Hours of gameplay

[Mickychi]

As the title says this is about Hours of game play, I'm curious to fine out what others think of how long a game's play time should be.

If it was a obtainable how long would you normally expect for there route? Non-commercial and Commercial?

What about a friendship route?

A reason I asked these questions is I want to see if it helps me work out how many words I would need to write about to per route. (10 000 words = 1 hour)

[Kura]

Write as many words as it takes to effectively express your story. Focus on how much there it to express, not on how much space/time there is to fill.

I pay little mind to how long a game is (though generally speaking I don't like to pay more than ~$3 per hour of gameplay, if it's commercial). I just want it to be the right length to tell its story without feeling rushed, or having scenes that are repetitive and/or add nothing other than word count.

[Camille]

You should write as many words as it takes to tell the story... I don't think there's really a set rule for how long or short a game should be. And I'm really not sure about the whole 10,000 words = 1 hour thing. Recently I did beta testing for my game. The chapters they tested had about 75,000 words total and some people blew through it all in less than 3 hours. D:

Edit; D'oh, Kura beat me to it! XD

[Mickychi]

Hmm... I heard that 10 000 words = 1hr but depends on people's speed and if the stop to stare at images I guess.

I will write as many words as I want, the only reason I asked was cause I was curious what people expect, to give myself an idea of how many words I should aim for.

Another question how long do you expect a game to be? (if 10 000 words does = 1 hr)
Also how do you determine how long your game is? By all routes play time or just the true route's play time?

[J. Datie]

A story should be as short as possible without sacrificing anything that contributes to it (ie. anything that develops the plot, characters, theme, atmosphere, ect.)

Wolfram|Alpha calculates 10,000 words to be about 36 minutes of reading, which seems consistent with Wikipedia's listing of 250 - 300 wpm for the average reading speed.

[DaFool]

I use 1 hr = 20,000 words. I'm only using wordcount as a gauge since with story-based games people equate $ = content. I'm only making Short (2-10 hour) games in the foreseeable future. And those are already complex and time-consuming to create. (It's hard to market Very Short <2 hr games since as shown in Vndb they practically compete with all the doujin freeware)

[Samu-kun]

I am now dismayed by the fact that apparently 2-10 hours has now been termed "short." Can anyone show me a "long" visual novel anyone has made on a hobbyist budget?

[DaFool]

Long:
http://vndb.org/v/all?q=&fil=length-4.olang-en

Shira Oka

Medium:
http://vndb.org/v/all?q=&fil=length-3.olang-en.plat-win

Always Remember Me
Card Sweethearts
Frozen Essence
Heartache 101 ~Sour into Sweet~
Homeward
Katawa Shoujo
Lucky Rabbit Reflex!
Magical Diary: Horse Hall
When the Seacats Cry
Zenith Chronicles

(disclaimer: I would beg to argue the length about some above, just like I've seen some Very Short commercial VNs bumped into Short, but I'll keep silent. People want "value for money" these days, so can't blame the creators in wanting to inflate playing time)

[gekiganwing]

There's a brief segment in Understanding Comics that shows how a story can be told in varying degrees of length. On pages 84-85, the writer first tells it through a couple dozen panels, then ten, then four, and then two. He concludes with saying, "And finding the balance between too much and too little is crucial..."

There was this time in my life where I would put hours and hours into my video games. But then I took an arrow... oops, I mean, started working full time, focusing more on my social life, and finding other hobbies such as board games. So while I remember investing huge amounts of time into Simcity and Civilization, and constantly replaying FF4 and Lunar 1, I find it tough to commit to a single video game now. If someone asked me to remake one of the recent Dragon Quest games or Persona 4, then I would make a lot of the gameplay non-mandatory, and completely eliminate a few tedious sections.

If you're creating a VN, and you decide to write a large number of slice of life scenes, well, that's your choice. If you make a complex game with mandatory and extensive scripted sequences, or a high learning curve, then that's your choice. I'm currently more interested in games which are easy to understand but also concise. Obviously, not everyone will agree.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

A story should be as short as possible without sacrificing anything that contributes to it (ie. anything that develops the plot, characters, theme, atmosphere, ect.)

This. So much this.

One of the common pieces of writing advice from professionals is this: Start as close to the end of the story as you can, and end the story as soon as you can. Or, in the words of my grandmother: Your writing should be like a woman's skirt - long enough to cover the topic but short enough to be interesting.

