than a tutorial) OR the campaign needs to be good enough to allow offline/singleplay game for the useful life of the multiplayer part, to justify its inclusion as a positive point. A singleplayer open world RPG that is 80 hours of basic content where 40 hours of that is just gated grind, especially if it can be skipped by microtransactions, is 40 hours too long. If the game is 80 hours with 40 hours grind and 20 hours tedium, it is now 60 hours too long.

[@SleepWellSanDiego]

Yahtzee sounds like he's struggling to persuade himself. I love this series so much.

[@Degrelecence]

He seemed to be making a completely effortless argument to me. Instant responses and none of that 'well, remember that I have to argue the other side of this' that they often say. Also, the top comment is about how Yahtzee would have fought to have this side.

[@arthursombra]

That is actually why I dislike the series... It would be better if they discussed what they believe in

[@NotHPotter]

@@arthursombra Except they probably often agree on most positions. (Oh, wait, that's what the linked podcast is for.)

[@MetalPope85]

@@arthursombra that's what makes the videos fun though

[@2CPhoenix]

Coin flip: Yahtzee will argue they’re not too long and Jack will argue that they are! Yahtzee: er... wanna trade?

[@thrillhelm419]

So long as a game stays interesting, it can be as long as it wants to be. This entirely differs depending on the type of game. Good luck making a Ubisoft collectathon trash-fest 80 hours and still keep it interesting. I also doubt the enjoyment of a five-hour Metroidvania or Pokemon game. Length needs to match genre.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

The problem is that 10 hours can either be full of engaging gameplay or you walking around a map that's 3x the size it needed to be. Then again Pokémon unashamedly shipped a half-finished 15 hour game for $60 so it could be worse: if we ask for shorter games maybe the quality won't even go up to compensate.

[@aquamarinerose5405]

Yeah.. granted I haven't watched everything yet but the first thing I instantly thought was the issue that we've kinda opened the floodgates on open-world games in the past few years, and whilst not all open world games are bad, they're also the games most likely to feel like the drag on too long even in the cases of the GOOD ones. Example: Breath of the Wild is an amazing game, but I just kinda dropped it eventually because I got bored of wandering around the landscape trying to figure out where the hell the last shrines and the 700 korok seeds I still haven't collected were hiding.

[@skysnow2495]

Pokemon's a bad example here. They have the opposite problem of making two games where neither have as much content as they should.

[@superchroma]

"it can be as long as it wants to be" is fundamentally incompatible with common project planning processes in large corporations, sadly..

[@cloudy772]

TheHoratiosvetlana Yeah I got 100% at 60 hours and all achievements at 200 hours. Best value game I’ve ever seen by faaaar

[@josephabrams8529]

As per usual, it depends on the game. The salient question isn’t “are games too long or too short” but “is this game as long as its story and gameplay loop can sustain?” Better yet, “is this game taking its story and mechanics as far as it can go without moving into tedium?” I’ve come to the conclusion that The Last of Us Part II is a perfect example of a game that can’t sustain itself. On the one hand, it has a strong gameplay loop that unfortunately cannot sustain its 20-30 hour runtime. It’s good gameplay, but incredibly repetitive. Combat encounters become the same basic affair each time, and scrounging is a horrible chore due to the larger environments. When I played it, I started to get tired of the gameplay about 2/3 of the way through Ellie’s story. I was completely over the gameplay by about 1/3 of the way through Abby’s story. It was particularly frustrating because while I was playing through the descent through the hotel as Abby, and the Rat King sequence, all I could think was, “this is great stuff, fantastic even, I’d probably be enjoying the hell out of it if it happened 5-8 hours ago and I wasn’t completely bored of this rote shit.” I still haven’t finished it, and don’t care to. I watched the cutscenes online; which brings me to... The story needs focus. It feels too long as we’re getting 2 full stories and a bunch of overly indulgent flashbacks (pretty much every flashback could have been cut in half, or told more elegantly, or truncated). I understand why Naughty Dog did what they did in regards to the plot, but perhaps they should have considered picking a topic that was a bit less broad than, as Neil Druckmann put it, “an all-encompassing hate.” If Ellie and Abby’s stories were two separate games, I can all of a sudden imagine an Ellie revenge story that feels more focused and satisfying. I can imagine an Abby story that focuses more clearly on the WLF/Seraphite conflict. Seriously, there’s some really interesting themes to be addressed in this war between two extraordinarily different societies vying for power. But no, instead we get a shallow examination or revenge and tribalism that means virtually nothing. Druckmann mentioned that he was influenced by The Godfather Part II in his creation of this game, but I think he failed to see what made that movie great. TL;DR, the length depends on the gameplay loop and story’s ability to sustain itself. TLOU2 is boring, pretentious nonsense.

[@caseyhall2320]

This is really well put. Everything you just said is basically how I feel about JRPGs. I actually quite enjoy their stories a lot, as they tend to have more complexity and thought put into the plot than american AAA games. But I just canNOT stand having to do the same basic fighting loop hours on end just for a small reward of being able to actually progress the plot. It's just not worth it to me. I swear, if JRPGs had experience and gold multiplier settings it would be a Hail Mary for me; I could play a game I enjoy without getting bored and others who enjoy the original grind would still have it.

