When was a game's price worth it to you?

apotheotic, 7 months ago

I don’t consider my gaming in terms of price/time because that just encourages buying games that suck away my time.

My value for gaming is less of a simple equation, but my examples of games that are “undoubtedly worth the price” are going to consist a lot more of shorter games that are absolutely spectacular for their shorter playtime with a £30ish price tag.

Think:

• Outer Wilds
• Tunic
• Hollow Knight
• Journey
• The Witness
• Portal (1&2)
• Celeste
• Undertale
• To The Moon
• Ori and the Blind Forest/Will o the Wisps
• The Witcher 3

I have no strict criteria for this, but I can say I’ve had far, far more than my money’s worth from those games in terms of the value they brought to my life.

If you do want to look purely at the number of hours you’ll get out of a game vs its price, look no further than Guild Wars 2. You can get all the content for under £100 I beoieve, and I’ve spent 6000+ wonderful hours playing it. It’s not the same kind of enjoyment though.

donuts, 7 months ago

I don’t consider my gaming in terms of price/time because that just encourages buying games that suck away my time.

So true and well said.

I love playing a 70 hour From Software game or a 50 hour JRPG as much as the next guy. But some of my favorite games of all time are old classics like Super Mario World or Zelda: OoT, which can probably be completed in a single session or two if you know what you're doing. And there have been some truly great, but short, indie games over the years.

Then there are also sim games and arcade/fighting games that had great reliability and you can get many hours out of if you like them.

In the end, as long as the game is fun and satisfying, I don't care how long it lasts.

CleoTheWizard, 7 months ago

I think people don’t often factor in that time in a game is just as much or more a cost than money is.

If I make it super nerdy, my equation for games would be more like fun / (money cost + time cost). But really I don’t actively quantify these things, I just have a sense of it.

The other thing id say is that games recently are being judged more on how they respect the players time. The max game money cost is locked in at $70, likely for a long time. So the thing being optimized right now is the fun/time part. Not respecting the players time is one of the worst crimes a game can commit in my opinion.

That’s what I’m hearing about games like Starfield and it’s always been a criticism for games like assassins creed. Like they’re fun games, but the time investment is far too large for what they offer.

The reason it doesn’t apply to sim games or city builders is because you are largely in control of how best your time is spent. That’s why open world games used to rule Steam for a long time and still somewhat do.

Anyways that’s my rant.

explore_broaden, 7 months ago

Factorio is probably one of the best deals I’ve gotten; I paid $30 and at this point I’ve played it for at least 200 hours because I find it such a fun game.

berg, 7 months ago

What are you doing here? It’s not growing now is it? You see, it has to grow! The factory MUST grow!

OutlierBlue, 7 months ago

200 hours

Just a beginner, huh?

explore_broaden, 7 months ago

It’s true, you caught me

newtraditionalists, 7 months ago

I pay $20 to watch a mediocre rehashed superhero movie for 2 hours. I can absolutely pay $60 or $70 for something that gives me 10 hours of entertainment. And most games I pickup give me way more than 10 hours. So I find gaming to be worth it pretty much all the time.

berg, 7 months ago

That’s pretty much my look on things as well! I’ve felt like the gaming community generally demands more out of a game than they’d a movie.

newtraditionalists, 7 months ago

Completely agree. They demand more than most communities, while enjoying one of the few products that has dodged inflation in a huge way. I remember paying $60 for games in 2000. 20+ years later, and I’m supposed to be livid that most are still $60. The amount of whining is so crazy it’s embarrassing.

tal, 7 months ago

Welll…it depends. If you count DLC, there are games that have greatly outpaced inflation.

The Sims 4 costs nothing for the “base game”, but with all DLC – and that is still coming out – it’s presently about $1,100.

Another factor is that in many cases, the market has expanded. Like, in 1983, it wasn’t that common to see adults in the US playing video games. I am pretty sure that in a lot of countries, basically nobody was playing video games in 1983. in 2023, 40 years later, the situation is very different. The costs of making a video game are almost entirely fixed costs, separate from how many copies you sell.

So…if there is a game out that that many, many other people want to play, it’s going to sell a lot more copies.

