How do you measure a game's worth?

[kasperbbs]

Content is a major factor for me and if i find that content enjoyable. Thats why i love games like elder scrolls, oblivion, witcher, fallout, mass effect, etc. They provide many hours of fun gameplay and replay value with their different classes, choices and mods to add even more content. If it's something like call of duty, then i will only play the SP once which will last me around 7 hours, then it becomes useless since i'm not interested in multiplayer.

 

[Vern5]

The Number of minutes I am having fun should be greater than or equal to the price I payed in American Dollars.

Somebody make that into a mathematical formula, please.

Minutes? Really? The way i judge if a game is worth it is the number of hours it takes to complete versus the price. Bassically, i will pay 2$ An hour.

Whoops, you're right. That should be Hours and not minutes. This new console generation must have dropped my expectations like an anvil.

 

[INVALIDUSERNAME]

Pretty much what has been said before: the number of hours relative to the price I paid.

Still, if I can get a damn good story out of it even if it is somewhat of a short game, as opposed to some shallow, bloated game that takes dozens of hours to complete, I'll take the former any day of the week.

 

[pilouuuu]

If I have fun playing the game, then it's worth it. If I REALLY have fun playing it and that fun will last for a while, then it's worth paying full price. If the game is not fun, then it's not worth it, no matter how cheap it is.

That's pretty much it.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Is it how long the SP is? How varied the weapons are? Or perhaps is it only the story? The gameplay? The character development? How much money was put into making it? What makes the $60 all worth it?

A question a definitely want to ask is, can gaming be considered an art form?

I do think some games like Journey could be considered art, some games not. It varies.

What are your opinions?

Great post Ravage.

For me, it all revolves around the gameplay. After you see the story, there needs to be something else that keeps you coming back. Content is part of the gameplay, so longer games are better for your buck as long as the gameplay is solid. Characters are only important if I *don't* like them and you're forced to use them. I hate Solid Snake for MGS1, and therefore I avoided the whole entire series. The deeper reason that I avoided it is because I don't like what they did to the story. I couldn't plug myself in there like I did with the original Metal Gear.

Regarding games as art, yes it's possible, but I haven't seen an effective way to appreciate games as art. I see them primarily as entertainment - which can be a vehicle for artists. IMO, entertainment is one of the strongest vehicles for artists. Music can be art, but it's a more potent art form when you dance or other art forms to it. That's why Micheal Jackson (for example) will always be legendary. His music alone is artsy, but he could also dance, sing, etc. He was multifaceted and the true definition of an entertainer. The best artists are multifaceted, just like most of the best games borrow from more than one genre within gaming.

The flaw in appreciating games as art lies in the comparison of gaming with film, tv, and books. This reduces gaming to a visual experience only, when it is way more engaging than a mere visual experience. Your actions in real time are what make gaming unique. Our bodies play a role in the gaming experience, not just our eyes and brains.

Someone will say that a game like Dear Esther is just as valid as Arkham City, but I say no. I can pick up an old "Choose Your Own Adventure" book and get the same experience out of that as I would with Dear Esther. More importantly, I can watch the entirety of dear Esther on YouTube, so I don't need to interact with that game in the same way that I do with Arkham City.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

If I were to make a list of games based on the visual experience:

ICO
Shadow of The Collossus
Journey
Outlands
Prince of Persia (with Elika)

My favorite games on that list would be ICO, Prince of Persia, and Outlands. I like the Journey demo, but I don't have the actual game. I beat Shadow of the Colossus, but was bitterly disappointed with the story, so I didn't bother playing it after I finished it. Ico is unmatched. The game and the story are interwoven very well.

Prince of Persia is old school romantic, but I like that stuff. It's also a very pretty game. I wish they'd have developed it more.

 

[The Enquirer]

Wanna know how I measure the value of my games?

How much fun did I have playing it?

One simple question that I need to answer.

I don't think we can actually judge based on fun. I mean, can you say that you were really having fun playing Spec Ops: the Line? Or for that matter, watching Breaking Bad? Both can be argued to be of significant merit and artistic value, yet I can't really argue that either gave me a fun, enjoyable time. We can't really say that a fun piece of media is necessarily good.