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

Well put. Compare that to Titanfall 2, which succeeds primarily because of crisp pacing. At 20 hours it would be a trudge, with novel worlds and mechanics introduced long after the last gimmick got boring. At a crisp 6-8 hours, you get the surprise of the new environment or mechanic, the sense of rising challenge as you grapple with it, a few minutes to express your mastery over it, and a final test in the form of a particularly difficult five-minute challenge. At 3-4 hours it would be a hurtling mess that never gives you time to breathe then ends abruptly. There is a just-right length for any game based on the quality of core and polish, and it is tediously common for arty games to wildly exceed this length because gaming is a less-matured medium with less discipline from directors, and obnoxiously common for generic AAA games to wildly exceed that length because they are selling not the game as an experience but creating frustration as a problem that microtransactions can solve.

[@zaser1264]

Replay value>Story length

[@MisterCasket]

Depends. For me personally, in the old days, I bought one game and replayed it lots of times. These days, I simply complete it and move on. If I haven't 100 percented it, too bad, the story is done. Multiple endings? I take the one I had as personal canon and maybe watch the rest on KZbin. I hardly reply a game anymore.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

In time, and with quantum computing we may see games are are endlessly new and fascinating. Maybe even games you control the parameters. You just tell your personal AI assistant what you are in the mood for and to base it on your personal preferences. "Hey Cortana, give me a 9th Mongolian steppe realistic VR combat slash life sim with horror elements and the usual. Cortana "So sex with demons?" "..."

[@dagroth123]

solid reverse here: i rarely go back to a game once i've finished exploring it. ...speedruns aside...

[@joshuahagon8269]

this is why roguelites were such a huge hit

[@dagroth123]

"if games are shorter, than developers wont have to work so much" got a spit take and a loud exclamation from me. the people driving them to a deadline aren't gonna lower the load, they're gonna make them come out more often.

[@uxie6177]

Yeah, that was my instant rebuttal as well. If you halved the content requirement for games, crunch wouldn't go away - there'd just be a release every year instead of every two years.

[@Tyrfing42]

Is crunch really dependent on the length of a game? Wouldn’t shorter games with the same bad business practices just have proportionally tighter deadlines and still produce the same crunch?

[@skysnow2495]

Plenty of these long game still come out with insane frequency, pretty much no matter how you cut it games with less stuff will take less crunch

[@camdened123456]

@@skysnow2495 I mean they'd probably just emply fewer people and make them work at the same intensity...

[@akhannar9368]

@@skysnow2495 if you are trying to say that a shorter game has a shorter crunch period, let me remind you that a dev studio does not produce only one game in their lifetime. The devs would still be under the same amount of crunch - they would only be making more games through the crunch. The existance of crunch has nothing to do with game length.

[@skysnow2495]

@@akhannar9368 This is true, but a longer game will have needed more crunch to finish and it's very possible for the crunch to be much worse on a large game when there's a close deadline and a lot left to do.

[@skysnow2495]

@@camdened123456 Short games son't make crunch vanish. It's just less crunch going into the game basically.

[@bandicootsauce4569]

I'd rather have six hours of fun than sixty hours of boredom.

[@SapphireDragon357]

For the price of games nowadays, I'd like 60 hours of fun please. And yes, there are games that have that. No matter how good it is, if I pay for a game, it had better entertain me for more than 6 gorram hours.

[@HUNbullseye]

I loved Yahtzee turning into the Colonel from Monty Python, and shutting down sillyness.

[@Tounushi]

That's why he tries to speak so quickly, because there are no piss breaks.

[@gert-janberends2431]

It just hit me (after about 10 episodes) this just an 8min commercial for the podcast

[@keithadams7619]

I'm about 2 minutes into this argument and I got to say, Yahtzee sounds like he's struggling to contain his self-loathing at being stuck defending AAA hogwash. 😂

[@aquamarinerose5405]

yahtzee deadpanning "Oh Shit" when he realized that he fell for it but also still realized he was struggling with to take the side he doesn't really believe in slays me for some reason.

[@DarkMaker75]

Couple of things to take in mind: Price: A $5-10 game can get away with being an hour long, a $60 game cannot. Genre: Some genres don't really work if they're too long (or too short). 200 hr platformer vs 2 hr RPG *Interesting* things to do: The more interesting things there are to do, the longer length a game can get away with. (This can be story or gameplay) Replayability: Highly replayable games can get away with being shorter. (If anything, they SHOULD be shorter) See roguelikes and arcade-y games Overall, games should aim to be as long as they need to be and not any longer. No one likes fluff.

[@Timmy_T]

Here's my "depends on the..." comment: If a game like Disco Elysium was 200+ hours, I'd play the crap out of it, but if I have to play 100+ hours in GTA V, I'll be annoyed. Long games should only be long if its interesting plot wise and gameplay wise. This excludes overlong cut scenes... YES, I'm referring to Final Fantasy All of em!

