Updates Wednesdays

Comic 422 - Length is subjective

Posted on Wednesday, the 5th of August at 12:00 AM, 2020 in 2020

Author Notes:

DanVzare Wed, 5. Aug 12:00 AM, 2020 edit delete
DanVzare
This comic started off, with me noticing that everyone was complaining about The Last of Us Part 2 being too long. I thought it would be funny to compare how people thought about game length now, compared to the past, when long games were generally being praised. Then, because I needed to research my topic for that extra bit of humour, I thought I'd check to see how long The Last of Us Part 2 took to beat. The result was hilarious. Which is why you have this comic here.

Now it should be noted that there's a difference between a long game and a game that is too long.
An example of a long board game would be Twilight Imperium, which takes around 8 hours to complete.
An example of a board game that is too long is Monopoly, which takes around 4 hours to complete.
I don't expect you to have played Twilight Imperium, but you've probably played Monopoly, so hopefully you can understand where I'm coming from. (Which is that one is fun, the other is not.)

Considering The Last of Us Part 2 is far from a long game (as a matter of fact, its playtime is rather average), that must mean people are complaining about the length for the same reason as Monopoly.
And if I had to take an educated guess, I'd wager that it stems from the writers (or writer), not realizing that writing for a video game is different to writing for any other type of media. There's been a lot of willful ignorance in regards to that for decades, and The Last of Us as well as The Last of Us Part 2, both seem like perfect candidates for that kind of problem.

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Geeky Meerkat Wed, 5. Aug 10:51 AM, 2020 edit delete reply
You have summoned me and my love for math! So Last of Us 2 on the website HowLongToBeat has a completionist time of 38.5 hours. Dragon Quest VII on the other hand has a completionist time of 259 hours. Next, the retail price of the Last of Us 2 is listed at $59.99. DQ7, on the other hand, came out in 2001 and while I'm not sure what it was priced at the average price of games in 2001 was $49.99.

LOU2 = $59.99/38.5 hours getting us $1.56/hour
DQ7 = $49.99/259 hours getting us $0.19/hour

Even better DQ7 by current prices be purchased for much less if you look around on sites like Ebay. Even saw a place that was selling it for $19.99, but it still has the same number of play hours. So now...

DQ7 = $19.99/259 hours getting us $0.08/hour

And people say LOU2 is too long. I say it's too expensive for as SHORT as it is.

Now to be fair, I've never played DQ7 to be able to know if those 259 hours to play it to completion are just a bunch of filler hours that aren't actually fun. But even the main story is clocked in at 62.5 hours. So let's say after playing the game I'm now bored of it and just want to move on with my life.

DQ7 play until I'm bored value = $19.99/62.5 hours still only raises it to $0.32/hour.

This means that LOU2 is effectively 4.875 times more expensive than DQ7 if we consider enjoyment per hour played. Pfft. No thank you, sir and/or ma'am.
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