How much content should be in a Sonic game?

[Sonic Fan J]

21 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I'm no expert, but it's probably possible...but it's also probably a really bad way to go about it. If nothing else, it screws over anyone who buys physical versions of the games, as you obviously can't put two disks/game cards in your system at once. If they wanted a Mania 2 character to be able to go through Mania 1 content, they'd be better off either porting Mania 1 levels to Mania 2 or making the character dlc for Mania 1.

Well admittedly since DLC is a major thing for games as well as game installs these days it could still work. Just put the Mania 1 DLC info on the disc for 2 and require an off the disc install to access it in Mania 1. While I can't speak for the difficulty of programming that ,it isn't unprecedented since lot's of games have collaborative options based on existing and new save data for the games in question. In that light I don't see why it couldn't work.

[Multikaris]

At least 8 hours of content, padding or otherwise. 

[Dr. Detective]

I could give the usual textbook answer of "A long story, extra modes, and unlockables don't matter if the quality isn't good" but to be honest, I'm starting to dislike the idea of immediately equating the two of those things together. It's starting to feel like people seem to think it's just impossible to have both in a general sense at this point. 

I mean, yeah, the quality can go down if too much focus is put on one area but it also could stay the same or even go up if you're really good at making games. 

I don't want to sacrifice one for the other and saying that I'd be okay with doing that would be a fucking lie. 

I'm a greedy bastard and I want my game to be huge and good, please. 

[OnslaughtIsCool]

I'd say it depends on the game. Example, a racing game, such as TSR, wouldn't be expected to be a 12 hour single-player campaign. But an RPG game, such as a sequal to sonic chronicles, or a new sub-series, would have a long play time. I'd say for a boost game would have 2 acts per level, with a mini-boss at the end of each level. 12 levels in whole, the last level presumably being the Death Egg, because Sega.