In defense of the four-hour game

There's a strange pressure in gaming to measure value in hours. A game that lasts a hundred hours is somehow worth more than one that lasts four, regardless of how those hours feel. I've come to think that's backwards.

Hollow Lantern took me about four hours and I remember almost every part of it. Compare that to the bloated open worlds I've played where the last twenty hours blur into nothing, and the short game wins easily.

Short games on mobile make even more sense. A phone game you can actually finish is a gift. You get a complete experience, a real ending, and then you move on instead of feeling vaguely obligated to keep grinding.

So when you're browsing, don't dismiss a game because it's short. Ask whether its hours are good ones. A tight, confident four hours beats a padded forty almost every time.

I'd rather recommend ten games I finished than one I abandoned halfway through.