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| - Games in the 1970s and early 1980s usually had no fixed ending; if you survived, you kept going. Then came the 8-bit generation. Games started to have a definite length. If a player was highly skilled with the game, then most could be beaten in anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The general lack of saving and soul-crushing difficulty of these games meant that one had to play them for much longer in order to become good enough to get to the end. Gamers were more or less satisfied. Then the 1990s and 2000s came. Hours-long adventures and RPGs started to increase in popularity, and the average length of a game increased. Many games these days last 20 to 40 hours. No longer could an hourlong game be regarded as standard length; it was now passed off as a short, budget game to be avoided at all costs. The game's length must be directly proportional to its price. In other words, It's Short, So It Sucks. It doesn't matter what genre the game being targeted is: First Person Shooters, Shoot Em Ups, RPGs, Action Adventure, you name it. If you can beat the game in a day or two, or worse, in one sitting, expect review sites to, at best, cut off a whole point or letter grade. To some, complaining about an arcade-style game's length is to entirely miss the point. Truth is, there is nothing (inherently) wrong with a short game. As the original generations of gamers have grown up, many of them have never left the hobby. But they find that many complications such as college, jobs and family life leave them with less time (and more money) to play. Many of them prefer a shorter game that can be beaten in a few days, or even hours, so they can get on with their lives, or at least move on to the next game (or the New Game+, or whatever post-game content is available in the present one). A single, hours-long game tends to satiate the player after one playthrough, leading to the mentality of “oh, I'll put this game away or sell it.” In comparison, shorter, arcade-like games, due to their inherent Replay Value, are less likely to do this; multiple playthroughs of such a game can total up to the time needed to beat a modern video game. This goes double for handheld consoles. One of the handheld's primary strengths is that it can be played intermittently while you're out in your normal day; on the bus, or during your lunch break. Portable games arguably need to be short, or at least be amenable to frequent interruption. This is further mitigated by handheld games commonly being cheaper. Another viewpoint argues that it's exceedingly rare to find a long game that achieves its length without resorting to Padding, repetitive gameplay, being a victim of Story to Gameplay Ratio, and other forms of Fake Longevity. Therefore, shorter games of consistent, satisfyingly concentrated quality are often thought to be preferable to games that were artificially stretched out in response to this trope, but would otherwise be short. Still, as the general price of games remains high, gamers may blanch at paying full price for such a game, making this perhaps a legitimate complaint for a review, though a more apt label would be “It's Short, So It's Too Expensive.” Some reviews have forgiven shorter games that are either budget-priced or cheap downloads (Portal is a commonly cited example, lasting around 3-4 hours, but originally sold in a $50 bundle with four other AAA games.) Sufficiently Egregious examples come across as a Mission Pack Sequel masquerading as actual games. Note that the minimum amount of time necessary to complete a game is never actually paid attention to, as very few games remain unbeatable within the space of a single day for the dedicated and experienced; it's only the amount of time it takes on a casual playthrough that draws this fire. It's Easy, So It Sucks is a Sister Trope. This is not the inverse of Bigger Is Better in Bed. This is NOT, we repeat, NOT a page on which to complain about games that are too short. That's not the point of this page. This is when fandoms (or hatedoms) and reviewers make the complaint.
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