I think the idea of "people" in general demanding "longer" or "shorter" games in general is ridiculous. No one wants games bloated with artificial grind, forced "collect a 1000 trophies" busywork or other such nonsense, but also no one wants games to be too short, with a story butchered to fit in 4 hours or missing important content that was either to hard/expensive to develop or was cut for DLC. Every game should be the right lenght for this particular game.

The problem is, for the past 10 years or so, devs have been changing the standard and making it vastly worse for consumers.

It used to be that a full-priced games gets you 30 hours of grind-free gameplay, at a bare minimum.

But now, most full-priced games get you only 5 - 15 hours worth of substantive gameplay.

If they are going to be that short, then they should be priced accordingly, at $9.99 - $14.99 USD for the maximum, standard, non-sale price. Except they aren't. Instead, those short games sell for $44.99 - $79.99 USD MSRP.

And that is a colossal rip off which consumers should stop putting up with, as they are now getting scammed, in ways that they never used to in the past, when all games were made to be a reasonable length (i.e. 30+ hours, with no grind) by default.

I'm fine w/ shorter games. Thing is: most games need to be priced accordingly too.

Short games with no replay-ability and/or no multiple different endings - these games probably shouldn't be $60.

I would rather w/ there being so many companies now and so many games, that these main quests get shorter; if there's any UbiSoft meaningless side quests/MMO quests those are their and are NOT grind-y to get me into the next quest/area/mission/etc; and any real side quests (with actual real missions, design, story, etc) actually are easier to the player to be noticed in the game-world/mission-log/etc.

Personally, I'd rather most games fall into the 5-20 hours main-quest range. Side quests can be whatever - I'll get to them, when need be. But, these meaningful side-quests should be easy to find an obvious to the player, so we get more to the "good stuff" and not caught up in the Ubi-Soft meaning side-quest/MMO/collect-a-thon quests.

For RPG's - probably best to be in the 15-30 hours for the main quest. Side quests and Ubi-style quests can be...whatever, in their own total.

Grind-y meaningless quests - meh, rather those be there to do, but actually optional; I'm tired of the grind. Too many Ubi games and wannabe's doing that style of littered Ubi side-quests everywhere.

Also - great games that are great w/ quality over quantity factor; have meaningful side stuff; and/or many any Ubi-style quests optional: yes, these are the ones that deserve the expansions/DLC/sequel type of treatment.

Two of my favorite RPG's in the last say 20+ years of gaming - they're Vampire: Bloodlines and Disco Elysium. Games I would love to see DLC's or expansions, and/or sequels to. And per playthrough, you can get through those in around 25-30 hours a play-through.

EDIT:
I think Mass Effect 2 for me was somewhere in the 30-35 hour ballpark per playthrough also.

yes they do that

We should let the market correct itself.

Don't pre-order or buy Day 1, on most titles.

I know gamers want to pre-order or Day 1 games, but is there any point in doing that very often anymore? Sure, do it for few or handful games ASAP - but is it worth it anymore?

Very short games; games with lots of bugs; games with stability issues; performance issues in PC version if you don't have an expensive rocket ship for a PC; Expansions/DLC's/Season Passes - is it really worth even buying games on Day 1 anymore?

Should we...just wait for price-cuts, games to get patches, Complete Editions and/or Complete Edition Redux Remasters?

Also - with huge backlogs like I have and with so many Bundle Sites de-valuing games...why buy ASAP?

And I feel like sometimes 15 hours is too long for an RPG.

Here's an actual lie that devs are embracing: "It's not crunch if I'm enthusiastic about the project."

As for the matter of games being too long, I recently quit Slime Rancher because the game is padded like a training bra. Monomi Park just didn't have the skill to give it a meaningful depth. It's all loosely "humorously referenced" grinding.

Just as Final Fantasy 13 went and showed, what good is a 60 hour RPG when there's only three hours of meaningful content?

Some of my favourite games are short. Like Super Metroid (Under 10 hours), Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers (A lunch break), Secret of Mana (Less than a day total.)

