Arguably the most overused phrase on this forum (including variations thereof). If it is true, could someone please point me to the magical point in time when action games were of similar quality and lasted fifteen... twenty... twenty-five hours? Because, despite having played games regularly since the days of the Amiga, I can't remember it. I've also seen suggestions that ten hours is "short" for an action game. Again, when were they significantly longer than this, if ever? Ten hours is absolutely fine for those types of games anyway: anything longer and it starts to become a drag (see: Manhunt).

So... some questions I pose to The Escapist. Are we all just blinded by nostalgia - were action games actually more substantial in the good ol' days? Surely quality is better than quantity? Does replayability not count for anything? Are modern games value for money? I would personally argue that "value for money" is a misnomer because it typically equates value with duration rather than enjoyment. In other words: I would rather have lots of fun for a couple of hours than a bit of fun for several hours.

[By "these days" I mean the current console generation and PC games released within the same time frame.]

I think that there is an larger emphasis on online play now rather then just on the story is campain.

I think the reason so many people believe games are shorter is because genres with longer games like rpgs and tactical games are being replaced with more action and fps. But still, these titles have tons of replayability and not just with online play. For instance, I must have beaten the entire Orange Box at least 4 times.

It seems that games are getting shorter, but I must be getting better

I think they are shorter but maybe it's just the fact that they seem to have less story and I'm more likely to sit and run through the story all night without going bed now that I'm older.

Some games today are so long that they should include several in-flight meals. However, others tend to be noticeably shorter than games from previous generations *cough*H3*cough*. The change in length is not really the issue here; the popularity of shorter games has increased with the addition of online play. An example; CoD4. The campaign is about five hours, but the multiplayer made it incredibly good. Thus, games seem shorter today because a game can still be short without losing its appeal. In the days when a game only kept your attention as long as the campaign lasted, 100+ hours of gameplay was a selling point. Now, it can sometimes be a detractor; look at Oblivion.

Games aren't getting shorter. Back in the day, games merely gave the illusion of length by simply not allowing you to save. Come on, Sonic, Mario, all the oldies, can be done in an hour, two tops.
System Shock 2 is only like 3 hours, a lot less than Bioshock (ok not a lot less but still)
What I have noticed though, through playing modern and retro games very closely together recently, is that older games are often much much harder, harder game = takes longer to beat, but once mastered, you can see 'em for the short little fuckers they truly are ^^.

I recently saw a full game map for the original castlevania. If any of the recent RPG versions were that short, you'd be done in 20 minutes. Tops. It really is just an illusion that games are getting shorter. Games are just being made to be beatable, and not to suck your quarters away (like that even happens in home consoles anyway). That is one thing I disagree with Yahtzee about: Lives systems. Lives systems still serve a purpose if the game design accommodates it. Look at Mario 64 Vs Jak and Daxter. Fundamentally, the games are identical, but Mario gives you limited lives so that your progress on collecting things gets reset if you really suck. Jak, on the other hand, didn't really rely on levels, so there wasn't much they could reset if you died too much.

I really don't care what you say. The games now are as long as you want them to be. You can take your sweet time or you can blow right through them. It's all up to the player at this point.

Games aren't getting too short, they're getting too easy.

First of all, we are all getting better, so naturally we can finish games a lot faster than we used to. This works in conjunction with the fact that we (at least the people I know) are not able to enjoy every single game to the same extent as before.
Action games are definitely longer today, partially because of more options are available for designers.
I think mostly of RPG's, which might have become slightly shorter overall, but there are always developers who compensate this by creating perhaps too long RPG's now and then. Sometimes it feels like they do so simply because they can, whereas in the olden days it was necessary for them to be able to fit the entire concept in one single game, and even if they tried, they often had to shorten it, unfortunately.

It seems like a lot of games pad out their length with cutscenes, side missions, and other extras. I used to really like long games but nowadays I just don't have the time to spend. As a general rule, I have a 20 hour limit on finishing a game. Anything more than that just feels like too much of an investment.

Can't say. The only real thing I have to compare with is Bioshock.

Although, once I get a PS3 I know MGS4 won't be too short. :D

Roughly the same length, but they cheat with sandbox modes, "Finish the game 99 times to unlock director commentary!"-style challenges, "badges" (like the X-Box "Achievements" and whatnot) and barely-there online and multiplayer modes (not counting of course, games really made for multiplayer, or ones with a genuinely fun multiplayer mode).

GCM:
Can't say. The only real thing I have to compare with is Bioshock.

Although, once I get a PS3 I know MGS4 won't be too short. :D

mgs4 is not short... gta4 has many hour so as fallout3... so it depends in the game and in your gamestyle

Sackwak:
It seems that games are getting shorter, but I must be getting better

This this this this.

I must have beaten Cod:WaW in less than 6 hours on Hardcore. Army of Two I beat by myself in 4. I beat Gears of War 2 in like 6, it's ridiculous.

it depends,

if you play game for there single player componets, then yes there getting shorter, this is becuase theres much more empahsis on replayability and multiplayer now. but if you take the whole package single player and multiplayer then games are much longer then before.