[@SinisterPuppy]

I'll post my comment under yours. I have a somewhat similar thought on things. Do games have good game play loops that give replay value or make the length fun? Personal antidote, in dark souls I enjoy trying new classes/weapons out as it changes the game play dramatically. Or take Shin Megami Tensei, it has just enough of a twist on turn based combat to keep it engaging and the various morality paths give it some minor replay value. Then you look at railroaded narrative games like Last of us. There's no replay value, no player agency. You're forced to swallow a 20hr movie watching people make the worst possible decisions imaginable. It's like every horror movie where the people hear a spooky noise and go to investigate it. We all scream at the screen "don't do it!". Except in the game your screaming for 20hrs. That is when long is to long. Besides, how can I get immersed in a world where the people are nothing like me? Being immersed is another key to making length enjoyable.

[@zyonhenderson67]

@@SinisterPuppy While I did like the Last of Us 2 espeically after replaying the first one, I must agree that the game should not have been that damn long. Lots of things were overdone and I hated the puzzle's and having to find stuff to get from point A to Point B. I acutally like video game movies as I've been more drawn into narrative based games such as Mass Effect, Life is Strange and Uncharted. Hell I literally spent 4 hours watching a playthrough on Deus Ex. TLDR: To each their own my guy

[@ilovenuddlesandballs]

what you got from Disco Elysium wouldnt be there if it was 200 hours long.

[@zyonhenderson67]

As a final fantasy 10 I take offense!.....but Disco Elysium is amazing 👍👍👍

[@MadnessBomber]

You should apply that to a majority of JRPG games tbh. I started playing SAO: Fatal Bullet and a MAJOR part of what I've been playing is just cutscenes, text, and more and more japanese talking that I don't fully understand but I know juuuuust enough to know that the subtitles aren't exactly matching with what's being said.

[@higurashikai09]

“What do you mean you put 14 hours into one day??” But also “why can’t you work days and nights and be on call??” Both in the same conversation :/ How am I simultaneously working too much but also not enough at the same time???? So that section about corporate slavery really hit me in the gut lol

[@01oo011]

They aren’t. Blame bloat and padding on Ubisoft, ever since end of the PS3/360 era pretty much every AAA publisher/studio has evolved in the worst way possible. Ubisoft made Prince of Persia, Far Cry, Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon, Rainbow 6, Splinter Cell. EA had Black, Burnout, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Army of Two, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor. What have they done with all of these? Permanently shelved them, filled them with microtransactions or turned them into live service Skinner boxes.

[@kadosho02]

So true. What we loved, changed, was meshed turned into something we barely recognize. Sigh

[@themetalone7739]

Not really fair to compare the 90s to now, in terms of game output. Games are a much larger form of entertainment than they were back then, and the accessibility of development software and decent PC parts made it easy for tons of Indy devs to spring up. Besides, the increase led to a larger variety of games being created (more niches being catered to), rather than us simply getting more of the limited scope of games we got in the 90s, so the argument that people have "too many games to play" is kind of inaccurate. You have more games to play, *if* you like a lot of niche genre games (for example, retro-style platformers), but you've got the same (or fewer) decent games in the big genres like RPG, FPS, action, etc. Ironically, today's gaming industry seems pretty infatuated with remaking games from the 90s, so I have to question how many of those 1200+ games are just rehashed 90s crap (mostly joking).

[@esteban280889]

Games have no length anymore when they all become live service. And having too many of them makes me have no time to play games with fixed length

[@pjornhoob708]

Yeah I feel that way sometimes too. Whenever I think of buying a story game thats less than 20 hours I just think that I could spend that on another game and play it for years (Rainbow 6, Destiny etc.) but I've tried to get over this recently

[@BugsyFoga]

"Yes No , Maybe , I don't know , Can you repeat the question "

[@gonesnake2337]

You're not the boss of me now!

[@zdanee]

@@gonesnake2337 And you're not so big!

[@Cptkaliente1]

Just finished Red Dead Redemption 2. Phenomenal Game buuuutttt i could feel the hours sometimes.

[@jedimike7622]

I only picked it up like a month ago, but that's part of the reason I still haven't finished it. There's just... so... much...

[@Cptkaliente1]

@@jedimike7622 I played it on and off for 3 months. Definitely a "slow burn"

[@jedimike7622]

Yeah, that's how it's probably gonna be for me. Which is a shame, because it's a fantastic game overall. Just too big.

[@pjornhoob708]

The horse riding stopped me from replaying the game. I never realised how many missions start and end with two characters talking on a horse, granted the characters are some of the best I've seen

[@TheAdarkerglow]

That's nonsense, Jack. The valid issues are the problems of corrupt capitalism. The final issue of 'too many games' is nonsense, though. That's pure consumerism. I think the honest answer to this question is, 'how long should we expect Triple A games to be?' because, as Internet Historian put it, 'Prices. $et. Expectations'.

[@hubblebublumbubwub5215]

Taking discounts and indies and inflation into account, games are REALLY cheap now, plus you can still play old games. There's not a new trend of consumerism but cheaper development cost creates a larger supply and pushes prices down. Time is a bigger restriction than money.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 No sane person should claim that paying $70 for the same open-world survival crafting game is good value for money. AAA games are comically overpriced to the point where they are worth nearly triple their actual value, and people just go along with it because of the shiny graphics they keep slapping on them. The game really doesn't need to look like a picture of real life: real life is where I spend most of my time and I don't find staring at the walls engaging just because of the ultra-4k textures.

