If you follow the game-writing blog world, you not infrequently encounter critics talking about how the whole thing of contemporary games usually sucking up a bunch of hours to play as problematic. They talk about how this is repetition for repetition’s sake and does the art-form side of games a disservice.

The common rejoinder, or at least straw-man argument, is that games are long because gamers want to get value for money out of them. Nobody wants to pay sixty bucks for Bioshock 2, say, and then only have a three hour experience – that would be $20 an hour. Shitty value to the point that the game is probably being paid better than the player.

I’m assuming there’s merit to both sides of this (and the many other positions that can be taken) – after all, these are smart people. And, honestly, I don’t care all that much about how long games are – I usually grind them down anyway, not necessarily enjoying the endlessness (as per the arguing against), but glad that the game carries on (as per arguing for). But the reason I like games being long is maybe different.

I like games that are long because they make me stick around in the world after I’ve registered the period of “wow! fuck! this world is crazy amazing!” (as in, say, Bioshock or Red Dead Redemption). I don’t dispute that those early hours in those games (and others) are the most special from a straight up aesthetic experience perspective, but I also find the ensuing grind valuable. For one thing, you earn certain experience through time that can’t be achieved otherwise. My ride into Blackwater in Red Dead Redemption was poignant because I’d spent so long riding/grinding through the Wild West of the game and then came to see the signs of my (John’s) obsolescence in the new city.

Also, and perhaps more specifically because I spend so much time thinking about games rather than “just” playing them, spending bloody ages in a game that’s already moved beyond its “peak enjoyment” phase is important to me specifically because it’s good thinking time. As Bioshock 2 rolls on, for instance, I’m finding it rewarding just to be still in the world, still looking at it and noticing things about the nature of the game that I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up on had it ended after some “agreeable” number of hours.

It’s kind of like “replay value” except you’re still playing it for the first time.

I fired up Bioshock 2 this afternoon, less late to the party on this particular game than I usual am (released February 2010). My main feeling was one of slight trepidation about the place of narrative in the game, because the box it came in mentioned next to nothing about any kind of, you know, plot.

The game didn’t (or is that did?) disappoint. While the first game had no overt plot to begin with – you just get dumped at Rapture with no real explanation – it had the novelty and “worlding” Rapture itself to provide the aesthetic interest the player needed. Bioshock 2 dumps you in Rapture again, informing you you’re a Big Daddy in search of his Little Sister.

But this time the whole Rapture song and dance doesn’t have the same zest for me. I know about this world, and introducing a new character, Sofia Lamb, does really add up to enough. Rapture looks the same, handles the same, feels the same. So it’s not the voyage of discovery that Bioshock was – it’s a homecoming.

And sometimes you just don’t want to go home.

Played rather a lot of Fable 2 today, with a particular focus on the shooting-range minigame, as I’d found out you can get a good weapon if you win it. I did not win it. I played it and did not win it a fairly large number of times. Well, that’s okay, them’s the breaks, that’s video games for you.

What was not okay, was the maddening repetitions of the guy who ran the shooting range as I tried to shoot targets. Seriously, he was capable of saying about 6 distinct things and I heard each one about fifty times. The one that sticks most firmly in my mind is, as above, “it’s a cardboard massacre!” With his cute British accent and all. “It’s a cardboard massacre!” “It’s a cardboard massacre!”

Seriously? Do video games still have to have this weird thing of NPCs saying the same thing until it haunts our dreams? In Bioshock, the Little Sisters’ “No! No! No no!” has stuck with me on and on for the same reason. Games often offer a lot of variety visually, but they frequently could care less if you have to hear the same sound effect or sound-bite an infinite number of times.

It’s an aesthetic massacre.