At the end of it, I'm no longer a teenager willing to tolerate long sequences of grinding because all I've got is a copy of Pokemon Crystal. (And indeed, that is why I retired from the Pokemon franchise as a whole, because the Pokemon Franchise is stuck in the past.)

This is subjective, really.

One thing we all agree, though (I believe...):

We rather have a good, dense, fun, short experience, then a big, grindy, boring, loooong suffering.

For story-driven games, to me, they must have at least a good story (well written), if it is short, but with a well written ending, Im happy.
For games like Monster Hunter, for exemple, I want many, many, many good loot for it to be good and to be played through the years, here and there.

That's why I think this is subjective.
Also, many people love power-fantasy games for the grind.
Like, they don't enjoy the game itself, but enjoy the GRIND. haha (Im not one of them)

But I remember playing games as kid many, many times. Primarily storydriven games.
Games back then weren't that big (5 ~10 hours) but I enjoyed them a lot. Replaying and replaying for all the hidden contents, secrets and also sandboxing with my imagination.

If the game is really big 40h+ > It must be really well done, otherwise, It will be a boring mess.
If the game is a short story driven 8h~15h, it also must be well done, otherwise, it will be a suffering to go through it.

But again, "good game" is also a subjective concept in terms of gameplay and gameplay loop. But tecnically, they can be at least well done.

And... there's a rule for that:

Never pre-order. Buy the product you know will work the way it should.
Done. Happy foreverafter the buy.

For example, Sonic 2006 is not a good game by most metrics. But due to how absolutely broke it is, it's absolutely a blast for a speedrunner to go ham & hog on.

Curious: what RPG's in that 15-hour ballpark actually felt too long for you?

It helps that there are some games where the game is the "grind" (that's a term I really don't like, actually).

I could also mention games like Cookie Clicker, where the whole point of the game is to get a number up. (With that said, Cookie Clicker is rather slow, and the game is rather CPU-intensive for some reason, so I think I may prefer CivClicker, which is a much faster idle clicker.)

SaGa 2, when compared to the much shorter and denser SaGa 1.

It doesn't help that, in SaGa 2, human/esper stat growth is too slow for a large portion of the game. (At least you can avoid that issue by using only robots and monsters in your party.)

Also, games that involve irreversible build choices would be better served by being shorter, so that it's easier to replay with different builds. The same can be said for games with diverging plot lines or side quests with multiple outcomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGv4ixLllWo

This video is really a deep dive about, among other things, the fun we can have repeating the same action again and again for long periods of time. Cookie Clicker, CivClicker, The Longing, etc.

Also, sorry if the way I used the term grind offended you in any way, honestly. ^^'

Any statement starting with something like "People are" is too vague to really mean anything. Just like "many messages from gamers." ;P

What I'd like to see is the source of that quote.

That being said, time is money too. I don't want less for my money if less means less quality, but I don't want more for my money if more means less quality either. Quantity is not what I look for in games, I'm looking for a worthwhile experience, not just a time killer.

Absolutely. I very rarely pre-order anymore, due to the amount of games that are broken; incomplete in actual content; incomplete storylines; unstable; crashing issues; poor performance.

When I can wait 6 months to a year for a game to drop to half-price or 75% off or wind-up bundled - why buy now?

When games come out broken - why buy ASAP? Why not wait for more patches to be behind a game?

I got plenty of games backlogged - Shadowrun: Hong Kong; Pillars of Eternity 1 & Expansion Pass; Pillars 2; Everreach: Project Eden; Divinity: Original Sin; Dragon Age 2 DLC's; DAI Trespasser DLC. That surely ain't even close to most of the stuff that I have backlogged.

I also have backlogged these games - RE7 Gold; RE2 Remake; DMC5; Watch Dogs 2's DLC's; Far Cry 5 Season Pass; Far Cry: New Dawn; ELEX; DLC's for Control; etc. That also ain't even close to everything I've got backlogged.

I've got so much backlogged - if I was to play it all, I'd need to freeze time and/or need a time machine to go back in time numerous times...or something. :oP

It is a pretty common topic on reddit, but usually referring to open world games as being fatiguing/draining. Of course there is still a large audience that want them, though personally I'm not part of it. 30-40 hours is my max with most games even if they are varied and fleshed out.