Notice a pattern here? Length. Speed. Moving forward to the next thing—because we're all hungry for information and our lives are a daily struggle to cram as much in it as possible, in the least amount of time possible.

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Many of us bemoan that games are getting shorter and shorter, some of us would even like our games to never end. But maybe we're ignoring the fact that this shortening is happening to media-at-large and it's something that we actually like, speaking generally.

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And why wouldn't we like it? Constant stimulation feels...good. Compulsive. At times maybe lacking depth, but good.

Many of the games that will come to top GOTY lists this year, I suspect, will be shorter games. Journey. Walking Dead. Fez. Papo & Yo. Just to name a few.

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Notice a pattern here? Length. Speed. Moving forward to the next thing-because we're all hungry for information and our lives are a daily struggle to cram as much in it as possible, in the least amount of time possible.

It's not the length that will give these titles the ability to contend for the top prize, of course. Nobody is going to award a game a prize for being short. But being short means that a game has to be conscientious of how it asks us to spend our time, and to be, above all, punchy. Shorter games have to be better games—or else. We might be willing to forgive a longer game for segments that drag on, but a shorter game is burned at the stake for the mistake.

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A shorter game forces a developer to focus on only the aspects of a game worth including and experiencing. It's no surprise that titles like The Walking Dead feel tight and well-paced. There's nothing superfluous in it. And, should it be that the game is actually drivel? Well, it was short—you didn't have to suffer through it for too long and, ideally, didn't spend much money on it either.

Consider, too, that not only is our free time disappearing as we are all getting older—according to the ESA's average gamer age, anyway—but stats show that we just plain don't finish most of the games we play. So why do we keep asking for them to be longer and longer when the truth is that most of us don't have the extra time for it, and if we did, we're not even finishing the games anyway?

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Give me more shorter games. Longer games have their place, and I don't want them to go away. But I also want to feel that my time is respected, and I want to play as many games as possible. Maybe you do too.

(Credit Bloomua | Shutterstock)