[@k38-w4x]

@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 If I see a game that takes 100+ hrs to beat, I don't even bother anymore ... who has time for that now?

[@hubblebublumbubwub5215]

​@@PlatinumAltaria I don't claim that paying $70 for the same open-world survival crafting game is good value for money and yet my steam library is extremely bloated.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 Congratulations on having more disposable income than the average person?

[@TubeRudeYou]

A game can be long and fun, but ultimately feel empty. A game can be very short and painful, but be incredibly fulfilling. Both can be great. What kind of games do you like to play?

[@pillarnexustheancientgladiator]

The last few games I've enjoyed were mostly short, among them Portal 2, The Stanley Parable, Undertale. Lately, I've been trying to get into longer games; I was playing Morrowind until life happened and my time available reduced considerably. I might get back to it, but I've been enjoying, far more in fact, other things that don't have system requirements in excess of my current computer: watching KZbin and Crunchyroll, or playing board games at the store. I remember spending whole days on games years ago but it just hasn't been as appealing these days as it used to be for me.

[@gordonmarshall5980]

I love how clearly Yhatzee does not agree with his own arguments in this one. Even going so far as to impersonate / ape (but in a clearly sarcastic way) a lot of the propaganda the triple A execs pedal.

[@Just4Fun-Zocker]

If it were "only" 20 hours that would be still kind of ok. But no, every game seems to try to become Witcher 3, but only in size.

[@oomsou5018]

So a 20-40 hour game is too long? From the thumbnail I thought it was gonna be about 60+ hour triple A games being too long. Seriously if I pay $60 for a game it better damn well give me at the BARE MINIMUM 20 hours worth of game time. Any shorter and I’ll feel cheated out my money. Now if it was $40 I’d be slightly more lenient but yeah for today’s prices 20 hours is a short game while anything around 35+ is long sorta. Actually anything over 40 hours is long. This argument was quite ridiculous if you ask me. Yes a 6-7 hour refined experience is amazing. But I’m not gonna pay $60 for it.

[@Azerinth]

As far as crunch goes, shorter games would just mean more frequent crunches as the expectations for how long a *short* game takes to make gets refactored into the "do it quick to make money sooner" algorithm

[@NotHPotter]

Yahtzee's continues streak of taking the piss out of his position is why I keep coming back to this series. Don't even let him argue a position he actually believes.

[@frankallen3634]

As I'm 4100 hours into monster hunter world/iceborne. I can count on 2 hands the number of games I've played in the last 6 years

[@michaelhanisch9743]

MHW is so good, but I'd totally pay 60 bucks for a 10 hour narrative. I think some games suffer from developers trying to appeal to everyone. Like, Monster Hunter dosent need cut scenes. I definitely loathed the main story quests in World.

[@MalzraAirwynn]

This one really just comes down to the specific game. Some games are bloated and stretched out more than the need to be, others handle being long just fine.

[@dafff08]

tbh 20 is still quite low for a full priced aaa game considering how much cr*p we get thrown at. (season passes, micro dlc, etc etc..) if the game has 20 hours of quality content and fills the rest of time with a bit of grind and repetition its ok i guess.

[@twoteesful]

This series has been great not because of the actual argument (which sometimes is good), but it always seems to capture core questions that are important for gaming at this point in time

[@pavlotverdokhlib7627]

Having just finished 100%ing Horizon Zero Dawn last night (took me 148 hours according to Steam), I'd say it depends. If your core gameplay concept is satisfying (Sekiro's combat and exploration; Horizon's "pick your tools to beat specific machines efficiently"; Shadow of War's Nemesis system- I'm just listing off the last few big "AAA time sinks" I've played- then spending the time exploring every nook and cranny of the map, or every permutation of the gameplay systems doesn't stop feeling rewarding. But if your open world is filled with collectathons and fetch quests that dont' contribute to the world-building in a meaningful way, then it becomes pure padding and bloat. My favourite go-to example were always the Batman Arkham games and the Riddle trophies- a lot of people hated them because they were busywork; but I was always motivated to collect them because a) I enjoyed a lot of them (the scavenger hunt actual riddles, especially), but also because b) collecting certain "sets" would unlock bio tapes with further background to the games' story. As long as your "bloat content" generally contributes to the the overall concept your story is trying to convey,, I don't see it as a problem. Witcher 3, for all of its enormous maps and many, many side missions, had only a handful of "true" fetch quests, everything else being treated as essentially another vignette that would fit the tone of the short stories in the source material. tl:dr- it's all about how extra content's presented that determines whether the game is "too long" or not.

[@brendanrisney2449]

I love the personas they both take on for this series. Jack is the researcher, the one who digs deep and finds the facts, makes a multi-point argument, and the debates once all points are made. Meanwhile Yahtzee is the average man, the one who uses common sense to dictate his argument, who realizes not every person is min-maxing their games and points it out. It really helps cover all ends of the arguments. The only thing that could improve this is if they had a teammate that copied the other so both sides got both personas.

