With as much as games cost and as low as entertainment is on the list of things one needs to survive, games need to fight for their place in our living rooms. People need to know that when they buy a game, that there's some meat to it. The game that will take up more of a person's time will usually win out over something that can be finished in a weekend. Not everyone can afford to buy a game per week or month.
This doesn't mean that short games shouldn't exists, far from it; it simply shouldn't be an industry standard. Assuming that publishers aren't going to reduce the prices of the games we buy, we have to have certain standard that we can expect from picking up a box at a store (or a download). Great, short games are certainly appreciated, but much more so at a lower cost. People seem to forget that Portal, a game often seen as the poster boy of the shorter games argument, was sold for $20 on its own, and $60 as part of The Orange Box, along with Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. Could Portal have sold for $30 or $40? Most likely, but Valve charged what they thought was appropriate. For $60, there's an expected amount of content, considering what else we could buy for that much money.
This doesn't mean that consumer just wants filler content that adds nothing to the game. BioWare, a company known for its 50-hour RPG's, has done a fantastic job at not making the middle sections of their games seem like a grind. Both Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect were critically acclaimed, and the length of those games were cited as one of their biggest assets.
There's also a number of things from a design perspective that only work when a game takes a certain amount of time to complete. Would Mass Effect's choices mean as much if the game was only six ours long? The game's key moments and twists only have their weight because if you choose wrong, you'll have to ride out your mistake for several hours. If you chose to kill a member of your team but the game ended 30 minutes later, it wouldn't matter as much.
And it isn't just about reaching the finish line, either. Multiplayer, when done well, is usually a game's greatest feature. Modern Warfare 2 had a pretty good campaign, but it's the multiplayer that keeps its fan base hooked. The ability of multiplayer to keep players coming back for more has clearly not been overlooked, as many developers have taken it upon themselves to include it in their offerings. The results are often mixed, but when a game's online mode catches on, it's a considerable benefit for the company and for consumers.
Like it or not games have to justify the money we spend on them. While some of the greatest experiences in gaming are brief ones, the games industry can't afford to make their games fleeting, especially because the market for used games and rentals is so big. The power of a lasting experience can't be understated, and if people are going to spend the kind of money they are on games, they need to be assured that the game they're considering will be worth the money.
