Maybe I could rephrase it a bit. I don't mean all games should try to be short, but right now there are almost none. Few game designers aspire to make a game t

Maybe I could rephrase it a bit. I don't mean all games should try to be short, but right now there are almost none. Few game designers aspire to make a game that's done in 2 hours and worth $8. Chess is a bloody complex game and you can play a round to full satisfaction in 15 minutes. You have your complexity, but it's enough to enjoy yourself 3 hours/week. Most movies will immerse you in the world and the characters well within the first 15 minutes. Today, you have something like Fallout 4 where it takes an hour from customizing your character's face to leaving the vault. I think Adam Cadre's games are a great example: http://adamcadre.ac/if.html http://adamcadre.ac/if.html What separated the Interactive Fiction from Adventure genre was that IF was more on interacting with the player's actions. You could achieve a goal and unlock endings, or just explore. You could get a full story well within a couple hours because the games are designed to avoid you from getting stuck. Adventure games were plagued with resource management and metagaming; once you remove the unnecessary grind of puzzle solving, you get a denser game.