To Video Game Buyers, Longer Often Feels Better

In the New Yorker, Simon Parkin says when it comes to buying video games, players put a premium on length, no matter how good the game is:

A visit to the review directory Metacritic shows how high the premium on length is.Journey, a Sony-funded game about death and religion, which costs only fifteen dollars and runs for about two hours, received wide acclaim on the site, but nearly half of the reviewers also registered a complaint: “Journey’s short length makes it difficult to wholeheartedly recommend,” one wrote. Another said, “Journey is short. Too short.” More recently, the celebrated game director Ken Levine felt compelled to reply to critics who griped that his new two-hour addition to last year’s critically hailed bestseller Bioshock Infinite was too brief. He had opted for “quality over quantity,” he said. “Few people would judge a movie based on how long it is.”

The extent of my video game playing habit nowadays is dedicated to a few apps on my phone (still playing Tetris after all these years). All you gamers: Is this true? Would you rather pay $60 for a long, theatrical game than $15 for a short one?

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