I too have become sensitive to filler content – I can recognize it earlier, and when it’s obviously meant as a cheap means to bloat the apparent scale of the game, it’s even more annoying. But if there’s a little intrigue at all, a little “there is more to this place than my personal interests”, that somehow makes it a more personal experience. It’s the richness that counts.

I like to be rewarded for exploration. Not necessarily getting a piece of loot or a title because I found a “secret” area, but finding that someone had an experience there, that a developer put a little love into his craft without expecting anyone to notice. Orc grafitti, a doll that some kid dropped as their family fled from an invasion, a journal written by some completely irrelevant person.

The opposite of this is endless square mileage of algorithmically-generated terrain stocked with ultra-aggressive wildlife who wander aimlessly in little circles waiting for JUST ME to walk by. NPC’s walk right through them; tasty deer and rabbits frolic among them; but I step foot in there, and the entire zone comes after me. Lame. Overused, cheap, lazy, uninspired, unbelievable, and non-immersive.

With Oblivion it was even worse, in my opinion: as you got more powerful, the entire world got more powerful with you.

I don’t know what the solution to making games infinitely interesting is, but I know it doesn’t involve making me, the player, the center of it all.

I don’t mind trudging across empty wasteland if I think I might find something at the other side. I like to think of it as a bit like percussion in music – the rhythm comes not just from the sound of the drums but the spaces between the sounds. As long as the excitement isn’t too sparsely spread, I still find it fun.

I could sink hours into a game of Deus Ex or Civilisation. I don’t mind having the game continue over a number of weeks. However, I like shorter games too. I recently replayed DOTT in a day and enjoyed it immensely.

My feeling is that a story driven game should take its average play time from the pace of the story itself. Action driven games should base the play time on how long they can maintain a varied and fun combat (or whatever) scenario. I really dislike filler. If ever I feel a good game was too short, I prefer to think of how awful it would have been if the packed it with filler to pad the game time.

I think I am similar to yourself, I would tend to play games at a slow pace relative to the average. I like to explore a bit. But certainly not as much as you… 200 hours? =)