Value for games

[wulf3n]

I don't like the idea of time being associated with value/cost.

You don't pay extra/less for movies if they're longer/shorter than 2 hours.

Then you have to take into account how good/fun/engaging that time was. I would be happier with [pay more for] 4 hours of solid engagement as opposed to 8 hours of mediocrity. Both might be something I would buy, but aren't necessarily equal.

 

[A Weakgeek]

If I play the game for the gameplay, then yes, I expect around 1e/1h rate.

If I play it for the story however, I can accept alot less. Besides, ive yet to play a game that lasts 60 hours and has a good story and isn't padded to hell.

 

[TrevHead]

I don't follow any gold rules like £1 per hour as it forces bad habits into devs how start padding out their games with boring crap to make the game length longer. IE Level grinding in a FPS, crappy side quests and collectibles, backtracking or even shoehorning MP or open world into games that don't need them.

If a game is short and good you should atleast want to replay it a couple of times, even if it sits on your shelf for a couple of years between playthoughs.

Here's my own rule of thumb for judging how much to pay for a game.

1) Do I think I will get a decent number of hours playtime in it over the length of a couple of years?

2) Do I want to play a sequel or another game from the same dev? (only applies to new games)

3) What is the longterm resale value of the game? (I don't resell straight away but may sell at a later date)

 

[everythingbeeps]

Anyone who puts a dollar amount on each hour spent playing a game is a certifiable lunatic. That's it.

Most games, when I'm done, I have no idea how long I spent playing them. And I don't care. If I enjoyed it, it was worth it. If I didn't, it was my own fault for buying a game impulsively and not doing more research.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Im also one of the crazies who dosent have a strict formulae worked out to descover if the game was value for money or not. As others have posted mine is did I enjoy it enough to consider it a worthwhile purchase if yes then it was value for money if not then it wasnt. Terribly unscientific I know but its got me by so far.

 

[NightmareExpress]

Well, I like to think that I pay for enjoyment.
A lump sum payment for something that I may or may not like.
But fortunately, I know myself well enough to make worthwhile "investments".

I don't think I could put a dollar amount on time spent playing. That's not what the price represents, period.
The price is to pay the people who made the game, the people selling it and the people who made the box and knick-knacks if it happens to be a physical copy. It doesn't matter if the game lasts 200 hours or 8 hours, it will be priced the same at release (40 - 100 depending on where you live and how rich/confident the publisher is).

My preference lies in "good gameplay" + "good length" + "replayability".
If all three are present, awesome. Though if it's short, well...I can definitely deal with that if it's still amazing.

 

[Doom972]

I think $20 should be the maximum price for a video game. I only pre-order and pay full price if it's a game I'm extremely hyped for (there are very few of these).

My pricing:

$20 for a AAA-quality (Doesn't actually have to be AAA) game that lasts more than 50 hours and has good reviews.
$15 for a AAA-quality game that has average/mixed reviews.
$10 for an indie-quality game that has good reviews.
$5 for an indie-quality game that has average/mixed reviews.

There are many exceptions, and if a game has a demo and I really like it I might spend more money on it.

Right, and how are companies supposed to make money with that system? Development costs for AAA games have only been rising, and they will probably rise even further with the release of the next generation of consoles. Sure, Indie games can be $5, but that's only because they don't have the same time and money put into them. Your pricing model is insane.

They should lower their budgets and divide their studios into smaller teams dedicated to different games. If a game needs to sell millions of $60 copies on the first week after release for the game to make a profit - its budget was way too high.

I like to use Legend of Grimrock as a great example of what can be achieved with a team of four people and a very tight budget - It's an indie game with AAA quality. They even made their own engine for the game.

Don't let the AAA publishers have you think that games have to cost $60. That's how they keep getting away with it.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I buy games such that I can hardly NOT get value for money out of them. Being in Australia, this means basically f*** launch prices, but I also tend to know what kind of game I'm getting far in advance. The only thing I think wasn't worth what I paid for it recently was AC3, but that's because I'm used to putting in hundreds of hours (Armored Core, Monster Hunter, definitely Dark Souls, Skyrim, Resistance, etc.) and liking all of them.

 

[likalaruku]

I think games with guaranteed replay value & a really long run time merit higher prices, while games that can be finished in 2 days or less or have no real replay value should have bargain prices. A lot of linear games have the same replay value of books & movies if the characters & story are written well enough, so I decided not to incorporate that as a bargain aspect.

 

[FoolKiller]

All things being equal, I also have a chart to show what game I got the most value out of. Borderlands was the winner last year. I played it an astonishing 184 hours and only paid 23 dollars for it. That boils down to $0.12 an hour. Now I don't buy games based on this, I just like keeping stats. I do find that even short games, if I love them, will drop under a dollar an hour as I will end up replaying it because its fun.

 

[BeerTent]

I look at things this way...
Going out for a meal is $7, and that'll net you entertainment (and noms) for about 45 minutes.
Going out to see a movie'll entertain you for about 2 hours, and that's about $15.
Going out to a bar will entertain you for the night. This'll cost you upwards of $50, depending on your situation and tolerance.

A game? Well, that entertains you for a variable amount of time. All in-all, if a $10 game entertains me for the entirety of the night or two, like Hotline did, then the $10 price-tag was more than worth it. See where I'm going? Even if a $60 game entertained me for a single night, I'd have felt my fill, and have declared it worth it.

Though, that doesn't mean that I won't try to cheat the system, buying cheap multiplayer games while on sale will entertain me for significantly longer. NS2, Anno, ARMA2 mods...

