"There's an ending to the games, but they're set up to accommodate pockets of gameplay," said Kagel, continuing, "you can jump into GTA and play a mission for ten minutes and feel like you've accomplished something. But you don't necessarily have to go all the way to the end to feel you've gotten the full experience out of it."

Some consumers I interviewed said a $60 retail game without multiplayer needed to be forty hours long, minimum. But while many players demand this length from a full-priced retail game, the reality is that most won't even touch all the content a game has to offer.

"For most players, 20 to 30 hours [of gameplay] is what they'll actually see in the game, despite claiming the bullet point on the back of the box of 40—60 hours is what they're looking for," Steinberg said.

Extended play

Multiplayer is another factor in shorter campaign lengths, because it takes up just as many development resources as the single-player story does. Players buy multiplayer-enabled games because there's something there for them after they finish the narrative—the game won't just sit and collect dust once they've completed it. Especially when they can play online with friends for months or even years.

According to Bungie, within a month of release, gamers played 16,455 years of Halo: Reach. Numbers weren't given as to how much of that time was spent solely in multiplayer matches, but I'm fairly certain that a vast majority involved capturing flags and deathmatching, not the campaign.

Steinberg said the "inherent flaw" in single-player experiences is they're meant to be consumed alone, often in a single run-through.

But does every game—say, Dead Space 2—need multiplayer?

"Multiplayer in the end may feel tacked on and not make sense, simply because the developer feels it's a way to create more value," Steinberg told us. "It runs into trouble in that it doesn't always add to the core title."

A DL sequel

The original Xbox barely scratched the surface of downloadable content’s potential. Now, we expect additional content from every game. When done right, you get an experience like Mass Effect 2's "Lair of the Shadow Broker." If a developer flubs it, well—you wind up with horse armor.

Kagel told us he's been in situations while production is underway on a game and the publisher has decided to save portions for DLC. "They'll release a DLC pack for whatever quarterly milestones they have to hit or so it remains fresh in gamers' minds when the holidays roll around," he said.

Some could see this as charging for content they would have otherwise gotten for free, and they'd be right. This may make for a shorter game, but it allows developers to spend more time and effort honing the content shipped on the disc, resulting in a better pre-DLC experience.

"The upside is you get a more polished, more refined product faster," said Steinberg. "You get regular updates on the backend [through DLC]." Now, instead of waiting three years between sequels, new episodic story content and multiplayer maps are available within months.

Give it time

If gamers want longer single-player experiences, they need to speak with their wallets and their thumbs. If Call of Duty didn't sell well, Activision would stop releasing it each year. With Achievements and Trophies, developers are able to see just what players are doing and how far people are getting in their games. If only ten percent of a game's player base sees a game to the end, and 90 percent makes it over 60 percent of the way there, of course games are going to keep getting smaller—it's a matter of efficiency for developers.

Right now, developers are trying to figuring out how to make games the "right size" and find the equilibrium between cost and content. Sure, we're getting shorter games now, but the games are often higher quality. In the short run, games will continue to shrink; but Steinberg suspects they will eventually hit a sweet spot in terms of length.

"It's going to take time before we start to get some answers [about what's long enough]," he said. "Change is never easy, but in the end it tends to work itself out."

Before Halo released, many were used to carrying an armory on their backs. Halo's two-weapon limit influenced almost every shooter since and the genre is better because of it—proving less sometimes is more. This same ideology should be embraced by gamers when it comes to single-player length, too.

"You don't need a lot of pieces to make a great game," said Rogers. "You just need the right pieces."