Shorter video games are better, and I want more in 2024
I’ve gotten into some hot water these past few weeks for some views of mine that have been controversial. But one of the things that appealed to me about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was that the campaign was shorter and more concise, and it’s only one of a number of games with shorter campaigns that I’ve enjoyed receently. This has led me to a conclusion I’m only now realizing in my life as a gamer: Shorter video games are better.
Before I get bombarded with threats and outrage in the comments, hear me out. I’m not saying that longer games don’t have a place in my heart. I love traditionally long-winded series like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, God of War, and Assassin’s Creed. But open-world fatigue is real, y’all, and having to spend hours working through a skill tree, side-questing, and roaming an endless map is exhausting! This goes double when one is a neurotic completionist like me. It almost feels like a failure if I don’t do everything the game has to offer.
But what does accomplishing that actually look like? In my life, it means locking myself inside and hammering away at a game for days straight, even though these titles are undoubtedly meant to be treated more like marathons instead of the breathless sprint I end up running. In my adult life, though, shorter campaigns just fit better.
Part of determining whether you prefer games longer or shorter is simply pinning down what you’re looking for in your video games. For my part, the biggest draw in a game has always been a strong narrative, and being able to get in and out within ten hours seems to be a sweet spot for providing a story that satisfies me. Let me run down a few examples.
Bramble the Mountain King is a retelling of Scandinavian folklore that delivers its narrative beautifully without overstaying its welcome. It’s one of my favorite games of 2023, and when I realized I could complete it in a weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder why more games weren’t like that.
Another great example I recently played is Jusant (French for receding tide), a great exploration game from the developers of Life is Strange. The main protagonist of Jusant is completely silent, but the game still managed to offer a great story by showing rather than telling. It incorporated unique gameplay and storytelling techniques and reminded me that video games are also art. And the best part is that I had finished the game in a weekend!
These are just a few examples of shorter games that have hit me really strongly. A game’s length clearly doesn’t equate to how good it will be, and in some cases, the length can actually make an otherwise powerful feel stretched too thin. The older I get, the more I cannot help but wonder whether a game really requires a hundred-plus hours of my time to get its point across. Is it actually telling one hundred hours worth of story, or do the developers feel pressured to add in a ton of padding to make publishers and some demanding gamers happy?
The Assassin’s Creed franchise might be the prime example of this phenomenon from recent years. Ubisoft’s mega-franchise started with ambitious but still relatively approachable games that would take fifteen to thirty hours to complete. Beginning with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, though, Ubisoft blew up the series into a new epic action-RPG form, with each entry taking over a hundred hours for full completion...and that’s before you even think about the string of beefy DLC additions!
I’m not saying that games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla are bad by any means. I loved both of them. But I can’t lie, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I discovered that Assassin’s Creed Mirage was returning to the franchise’s roots. Mirage isn’t exactly a short game—it still took me over twenty hours to finish—but it’s so much more concise and tightly designed than the past few games in the series.
I accept that many readers might disagree with me about this short game preference, but there’s at least one misconception I really want to push back on. Some view a preference for shorter games as a “casual gamer” thing, but shorter campaigns don’t necessarily have to be less challenging or easy to get through.
Lots of people complained about Modern Warfare III being too short. Yet, I’m willing to bet these people didn’t think to increase the difficulty. As a Call of Duty veteran, I preferred playing on a higher difficulty, which required moving through levels at a slower pace and being more strategic.
I’m only saying it’s nice to have some control over your progress and a finish line that’s within a reasonable distance from the starting point. I don’t want to be forced into a life of solitude and anxiety while working through a to-do list as long as my arm just to finish a video game. Games are supposed to be recreational, not testaments to the amount of time I’ve spent sitting in front of a screen. What matters to me is the quality of the experience overall, not how many hours it successfully took up in my life. That’s why as far as I’m concerned, shorter video games are simply better.
💬 Are shorter games better? Let me know in the comments.
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