depends on the genre

Actually, they're way too short. Unless it's like a MMORPG, but then you would want it to be long.

I think the perfect lenght of an FPS game would be somewhere between COD1 and NOLF1-2

Wait what! so £40 is worth 4-5 hours? I dont think so... ¬_¬

Games should only be as long as they need to be. If it's 8 hours but it's a very good 8 hours then fine, if it's 40 hours and doesn't drag on, then that's awesome. I can't stand playing games where it gets dragged on with pointless objectives and ruins what would have been a good experience.

yeah it depends on the genre and depends on multiplayer...

nobody would bother with an 8 hour RPG would they?...

but...in a case of a game this dude made...Far Cry 2 WAS too long...because it wasn't fun...and the multiplayer sucked...

even a 5 hour campaign on a shooter is perfectly fine with me if it makes up for it along the way in various ways...but it absolutely has to have a good multiplayer portion to be worth $60 for me...

hack and slash ~ 8-10
RPG depends on how big the sandbox if there is any,to explore them xD
open world action games,,,,,how fun and how much extra stuff it has
shooters....dont play them so idk :P

He needs to go play Deus Ex 1 or No One Live Forever 1 & 2 or the Thief series or the Half-life series. These are top notch games with long single-player with EXCELLENT stories and execution.

And Splinter Cell Chaos Theory had an excellent single-player. Hope he doesn't think that was too long though...

It always depends on how u play and on what difficulty. I mean, when u play a game on easy you'll see the end in less time than playing it on hard and having a challenge.

I'll remember not to buy anything this guy is a part of regardless of quality. I'm not spending $60 on a movie length game. If you want to drastically cut the price then sure shorter would be fine.

Whatcha talkin bout Willis!

quote from the article:

"I would love to make the argument that the next-generation of single player games should be a four hour experience, but I know that's not realistic."

no...just no.

Lazy dev, detected.

You want to shorten your games? How about you shorten the price.

No wonder I don't like Splinter Cell. A longer game means more value for your dollar. I'm sorry but a 5 hour game isn't worth $60 unless it has good replay value and too many single players don't have good replay value.

wow what an idiot. sp should be 12-13 hours minimum even though the game has mp

what

this guy needs to be shot. people like him is the reason the gaming industry is so fucked up now. pretty soon games will be 1 hour long and be like 80$

We all would like to only work for two hours but be paid for all eight. But that's just not how it works, dude.

more games like kane and lynch 2's length ?... Noooo... restrict the length only if the quality is also like kane and lynch 2...

Has he not played Vanquish?

short game

Games are too $60. That's why they typically drop in price within a month or less.

Just more lazy developer BS giving excuses so they can justify stiffing us on the SP so they can hand us another half game for $60.00. Just stop the $hit and give us a meaty SP as well please. If you want to trim the SP, then trim the price along with it. If ND can give us both with content, you can too.

He's just confused because he thinks FarCry 2 did so bad cause everybody thought it was boring and too long....Single Player Campaigns need to be longer...so u can play for months and not finish it in 1 evening(games are not like junk food) people want to get value for their money.

Single player games are getting shorter and shorter, people who don't like multiplayer are getting screwed cause they still have to pay 60 bucks for a five hour game.

And I see someone has been smoking the hooch too much

I agree with him no matter how good the game or story i kind of loose intrest fast in single player maybe cause thats all i played for years knowing im pissing off another player around the world is satisfaction.

I get pissed when I drop 60 dollars on a game and beat it within 6 hours. If a game has a short story mode but it has great multi-player, I don't mind dropping 60 bucks, I know I'm gonna get some miles on a game. If the guy thinks games should be shorter, at least make the price cheaper. I love games that are long, that allow me to get lost in another world, not a 7 hour road trip and it's over.

60$ for 5-6 hours of gamelpay,regardless of 'graphical' benchmarks,is an insult.
35-40$,sure.
Could care less about 'pushing hardware' if it produces 4 hour 'pushes' @ 60$ a pop.

Start by trimming the price, or STFU.

I can't be the only one who feels that a game developer might have conflicted interests when he turns around and says his job needs to be made less taxing?

Seriously, games are f*cking expensive, we can't be expected to dole out forty or even fifty quid for a game that might a)turn out to be awful or bug ridden, and b) is four hours long.

Lots of movies these days are three hours long and cinema tickets don't cost forty quid. But if games get any shorter they'll have playtimes of four to five hours. So what, that extra hour or two makes a game worth fifty quid but a cinema ticket is worth ten? You can't tell me more effort is put into games than movies, both require loads of attention, effort, patience and strong teamwork. What this guy is essentially saying is that an hour of gameplay is worth ten pounds.

I'm sorry but I could go to Tailand and for fifty pounds I would have five hours of enjoyment with three people of any gender, age or god damned species that as an experience, good or bad, would pound far cry 2 or splinter cell into the ground.

Whaaat!!!Games are very short nowadays and fps' are shortening year after year.Now its 4-6 hour single player.If this practice continues,its not very far away when we will be getting movie-length campaign.
Thanks to god that rpg hasn't changed that much in terms of length due to
devs like bioware,bethesda and obsidian.
Most fps devs are going for quick bucks as we are seeing biannual releases of sequels.

games are toooooo short for me , i complete the game in the first day i buy it and i even complete it twice if i liked it alot ...

Well it's Ubisoft, so this checks out

If it isn’t like Chaos Theory at best and Pandora Tomorrow at the least then I wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. Not a fan of running and slapping files off desk. XDefiant is so bad that I can’t imagine how the new Splinter Cell must have been.