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Originally Posted by Ninth
11 hours. And that's not counting the fact that cut scenes are unskippable. Without this, it would go down to 8 or 9, probably.
So yes, it's short, albeit not obscenely short like Lost Eden or Amerzone.
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I just think the playtime numbers that are tossed around are pretty arbitrary. I did not get far in Amerzone, but I played a good two hours and never got out of the explorer's house. Everybody goes on about what a short game it is, which
must mean that the fact that it took me so long to do such a small portion of the game is an anomoly... either that, or I'm really stupid.
Or maybe, just maybe, that its label as a short game is meaningless -- but no, that couldn't possibly be it.
I generally don't keep track of my playtime, but did for Voyage and am for Bone, for curiosity's sake. Voyage took me 13 hours spread out over a week and a half. If I hadn't been trying to meet a review deadline it would have probably taken me 13 hours spread out over three months, and although the hour amount would have been the same it would have felt like a longer game to me.
I guess my question is, is one experience worth more than another? Is it a developer's fault that some people like to sit down and play in one sitting, and those people expect the sitting to take a certain amount of time? As for Bone - people have finished it in 2-3 hours, apparently. They must have been enjoying themselves to play the whole thing through in one sitting, yet they immediately turn around and complain that the game was too short and how dare they be charged $20 for it. The player has to take some responsibility. If you know it's a short game and you want it to last longer, don't play the whole thing all at once!
Sorry, not meaning to rant. I'm just frustrated, I guess, because I don't think these numbers should be used as a yardstick. If I had to choose between 4 hours of a really good, immersive, story-driven game made by people who clearly care about making a good, immersive, story-driven game, vs. 15 hours of boring-as-hell gameplay that only takes that long because you have to traverse over a ton of empty screens doing pointless tasks like delivering an inventory item from one boring character to another boring character... well, let's just say I'd rather play the 4 hour game, and I'd even pay more for it. Quantity is not a measure of quality.