Length?

Although I am new here, I have noticed that the majority of RPG Maker games I come across are very short. Short as in the creater stating they can be completed within 2 hours of gameplay. I'm starting to map out my world and plot on paper and I can say it's going to be a game that will take a couple of hours with the main quest and side missions, not to mention I'm thinking of having it very open world so exploration is there. Plus I'm trying to create a very rich and immersing lore that will make the player want to explore every nook and cranny and to speak with all the townspeople,discovering new quests and missions.

So what are your thoughts? Do you prefer games are very short or games that take a lot longer, or games that you can beat within maybe a few hours but has lots of optional, additional content should the player want to play more? 

Depends on how good the game is. I would rather play a 2 hour good game than a 30 hour bad game.

I think the big factor is pacing. A game can be as long as short as it wants as long as the events are well timed and nothing is too rushed nor drags on. If I spend too much time on one particular main story event, I really do feel it start to weigh me down. 

anything as long as it's fun.


I think some of the reasons why a lot of games here are short are:


1) It's a first or early projects (so we avoid huge ones as we don't have enough skills yet)


2) Time constraint for the devs (a lot of us here if not most are doing this as a hobby during our little free time)

The first question is: how long does your story need?  Picking up on Ms Littlefish's comment, pacing is all important.  You don't want your story to feel rushed because you have some arbitrary time limit that you feel it must meet, nor do you want to drag it out.

Next question: is your optional content in some way linked to your story?  if it's totally unrelated, it may just feel like padding to the player.  It should be optional content that these particular characters that you have created would want to do.  This is not the same as content that you, the developer, think would be fun to include.  This distinction is one which is sometimes overlooked.  Well constructed optional content, though, can easily double the overall length of the game.

Finally, there is no 'ideal' length of a game.  I have played games ranging from 2 hours to well over 100 hours, and in that range I have found good and awful games at every point.

I make very long games (several of them north of 30 hours). Pity you haven't come across my collection it seems. :(

Longer by a landslide. If the overall quality's good and the content rich for real (ie the game is not just long cuz of too much walking back and forth for instance, or fights every 2 steps), then long games allow to include more characters, more enemies, more equipment, more optional content etc. Deffo what I prefer in an RPG.

Make a game like this and I can tell you my community would love it! :D

There're many limitation as adiktuzmiko said. Some people have a little spare time and mostly they're hobbyist. They pretty happy when they can finish their masterpiece even tho it's pretty short. At least, they made their game. Making 15 hours game may took years, especially if they're alone. And you may lost the interest on your game, get stucked in some points, and lead the game to be hiatus / canceled (like I did). Before it happen, they may decided to make it short.

Due to my limited time, I only be able to play game around 2 hours at maximum, so I would go with short gameplay. But if it's done right, I could play 10+ hours of gameplay if they're a lot of explorable contents and as long as it isn't boring. To be note that I have no interest if the content itself is story, lore, etc... I would like to explore the game mechanic like tried to switch class, explore the skill tree, try different combination of party members, and such. I like to see how far I can improve my character.

I can play longer gameplay with story IF it's linear story that can make me curious what is the next scene / plot, etc instead of open world that focused on the world itself. I play open world games not to explore the world, but it see my character improved.

Story of my life back when I was starting in RM... :3

These are all very good points. I don't have lots of free time either from working full time and starting college. But with that being said, gaming and writing are my biggest hobbies (alongside maybe playing music) so even though time is hard to find, this is something i feel i can have a passion for. I'm sure it takes a very long time and I'm new at this plus working alone but I'll give it my best.

I can see how doing very long quests will become boring and i also agree pacing is important. The game Should have a flow that's not too slow, not too fast but it's important sometimes to slow down the pace or quicken it sometimes to mix it up, so your story isn't going the same miles per hour the whole game. It's all one big balancing act really.

I would personally recommend to make your first game fairly short and not to include too much optional content. The first game will be your learning curve. By the time you finish it, you'll learn a lot of stuff about the engine and you'll realise there are a lot of things you did that you could've done in much easier and more efficient ways. Once you acquire that knowledge, you can then tackle bigger, longer projects and still complete them within a good time frame. :)

My very first game, Demon Hunter, was to be some big 15-20 hour game. I've worked on it for nearly 1.5 years and I'm still not done with it. Had I not already set the precedence and made the story line as vast as I have, I would gladly go back and rethink it to a 8-10 hour game, so that I could finally be done with it lol. So in essence, bigger is not always better...you tend to burn out much faster with a huge project. Lesson learned indeed.

A tough question to answer for sure, but it really depends on how well your story holds momentum throughout the game.  You need something to keep the player hooked, and with longer games, it is tougher to do, as you need to add twists, make engaging characters, and so on.

Shorter is way better in my opinion, especially in the RPG Making community.

I've played a lot of games both short and long, and typically it's the short ones that stay in my memory. As others have mentioned, it's easier to keep a player's interest with shorter games and they're easier to finish. I also like how they're easier to approach; I'm more inclined to try and new game that's shorter simply because I'll be finished with it sooner.

I've been leaning toward shorter games recently, but that's mostly because I am trying to make a shorter game so I actually finish it for a change (all my projects blow up into 10+ hour games, I have such trouble keeping to my original plans! Which means I have yet to finish anything worth talking about). I want to see how people manage making something so concise, so I want to play more of those.

But besides that, I don't usually care how long it is. If something about the concept catches my fancy, I'll check it out. I'm the type who puts in over 100 hours on their console RPGs before beating the final boss, though.

The key is putting out a good promo, and finding your target audience, I guess.

I really don't know how to strike the satisfaction spot with short games, though. Neither in myself, nor in the players. I don't feel satisfacted when finishing a short game, mostly because I don't think the conclusion was satisfacting to the player.