Hello, i want to ask, is there some sort of game length databse? That means where a lot of games have an entered average playtime length?

I know about the http://howlongtobeat.com/

Are the similiar sites or ways to know the average length of some game? (Besides watching complete playthroughs on youtube?)

What about steam, is there a way how to datamine time spent in each game?

Any ideas about this?

(Reason im asking -curiosity and im designign one game and i want to check how long it can be based on assets im planning)

Any input is aprreciated.

... i want to check how long it can be based on assets im planning

I'd like to respond to this specifically:

I'm inclined to suggest giving your game whatever length works best for it. Don't cut content because similar games are shorter, and don't pad it because similar games are longer: the former may do your game a disservice, making it less than it could be, while the latter may result in it outstaying its welcome with players.

Why do you want to know this? The length of a game's average playtime says nothing about the quality of that play time, which is ultimately the more important thing. It's a bit like measuring code quality via line counting.

im designign one game and i want to check how long it can be based on assets im planning

There's no real correlation between the assets that go into a game and how long the resulting game will be. It depends entirely on what you do with those assets. If you want to have an idea of the average play time of your game, prototype enough to get an idea of the time it will take somebody to run through some of the scenarios or representative structures of the game, and extrapolate. Basing your metrics on some other games metrics is unlikely to be useful unless you are almost straight-up ripping off that game.

Are the similiar sites or ways to know the average length of some game?

More important than knowing how long your game will be is knowing the length of a single play session.

A game like clash of clans can last years, but actual time spend playing is in short five to ten minutes sessions. Games like Battlefield, are designed to putt a lot of action in a thirty minute game both entertain and tire the player. Doing so hoping that thy will play a mission or two at most a day, so that the game can last till the next big release.

Session length is also important for your target audience, as kids will find more time to play than a person who works.

Session length is best tested for each game, but exit points allow you to stop players when you need.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a great example, you can play for short burst to a safe house when you are looking for just a easy shooting game.Playing a full level takes about 1:30 and is great for a weak day game, and playing the whole game is great fun for a weekend game. Left 4 Dead also uses very limited amount of resources to provide a lot of game time.

3 posts are all are offtopic and useless..., guys... guys... :-). Answer the question if you reply, otherwise start your own topics regarding these issues (in interested)

I didnt ask about the quality vs. quantity, im not an idiot and i have some experience in this, thus i will make the game exactly as i want to.

I really just want to know some way or sites that will show me average gameplay time... like that howlongtobeat.com

so please to stay on topics do you have some tip for some similiar site or a way to find out?

thank you

3 posts are all are offtopic and useless..., guys... guys... :-). Answer the question if you reply, otherwise start your own topics regarding these issues (in interested)

Those down votes should serve to remind you that Gamedev.net isn't Google or Bing , also the yellow smiley is more noticable and will make it clear that there is no harm meant with the words. Remember a topic on Gamedev.net is open to discussion and debate just like a topic in real life, most people expect that you did the basic research before posting.

I really just want to know some way or sites that will show me average gameplay time... like that howlongtobeat.com

http://www.gamelengths.com/ Allows user input and is a very rough estimate, as players shave there time to look good. Considering that you know about howlongtobeat.com, you should know this one; thy are both the first search results.

so please to stay on topics do you have some tip for some similiar site or a way to find out?

The best way to find a average time for games is to search for that game e.g. "How long to finish Far cry 4".

You can also ask friends and family for there time, but thy will answer in the form of weeks and days; so you will have to know there play session length to turn that into usable data.

Then use these to form your own database, hope you didn't expect to learn something with out working for it.

My opinion:

The problem with you question is that the time for a player to finish a game differs wildly, it depends on the player finishing the game and most don't, take your own games as a example. The player's skill, occupation, hardware, personal goal, game collection and there life in general changes how long it takes them to finish a game.

For a proper database you would have to get rid of the variables, so you would have to isolate player and ask them to play the game from start to finish. The cost of such a study would drastically outweigh the benefit.

The simple fact is knowing how long it takes players on average to finish a game doesn't matter.

I would echo that firstly it doesn't really matter what other games do, and state secondly that you're not going to get a statistically-accurate number of average playtimes anywhere I'm aware of, as very few (if any) games are actually instrumented to measure length of play; the only one's I can think of off the top of my head are Open-World games like fallout 3 or RPGs (both japanese and western-style). Any self-reporting is going to be skewed, firstly because people want to look better, and secondly because my intuition leads me to think that speed-runs are going to be statistically out-sized (so, you might get something closer to the average length of a speed-run instead of the average length and average player takes to complete the game as intended).

Since you don't have statistical accuracy, your own educated guess about game length are probably as good a basis. For example, I'd say that the average length of a traditional FPS single-player campaign is around 15-20 hours, but could be as few as 8-10. Keep in mind that those figures are the length of the critical path, and discounts failed attempts and false-starts.

Perhaps a better way to approach the question is to name the genre(s) that interest you and poll the community for their own gut-estimates, and then averaging those answers to benefit from a larger sample size than your own experiences.

Yes thanks for the

But since players input that number it wont be accurate probably.

Its said that nobody solved this already, for example using the steam and their achiavement i believe there are achiavement for completing the game so someone could use this to build statistics.

So the only viable way probably today is to look a gameplay on youtube, find the one where the player plays normal and not a speed run or something similiar and then count the length, thats the way i was doing it until this point, but it takes time :-).

Steam measurements are unfortunately inaccurate. I've personally played games for tens of hours longer than Steam reports, and many other people on the internet claim their own usage of Steam also gives incorrect measurements.

Sometimes I've played a game several times for an estimated ten hours, and it only shows 1 1/2 hours played. I wouldn't trust Steam's time measurements for research. Other times games I've played multiple times has it listed as "zero hours played". For some reason, it fails to record large chunks of playtime (possibly when Steam is in offline mode? But I normally leave Steam 'connected' and still experience time losses).

Basically, this is data you need to gather yourself by releasing games, and having the games measure users playing them, and then you have real results. I'd guess many large studios have those numbers gathered from their own game, but like to keep them close to their chest. It'd be nice if indies started releasing their metrics publicly.