See I had fun playing Spec Ops because it gave me something completely different than I had expected.

As per Breaking Bad looking forward to every episode was something great.

So I can see your point so I guess you can also factor in if the game gave you some form of experience whilst playing it. But you can be as artsy as you want, it doesn't necessarily make the game or tv show any good as the two aren't at all linked.

 

[shogunblade]

snip

I need to get around to playing Hotline Miami one of these days. I keep hearing good things about it, but it's just one of those games that slips my mind.

You can get it for free if you have a PS3/Vita and a PS+ subscription. Get the membership for a month and play it, it's easily worth the one month, unless you decide to buy it.

Which brings me to Hotline Miami myself. The game was difficult as balls and sometimes left me freaking out (I was playing it while I had an ulcer, which probably didn't help my stomach at all, with all the internal pain I was in), but it has been a long time since I have played a game that made me feel as intrigued, from its music to its visuals to its story. It was quite fun, If I made 'Games of the Year' lists, I'd put H.M. on the list, easily.

OT: I rate a game by the impact I felt from playing it. One of my favorite games of the 360/PS3 generation was Brutal Legend. I really want to play it on the hardest difficulty again. I don't like to do that for any game, but it's simply incredible to play, from its RTS style, its animation, soundtrack and humor and story. I cannot say I enjoyed Uncharted 2 near that much that I'd want to play it again. I mean, it was fun in parts, but nothing about it screamed to me "Great Game". If I remember an idea, a battle, a funny quote (or a serious quote), a part that made me emotional, I will grade that game quite well. It's why I love Ico and King Kong, or even Manhunt.

 

[veloper]

GFX, but not in the way you think.

To be worth my TIME, the gameplay has to be good. That or the atmosphere and story need to be very good(for a videogame),
but I'm still not going to fork over $50 for a solid game made in somebody's garage or for a 10 year old 10/10 classic.

When it comes to supporting game development with my money, I'm more interested in how many soulcrushing manhours it took to make the game and how much time has passed since then, in the hope that if enough people also threw some money at the game, somebody might get the bright idea to fund the development more games like that (maybe even made by the same devs).
Tossing $50 at a 100 man strong devteam along with the other honest fools (fans), still to me seems money better spent than contributing that amount to the early retirement of one lucky garage developer of a succesful indie wonder.

Graphics are an indication of how much sweat and tears and wage slave blood went into making the game.
So the gameplay was already good and I'll happily play something that looks like it was made in the early 90s, but for me to also purchase the game at FULL price, I expect everything about it to be good.

 

[Ipsen]

I measure it by how enriched I feel afterward.

A game doesn't need to be fun, or long, or have overly deep gaming mechanics, it simply needs to leave me with a lasting impression. However it chooses to do this is up to the game itself.

Quoted for best in thread, so far.

I'd go one step further, and say that I measure quality by how enriched I feel during gameplay.

Perhaps I am a bit self-conscious, or easily taken out of games these days, but if a game is so impactful that it actually takes me out of it to think a bit, then it's doing something right, and most likely would for many other (more focused) individuals.

I would also like to state that the genres that you gravitate towards can color OP's question. Think of yourself holding a fine edge when it comes to genres you like. If I liked FPS games, I'm going to find more to be interested in, and thus find more value (and thus, hours, as most of us would equate it to). Double-edge sword as it is, I'd also find more wrong, and may judge more harshly for it too. The line between what you like and don't like is more detailed.

If you're not in a genre you like, well, you're probably not going to like the game you're playing, but you might! And that can mean a lot; consider surprise factor. Blunt edge metaphor here. Doens't always work, but when it does, it DOES.

 

[Lightknight]

Dollars to hours spent. $60/1 hour = a horribly costly hour that could have been a multiple hour date night with the Mrs.

I do have some evaluation regarding the quality of said hour. For example, a phone game that I play for hours out of having nothing better to do isn't the same as playing a full scale game for hours because there's nothing else I want to do more than play it. But this area is far more subjective than the first value.

