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Comment by tikotus | Hacker News Reader

I'm with you on this boat, but I believe I see the point in the way it's marketed. An average person who makes regular game purchases likes long games. They want value for their money, and the number of hours is a big factor. This game has a big piblisher behind it, and I believe they know exactly what they're doing with the marketing!

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The regular game buyer has more games than they can possibly play. Some people are focused on maximizing enjoyment-dollars/hour, but I would posit that an excessively long playtime is a detriment to most gamers.

I have been turned off from a few JRPGs with such high playtimes that they have no respect for the player.

Exactly, until my 20s I enjoyed long games. Now, I have a family, I have other things competing with my time, I want something that is tight with barely any fillers that deliver a good story. My most memorable recent games all delivered on that: Forgotten City (8 hours to finish it completely), Carto, A Juggler's Tale, There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, ...

While I do enjoy longer games like Yakuza, etc, I really enjoy being able to play through a game in 1 to 2 evenings.

I don't mind longer games at all, even though I juggle dayjob, university, family, and quite time-consuming woodworking hobby at once.

Currently I'm playing through Cyberpunk 2077 and as usually I do almost all side content. I play it for months already, just an hour here and there. I don't mind it at all.

What's important for me the game doesn't waste my time on senseless, boring, repetitive activities. That way, even 30min of playthrough scratches the itch and feels fulfilling.

Oh yes, didn't try cyberpunk yet but Witcher was great because even if long, it was rather tight. Problem is that when I stop playing for 2-3 months due to work, it's hard to remember where I was.

> An average person who makes regular game purchases likes long games. They want value for their money, and the number of hours is a big factor.

Is that the case? Or do they want short games, so they can complete it and move on to the next game. If you’re buying games regularly, either they’re shorter games, or you’re not completing them all—in which case, the length doesn’t really matter. Or looking at it the other way, if you like long games, and you’re completing them, you’re not buying games regularly.

Regular buyers are gamers who spend a lot of time playing games. That's who you want to target, since that's the group who are actively looking for new games, and they also want their games to last. It's not about completionism, it's about spending hours and hours playing games.

> Regular buyers are gamers who spend a lot of time playing games.

Sadly, like most things, Buying Games and Playing Games are 2 different hobbies.

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