[@mmarage1]

My argument against Jack's statement for crunch is look at the TTG fiasco. Most of the episodes that they put out were about 2-4 hours in length, and each time, the developers would be experiencing crunch all the time right before they put out yet another episode.

I feel like since AC2 and Skyrim, soooooo many games have tried to jump on the large/open world train. I was playing Fable 2 the other day and was thinking "what happened to just larger levels or regions that are not connected into one giant map?" I like when games do that. Not every game needs to be Assassins Creed or Far Cry.

[@pirateskeleton7828]

I fall on the side of longer games. I like longer games, but Jack is right about certain developers creating content by duplication enemies (looking at you Bethesda), some like to use “open world” as an excuse to not craft deeper stories.

[@dylan1kenobi]

I love both of their tones it's hilarious

[@MichaelChisholmChizzieRascal]

If games were shorter AAA companies would fill them with equal bloat they'd just cut the plot in half sell the game to us twice and say "Nuh'er we made it shorter like you wanted." It's 5 hours plot and 7 hours bloat instead of 10 hours plot and 14 hours bloat.

[@TheCreepypro]

I personally love fact Jack if Yahtzee loses these debates it is usually to him and it is always fun to see Yahtzee try to actually take down a logical argument even when he knows it is wrong

[@Zero_Shift]

The real "Slightly Civil War" questions is: "Will there ever be a SCW video that ACTUALLY has a talking point?" so far all the things could be answered with a simple yes or no, without the need for arguing towards or against it. Yes, triple A games are too long. Most of them devolve into uninteresting gameplay loops or unnecessarily long cutscenes. It's rare that a game is short because that means people will finish it quickly and forget it, no matter how good the game is. So devs ended up stretching it longer.

[@drdca8263]

Instead of the “more games -> shorter games” argument being based on the idea that people want to play every game, it could instead be based on people wanting to play a constant fraction of the amount of major-release-game-content that comes out.

[@flooptydooicepant]

It all depends on the game for me. I've replayed persona 5 more times than I'd like to admit but the music, turn based action, story and aesthetics make those 100hr+ playthroughs an absolute joy. After I falling out of the AC series post black flag I jumped into Odyssey but after about 8 hours I dropped it because I thought the gameplay was boring and couldn't sustain a world of that size. I've played and enjoyed every expansion for destiny but every time the inevitable grind really tests my patience. With TLOU2 I thought the experience was a bold but miserable slog to go through, while the game is without a doubt a technical masterpiece I was tired of the encounters before the charcter swap and that made it even harder to stay invested in the story for the next 12-15hrs.

[@pacificblue5461]

This week Pack Jackard and Yazee Crosshair debate frivolous triviality from the perspective of those who dont have to pay for games anymore

[@TheBurningcage27]

i think the problem actually stems from a oversaturated market of too many replayable and big games. back in the 90s and 00s it was easier to play a game over and over and over again cause there wasnt gonna be something as large or good for months or years, now. we have to choose from a massive library of giant replayable games that if you railroaded it still takes 60+ hours to complete. also i think the generation that were kids in the 80s, and 90s who are now anywhere from 21-41 are adults and were finding ourselves not enough time in a day to be motivated to complete a 100+ hour single player game.

[@kilroy987]

Not if they're good, the pacing is tight, and they don't overstay their welcome. And long games are not the same as REALLY understanding a subject or idea, by the way.

[@joshuahagon8269]

how do these not have more views? I love Yahtzee attempting to convince himself of his argument cause he's clearly against it.

[@KingOfDoma]

You know what the funny thing is? Doctor Nemesis is an actual character in Marvel Comics... and he's a GOOD GUY.

[@rikou1986]

It really depends how you play. A story guy could finish quickly A 100% guy could take 100+ hours on say witcher3 or fallout4.

[@AlexiusRedwood]

It's boring. 1% of the players do it

[@fritzcat1997]

only 100 hours for the witcher?

[@alexalexander1772]

fritzcat1997 they’re just trying to plug their Witcher speed run.

[@superchroma]

"If the scope of the project is smaller the project manager won't run his developers ragged getting it done by the poorly estimated deadline" Jack, corporate evil doesn't scale with the scope of the project!

[@BinbagMcGraw]

I'm only posting a comment for the Vic and Bob reference by Yahtzee at the end there. I was pleased to hear such a reference. That is all.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

If the game is good how can it be too long? I want a game that is literally so amazing that the authorities have to regulate my play to keep me from starving.

[@prcervi]

and to join the chattering aviary, a game is only too long if the time spent is entirely boring like, i'll happily play a game for as long it's fun

[@bigbenultimate10fan]

I feel like the length of the game needs to be justified. I am perfectly fine with something like The Witcher 3 being the length it is, but Assassin's Creed and the newly released Avengers just stretch the length for the heck of it, with doing the same shit a hundred times. That is boring and unnecessary to me.

[@Sagaan42]

The crunch argument makes no sense. If games were shorter, development time and budget would just get tinier as well, and crunch would stay at the exact same amount, which is "just enough not to kill all the devs"

[@AsharOzborne95]

I loved the Yahtzee and "Dr. Nemesis" bit. That made me literally LOL. XD Yahtzee is obviously the professional comedian and on average he makes me laugh more often, but sometimes Jack hits right me with a surprise left hook right the fuck out of nowhere (metaphorically, calm down FBI) that leaves my abs aching from laughter.

