I have used this site to see how long games will be: http://www.gamelengths.com/

I usually like to know how much time is left (if a game is either good or bad, it's good to know how far along you are).

Does anyone else check the game length, and does it affect your decision to buy a game?

Game length doesn't matter to me, no matter what genre. What matters to me is how much I enjoy the experience. If I have fun playing it once, I can have fun playing it again. I play through all my favorite games at least once a year every year. Doesn't matter if it's a point-and-click adventure, an RPG, an RTS, or an FPS, and it doesn't matter if it takes 2 hours or 20. For me such games are like a favorite film I can watch over and over again.

I used to not care about game length at all, perhaps even skewing toward a preference for longevity. Adulthood, however unfortunate this may be, has got me paying attention. The truth is, I find myself searching for shorter games these days than I used to in my teen years. I just don't have the time to sit and play for hours and hours on consecutive days like I used to. Work, family demands, fitness maintenance and social appearances have all taken precedence over gaming. I still make time for the hobby, because I love games as both an art and skill-based medium. But the shorter divine experiences, like Portal, Bastion and Braid have taken precedence over stuff I've avoided (that before I might have gone crazy over) like Kingdoms of Amalur, Darksiders II and Skyrim.

Now I like my games to offer experiences that do two things (concerning length), primarily:
A) Allow me to have a meaningful accomplishment and/or experience during short play stints (under an hour).
B) Finish in a relatively short amount of time so I may move on to the next game (subjective, but 50+ hours would be too long and leave me unlikely to reach the end).

Sadly, I can't do that. I may play a game a second time and chances are likely I won't finish it again. I can remember plot points after a long time and unless the gameplay is very fun, I'll get bored quicker the second time through.

I actually prefer short to mid sized lengths in my games. Long games are usually padded with repetitive gameplay and sometimes I'll keep playing just to see the ending and feel like i finished it, not because I'm enjoying every minute of it.

I loved Portal. Very short, yet very sweet. One of the few I've finished twice precisely because of it's short length.

Thanks for the link! I usually check How Long to Beat, but it contains only half of the games I'm interested in at best, so it's good to have an alternative. :)

Since I play so many different games and don't like to abandon them unless they're really bad, I get discouraged by games with very long gameplay, so I'm always curious to know how long it takes to play through a game, before I start playing it. Especially with RPGs and adventures, because they require you to stick with them for a longer time - you usually can't play them just casually whenever you get into the mood, as there's always the risk of losing the thread and forgetting important things, when you take long breaks. If a game is really good I don't mind it to be longer, but in my experience few games are rich enough in variety and entertainment to justify 40+ hours gameplay, and most are artificially prolonged by tedious mechanics and filler content.

But even with the best games, it's nice to check the gamelength and be reassured that there's still lots of fun time before the end. :)

EDIT: I think my preferences are quite similar to those of El_Caz; I don't like replaying games either. And I rather share my time and attention between several different and shorter games (and other media) than get the most of one single and extremely long game.

Sorry for necro'ing this, but just now my interest was sort of turned off by a certain game description that promises some or over 100 hours of gameplay. Normally when we buy games, we kind of hope to get as much values for our money, so most people likely like long games. But since I get less and less gameplay time these days, with real life interfering, etc., I seem to be looking for short to middle length games instead.

Depends on the game, but a lot of the time they "add" time by adding achievements. I've found the later FO games to be pretty long legitimately. But, I've also noticed that if I don't pick up again fairly quickly after my last session that I don't remember what I was doing.

FO3 and FO:NV are easily 100 hours plus as long as you're not using walkthroughs and take some time to explore. FO:NV was I think 40 hours for me to get through the main plot without skipping things.

For my recent play of Oblivion. I'm already at 57 hours without doing anything meaningful(Main quest, guild quest, etc, etc)

Well, obviously, it's even longer if you're not focused on completing the storyline. Personally, I go by the storyline when determining the length, because an open world game can take a near infinite amount of time if you're not working on completing it.

EDIT: And the AC games can easily take hundreds of hours if you want to get all those stupid flags and what not.

These days I tend to check ballpark figures for number of hours.

It never used to be a concern, but after playing a few games to the end and thinking "That's it? You gotta be kidding me!" I got into the habit of doing much more research on games before buying.

And I am ridiculously slow at getting through games. I don't even care about beating them; I just want to have fun, so if I actually get through a game, it's probably way too short.

I often check that site too, but only for the purposes of determining which game of the ones I already own I should play next. I start with the shortest one, then move on to the one that's longest in order to avoid gaining a huge backlog of games. Although, this hasn't been a problem as of late because since this summer I haven't had any backlog to speak of. This changed with the D&D promo, but I still know the order of the games I'm going to play: First Icewind Dale, because I've already started it, then Temple of Elemental Evil, then BG 1 and 2 because I've understood 2 immediately continues the story of BG 1.

Septerra Core, started well. At a certain point turns into a complete chore. Several hours "gameplay". Much too long in my opinion.

I saw this :

Team Fortress 2 510 hours, 12 mins (5 play times)

and i left the place .

I usually check how much left of a game there is if I start to get bored with it. As I've grown older, I've gotten a far lower tolerance for filler content/grind, and it is usually when a game forces me to do something like that that I start to look for information on how much of the game is left.

Game length in itself is no real concern though. If a game is very long, I'll just play fewer games. Same with books, if I read lengthy books, I'll read fewer books, but it won't be a factor in which books I chose to read.