The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

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Voros said:
I recall one game designer discussing game completion rates in a presentation and they are not high. One need only look at the trophy completion rates for many games to see it.

Many games are long simply to be long, so people feel okay about dropping $80+ (CAD) for overstuffed but underdeveloped AAA games.
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This scientific article from 2019: Game Completion Rates on ScienceDirect says 14% in the highlights, so indeed very low. You can buy the full article for 55,2 USD, a bit much for me right now just to satisfy my curiosity.
 
I would say the reason that game completion rates are so low nowadays is for several reasons:
  1. With stuff like Steam Sales we all own WAY more games than we did back in the day. More choice means less need to finish a game we are "eh" on.
  2. More people playing games are busy adults with jobs and families than back in the day. We just don't have the same amount of time as we did as teenagers.
  3. Games are LONG. Yes, there are still shorter games, but in the PSX days a 40 hour game would have been considered pretty meaty, even for a JRPG (thinking of FFVII). Nowadays, for a JRPG, 40 is pretty standard, and I can think of quite a few that are in the 100 hour range (Persona games, DQXI, etc).
Not that all of this is negative stuff. To be honest, I'm glad that I can buy a game on Steam sale for like, 10 bucks, and play it for a few hours and if I find out I don't enjoy it I don't feel obligated to "get my money out of it, and if I do like it, I can continue playing it for a hundred hours.

... Would like to have more spare time though.
 
I don't mind long or short games. Torment is 20 to 40 h if you're not too lost and it's excellent. Fear and hunger is 12 h if you know what you do (according to the internet)
in general the I think it's probably better to shoot for 20-50 h if the story is the main attraction just because it's harder to make a good 150 h story.
 
For me, it's not about the length of the game but about the amount of padding in the game. If a game has 60 hours of entertaining game play interspersed with 40 hours padding, I'm going to tire of the padded parts before I get to enjoy the 60 good hours.

I'm also going to be less excited about buying the sequel if the last game began to bore me before the end. Video game companies need to learn the less about always leaving your audience wanting more.
 
I think the trick is for a game to be just as long as it needs to be to finish from a "beating the game" standpoint, but have enough content that I can spend as much time as I want to with it.

That said, I also don't mind if a game is a one and done style game either. Different games are good for different reasons, and different structures and lengths work depending on the design and intention.
 
Baulderstone said:
For me, it's not about the length of the game but about the amount of padding in the game. If a game has 60 hours of entertaining game play interspersed with 40 hours padding, I'm going to tire of the padded parts before I get to enjoy the 60 good hours.

I'm also going to be less excited about buying the sequel if the last game began to bore me before the end. Video game companies need to learn the less about always leaving your audience wanting more.
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EmperorNorton said:
I think the trick is for a game to be just as long as it needs to be to finish from a "beating the game" standpoint, but have enough content that I can spend as much time as I want to with it.

That said, I also don't mind if a game is a one and done style game either. Different games are good for different reasons, and different structures and lengths work depending on the design and intention.
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Both of these echo my thoughts. When they pad it with travel and random mobs going over the same territory, it gets boring really quickly.
 
Baulderstone said:
For me, it's not about the length of the game but about the amount of padding in the game. If a game has 60 hours of entertaining game play interspersed with 40 hours padding, I'm going to tire of the padded parts before I get to enjoy the 60 good hours.

I'm also going to be less excited about buying the sequel if the last game began to bore me before the end. Video game companies need to learn the less about always leaving your audience wanting more.
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This is one of my main issues with game length, especially with a lot of modern AAA games.

Another one is gameplay mechanics. A lot of games simply don't have interesting enough mechanics to last for their length. I don't want an FPS like Doom that would take 100 hours to complete. Even though Doom has good mechanics.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
This is one of my main issues with game length, especially with a lot of modern AAA games.

Another one is gameplay mechanics. A lot of games simply don't have interesting enough mechanics to last for their length. I don't want an FPS like Doom that would take 100 hours to complete. Even though Doom has good mechanics.
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Yes, that's the other issue. Mechanical loops can get boring after a while. I find that is also why I tend to get bored of TTRPGs with a tactical miniature game for a combat system. Once you get sick of the game that the combat system presents, you are sick of the whole RPG.
 
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