Word counts are a tricky thing. I’ve seen some writers use extremely bloated writing styles to increase word counts without necessarily increasing the content. I was guilty of this before, back in college, plenty of students including myself, threw in plenty of academic jargon and roundabout phrasing to write a paragraph of a point which could be easily explained in one sentence - all to meet the word counts. Admittedly, in hindsight, college papers are just a ton of BS.
I admit that I like longer games too, but sometimes, it’s harder to tell how much you’re actually getting from that number you see on the word count box.
Previously, I had assumed somewhere north of 100k would still be within the lower bounds of “acceptable”, but I’m not sure how true is that now. Going back to a famous thread for new writers:
Readers have gotten a bit spoiled, and at this point, I have one major piece of advice for anyone planning on putting out a standalone story under 100,000 words in length: DO NOT DO IT
We might need to revise that number, upwards. 