[@playALLth3games]

I feel like another contributing factor is the cost of games. Since most AAA games cost $60.00, I think there’s an obligation for the games to have a ton of content (good or bad) so players get their money’s worth. But then there are also microtransactions because gamers are the dairy cows, so...

[@a1goldenrunner]

I can enjoy both long and short games, but if it is short, I expect as much replayability as possible. I really like more arcade-y titles that give you a few minutes of gameplay you can play as many times as you want with challenges that keep you immersed in the experience

[@skyscreamstudios]

If I drop 50 to 100 bucks on a game and finish it in one day I'm gonna be pissed. Granted, I cut my gaming teeth on old school rpg's from the age of dinosaurs but if I finish a game in one session you will never get my money again. For example Ready at Dawn, the developers of The Order:1886.

[@sirhenrymf]

I’d rather be electrified for 5 hours than bored out of my tits for 100.

[@punkboybaby5593]

honestly, a game should be, as yahtzee puts it, as long as it *needs* to be. if a game's aspects (plot, gameplay, sidemissions, et al) is fun or interesting, by all means make more! but if you feel like things are becoming repetitive, send it home or shake it up.

[@scottwoodtraining]

I'm very good with long games. Like yahtzee said, I enjoy games like I enjoy a book. A few pages(minutes) at a time and stretch it out over half a year.

[@TrivialPunk]

I would have liked the debate to focus on live service games and their effect on narrative structure

[@BlazikenWantsToKick]

5:39 after last week's episode, I was worried that he was going to list off all of those released games

[@jmcalcy69]

3:40 I really want to hear Yahtzee talk about how capitalism either ruins, or is at least a blight, on modern gaming. From EA's shenanigans, crunch, design by marketing committee, etc.

[@GabrielOnuris]

Oh how I wish "long" games were between 20 and 40 hours! Some open world games have easily 100 to 150 hours of pure repetition! Actually, 20 to 40 hours for an open world game seems reasonable. Even better if it 20.

[@ryanschramm8147]

I want to buy a game knowing it'll occupy my time for months. I'll sometimes dedicate whole days to a game and PERSONALLY nothing's worse than beating a game in 1-3 sittings

[@drewhoffmaster2969]

Gotta say, I'm conflicted. Is game bloat a thing with needless collectathons? Sure. Is crunch a thing? Sure. However I have one main issue with saying games are too long: Prices and expectations. I am primarily a longform RPG player who loves extremely long stories to keep him involved. I am not a huge multiplayer person. Hence, I tend to derive most of my value from a single playthrough of games, with maybe time for sidequesting and occasional replays (like for Skyrim). So, for me, if I pay $60 USD and only get 20 hours, I feel let down. That's a waste. I wouldn't pay more than $30 for a 20 hour experience. So, from that perspective, AAA games are not too long! That doesn't mean they aren't bad, though. Length doesn't make a game good, but it is a value requirement to make the cost worth it.

[@Daemonworks]

They're often too lazily padded, especially the games-as-service ones where the whole point is to drip-feed content for as long as folks will tolerate it, so they design around a few good bits and lots of hopefully-good-enough filler because they want to ensure you're kinda content but never actually satisfied. And lots of play time lets them fill their $$$/hr metric for folks who don't make a distinction between the quality of the entertainment received during that time.

[@michaelhanisch9743]

I'm totally behind shorter games. I love games like Fable, Darksouls or Pokemon that I can beat in a day if I feel like it. I still have games that I've sunk 2k hours in, but short and sweet appeals to me as I age.

[@doodlecrazydc]

I'm not paying £60 for a game I can complete in 1 weekend.

[@angeldeb82]

This looks so dang funny! BTW, I'm looking at you, Red Dead Redemption 2.

[@kevcroft2939]

My favourite parts of Mondays! Excellent once again guys a great topic.

[@NachtKaiser666]

I mean, if I'm going to pay 60-80$ for something, I want my money's worth... Triple Hay (read that with Jim Sterling's intonation) games will still be in that price range even if it's a 5-10 hours game...

[@Cyan-hide]

I think the length of the game depends on its target audience. You don’t see game like CoD doing a 16 hours long campaign (thank god for that) because it’s not what the audience are there for. TLoU2 feels overly long because its audience is people who enjoy third-person stealth action adventure, and those kind of games aren’t suited to keep the attention of the player for too long. There is the game the devs wanted to deliver and there is the format in which it is delivered in. TLoU2 wanted to be a deep story rich game, but delivered it in a stealth action game. AC odyssey wanted to be an open-world RPG, it was delivered in a single-player MMO grind heavy game.

[@Avagantamos1]

JFC I just had to be drinking when they got to the Dr. Nemesis bit

[@weirdunclebob]

I love the way you two bounce off each other! Fecking hilarious :D

[@FlashinGatznCookies]

The Walmart principal shouldn't be applied jack. Polish was the big argument no one made. Shorter games with the same development cycle would/should be much more polished and less buggy.

