Personally I like a 15-20 hour Single Player segment with about 10 or so more hours of Extra Content, like bonus or challenge levels ala Mario Galaxy or the Time Splitters Series. I would gladly pay $50+ for these length of games, however, I usually feel shafted or ripped off if a game is under 10 hours with no extras.

My general objection is that many game designers appear to be making shorter games as a short cut, charging us player $50+ for a 5 hour game. Now something like Portal, 2-3 hours of awesome with some extras for $20 or Penny Arcade Adventures, $20 for about 5-7 hours of gameplay, is perfectly acceptable to me.

Since alot of buzz in the industry seems to be that the "long game" is on its way out, what do the other citizens of The Escapist think is the ideal length for a game?

I like games at the extremes.

Either it has to be 40minutes or less like Lylat Wars.
Or it needs to be a 50hour plus epic like System Shock 2.

Aside from Metal Gears I don't own many 10-20 hour games.

On average I would prefer a game that's 20-30 hours long especially for action adventure games since there's so many places you could explore. For rpgs I expect a little longer like 40-50 hours although that's including cutscenes. Now that I think about it, usually pure gameplay in an rpg is around 20-30 hours and everything else is cutscenes.

Depends completely on the game. I don't really care how long a game is as long as it "draws you in like a triple C***ed hooker". But, if a game is 30+ hours it needs to keep me immersed. The origanal Half-Life 2 was good, but it dragged on way too long. I prefered ep2. Short but sweat.

Depends upon what's in it. 100 hours' gameplay sounds good on paper, but if 50 of those hours comes from incredibly-slow-elevators-from-heck and wandering featureless plains looking for random weak things to beat up then I'd personally rather see it end up 50 hours long instead.

I'm alright with Portal; it was just the right length for what it was. I'm also alright with Mass Effect, and that's even with the random planet and elevator timestuffers.

-- Steve

SomeBritishDude:
Depends completely on the game. I don't really care how long a game is as long as it "draws you in like a triple C***ed hooker". But, if a game is 30+ hours it needs to keep me immersed. The origanal Half-Life 2 was good, but it dragged on way too long. I prefered ep2. Short but sweat.

True enough, some of my favorite games are under 10 hours.
ZOE2
Drakes Fortune
Silent Hill 2
Portal
All awesome and short. Though those are lucky, game designers can't always ensure that you're going to get an amazing experience out of a 6-7 hour game. And there's always that niggling doubt that maybe spending $50+ on it wasn't the best plan.

Now if all these games included replay incentives or bonus levels/challenges I would be much more willing to accept their shorter length.

I used to be pretty cheap, so I wanted games to be long, so I could get my money's worth out of them. Aside from that, when I buy a game, I'm super-devoted to it, and if I don't beat it in the first couple of days, it's probably a game that would make most casual gamers cry. I put a lot of time into games, I'm very devoted to them. I like a game to be a good 20-30 hours. I could muscle past a 30-40 hour game, with a lot of play time. I mean, I'd have to call in a sick day to get some more play time in. And on the weekends, the video game would probably be the only thing I did. If the game's 50+, I'm assuming it's an RPG. While I'm not a huge RPG fan, I still play them. The only really long games I play are MMO's, though, and you can't really count that, because they can offer 1000's of hours of game time (I mean, if you really, really, really need to play the game, like it's the crack to a crack addict).

TheNecroswanson:
A game needs length. Otherwise there will eventually be a productive crash. Why will people continue to pay 50-60 dollars when they know the game won't last them 3 hours? Especially when Mass effect, which looks wonderful, and can last a good eighty hours, is in the bargain bin for 25 bucks.
I'm going to have to say, regardless of graphics, longer is better. Bow chicka bow-wow.

On the contrary, how many games will be sold if everyone spends 80+ hours on every game they buy?

More time on a single game = less games we have time to complete, if gamers actually play the games till the end.

I'd rather be playing shorter yet beautiful, imaginative, unique games like Psychonauts than bland, pretentious, samey sci-fi games like Mass Effect.

I've chosen 11-15. Most games that last longer than 20 hrs generally have fillers in the likes of grinding, poinless missions or quests. Okami is a prime example. Great game, but stretched out far longer than it needed to be.

And most of my favourite story-based games have kept me coming back again and again over the years anyhow-- Broken Sword I & II, Sanitarium, Silent Hill 2 +3, Metal Gear Solid, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Discworld Noir, Myst III & IV, Still Life-- so I get my 20-30hrs worth of gameplay anyhow.

I'm mixed on the poll, and therefore cannot vote on it with good conscience. I think games are ideal long and short. There are some short games out there that you could blow through in a weekend and some long games that are monotonous. These are games that I do not enjoy and probably one of them is what this thread is leaning towards. However there are good long games that keep you wrapped up for an entire summer to play, as well as some short games that, while you can beat it in a few hours, you can reply it many times and see something new each time.

And while I'm of the personalized opinion that a game should not be too long to the point that I have to run with it in parts over a year, I'm of the same opinion that some NintendoHard games or strategy games that last forever (the ones that you don't know if you'll ever beat or are unbeatable) are good games that can be picked up every now and then and enjoyed for the duration of my attention span.

In the end it all depends on the game and its worth, not the time taken to beat it. This is probably why my shelf has a variety of long, short, and moderately-timed games.

I find the games i play most are short, but you feel like doing it again becaus eit was so good. massive, longe games are good too, but i wont immediately start again upon completion. windwaker and twilight princess are, alas, bang in the middle of my two extremes or preference.

Games should be as long as possible.

bluemarsman:
Games should be as long as possible.

