What is the sweet spot in terms of number of hours for a single player game?

[DeathReborn]

How long a game should be really depends on the mood your in. Sometimes you just want to blast through something at a rate of knots (CoD for example, 6 hours or so), other times you want to take your time and spend the best part of a week or two (Football Manager, Civ 2/4).

Generally speaking RPG's should be at least twice if not four times as long as a FPS. Strategy games should take more than a day to complete, maybe weeks if there's multiple races & endings.

FPS - 20-30 hours
RPG - 40-120 hours
RTS - 24-48 hours
Platformer - less than 12 hours
Empire & Management - Potentially forever.

 

[Dumac]

Are there any games that actually have 100 hours of unique, non-repetitive gameplay? I don't think there are. Most RPGs that a huge number of hours only have that many because you have to grind forever in order to be able to beat the final boss.

TES games easily provide that much gameplay, and that is without mods even.

 

[TidusZ]

I'd say 30 hours if you rush 40 if you dont and 60-100+ if you do all the option/secret stuff.

Like ff7/ff12

 

[Tiamat]

Generally, more than 30 hrs, but the pacing needs to be good. If the pacing is good and the story is immersive and expansive while keeping intense interest, there is no cap on # of hrs for a single player game.

For what I expect from today's quality of games, I'd say 30-50 hrs. Any more, and it gets boring (since most games I am familiar with that have high time requirements require tons of level/skill/treasure grinding), any less and I feel ripped off.

 

[smackababy]

TES games easily provide that much gameplay, and that is without mods even.

I had over 300 on my Morrowind save and I explored everything, and did everything. Eventually, I killed all the NPCs (except those lame ass respawning guards...).


The number of hours is very dependent on the ability of the game to tell the story. God of War games were fairly short and did a good job in that time. RPGs usually end up being longer simply due to you have far more exploration options.

 

[Anubis]

for me more then 10, but less then 100

seriously anything in there is fine priovided it isnt just long for teh sake of being long

 

[Arg Clin]

FPS: 25-30 hours
RPG: 60-120 hours pr episode (spanned over multiple episodes it could go on more or less forever I think)