I don’t really see the point in getting upset about a price, though – I agree with you on that. I mean, unless the game was misrepresented to you…it’s a competitive market out there. Either it’s worth it to you or it’s not, and if it’s not, then play something else. If someone is determinedly charging some very high price for a game in a genre, and a lot of people want to play that genre and it can be made profitably at a lower price, some other developer is probably going to show up sooner or later and add a competitor to the mix.

newtraditionalists, 7 months ago

Good points made for sure!

Rentlar, 6 months ago

$5/hr of playtime to account for hours I may enjoy and not enjoy as much. That puts it on par with a cheap night out.

My favourite games are $0.02-$0.50/hour of play time.

Jinxyface, 6 months ago

WHenever I bouoght a game I suppose

MutatedBass, 6 months ago

Spelunky 2 - $20. One of my all time favorites here. Over 200 hours in, don’t regret any of them. I could easily double my playtime without seeing everything.

Dark Souls 1 - $30(?). Back in my teen years on the 360 I bought Dark Souls without knowing anything about it. I played through it with a buddy, passing the controller on death, and we had a blast. That first run transcends money for me, I would pay anything to keep that memory. Recently that same buddy and I replayed the game together and are now reworking our way through the series.

Racingmaybe - $3. This game is amazing. It’s a turn based drag racing game with an upgrade system. This is the best driving game I have ever played, far and away. It’s a hobby project by a solo developer. At it’s $3 price point this game is well worth the money. Seriously, if you’re reading this, buy it. Or drop your Steam name and I will gift it to you.

Mount & Blade: Warband - $20. This game is really starting to show its age but I still love it. Endless mod potential gives it tons of replayability.

I could go on forever but these ones came to mind first.

mojo, 6 months ago

$70 for Zelda TOTK, $60 of Baldurs Gate 3, $20 for Factorio. All these games were 100% worth the money.

Coskii, 6 months ago

I will buy a game when:

The gameplay is up my alley, or the experience is worth the time invested into it.

And

The final cost of the game after dlc is equal to or less than 1/10th the cost of my PC. Usually aim for 1/20th if I’m iffy about the gameplay.

lemillionsocks, 6 months ago

Honestly its hard to say for me. Generally I dont usually pay full price for games unless its a franchise I know I know I really enjoy and the general critical and user reviews confirm it isnt a dud. I usually dont find myself unhappy with my game purchases though. If Im usure about something I wait for a sale.

Lojcs, 6 months ago

Did a quick calculation and found that a 60$ game needs to be 35hrs to break even with movie prices edit: *where I live

Although I rarely think about game length when buying games. I find that what my gut says is a justified price is far more influenced by a game’s reputation/store page/reviews/what kid of game I feel like playing at the moment. What I’m pricing is my perception of an experience, not an amount of enjoyment for an amount of time. After I buy a game then unless it’s unexpectedly bad or broken I don’t really think about whether it was worth the price. Edit: In fact for longer games I find myself thinking if it was worth the time more.

I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t buy games with a hype wave behind them, so the “perception of experience” is closer to the actual experience than if you apply the same to new releases.

For game length, I find that left to my own devices I like when games are 10-20 hrs in length. For longer games I prefer when there’s a driving story that I can strive for, and even then it gets boring around the 30-40 hr mark. Some open ended games captivate me for 100+ hours but that’s not my expectation from a game.

I see that people are shouting out games in the comments, so I’ll add one. Cyber Hook is a fantastic runner/platformer game. It’s really fun (especially the beginning and dlc) and it’s pretty cheap. It’s not very long especially if you don’t bother getting good times in levels but the experience alone is worth it. Although, for some reason it requires internet connection for game progression so take that into account when buying too.

lemillionsocks, 6 months ago

Did a quick calculation and found that a 60$ game needs to be 35hrs to break even with movie prices edit: *where I live

How much do tickets cost where you live? Even using older $10 per seat prices and an average run time of 2 hours I come down to $5/hr. Also probably not just going out to a theater alone so if you’re bringing a date or your family, or even going with friends for a collective experience that balloons quite a bit.

Lojcs, 6 months ago

Saw oppenheimer the other day, it was 145₺ ($5) for 3hrs. For other movies the price seems proportional. Tbh triple A games typically cost $30-40 here so the break even comes down to 20-25 hrs.

