How Much is Alan Wake Worth?

[CronoDAS]

I would have guessed Final Fantasy I (available for NES, PS1 in Final Fantasy Origins, GBA in Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls, PSP, and Wii Virtual Console) and either Super Mario Bros. 1 or 3 (available for NES, SNES in Super Mario All-Stars, Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance, and Wii Virtual Console). I also considered guessing Phantasy Star II (on Genesis, Wii Virtual Console, Game Boy Advance, PS2, and PSP), as well. I didn't know that there were so many different versions of Resident Evil II out there!

As for myself, I happen to own Final Fantasy VI on three separate systems, but that's not my record; I think I've bought (or my parents bought) Final Fantasy Legend II for the original Game Boy at least three times, because my brother and I lost it several times over the years. Also, if you count Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow as one game, then I have three copies of that, too.

 

[Marmooset]

I will, of course, reveal the two games eventually. But I'd like to hear some other guesses first.

I'm gonna do the typical thing and project my values onto you. I managed to loan and regret said loans of Diablo 2 to the tune of three copies. I figure you'd have to have at least 33% more friends than I, so that.

And Half-Life seems to keep coming out with free former versions of itself in the new content, so maybe that, too - with the possibility of Children of Men being the fourth copy.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies

Interesting article. It is really hard to judge what a game is truly worth. Hours really isn't that good of a measurement. Some games have elaborating things happening at every moment while others have players spend lots of time running across a map. On top of that, multiplayer games rely on a different system of fun and play then a single player game. It's hard to quantify in any good terms and its really hard to say if you will or wont like a game based on just looking at it so It's difficult to say what games have the best value and are worth it. It's a quandary but hey, at least it involves having fun.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

You can't evaluate if a movie's worth seeing based on it's cost/length, you can only evaluate if it was really worth seeing after you've watched it. The same thing with an album - you can't judge it purely on the number or length of the tracks.

Any game that, when all is said and done, makes me walk away feeling a "net positive" is worth the price of admission. If I feel like it was somehow "worth it" for me to have played that game, to have experienced that scenario, I'm happy.

 

[Rack]

I can't believe I didn't think of PSO, I've bought that game 4 times as well. Also even though it wasn't right I can't believe I didn't think of SF2. I actually bought that 6 times.

 

[tavelkyosoba]

There should never be any doubt that your money is well spent for a book/game/album, you should feel so enlightened and bettered from the experience that you completely forget that you spent money on it.

That's not the case if it was so onerously expensive that you can't get it out of your mind, and that's not the case if you're wondering if the game was too short.

Therefore, Alan Wake is either too short or too expensive.

I'm going with "too expensive" because things kind of suck when they get padded out for length...triple spaced term papers come to mind.

Make it $30 and I doubt anyone would notice it's kind of a short game.

 

[Gunner 51]

There should never be any doubt that your money is well spent for a book/game/album, you should feel so enlightened and bettered from the experience that you completely forget that you spent money on it.

That's not the case if it was so onerously expensive that you can't get it out of your mind, and that's not the case if you're wondering if the game was too short.

Therefore, Alan Wake is either too short or too expensive.

I'm going with "too expensive" because things kind of suck when they get padded out for length...triple spaced term papers come to mind.

Make it $30 and I doubt anyone would notice it's kind of a short game.

I think you have a very interesting perspective there, Tavelkyosoba. Though I've been thinking of games as too expensive and too short. But then again, I'm the kind of gamer with a lot of time on my hands and not much money. (Which seems to be the antithesis of the new model of gamer. )

But I digress. I think you have hit the nail square on the head. If a game is short, the cost should be suitably truncated. But the big problem is what happens when you get a Multiplayer game only like Left 4 Dead? The single player side can be done in the space of two hours, yet the multiplayer seems to get a lot more playtime out of it.

Which leads you to another problem, how does one measure Multiplayer length and fun? What makes Call of Duty games more fun than for example: Wolfenstein in terms of Multiplayer? (I think fluidity is a real factor in this.)

 

[Bradeh]

I agree with Susan: I paid £3 for Bioshock and felt ripped off by it. I paid £10 for Call of Duty 4 and I'm not entirely sure if that was money well spent.

I paid £5ish for Team Fortress 2 (part of Orange Box) and I've had 300+ hours of enjoyment from it. Now that's value for money.

I'm going to guess Plants vs Zombies or Bejeweled.

You paid £3 for one of the greatest games ever, and you felt ripped off? How does that work? Even if you didn't like Bioshock, a statement like that is absurd imo.

 

[PipBoy2000]

Ok, as to those two games? You ready? Phantasy Star Online (PSO Episode 1, PSO Episode 2, PSO Episode 1 & 2 plus, on Dreamcast and then again on GameCube) and Resident Evil 2 (PS1, Dreamcast, GameCube and N64).