[@connorryan7122]

You just know full well that if games are shorter the AAA corporate monstrosities will just make them crunch to get more games out faster

[@bobtom1495]

To a certain extent, yes. But it depends really. If it's anything like AC: Odyssey where everything is copy and pasted in terms of missions and pure repetitiveness with little to no variation and it expects the player to be doing this for I don't know, 100 plus hours or more, then it has another thing coming. But if it's like Red Dead 2 or Witcher 3 where the world feels alive, there are things to explore and do that is not a grind to get that xp, then it's welcomed with opened arms...

[@joko49perez]

6 years ago everyone was debating about AAA games being too short.

[@blairfujin]

Well... 6 years ago publishers were interested in selling as many game copies as possible, now it's all about selling as much stuff inside of games

[@alldayagain]

I feel like a psychonauts civil war is slightly overdue. Is it the greatest gift to man since the birth of Christ? Or is it overhyped by the former?

[@captainkail]

Is the joke with this series that neither of them actually care and they're just pretending to debate stuff? I just don't get it.

[@niclyx7970]

Isn't that just debating in general /s

[@PizzaguyJeff]

I think it's that they're both right depending on your perspective, and everyone should just enjoy what they enjoy, live and let live.

[@caseyhall2320]

Yeah, it's basically just all in good casual fun. Which is nice.

[@drdca8263]

They are trying to come up with good arguments. It is an exercise in reasoning. If an argument can be convincingly taken down by someone arguing the opposite position who doesn’t even believe the opposite position, then the first argument can’t really have been all that strong of one. But if no one can offer a good rebuttal to an argument, it is worth taking seriously even if the person who composed it doesn’t believe the conclusion. When you encounter a controversial (by which I don’t mean “offensive”, just that there is much disagreement) topic, it may be worthwhile to attempt both/multiple sides of a debate on the topic within your mind. A compelling argument for a position opposite your own is a valuable thing. It is virtuous to keep track of such arguments, understand how they tick, so that you can really evaluate them, either to determine why they are initially compelling despite being wrong, or to discover that they are right. (Also it’s fun watching someone squirm to compose an argument for a position they don’t hold.)

[@mmanner]

Having to meet certain number of hours does most likely cause more bloat to be added but it doesn't make good long games bad. I think game length is just pretty pointless way to approach actual bloat problem.

[@custos3249]

As the saying goes, it's not the length that matters but how you use it. Few games are too long, as many are encumbered with pointlessness that fails to serve or otherwise electrify the central narrative or generate a micro-narrative of their own, often to distract from a poorly written script.

[@nintendokings]

Yes they’re too long

[@starburst98]

Dragon warrior 7 is like 200 hours long and it is fun.

[@JammyDuel]

What is the basis of ~20 hours, it strikes me that there are multiple debates based on what sort of game. Your bog standard fps is nowhere near 20 hours, most are not even 10 even when cranking the difficulty up, meanwhile with your open world RPGs 20 hours is very short, and then you have your games where completion isn't exactly easy to define and you could be looking at anywhere from 50 to 100+ (gr4and strategy, some sports, etc) For each of them I would say generally too short, about right, and not really a debate topic given they're as long as you want them to be

[@kingjorritiv5554]

I think part of the issue is that linear games are less prominent and a lot of AAA games now have open worlds for no reason. So yes 20 hours for an open world game is short but if every game is open world then the average play time still goes up

[@JammyDuel]

@@kingjorritiv5554 While people may not talk about the 2 hour campaign of Cod 3217. Having gone and looked up the length of linear games that I would think are fairly representative of your "unnecessarily open world" games they're shorter than I remember, generally clocking in at 10-15 hours, that is taking doom and tomb raider reboots and old god of war as the sorts of game is would expect them to be if linear. Interestingly Assassins creed is similar, before going more RPG style they were 15-20 hour games, black flag pushing 25, origins then goes for the lower end of the bloat at about 30 hours and then Odyssey pushes it up over the 4p hours, although I'm not sure it is entirely honest to call it bloat in either case

[@PANDORAZTOYBOKZ]

Honestly, games were better when the focus was on making the game as long as it needs to be, rather than as long as they think we want it to be. Some of the best games I've played in the past decade were condensed, and focused games under 10 hours, and that alone makes them more replayable than a new game plus mode on a 300 hour collectathon platformer in the veil of an RPG

[@PartisanGamerDE]

*aluminium hat territory* I am sure this whole concept of "games too long" was brought up by some business insider and is now going through the internet-gamer-echo-chamber until the point we are all convinced we came up with it (or at least too confused to ask who actually did) and just get along with studios and publishers selling us less game for the same money whilst we all nod in confusion and shame.

[@michaelhanisch9743]

I'm sure they will, but some of us work 12 hour shifts and cant play a narritive game unless it can be finished in a weekend. I think it's something that gets input from multiple angles.