 

[Splitzi]

I'm one of those people that still have a lot of free time to waste, so I'm not really as concerned with game length. For instance, I have replayed both ME2 and ME3 at least five times each. I do not think that other games like Dishonored that I played through once are worth less. Unfortunately I buy games impulsively, hell I bought Medal of Honor: Warfighter (so fuck me right). I don't buy games for game play, I usually buy for story. Once I connect with a character I can't let them go until their story ends. No matter how short a game is, if the story is good and engaging it is worth the $60

Well, I like to think that I pay for enjoyment.
A lump sum payment for something that I may or may not like.
But fortunately, I know myself well enough to make worthwhile "investments".

I don't think I could put a dollar amount on time spent playing. That's not what the price represents, period.
The price is to pay the people who made the game, the people selling it and the people who made the box and knick-knacks if it happens to be a physical copy. It doesn't matter if the game lasts 200 hours or 8 hours, it will be priced the same at release (40 - 100 depending on where you live and how rich/confident the publisher is).

This is perfectly summed up. I really like the idea of a game as an investment in entertainment. For example, the money I spent on ME2/ME3 seems paltry for the experience I got playing it. That investment turned out so well I felt like I came out on top, it was worth much more than the $120 to me. Also, the idea that we aren't paying for the game, we're paying for the developer's time and effort is neat.
A AAA game is always worth $60 until after you play it. Until then, you can't know whether it's worth anything different.

 

[TehCookie]

I don't go for time, I can spend hours on sudoku but I wouldn't say it's extremely entertaining and worth a lot of money. I judge games by how much fun I'll have with them, even if it's a short time of tons of fun or a long time of moderate fun. I'll also pay more if I want the series to continue, like I buy Disgaea games new to show my support for the series (and the entertainment and length is worth it).

 

[Auron]

highly expensive games that last 8 hours like Dishonored make my skin crawl, I don't care that it's advertisment cost them millions, the graphics cannot have been that expensive and while the storytelling was great it didn't really justify the price x time issue. It kinda sucks that they want to charge us 60$ for a really short single player game and then there's likely overpriced DLC to consider too.

(and I want the daud campaign.)

 

[Tom Waits' hat]

Why judge it by the hours? Isn't the point that you like the game or not is more important? You already paid for the game, that money is gone. Even if you put 200 hours into it, it is not going to matter.

I guess I'm more in the camp of as long it's good, it can be a 5 minutes campaign I'd still purchase it.

 

[LetalisK]

I think that, realistically, in this age of high-budget AAA games you'd be foolish to expect a ratio of £1:1hr; I think a far more believable ratio would be £1:2hrs. The way I see it, as long as I've enjoyed the game I'm more than likely not going to come out of it feeling like I wasted my money. Although that said, I pretty much never buy games at full price so make of that what you will.

I think you mean £2:1hrs. Paying £1:2 would be an even better deal than 1:1.

OT: I've always felt that RPG fans have it the best because of this. They always seemed to get so much more play time out of their games in comparison to the average shooter. Even if you took out the padded bullshit in RPGs.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Value for me is almost entirely based on how much I enjoyed my time with the game, not how long that time was. That said. I don't pay $60 for games as the going rate for new games over here on the PC is something like $45 on release and similar on 3ds, the only things I play.

The best hour to money ratio on a game I bought is probably Terraria. £3 for 170 hours and counting with another significant content patch coming next month (2 years from release). It's not one of my top 5 games though, the £10 I spent on 12 hours of bastion is much better spent in my eyes.

 

[Gatx]

I used to zero in on open world/sandbox-y games where you had a lot of freedom to do whatever you liked - Harvest Moon, Saints Row, Mount & Blade, and games with a solid multiplayer offering because I didn't buy that many games and felt those would last me the longest. I generally shunned games like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton because I didn't want to shell out $40 and just play through it one time. Recently I've been going through a few solid single player experiences though, and while I didn't sink 100 hours into the Walking Dead like I did with Skyrim, it was definitely time much better spent.

Still, I usually wait for sales though, I don't like to pay more than $30 for any game.

I don't buy into that "£1 equals an hour or two" thing.
Think about it, if that was the case, CoD would have a 40 hour campaign. Now, although it would make people happier, could you imagine shooting AI for 40 hours? That would get so fucking boring unless we get one of the greatest FPS stories ever made or they shoved a fuck ton of collectables in it.

To me, if I enjoy a game no matter how long it is, I got my value for money, no matter if I paid £5 or £45 for it. I don't agree with this "£1 equals 1 hour" of gameplay thing as if that was the case, I'd never get through any games I own.

CoD gives you more than 60 hours of gameplay if you're into the multiplayer (I don't buy into the "has to stand on it's singleplayer" argument).

 

[Harman]

I think that, realistically, in this age of high-budget AAA games you'd be foolish to expect a ratio of £1:1hr; I think a far more believable ratio would be £1:2hrs. The way I see it, as long as I've enjoyed the game I'm more than likely not going to come out of it feeling like I wasted my money. Although that said, I pretty much never buy games at full price so make of that what you will.

I think you mean £2:1hrs. Paying £1:2 would be an even better deal than 1:1.

OT: I've always felt that RPG fans have it the best because of this. They always seemed to get so much more play time out of their games in comparison to the average shooter. Even if you took out the padded bullshit in RPGs.

Yep, that's what I meant. Goddamnit.

 

[Something Amyss]

Why do we need to break everything down into flowcharts? If I played a game and enjoyed it, it was probably worth the money whether I played for 6 hours or 600.