10 Video Game Bombs That Made ONE Fatal Mistake

To be clear, games should be as long or as short as feels organic for the developers, but the price should also reflect that, as was the neon-signposted undoing of the PS4-exclusive third-person actioner The Order: 1886.

Though the marketing certainly did a solid job showing off the game's gorgeous graphics and intriguing steampunk London setting, there was much concern leading up to its release about its apparently short length for the full-fat AAA asking price.

Mere days before launch, developer Ready at Dawn estimated that first-time players would take 8-10 hours to beat the game, and given that "dev maths" is most definitely a thing, it was reasonable for players to knock at least a few hours off that ballpark figure.

And indeed, once The Order hit stores, players soon enough found themselves clearing it in less than six hours, even without making an especially hurried rush through the story.

Given that the game had little replay value, no multiplayer, and roughly half the play-time was comprised of cutscenes, many felt that it simply wasn't worth the price Sony was asking for.

Just a month after release, Sony responded by permanently slashing its price by one-third, though it's safe to say that the smarter option might've been delivering a beefier single-player experience upfront.

While we shouldn't undersell the enormous effort that goes into making any game, for a $60 price tag it was reasonable to expect more, and though artificial bloat is a bane of the industry, The Order's compelling world-building surely lent itself to a much larger canvas and more substantial campaign.