Fine. I'll take a game of tic-tac-toe and add a mandatory turn length of one hour per turn. That makes the game so much better, yes?

-- Steve

well it depends on the game, portal for me was a perfect length, but Id feel a tad miffed if other games were the same length

Games should be as long as they need to be. A game shouldn't be artificially extended because the developers feel it needs to be longer. Portal, for example, would have actually been a worse game if they had extended the single-player. Having too long of a game can sometimes make the game seem dull and drag on longer than it needs to be. Of course, you don't want to rush a game either, when it's clear that a segment could benefit from longer sessions.

Infinite.

ie, a good game needs a lot of replayability, in my book.

This sounds too much like movie length. You can't really talk about shmups like this.

A good average for me would be between 20-30 hours. Anything that's above 50+ hours better keep me interested instead of trying to paint a new color on the skin to trick me into thinking that i didn't do this exact same mission before 15 hours ago, of which i'm talking about GTA4. Basically gave up around the 43% mark and considering how the missions i did didn't actually progress the story. There were usually 2 or 3 missions that showed a bit of story, and the rest were just fillers to get some extra cash.

I'm going to go for a really cheesy line and say that a game should go on as long as it's good. Portal was really short, but it was still awesome. Morrowind and Fallout could take weeks to explore but still didn't lose their appeal until after the storyline was played out. As long as the story and/or challenge feels fresh the game should go on, but no longer. Freelancer was also one of those games, it went on and on, but as long as you had the story to follow it was good.

Examples where that happens are the UFO:After series. The story is the only reason I continued playing, but the games got boring long before it ended, the same thing over, and over, and over again. At the moment I can't think of a game that was too short, but I know they exist, and in numbers.

In conclusion I say that a game should be as long as it's story, but not longer than the gameplay holds. A story can take you far, but Dungeon siege is a good example of where it doesn't really reach all the way because of repetitive gameplay.

I like lengthy games, but reasonable. 20 to 30 hours of single player is a good length (you can't really put a number on multiplayer), I think you need at least 10 to really establish a decent world and at least another 20 for it to reach potential. However, too long and you chance stretching out a story to be so long that the player doesn't care anymore. There is one exception of course, and that's when you've got a story that works in episodes, something that is becoming easier and easier for publishers with downloadable content.

But yea, Silvertounge is right, too many games stretch out the narrative with repetitive gameplay, which is just plain irritating.

5-10 hours is good enough for me, if it's for the main storyline.
Endgame content, however, can come in very handy. Quite a lot of games simply put in multiplayer for that, others do unlockables. That's all fine with me, at least it's a choice you're picking, instead of being forced through 30 extra hours of boredom.

For example: I played through TWEWY storyline in about 8-12 (never really checked since I didn't know how back then). Right now, my playtime is clocked at over 60 hours. And I'm still not finished with it.
Or, a more obvious example: Pokémon.

Of course, there are exceptions, mainly the free-roaming/sandbox and MMO games.
There's a few exceptions for each genre, of course. First thing that pops up is The Settlers II. Really satisfactory to see an entire town work like clockwork. It just doesn't get boring that quickly (though in the long run...)

In my opinion it depends on the game.
if i get tired of the game in the first hour or so i don't want to have to play another 10 or 20 to beat it, but there are some games where i really did not want the story to end. i just wanted it to keep going, and when i finished it, i felt a little sad knowing that the game is over.

It does indeed depend on the genre:

Games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, should be a nice, long game. I have over 40 hours on it, doing a lot of exploring and side-quests like the Cave of Ordeals, cause, well, they're just so fun!

Games like COD4, should be long-ish, provided they have good writing, and the scenery is dynamic.

Games like Medal of Honor need to get as much shooting in as possible, make it satisfying, and end fairly quickly, requiring a liposuction EA refuses to pay for.

I said 20-30 hours. But thats really of the main story. I love extra side stuff. I like my games to be as long as a season of TV shows.

But I am all for 30+ hours of extra things to do like side missions and such.

I think long games are boring. The only way I can tolerate a long game is if it has a really good storyline, or if there is a constant stream of inventive set pieces. If either of those aren't met I will get sick of the repetition.

It all depends on the game.
Shooters can be anywhere from 10-20.
RPGs are best if they last aroun 30-50.
Adventure games can be any length really.
It all depends. You can't really fit all games into one set length it should be.

Depends... generally I'd say as long as possible when it's good (e.g. Baldur's Gate Trilogy or Planescape: Torment... I could play those for months and they wouldn't get old). On the other hand I enjoyed Portal also... a lot and it felt to be about the right size for what it is.
Basically as long as there's something challenging or new to do it can still go on as long as it wants but when developers introduce grinding mechanisms (like random missions, random encounters or nearly empty huge landscapes you have to walk through (or fight yourself through) a lot and the likes) it gets boring and I may even give up on it.
Mass Effect was one example of a game that tried to do that... the main plot was like... maybe 10-15 hours tops but they added 20 hours of mindless planet exploration and killing enemies to stretch it and I don't respond well to that (see my "review")

Well, it depends on the game.

It should not be so short that you feel 'ripped off', but not too long, so that you don't get bored when you don't feel like you've made any progress on the storyline after 30+ hours.

Well, I generally prefer games to be as long as possible but it's mostly about price for me. Nothing pisses me off more than paying full price for something that lasts half a day at best, when I know that there are developers making games that last ten times that and are just as much fun for the same money.
However, if it is well done and reasonably priced (such as Portal) I will probably play it.

I prefer a long game. Though, if you pad the game out with filler, it'd be better to make it short and sweet, like Portal.