Suggested Hours of Gameplay

[LightAme]

I'll be creating my first game. 


So, what's the best hours of gameplay should I have for the first RPG game I develop? For the first game I dev. First~


Some say it's 10 hours of gameplay. Is it good?





The game is a classic RPG game.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

   As a first game, my advice would be not to worry about length at all and to start with as small a scope as you possibly can. The 'project development' threads of every rpgmaker site in the history of the program belie this fact as they are, unfortunately, a virtual graveyard to projects that were just to ambitious to be completed by their respective developers at the time they were being developed(my own first project included...and my second). Better to complete a short twenty minute game and release it than to have to walk away from an overly ambitious one after years of off and on development and redesigns to combat your own previous incompetence. (an unavoidable reality of 'firsts' is that somewhere along the way you'll realize how poorly something was done, and if you aren't careful you'll end up redoing everything twenty times over before you plateau and settle into experience).

 

[Andar]

Different people play games with different lengths - your game should never concern itself with its lengths, but with the question if the story is complete or not.


Bloating a project to a number of hours without concern to a finished story will only decrease the quality of your game.


That said, your very first game project will never be completed - you'll need that as a tutorial to learn how to make your real game.


That second game project that has a chance to become your first real game should be as short as possible, because you want a complete game on your profile as advertisement, and because you'll need to learn how much work longer projects are.


That said, as a guideline you can consider that every hour of gameplay needs around 100 hours of game development. How much working time you can place into your game depends on if you're working alone or with help, and if you can work fulltime or only one or two hours a day...


Follow the link "starting point" in my signature to learn more about game making in general and how to use the RM engines in particular.

 

[Wavelength]

17 hours.

...


Okay, seriously?  Make your game as many hours as it takes to deliver the full, enjoyable experience for the player, and no longer.  This might be 30 or 40 hours for a game with an epic story and tons of physical exploration, or as little as 3 or 4 hours for a game with a simpler story and deep (rather than sprawling) gameplay.  Don't bloat your game with things that aren't fun or interesting for the player.  Instead, give the player ways to repeat the things that they enjoy doing in your game if they want to.

 

[Milkdud]

Don't worry about how long a game should be. Worry about it being good.

 

[VideoWizard]

Whether it be 1 hour, 10 hours or even 100 hours, if the game isn't good (or fun), it's not going to matter in the long run. I'd try for an hour long game first, as that is about 100 hours of development, which can still be several weeks worth. A 10-hour game would be about 1000 hours, which can be an entire year. A 100-hour game is, well... if you're putting in low amounts of hours per week in development, a game that long may never be finished.*


*Interesting note about such long games: I saw screenshots from an RPG Maker 95 game still in development maybe a couple years ago, that clearly was going over the top. Maps and dungeons were HUUUUUUUUUGE! I could actually believe that game having, say, 15 years of development, or since RPG Maker 95 released.

 

[Joewoof]

The accepted rule of thumb is that it takes 100 hours to make 1 hour of gameplay. That means it can take up to 1000 hours to make a quality 10-hour game. That means, if you spend 4 hours every day, it will take you 250 days to complete your 10-hour game. That's 8 months of constant development time. If you cannot spend 4 hours every single day, and can instead only dedicate 2 hours a day. That's a year and a half already. Ask yourself if you can dedicate yourself to single project for that much amount of time. If not, don't attempt the 10-hour game; go for something much shorter.