For most busy adult gamers with busy adult lives, a game that boasts over seventy hours of content is more than enough. For one Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning player, however, it's a travesty that a roleplaying game could be so short. Yes, there are gamers out there who feel cheated by seventy hours!
"First, I hit level cap before I even got to the last area," writes Albedo in a thread I was linked to by Nalezing. "Second, there was basically no high/Max level gear. And the third is that there is essentially no post game content, one small dungeon opens up. All of the game I could do (Including opening all but a few chests in the beginning area) was done and clocked in at 71 hours. Admittedly I skip most dialogue that isn't story or faction quests.
"Basically the question I would like to ask is, where we lied to when the devs promised close to 200 hours of content, or am i missing some big part of the game?"
To be fair, it's not like he's raging and demanding his money back, but to feel cheated by seventy hours highlights just how obsessed with length gamers can be. For some people, it doesn't matter how much fun they had with a game, they'll still get pissed if it didn't satisfy an arbitrary time requirement.
While it's true I was irked by Amalur's online pass, that was more about sending a shitty message to the consumer and holding existing content to ransom, rather than satisfying a personal demand for a certain amount of content. That's my issue with some widespread attitudes today, being pissed off by game length regardless of how good a game actually is.
It's also true that 38 Studios claimed Amalur would boast over 200 hours of gameplay, and I'm not sure I believe that. Nevertheless, whether it was marketing hype or honest truth, I can't imagine wanting to put that much into a single RPG. I'm trying to imagine somebody with that much spare time on their hands, and this is all I can think of:
This is a sea anemone. It sits on a rock in the ocean all day, doing nothing. It has time to play Kingdoms of Amalur for 200 hours. Because it is a sea anemone.
There are many great six-to-eight-hour single-player games I've bought, and kept, and replayed because they're so good. When an eight hour game is good enough to play again, that's sixteen hours of gameplay, right there. I think that's an important thing to consider, and not enough people do. It's the same with any other medium -- there's "replay" value in a great movie or a good book, because you'll want to watch and read again. Getting hung up on a campaign's initial length, over and above that campaign's quality, seems to miss the point a little.
I think it's also part of the reason why we end up with shitty multiplayer mods bolted onto games that were just fine being single-player experiences. Anything to boost the sacred replay value, as if that term means what it should anymore. I'm looking at you, BioShock 2.
There are definitely times when the content on a disc fails to justify an asking price. A four-hour single-player game asking $60 is pretty galling, but even then, most four-hour games aren't very good to begin with. Would it matter if a four-hour game was utterly amazing and gamers wanted to play through it twice? Maybe it shouldn't.
Just the phrase, "Only 70 hours of content?" looks completely silly, but it's only an extreme example of a common attitude. I've had to start putting length in reviews now because, no matter how good you say a game is, a number of readers don't care. They only care about how long it is, because screw a great game if it doesn't fifteen hours to beat.
I'd rather have six great hours than fifteen mediocre ones.
Contest:
11:00 AM on 02.16.2012 | 
What did he think he bought an MMO or something?
Just like women. Heyoooooo!....sorry.
70 hours is more than enough. Animal Crossing have spoiled us gamers.
Tho I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that 200hrs was taking into account future DLC.... which would technically make them correct in the most reprehensible way I can imagine :P
...Baffling
(though I'll admit I was a bit irritated that Saints Row 3 was significantly shorter than SR2).
BTW could you imagine if a game like No More Heroes was 70 hours? Jesus Christ. Good luck with that one.
I may have only 30 hours played after so many replays... but I still think that it was worth every cent.
A game is not measured because of the time it takes to beat it, just look at the first Portal!
Tyler Wilde of PC Gamer brought up a great point once in defense of his Portal 2 review. He said that he thinks $60 was a reasonable asking price compared to the price of other entertainment. To see a 2 hour movie where I live is $9, by comparison I'm more than happy with a game that gives me 12 hours of entertainment. By that logic, Kingdoms of Amalur should run about $630 for the amount of time you'll spend playing it.
This is a guy who is (as you rightfully acknowledged) not overly raging about anything, asking a question about something that was more or less promised to him. Red flags are raised at "where we lied to (...)?" but he even admits it could be just him. And there's not much in that post that screams "I feel so cheated by this!", I think.
I mean, you're not wrong in the things you say afterwards, but basing it on this particular post doesn't seem entirely fair to me.
I would really hate to see how you would price DVDs/Bluerays.... I mean with the potential to watch them an infinite number of times. I can see it now at the register.
"Sir... that will be infinity dollars, how would you like to pay"
His phrasing of "Only 70 hours" perfectly encapsulated the problem, though. He just sped through content -- sped through it -- and got 70 hours, then complained because it didn't take him 200.
It just sums up the attitude beautifully.
Length isn't so important to me as the density of a game's content and it doing that content well. I don't expect Resident Evil to be more than 8 to 12 hours, but I do expect it to have enough variety in how it plays to say interested for those 8 to 12 hours.
When your resume has The Elder Scrolls on it, I guess a 70 hour game full of FFXIII-style high fantasy babble could be seen as disappointing. My objection is, however, the online pass witholding game content for a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. I just won't support that, even if the overall length is more than enough.
See, back in the day we didn't pretend this stuff was DLC or an expansion - it was part of the fucking game.
I'm a bit of a proponent of games being shorter and better quality, but it annoys me when people compare game prices to ripoff movie theater admission prices. Or when they say "a steak dinner at the most expensive restaurant there is only costs 15 dollars, so 15 dollars is totally worth a 1 hour long dlc mission." It's partly an apples to oranges scenario, and it also assumes that movie theaters totally offer a great value.
Don't rush through a game if you want it to last long.
Crash Twinsanity would like a word with you,Jim.
It just sums up the attitude beautifully."
I'm not sure I agree, if only because he seems more concerned with the fact that the devs mentioned 200 hours than how "short" the game was. But maybe I'm giving him too much credit, I don't know.
Either way, I can see where you're coming from, and the phrasing does fit nicely, so I guess you've got me on that one. :P
I mean, if I buy a game expecting [foo] on the basis of being promised [foo] by marketing, and I don't receive [foo] then I have grounds for a complaint regardless of what [foo] is.
I mean, I'm someone who cares about "length of games" but that's largely because "longer games mean I can wait longer before buying the next game" so caring about it saves me money.
I would SOOO rather have a short romp that is fucking amazing than 20 hours of "meh" gameplay. Would you rather have a piece of the finest steak in the world or 5 Big Mac's.
But still, 70 hours is a lot of time.
So hypothetically if a game comes out, and is capable of amusing me for 200 hours, if I game for like 10 hours a week, that game will let me go five months without buying another game! If I buy only games that will amuse me for 15 hours, then in those five months I would have to buy 13 games! If I buy every game for MSRP, prioritizing longer games just saved me $720.
Now, no one is saying that you can't "pad" the amount of time someone wants to spend with their game by making it something they want to play more than once (in fact, this is probably the best way to do it.) But I don't think that people who prefer longer games when they cost the same as short games are really worthy of scorn.
I'd like to point out that this game, Kingdoms of Amalur, has only been out for nine days as of today (2/16). This player sunk at least 70 hours into the game in nine days or less. Someone has a serious case of having too much free time.