I’ve never liked the time=quality argument that some people seem to want to apply to games. I took a look at my Destiny profile this morning and I’ve spent about 140 hours on that game. If you don’t count World of Warcraft I think that’s probably a new record for me. It’s pretty rare that I reach the 100 hour mark in a game. In the past it has only ever happened with Pokemon Diamond and Final Fantasy tactics. I loved those games obviously but I would not say I loved them anymore than a games like Rez, Brothers or Last of Us. At no point do I ever consider the length of time I played a game to be in anyway connected with my enjoyment of it.
I can tell you that I wish Dragon Age:Inquisition had been shorter. I spent almost 50 hours on that game before I got bored and quit. I wish I could have seen that story to it’s conclusion but I just couldn’t stick it out. I still consider it a great game and one that I really enjoyed. The truth is, I wish more games clocked in at the 6-10 hour mark. I find that to be the sweet spot for my tastes but I’m not going to get upset if the vision a developer has for a title doesn’t line up exactly with my personal desires.
There are long games that suck and there are short games that can blow you away. It’s a ridiculous argument and it’s one that Polygon leverages here for the purpose of getting people riled up. Tycho explains it really well in his news post today so I won’t bother covering the same topic. What I will do is give you an alternative to their bullshit.
Just read Reddit. It’s where all these news sites get their stories so you might as well just cut out the middle man. When you see headlines like “How many people did John Wick kill? “You can beat the Order 1886 in five hours” or "Some guy solo’s Destiny’s hardest raid!” you can be sure that I already read those stories yesterday on Reddit. Not only that but I read them without the bullshit clickbait spin.
For me I actually made a big change to my bookmark bar a few weeks ago. I removed all the game news sites and replaced them with other stuff. I have quick links now to r/games, and r/gaming for general purpose game news. Then I have specific subreddits for the games I’m currently into. Right now it’s r/DestinyTheGame , r/monsterhunter , and r/hearthstone. The rest of my bookmarks now are just art sites that I like. I figure if I’m going to waste some time browsing the web it should be stuff that will inspire me or inform me rather than just piss me off. So now when I have some spare time I don’t go to Kotaku I go to Eat Sleep Draw. Instead of going to Polygon I go to Design Clever. I’ve had this new system for about a month now and I cannot tell you how much better I feel.
-Gabe out
