This Article Has At Least Two Minutes of "Read-Time"

First off, welcome to all the new visitors finding this blog through the recent mention in Electronic Gaming Monthly (Did I ever mention how much I like that magazine ^_^). Now that you're here, I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy the site. Please skim through the archives, comment on some stories, and by all means let me know what you think of any and all video game journalism.



Thanks to _render_ for (1) linking to my site and (2) pointing me to this TotalVideoGames (TVG) article saying that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will have "150 hours of gameplay." This is a perfect springboard for me to rail against how utterly useless and misleading the "gameplay time" statistic is.



Now, I understand that video game critiquing is a subjective craft. What is a great game to one person could be the worst game ever made to another. The main problem with the "gameplay time" statistic is that it sounds very absolute and scientific when, in actuality, it's just as subjective as any other part of a review.



First off, the amount of time it takes for a person to beat a game is largely a function of general game playing skill and style. I was able to beat "Paper Mario" in about 24 hours, according to the in-game clock, it took my girlfriend -- who has less experience with RPGs and tends to spend more time exploring -- nearly 34 hours. Even my roommate -- whom I consider an equal in skill and style -- took two fewer hours than me to beat the game.



But even if you can assume a base level of skill for your entire audience (hardly a comfortable assumption), the "gameplay hours" statistic, as it's usually used, is incredibly meaningless for a large segment of games. By, "as it's usually used," I mean defined as: "the time it will take an average player to thoroughly beat the game on the first playthrough."



Using this metric, what kind of "hours played" statistic would you give Tetris, a game that is technically unbeatable. The Sims, which has no goal except that defined by the player, is equally uncategorizable. It took over 20 years for Billy Mitchell to fully "beat" Pac-man by getting past the 256th screen without losing a life or missing a ghost. Would his thousands of hours of game time be an accurate measure of anything?



Even for games that do have an easily defined "end" the statistic is rife with problems. Technically, it probably took me only about 40 hours to beat Super Mario 64 with all 120 stars. But since I reached that point, I've come back to the game constantly, easily quintupling that base play time just running around the castle, finding glitches and repeating challenges. For a game that gave me over 200 hours of time in front of the screen, 40 hours seems pretty inadequate.



This doesn't even get into the issue of when today's games -- often full of unlockable levels and secrets -- really end. Do you cut Super Mario 64's time off at the minimum 70 stars required to beat it or the maximum 120 stars? The answer can severely skew the statistics.



The only "gameplay time" statistic that really matters is how much time you're willing to keep playing the game, and therein lies the problem. Despite the seemingly straightforward and absolute definition given above, most "gameplay time" statistics end up reflecting how much time the reviewer was willing to spend with the game -- an inherent value judgement that is largely invisible to the reader. If one reviewer blazes through a game he hates in five hours to get the review done, and another spends 20 hours engrossed in what he considers a deeply moving experience, who's to say which number is the correct measure of "gameplay time?" And who's to say which one will be closer to the amount of time a player actually spends on the game?



Outside of all this, I have to say that taking a "gameplay time" number from the producer of the game, as TVG did, is absolutely ludicrous. Of course he's going to say that the game has lots of play time. It's his game... he wants to sell it. It's like printing a quote from a developer who says his game will have "good graphics." It's entirely expected and entirely meaningless to the reader.



To sum up: I suggest reviewers spend more time playing the game and less time worrying about how much time they played the game.