I had only considered the price for my seat as friends pay for their seats. Ofc this is also not considering popcorn etc, those increase the cost quite a bit.

amju_wolf, 7 months ago

Some of my most favorite games were fairly short experiences.

In fact I value when a game doesn’t waste my time and is 100% fun, great content without fillers and stuff to just give you FOMO that ends up being boring and underwhelming when you actually try to do it. Even worse when you can’t tell what is and isn’t the filler.

Like, I’ve bought Outer Wilds for maybe 20€ or so and it is probably my favorite game of all time. I wouldn’t have bought it for 60€ (and it’s especially a hard sell because you can’t really entice anyone to play it without spoiling some part of the game to them which really sucks; like, I’d argue even the Steam description already spoils some of the magic). But it would be 100% worth it even if I 100% the game after maybe 10 hours (and there is no way to replay it, unfortunately).

Similarly, I’ve gotten A Short Hike for free with a Humble Bundle subscription (and not like free to own as part of the monthly bundle but just free in their “trove”) and I also completely loved it - was maybe 5 hours.

Meanwhile I played, say, Cyberpunk 2077 for free, finished it, and I am still kinda disappointed? Like there was good stuff in the game but I’m really glad I didn’t pay for it - it’s enough that I paid by putting the time in it. It left me with a feeling of wasted potential and like “surely there has to be something more” and then I finished the game and there wasn’t more. It’s so hard to explain… Like yeah, I enjoyed many hours of it, I think. But in the end it doesn’t feel good overall.

So yeah, these are the extremes, but I really don’t think you can put value on a game like that. Games by their very nature vary a lot and length isn’t (or shouldn’t) really be the main criteria. And enjoyment varies a lot as well. It can be so good that a few hours of it is enough, and it can be so mild that it’s not really worth playing. Oh and that also completely ignores the fact that some games are made to be played for hundreds of hours by design (Factorio, Rimworld), while purely story games can hardly be stretched for dozens of hours and still be fun/interesting. And games with balanced narrative and gameplay can reach a few dozen hours but even for the larger ones going 50-100 hours is usually a stretch.

BmeBenji, 7 months ago

I can’t say I have any sort of standard way to gauge that. Once the money is spent, I don’t really think about it anymore and yeah that’s probably a result of my monetary privilege, but it’s my honest answer to your question. It’s almost impossible to determine about the monetary value of an experience of a piece of art.

Faydaikin, 7 months ago

Quite a few times.

BG3 already payed itself off in the first couple of weeks. Subnautica is another. And although I loathe to admit it, I do have about 2000 hours in Dead By Daylight.

Hell, I’ve bought and re-bought the original two Fallout games several times back in the 90’s as I wore out the CD’s over the years. And there plenty of games in between them and the newest that were absolutely worth it. Some aren’t even playable anymore.

And since I got into the Indie scene the numbers went up.

So yeah, quite a few games all in all.

Sivick314, 7 months ago

@berg honestly, when it tells me a good story, either through traditional storytelling or when it's through my own emergent gameplay.

Games that aren't going to do that aren't even worth downloading for free.

MangoKangaroo, 7 months ago

I think it definitely depends on the sort of game. I don’t mind paying AAA pricing for a game that actually feels like the studio gave a rat’s ass about providing good value. BG3, for example, was very much worth what I paid for it even just with the ~100 hours I got out of my first playthrough.

Of course, there have also been value kings that I’m not sure will ever be beaten for me in terms of price to hours played. Minecraft and Terraria are good examples here. I got Minecraft during either late Infdev or early Alpha, and so I paid fuck all compared to the current price. Considering I’ve probably put tens of thousands of hours into that shitshow in the over 13 years that I’ve played it, and I’d say it’s more than been worth it. The same goes for Terraria. At 1.5k hours of playtime and counting, it’d’ve been worth it to me even at far more than the $10 price tag that I (probably) got it at way back when.

So tl;dr, I’d say that if a game is truly well-made and enjoyable, then I don’t mind paying whatever the devs need to charge to keep their doors open. Bonus points if I can purchase the game DRM-free somehow.