The Glade 4.0

Of course, not every game is "beat it in an afternoon" length. The very next notch up the scale of game length is the "you will never **** see everything even if you play it for three years" games. Skyrim is promising "over 300 hours of gameplay". Games like that have endless tricks to stretch out the game experience forever and ever -- from assloads of side quests, to the promise of a completely different experience if you go back and choose a different character class or skill set (see: Borderlands) .
You can always spot these bloated games immediately, because you have to invest 10 hours in the intro mission that teaches you the menus ("What, you mean Fallout 3 isn't about a dude who spends his entire life inside this **** underground vault?").

But more does not mean better. I didn't have to skin too many coyotes in Red Dead Redemption before I realized I was playing a time wasting simulator. Now please, somebody tell me if this letter icon on my map will actually advance the **** main story, or is just another side mission to earn $35 so I can buy bullets for the next side mission. Since when is entertainment about making the audience wander around aimlessly so you can boast about the sheer tonnage of hours you gave them?

But the Truth Is...

Boredom is a young man's disease. For me, every minute I spend playing, more **** is piling up in my work inbox. No, I don't need a game that will kill time. I need a game that will give me the most possible fun in the precious few hours of spare time I get in a week. Trust me, if you ever see me reopen my World of Warcraft account, it means I probably got fired from my job.

And this is when I realize that these are the games I specifically asked the industry to make 15-20 years ago. Back then, one of a game's selling points was the amount of hours it took to beat it. A 40-hour RPG was a big deal, and even after you beat it, you still wanted more. There are RPG's I've beaten a dozen times. Grinding and leveling was such a "rinse and repeat" set of motions, there were times when I'd snap out of a daze and realize that I had been killing the same monsters for three hours, increasing ten levels on autopilot. I fantasized about endless games that you could just get lost in.

Well, game developers listened to the 17 year-old me. It's just that by the time they got around to figuring out how to make a 300-hour game, I had a job and three kids, and 300 hours represents every minute of gaming time I'll have available to me in the next three years. In other words, selling me that game is the same as taunting me, reminding me that the same obligations that let me afford to buy games also prevent me from playing them.

Number 3 is far more compelling, but I hate to admit he's probably right. A lot of the allure is probably in us, not in the game.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin