i think the “playtime = value for money” mindset is actively harming the industry by making it about quantity rather than quality. a game should be as long as it needs to, and that’s not correlated with price. some of the best experiences i’ve had has been with €10 10 minute games, and some of the worst has been with things that just outstay their welcome in order to meet an arbitrary target. it’s the blockbuster mentality, except blockbuster has been dead for a while.

I’m pretty bad at staying with a game to the credits. If it’s more than around 20 hours, there is a high chance I will just drop it for something else that I’ll find more interesting by then.

I think 15-20 hours is the sweet spot for me. Otherwise I might end up dropping it before hitting credits.

Note: The above rule doesn’t apply for fighting games, jrpgs, and monster hunter.

A bit of a non-answer, but I’d say “as long as it is enjoyable”.

For example, Muramasa Rebirth and LiEat both are rather grindy in their own scopes, but the latter still manages to be short enough it doesn’t overstays its welcome.

Or on another example, Solatorobo could easily have ended at the villain’s defeat, but the events afterwards still build up on that world’s lore, and so making the extra playtime worth it.

And then there’s sandbox games like Minecraft and Starbound, which are literally as long as the person is enjoying them.

I like long games (let’s say, 60h+ to complete) better, as long as the game allows me to stop and resume at any point, without losing progress - I’m OK resuming a playthrough, say, a week later.

I guess it will mostly depend on people’s age, having children for instance quite reduces how much time you can spend gaming

I often find myself getting tired of games after about 30 hours, even when I generally enjoy them. I recently dropped Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous after 70 hours, which is about half of the projected playtime. It was fun, but not that fun; it overstayed its welcome.
I think I actually prefer replayability over extra long games, I’d rather play something twice in a different way than one time for the same total playtime, even if “a different way” might just mean “a different character build”.

I’ve been really enjoying shorter games lately, 15 hours is a good amount for games that focus more on narrative than gameplay.

It depends. When does the game run out of content?

Like if you make a game of say 3 hours but someone says “the game should have 10 hours of playtime” so you just add in 7 hours of worthless stuff then optimal time of the game is 3 hours.

A classic example of this is “open world rpgs”. Yeah the story is 5 hours but if you climb all towers, which are 1 of 3 templates of which there are 200 towers , and defeat all the bases, which are 1 of 4 templates of which there are 300 bases and ride a horse across the equivalent of 500 Sq acres of small empty barren hills, the game takes 150 hours… Take the money for all that development time and make the story better.

I’m guessing you mean playtime to complete? For me, 50-80 hours is ideal. I like to think in terms of getting an hour per dollar. So anything beyond 80 is gravy. And I do have quite a few games where I’ve passed that up, a couple even hitting 1000+. Anyways, if a game is only like, 20-25 hours but I paid $60-70 for it, I will 100% feel gipped and annoyed. Not that that has happened in forever because I will google playtime before buying any expensive game.

I usually enjoy at a maximum 50-60 hours. It does depend a lot on what the game is offering, though. I get distracted and play games in hyperfixations, so if a game can’t keep my attention I will absolutely move on without finishing it.

A full winning game of Nethack takes ~3.5 hrs

Been playing almost daily for decades

Won like 5 times

At least 1 hour for every €1 I paid for the game. I like if games have 8+ hours of unique gameplay (no grinding!) Most games I play 50-100 because of grinding. I have a few games over 2000h

15 hours is my limit.

This is one of the reasons I hated Death Stranding. At 40~50 hours for the main campaign alone, the fun per minute ratio is greatly diminished.

I’d rather play a replayable 15-hour-or-less game: The Wonderful 101’s campaign is 12~15 hours, but I have close to 100 hours in the game and the fun per minute ratio is much higher than DS.

I also don’t predict I’ll stop revisiting The Wonderful 101 any time soon; whereas, I have no intention to touch Death Stranding again past the 100%.

Another example: it takes 30 minutes to 1CC Crimzon Clover, and I’ve had more fun in the ~25 hours I spent playing this game so far than all of my time in Death Stranding. Every second is fun, no filler. I love that.

As I get older, I find anything over 40 hours starts to give diminishing returns. And under 30 hours is usually preferred.

I mostly play games with infinite replayability. Roguelikes, simulations, ones with strong mod suites and community-cteated content. There’s only three games I’ve played from beginning to end recently: Fez, Witness, and Stranded Sails.