Phantasy Star Online I bought because each version was at least slightly different than the others. Resident Evil 2 was, for a very long time, my absolute favorite game in the world, so I wanted to have every version of it there was.

Not a PC gamer, eh? Well, I guess nobody's perfect

Anyway, very good article. My friends and I have debated over this exact question for quite some time now.
I basically decided to set a certain arbitrary threshold for each genre, in order to calculate (no other choice, like you said) which prices are worth it and which are not.
For example, I don't mind paying relatively more money on adventure games. Those are relatively short and mostly have low replayability values (except for Sam and Max games, I guess, which are very funny even if you already remember what to do), but their stories are (usually) worth a higher money-per-hour ratio.

 

[Northern]

I'm more watching Alan Wake, than playing (to an extent). So I'm thinking £33 for 12 hours, makes it £5.50 every 2 hours, which I would easily pay to go see a film (or buy a dvd).

 

[Frybird]

As other commenters hint at, the whole "per hour" value starts to change drastically once your free time gets limited by that little thing called work.

During workdays, i have maybe 4 hours of free time per day that aren't spent with eating, sleeping, driving or hygiene. As long as i don't have other plans. As such, i may end up playing between 1 or 2 hours, or none at all if i don't feel like it.

Of course that all counts for nothing if i COULD play through a game in one weekend, but thanks to having an income, i can of course buy more games and as such, even a "short" game like Alan Wake easily entertains me for 2-3 weeks since i only play it so often.


I understand that students etc. want to be able to spend more time on games that had cost so much for them, but for people like me, it's basically a non-issue, as long as a game is longer than 5 hours or so. Actually, i'd rather take games that last 20 hours at best than longer ones since i get bored with one game anyways.


And thankfully, at least in Europe, Games get cheap fast anyways. I could buy Just Cause 2 right now for two thirds of it's original price, and it probably will be available for less than half by the end of summer. So even people with less income and more free time shouldn't mind short games much in my opinion, as long as they are not easily swayed by hype.


For me it's almost a curse, even if i had more free game time i wouldn't bother with a short game because i still have to finish Muramasa, The Second Riddick Game, Bayonetta, Red Faction Guerilla, GTA4:TLAD, Lost Odyssey, No more Heroes 1, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Shadow Complex, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Aquaria, Penumbra, World of Goo and probably many others, not counting ones i'd like to revisit...

 

[Aurgelmir]

How Much is Alan Wake Worth?

An hour of Alan Wake is worth more than an hour of Borderlands. Except for when it isn't.

Read Full Article

I sort of had this discussion with a friend about "Heavenly Sword" which is even closer than Allen Wake it seems.

The point is that although Heavenly Sword was lacking in a lot of department, it made up for it by not adding a lot of time-sinks into the game that would have pulled the rest of it down. But Heavenly Sword was short because it didn't have any grinding, any backtracking, or anything of that sort. All it gave you was the pure core gamemechanics that the developers wanted to give me... and I loved it.

I will pick up Allen Wake, because it is a short entertainment game, and not a "life style game"

 

[PlasticTree]

Your columns are great most of the time, but this one..meh. I agree with your main point, but it is a bit too obvious to dedicate a whole article to it.

 

[KDR_11k]

If it's too expensive wait for a price drop. That's how I handle those 70? 360 games, never buy them until they drop. It's not like the game will be less fun in half a year (well, unless it's a niche online game but those are usually not the ones where people complain about a lack of value).

Or if you do want to buy the games early just trade them in when you're done. Let publishers cry some more about used game sales and maybe they'll notice that shorter games suffer from that more.

Alternatively look for indie games that usually start out much cheaper while being just as much, if not more, fun.

 

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

Depends entirely on the game's story. Once you know the end of the mystery in Alan Wake, it's doubtful you'd enjoy a replay, because the story is so intrinsic to the game. (That's assuming you're like me and really take stories you like to heart and remember them very well even years later.)

So you never read a book or watch a film more than once? There's more to a story than just finding out the sequence of events that take place; if it's well told, it's worth experiencing a second time. You might even pick up on things you missed the first time around.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I chose Alan Wake over Red Dead Redemption to support a game that's going to need it. Red Dead will sell very well, Alan Wake may not.

 

[Uncompetative]

Well I think I can quantify fun. If we use this formula

Total fun= ((how likely are you to die from happiness from 1-10 during certain moments in the game)*(how long these moments last)) /(total game cost -(0.5% total game cost for every hour of total gameplay)

As for what to call the unit of measurement im not sure

[small]i dont even know if that formula even makes sense[/small]

You are missing a close parentheses at the end of the formula.