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Games have always been about fun. A lot of older games only provided minutes or a few hours of enjoyment before they were over, but many were enjoyable nonetheless. Over the last decade or so, playtime seems to have become an increasingly prevalent issue though. Several modern games boast their extensive playtimes in their advertisements and even on their boxes. While added playtime isn't necessarily a bad thing, some of these games are going about it all wrong. They're padding their games with filler content and losing sight of what makes games fun.
There are a lot of ways to add filler content to RPGs. One of the easiest is to use random dungeons. These require very minimal effort and it's possible to generate massive amounts of content for a game. While some random dungeons are certainly more interesting that others, many tend to be very plain and do not offer anywhere near as much enjoyment as a carefully crafted hand-made dungeon. Dark Cloud, for example, had about one hundred randomly generated floors in order to meet its boasted fifty hours of gameplay. Though it did throw in some things to make the journey less monotonous, it doesn't change the fact that players are repeatedly completing variations of the exact same floor.
Another common way to bolster playtime is to make the leveling curve in such a way that it takes forever for players to increase their power. This forces players to proceed slowly and cautiously through the game in order to avoid becoming severely outclassed by enemies. This was very common in older games such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest where the hero(es) were forced to gain levels before they'd have even a slight chance of surviving in dungeons. While this is one of the least offensive ways to pad playtime, it shouldn't be as prevalent in modern games, and it can be very annoying when combined with random dungeons and/or games with a very high encounter rate.
Games with high encounter rates are considered by most to be among the most annoying ways to increase playtime. Dungeons such as those in Beyond the Beyond that have a random battle after every few steps are rarely enjoyable. I mentioned earlier that this is very annoying when combined with slow leveling speeds. When battles with the same enemies pop up every few steps, take half a minute to complete, and offer very little reward, it can be very disheartening. The desire to simply run away from these meaningless battles may be high, but often the bosses are powerful enough to wipe out a party that tries to take the easy way out.
In short, it takes very little effort to make a fifty hour game. All you need are random dungeons, a slow leveling curve, a high encounter rate, powerful bosses that will smite anyone that tries to skip the multitude of meaningless battles, and maybe throw in a slow text speed for good measure. Of course, this game is likely to be among the most boring games ever created unless a significant amount of effort is put into the story and mechanics. Playtime is important to many people, but it's not worth killing the fun over. Short games such as Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow may only take ten or so hours to complete, but they're significantly more enjoyable than a game with fifty hours of meaningless filler content. Remember, there's always replay value.
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