[@PartisanGamerDE]

@@michaelhanisch9743 the question here is still why has it to be in one weekend? I have poured over 100h into the Witcher 3 campaign over the course of several weeks (I too work you know :D) and dont get why exactly it HAS TO be that short ... all it does it absolutely deliver less for the same price and you wouldnt miss out on anything if you would finish a longer campaign over a longer period of time. If something is less, its just that - less. But if you have more its just up to you to find the time to enjoy more of it. Also if you absolutely only have a weekend of time ... I find it strange to subject all the people that have more time /or make the time to experience something have to "suffer" (strong word in this context I know :D) by taking away from their experience. Also in the end ... I am convinced that this is just a bullshit corporate talking point so they can pump up those profit margins by putting less work into it and still demanding the same amount (or more in the case of the PS5) of money for it. Cause those shorter campaigns will most assuredly not make those game cost 49.99 all of a sudden. And no one would accept that in other media tbh. No one is out here demanding films to be shortened or series or books because they "NEED to finish them in a predetermined arbitrary amount of time", and still accept them costing the same or more on top of that.

[@michaelhanisch9743]

People actually do avoid movies and TV shows due to time demands. I do 12 hour graveyards so drawn out media is inaccessible for me.

[@PartisanGamerDE]

@@michaelhanisch9743 avoiding them is however a different thing entirely than demanding them to be cut down to size ;) I have no problem with you avoiding games with long campaigns I do however have a problem with them being cut down. The most honest thing I can say in this regard is, that there are two groups of people ad odds here and its impossible to satisfy both. If the metric however is: give both groups less so one can be happy I will squarely side with the side that demands the same as before not the one that demands less. Cause again if there is less in the game then thats just it ... all people get less. But if there is more in the game even people with time constraints can (over time) still experience every last bit of it. So there is only one scenario here where people ACTUALLY lose out and that is when things get cut down. Cause even WITH 12h graveyard shifts you a) do still find the time to play and b) if you find that time you can finish a long campaign the same way you can finish a short campaign as there is no need for you to absolutely positively HAVE to finish it in one sitting on one weekend.

[@teckzusferalupus5382]

Right now i'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and although the game is fun, i just wish it could end already. Still have a lot of things in my backlog, including The Witcher 3, which i know will drain me another million hours. I'm not in the age i can spend my entire afternoon on some RPG anymore. I know i could simply skip all the sidequests and stuff, but then i think i wouldn't be taking all the game has to offer. And to those who say games should be long to justify their prices: Wouldn't shorter games be cheaper?

[@MisterManDuck]

YES THEY'RE TOO FUCKING LONG. PEOPLE HAVE LIVES OUTSIDE OF GAMES. PLAYING A GAME SHOULDN'T BE LIKE PREPPING A WEDDING, GETTING HITCHED, DIVORCING, ARGUING OVER CUSTODY, AND EVENTUALLY DYING IN OLD AGE OVER LONELINESS.

[@Kylanoran]

>Are games too long >20 hours >'long' Anyone who thinks 20 hours is long for a video game hasn't played many of them. xD

[@xshadowscreamx]

Kylanoran idk any open world games are only 20 hours long, maybe mirrors edge 2?

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Most AAA are at least 30 hours long, which is a bit silly given how they don't have any good content in them.

[@StefanBlurr]

for a 60-100$ game I expect atleast 15h of non-boring playtime

[@bazzfromthebackground3696]

Triple A games are some of the shortest they've been. Remember PS1? I can't remember doing one of those in 1 sitting.

[@person9313]

That's just nostalgia

[@Shashank7170]

I've been playing Witcher 3 and while it's a good game, it's ridiculously long. Playing it forever and I'm still in Novigrad.

[@thatwolfdude018]

Let put it this way: If the game is good and or you enjoy it then time doesn’t matter. However, sometimes it’s painfully obvious that some games are just too long and should of ended long ago. Both The Last of Us Parts 1 & 2 for me were too long especially Part 2 but I enjoyed both of them. But I saw that both games had a story where it could of wrapped up a bit quicker. Now if your a LOZ Breath of the Wild, which is 60+ hours to beat but you are enjoyable then that 60+ hours can be cut to however long you want it to be then that’s not a problem because in that game it’s optional to beat it in 60+ hours you can go for Ganon right off the bat after the tutorial. Same thing with Yooka-Layee and the Impossible Lair. You can go right ahead and beat the game from the start. You the player have the option to beat the game whenever you feel like beating it. As for Jack’s argument about crunch, The Last of Us Part 2 is 20-25 hours to beat but Naughty Dog supposedly made their developers crunch to get the game out but games like LOZ Breath of the Wild (60+ hours), Sekiro Shadows Die Twice (25-75 hours) Monster Hunter World (Over 80 hours) or Assassin’s Creed Origins (30-53 hours) are much longer games but you didn’t hear crunch stories about these games (at least none that I heard of). What I’m saying is length of a game isn’t the problem, it’s the company that’s the problem. A game can be long but that doesn’t mean the company made their developers work faster. A game can be 10 hours long or 100 hours long it doesn’t matter how long the game is, it matters if the company gives a shit about it’s developers and staff. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[@DoomVlad]

am I the only one who likes Jacks shenanigans?

[@Lankythepyro]

Jack's argument that games should be shorter coz more of them are around? Maybe if games were two-thirds cheaper they could be two-thirds the content. Games shouldn't be long for the sake of being long. The length should match the content. We played FFVII for 100 hours because it was still fun at 100 hours.

[@kanaker9561]

The good ones are all too short. The bad ones are too damn long.