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Role playing games are most often distinguished from other types of games by their focus on an engrossing story that will captivate their players. A well written story can further close the gap between the gamer's knowledge that he or she is playing a game and his or her immersion in the game itself, thus enhancing the role playing experience that RPGs provide. Why, then, have RPG makers found it necessary to advertise the amount of hours of play the game guarantees to its player to complete it? What sort of demand has led to this fact? Can a game not be of short length and still be a great game? Too often reviewers and the gaming populace alike have grossly underrated a game simply by virtue of the fact that it is "too short," even if it exemplifies outstanding qualities in every other department – gameplay, presentation, playability, etc. The quantity of hours a game can be played has begun to be valued more than the sum total of every other characteristic of the game – a fact that has been disturbing me recently.
Speaking as an editorialist, it seems easy to condemn those who decry games simply by virtue of their shortness. Editorialists, reviewers, the entire field of video game journalism – all who are in a place of analyzing or reviewing games can reside in the ivory towers their positions provide to “critically” evaluate a game’s aspects and simply ignore the fact that the game may be of short length. I have taken this into account in the writing of this editorial. What I argue here, however, is that games with short lengths and fantastic gameplay mechanisms can be equally as good, and often better games as a whole, than games that advertise their 60+ hour of play time but have comparatively mediocre gameplay elements.
The emergence of the advertisement and valued importance of the number of hours a game can be played can be traced to the relatively small amount of innovation that RPGs have seen in their lifetime. As other RPGamer staff editorialists have recently noted, new RPGs may make graphical improvements over their predecessors or tout reported innovations in gameplay, but overall, the recipe for creating “successful” RPGs has largely been based on a few tried-and-true formulas. There haven’t been many RPGs that have completely ditched a "level-up" system of improving one’s characters or avoided utilizing the various story archetypes that pit a small group of "good" characters against the fundamentally "evil" bad characters. Therefore, in order for your typical RPG to sell many copies, game producers have recognized the need to advertise how many hours of this generic form of gameplay will keep the gamer occupied. With little deviance in the aforementioned “tried-and-true” formulas for creating a “good” RPG, game producers have to assure gamers that they haven’t been cheated by purchasing a game with a short amount of play time. The reason for the valuing of long play times, then, seems to be completely economic in nature; gamers simply don’t want to pay $50 for a game that will only keep them busy for 25 hours when they can purchase another game that promises 50+ hours of play time but has what is perceived to be only a slight decrease in the entertainment provided by playing the longer game.
But is this an honest and sound way of judging the overall quality of a game? What is it (other than the amount of cash in the gamer’s wallet at the time of purchase) about play time length, a single aspect of a game, that lets it override all other elements of a game? In what other medium does quantity trump, even determine the overall quality of a work? Certainly not books, movies, nor music. Those that have relegated the importance of the individual elements of a game to be less important than the play length seem to have forgotten that quantity by no means trumps the overall quality of a game or any other creative work; therefore, determining whether or not a game is “good” or “bad” must require the evaluation of all of a game’s aspects. Rashly degrading a game solely by referencing its short play length is thus a haphazard and incomplete approach to giving a sensible opinion on the overall quality of a game.
I’m not saying it’s impossible or even difficult for an RPG of long length to have a lot of unique, engaging, and fantastic gameplay elements. Nor am I arguing that games of short lengths with positively glorious gameplay elements are always superior to longer games. After all, length still is one factor in the scheme of evaluating the quality of a game. However, the importance of game length has been blown way out of proportion. I’m sick and tired of hearing people give games terrible reviews with their only negative point about the game “it only took me 26 hours to beat the game,” especially if that game keeps the player actively engaged and intent for all of those 26 hours. The difficulty in creating an exemplary RPG that possesses great aspects in all areas but only happens to last players around 30 hours to beat is much greater than the difficulty involved in making a mediocre to good game that lasts 70 hours.
The challenge, then, for creators of a game with a small amount of play time, is to ensure that their product exhibits standard-defying features that can make the gamer’s experience in playing their product tantamount to the perceived benefits associated with a game that has a larger amount of play time. Until this is accomplished, innovation in the creation of RPGs will be scarce, and length of play time will continue to be valued higher than the sum total of all of the other game’s features by a large portion of the gaming populace. The majority of current game creation trends have not inspired many RPGamers to pay the extra money for a short game that has fantastic elements.
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