Deciding on the maximum amount of time for ANY game must be crazy hard. Make it too short and it’s too much of a rush. Make it too long and you start to make it boring. Shoot for the middle of the road and you piss off everybody.

One of my favorite games is called Warhawk. In this game, the default time limit for a game was 30 minutes. When the game first came out, everyone was new to the game and so 30 minutes was a good choice. This allowed players to adjust to what was happening on the game and coordinate attacks with teammates. However, as time passed some players became “veterans” and recognized the key strategies to perform in a game, while others remained ignorant. Inevitably, the randomizing algorithm that split players between games did not detect this and teams often became unbalanced. Suddenly, 30 min games did not seem like such a great idea because if you got stuck on the retarded team that doesn’t know how to play,  30 mins seem like an eternity.

Eventually, the developers noticed the problem and did the opposite. Instead of 30 minute games, they opted for shorter, 10 minute games. Of course, there was a community backlash from the vociferous “vets”, but lets ignore that for just a second. Even though the game was the same, going from 30 minutes to 10 minutes drastically altered the gameplay.

Think about a football game. In football, you may choose to play conservatively because the game clock gives you that opportunity. You may want to wear down your opponent before going for the goal. However, what would happen if you reduced the game clock to 10min and gave an extra point to the winning team? Everyone would play aggressively to win the game in a single play. Longer games reward players who are more strategic, whereas shorter games reward players who have sharper reflexes and strength. Even though the game is still the same, the time limit plays a vital role in how the players will think about the game.

Then there’s the players who don’t care. These people don’t care about winning or losing, but about having fun in general. These are your casual gamers. One might assume that these people would prefer the shorter games, but that is wrong. There are many different types of casual gamers. Some of them admire the strategy and thought that goes into a game, and so they would steer towards the longer games. Other just want to shoot stuff and pwn the crap out of other players, so they gravitate to the shorter games.

Like everything, it all boils down to personal choice and unfortunately we have unlimited choices in a world of limited resources (in the case of Warhawk, official server rooms).

And so, here is the dilemma of setting the time limit:
If you set it to what the masses want, you will have a large fanbase but you will inevitably annoy someone. If you cater to the expert players, your players will love the game but you won’t have a large fanbase.

Nevertheless, choice is almost a universal good. It’s precisely why I love Warhawk.