Being obsessed with hours of gameplay is the exact wrong way of handling things. You've got a story to tell and there is likely only one "best way" to tell it. You should write it and then figure out how many hours of gameplay you have afterward - and then NOT change it. Seriously, what are you going to do? Add padding and filler, which will dilute your story? Most likely during editing you'll need to cut things out and shorten it in order to tell the story best.

Far better to have 2 hours of pure awesome than 6 hours of mediocre melodrama. I believe it was Orson Scott Card that once gave the warning to new novelists not to try and stretch one book worth of story into a trilogy. He said not to hold anything back for sequels, because if the first book isn't as good as it can be, there probably won't be a second book. And if the first book is full of filler, people may not even finish it.

And I don't know how true this is for VNs, but only 10% of gamers finish the games they play, so there is a lot of argument for going short and packing the story with awesome. I know that I often don't finish VNs that go on too long. Most of the time this is because it is a lot of filler and padding - why do I need to be told about what happened during the week at school if NOTHING HAPPENED? I chalk most of it up to simply bad writing - there is only so much I can endure. And pro tip - you have to be a VERY good writer to make "slice of life" work and be compelling. That is where I see VNs fail the most - the author is attempting slice of life, but without any of the deeper meaning and design behind it like the "slice of life" genre requires, and the result is boring and ironically, lifeless.

Another thing to think about - I've played a couple of VNs where I enjoyed the story and writing enough to finish, but it was so long that I only ever finished one path because the thought of going back and reading another 10 hours for a different path made me want to shoot myself. 10 hours is about 150,000 words at my reading rate and that is too long. That's more than the first two Harry Potter books combined. (And not nearly as good.) For ONE path. So EDIT yourself and kill your darlings.

Why care how long or short your game is anyway? If your game is non-commercial, so what if it is short? It's free! If it is commercial, charge accordingly.

If your game is meant to be replayed, the shorter you can make it the better. And the shorter your game, the tighter the writing we be, and the less art you will need.

[papillon]

(disclaimer: I would beg to argue the length about some above, just like I've seen some Very Short commercial VNs bumped into Short, but I'll keep silent. People want "value for money" these days, so can't blame the creators in wanting to inflate playing time)

Not assuming this was aimed at me, but just saying - I know I didn't write the vndb entries for my games, and I don't know how many if any of the game creators do in general. vndb is user-edited; don't assume that any inaccuracies there are definitely advertising.

[Samu-kun]

Always Remember Me
Card Sweethearts
Frozen Essence
Heartache 101 ~Sour into Sweet~
Homeward
Katawa Shoujo
Lucky Rabbit Reflex!
Magical Diary: Horse Hall
When the Seacats Cry
Zenith Chronicles

I'm not sure if any of those titles are longer than 10 hours, which you still consider to be short. Going off your statement that 2-10 hours is short, I was presuming that long was about 30 hours.

When I think of a "short" game, I think more in the time frame of 30 minutes to 1 hour, not 2-10 hours. 10 hours to me already sounds like "epically long."

[Mickychi]

Wow! So around 20,000 words = 1hr, I was off then. Thanks for the advice everyone it really helps, I can understand if the same old thing is happening that it does get boring.

Anyway I have another question, how long would you want to play a route for before you got sick of it? 2 to 5 hrs somewhere like that or more?

[redeyesblackpanda]

I must be a strange one... Unlike everyone else, I love really, really, long games. If I'm enjoying a game, I don't want it to end. (Of course, it's much harder to come up with enough content in a long game to keep it enjoyable, so I still agree with the "as short as possible while still maintaining content" philosophy.) If it remains well written, there would be no limit to how long I would want it to last.

[Anna]

I measure around 250-300 words per minute too. So more like, 15 000-18 000 = 1 hour. It's really hard to estimate it for VNs though, since special effects, CGs, content and other things can influence the reading speed as well.

The only time when I keep the hours of gameplay in mind, is when it can't be higher than X. For example, during March I want to do a free VN which isn't very long, because it needs to be created in one month. So let's say I take one hour of playtime as my maximum, then that's max 18 000 words. You need to keep that in mind while constructing the outline.

If you don't have some kind of X hour-maximum, then write as much as you need to tell the story :).