 

[Gaius Livius]

The Number of Hours I am having fun should be greater than or equal to the price I payed in American Dollars.

Somebody make that into a mathematical formula, please.

G = VFM IF Σ HF ≥ $ - This translates to Game = Value for money if the sum of the hours of fun is greater than or equal to the price paid in dollars

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It varies between amount of time played, how fun the gameplay was and how good the story/characters are. Generally the order is story, gameplay, and time played.

For example:

Torchlight 2 rated well on the gameplay side and I've put hundreds of hours into it but it loses out to Spec Ops: The Line even though I've only played 10 hours and the gunplay was rather generic.

 

[Milanezi]

First and foremost I totally ignore the MP (maybe that's why I never got to become a true fan of Halo...), it's not my thing and even though I might play once in a while, it's never the reason I buy a game so I couldn't care less if the MP is great or not.

Single Player is what matters to me, I used to think it was a matter of how long it was and how good the story was. Lately I experienced a few games that proved me very wrong. That however will make my answer an extremely subjective and hollow one: the game needs to entertain me, I need to have fun with it. I recently bought Tomb Raider via Xbox Live because of the low price, I'm finding the game amazing in every way (and I was never a big fan of older Tomb Raider games), I also enjoyed the fuck out of GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption both lengthy games with a strong story (specially RDR). On the other hand GTA V is a game that I just can't seem to bring myself to finish, the graphics, imo, are amazing, the story is decent enough (actually, as far as Michael goes it's pretty funny), the world is incrdibly rich and alive, it has a level of detail I find amazing, the idea that developers created that city actually makes me wonder if we are not inside a divine entity's video game ourselves lol, but... I don't know, I just don't feel the game entertains me at all, I'm not having fun with it. Difficulty isn't an issue either, I love Dark Souls and that game is very hard, it's long, hard and the story sorta sucks (by that I mean it's not "story-centric"), but for some reason I have fun with it.

The games that changed my mind were Dark Souls, RDR, Hotline Miami and Mark of the Ninja. They have almost nothing in common, still they brought me back to when I was a little kid with a SNES and only a few games, I didn't care I'd played a given title, as long as I enjoyed it, I'd play it again, to hell with the story or length or even graphics, the only thing that mattered was the fun factor. With around 100 games or more in my X360 library, I sadly realize that i could've done without most of them, and wasted more time replaying my true gems (my, because it's MY fun factor)...

 

[Storm Dragon]

How many hours of my life I offer up upon the game's altar without regret.

 

[aozgolo]

It comes down to enjoyment, pure and simple, I pay for games I will enjoy, and if I am really excited to play them, the more likely I am to pay full price to play them, but this seldom happens. I rarely ever buy games at new full price, and as a result I own more games than the majority of my gamer friends, and that's with having a family to provide for as well.

I don't go through complicated algorithms in my head, I usually just quantify how much money I "can" spend, and look at games I currently want and usually go for one that is in a genre/niche that I am currently lacking. For example I probably won't go buy an adventure game if I already have one I haven't complete yet, or an open world sandbox game if I already am putting 10+ hours a week into a different one. The only exception here is when games I want go on sale embarrassingly cheap, though I've kind of gotten past the mindset of buying a bunch of games at once for cheap since I invariably have one sit on the shelf for eternity.

 

[Vern5]

The Number of Hours I am having fun should be greater than or equal to the price I payed in American Dollars.

Somebody make that into a mathematical formula, please.

G = VFM IF Σ HF ≥ $ - This translates to Game = Value for money if the sum of the hours of fun is greater than or equal to the price paid in dollars

*Crying* It... It's beautiful.

 

[Idlemessiah]

When initially buying a game I consider how much fun I'd have if I too my money to the pub instead.

However, looking through my collection I can tell you that many games are worth waaaay more than I paid for them. 2 particular stand-outs for me are world depth and art direction.

A game can have great story or sweet gameplay, but I won't be interested if there isn't a world built around it all. The art direction also has to be coherent and unique to give the world a character.