I have like 100 hours on tf2 alone .

I will say that the games I have personally purchased recently have been much shorter, but this is okay with me because there comes a part in every game where I realize that I've been doing the exact same thing for 4-10 hours, and that bores me. With these recent 4 hour long-ish games, I don't trudge on half-asleep, I want to finish the game.

Of course games are shorter these days, if they weren't short would you seriously put out another $40 for DLC?

Short Game + DLC = $125 approx

Long Game = $80 approx

It all comes back to teh moniez.

It's true that games like COD 4 and WAW are featuring shorter campaigns, which I suppose is because of the time it takes to reach the high-tech quality they have. So maybe we're pushing technology in games farther than it should naturally be right now? But then again, games like Bioshock and GTA4 are managing to balance length and quality, so maybe these shorter games are just lazier.

Online add MASSIVE longevity to a game(see COD4 and several solid days of my life...)

I think its both ways. The single player aspect of the games are getting shorter. But the Multi Player aspects are increasing. CoD4 is a good example of this. However games like GTA4 have a massive Single Player, yet have a Multiplayer mode that i wouldn't call small, but increadably fun. So i suppose it depends on the Genre.

I agree with the point about that games used to be harder and would just SEEM shorter, nowdays they are generally easier and rightfully so. Maybe it's just me but it took me forever to beat some of the early Megaman and Zelda games, but that's not because they were very DIFFICULT, it's just that they were unfair. A perfect example is the original Metroid game: If you know where to go and what to do and you're generally good a the game, it will take about 45 minutes to beat, the problem is that you have NO idea where to go or what any powerup that you just got does, no to to mention it takes 5 rockets to open a red door and half the game is spent killing random enemies hoping to get rockets so you can open the next one. Also half the enemies are unkillable because you can't attack while ducking or shoot straight down while jumping, and the whole game ends up taking 30+ hours (especially when there's no save feature and the password is 40 characters long) not due to it being "difficult" or due to it actually being long, just due to it being broken. Flame me all you want, but I think older games usually aren't genuinely "harder", just more broken and unfair. I would like someone to prove me wrong (Mario and Sonic games don't count, they were actually good). P.S. another thing that would piss me off in is an Megaman game when you NEED a specific item to pass by an area (such as the Rush Jet) and you die once when you have low power for that ability, you just have to kill random enemies until you get a power drop from one of them, which can take as long as 10 minutes sometimes, and if there's no enemies around I.E. a sealed door before the Rush Jet area and you can't go back, then you're screwed and have to reset the game. This exact thing just happened to me in Megaman 3 and I got really ticked and had to add it.

I don't know if there's really a big difference, but I will concede that single-player action-adventure games from ~5 years ago are usually longer than single-player action-adventure games now.

They feel shorter because you don't miss that jump by one pixel 72 times before you can beat the level. Oh, and saving also made shit easier. Long gone are the days of leaving your NES on all night so you could finish the next day. I just think, in general, games have way better features allowing us to skip the "trash" so to say. Then again, they just throw in extra "trash" to make us feel like the game is more robust.

i finished tomb raider underworld in 8 hours and GOW2 in about 13 all in one sitting

In "the old days" we had 3 lives, 1 continue, and 1 sitting to beat a game. Hardly longer than what we find today.

Not to mention that back then you couldn't just go on the internet and look for guides/cheats, and the only way you could find cheats was by buying the same magazine every month.

I don't think games are getting shorter but I do think game developers are getting lazy why focus on a compelling and deep story when you can just focus on making online play that people will eat up, I personally don't like playing online if I want to hear people call me every foul name under the sun I'll go talk to my mother thank you very much.

I think that games are possibly a tad shorter, but they seem to effing drag on due to lack of good and/or original story and character development. Sure, graphics are pretty and all, but how well they can stack together pixels wont keep me buying up games. Considering I get a pretty nice discount, that's saying a lot. Most of the time I feel an obligation of, "I payed $40 bleeping dollars for this, I'm going to beat it" instead of WANTING to come to the end, sad that such a wonderful game has to end.

There's the "this is fun for a moment, like crack cocaine" element present in all games, seemingly thrown in more for the casual gamer. Which saddens me, because the 'casual gamer' who sits on his ass playing Madden between frat parties is seeming to quickly become the norm. Gears, though I love it, is a great example. There's a moment of "Woooo!" while flailing about a chainsaw, but once you realize that all the rest of its the same, the joy kind of dies away.

In short, the formula for modern games seems to be-
Pretty shiny things + Meth like repetitive game play + Difficulty manageable while smashed + The opportunity to teabag people worse than you = PROFIT

Where as it SHOULD be-
Good plot and story telling + Interesting characters + Well developed and fun game play + Some fucking variety + A decent amount of choices and options = Something I'd want to play again and again for fucking ever

But on second thought, they want something crack like and addictive for you to get over, so you'll come to them paying about $65 for your next fix.

They have gotten longer in my opinion but I haven't played many games this year, however I noticed they have become easier and I used to be better at games!