Dollars Per Hour -- Does the length of a game matter and how much are you willing to pay?

[GPX | 1,416]

I think the formula of the value of a game for me goes something like:

(fun factor) x (replayability)

The more fun and the more replayable (you keep coming back to the game in multiple plays), then that’s the true measure of value I feel. 

Duration of the game shouldn’t be a big factor, because:

- how many would pay $1 to play a shitty 1 hour game with average rating of 3/10? (I’m guessing not many)

- how many would $100 to play a totally fun out-of-this-world experience that gaming has to offer with an average rating of 9.8/10? Even if that game only lasts for half an hour? (I’m guessing more than the $1 game in the above example)

[avatar! | 1,948]

3 hours ago, Gentlegamer said:

Many great NES games are 15-30min long if you play straight through, and totally worth their 30-50 dollar price when released, which is something like 70-120 dollars now. Of course, the replay value is often high as well.

Games (and other media) shouldn't measured in duration as a unit a value; that's like buying it at the supermarket and its labeled to contain '6oz of game' or something. A mere qualitative expression usually isn't very informative of its real value (this includes # of levels or megs from old EGM).

The value of the experience is paramount, and length can be a huge detriment to that, but it varies from person to person.

I would argue that firstly what was great in 1984 is not necessarily great today. Contra for instance takes about 1 hour if you're good and know what you're doing. Today, a game like Contra would be lambasted, at least it would if it were $70-120 and one hour in length. No one is saying duration is the only metric to measure games, but it absolutely is a metric. Not many people would purchase a car solely based upon how many miles per gallon it gets, but it's a metric, and likewise so is the length of a game.

[avatar! | 1,948]

37 minutes ago, GPX said:

- how many would $100 to play a totally fun out-of-this-world experience that gaming has to offer with an average rating of 9.8/10? Even if that game only lasts for half an hour? (I’m guessing more than the $1 game in the above example)

Maybe if you're wealthy. I'm willing to bet the average consumer would say "hell NO I'm not paying $100 for a 30-minute game don't care how good it is!"

[fcgamer | 5,020]

What if it were the price per hour of going to a movie? Going out to eat? Visiting an escort? Going to a museum?

All of the above provide different lengths of enjoyment/entertainment, with drastically different prices.

[Rhuno | 163]

9 hours ago, avatar! said:

I would argue that firstly what was great in 1984 is not necessarily great today. Contra for instance takes about 1 hour if you're good and know what you're doing. Today, a game like Contra would be lambasted, at least it would if it were $70-120 and one hour in length. 

I don't know, man. A lot of people are still pretty okay with dropping a couple hundred on Contra.

Greatness endures! 

[RH | 5,246]

13 hours ago, avatar! said:

I would argue that firstly what was great in 1984 is not necessarily great today. Contra for instance takes about 1 hour if you're good and know what you're doing. Today, a game like Contra would be lambasted, at least it would if it were $70-120 and one hour in length. No one is saying duration is the only metric to measure games, but it absolutely is a metric. Not many people would purchase a car solely based upon how many miles per gallon it gets, but it's a metric, and likewise so is the length of a game.

 

3 hours ago, Rhuno said:

I don't know, man. A lot of people are still pretty okay with dropping a couple hundred on Contra.

Greatness endures! 

This still misses the point.  I could gladly drop $30-50 for a retail game that can be beaten in 30-60 minutes IF it has killer replay value or the skill-level requires several playthroughs.

I stand by a point I made a long time ago--back in the 80s, these games had specific limitation like ROM size limits and to add value, companies made the games more difficult.  A game like Contra, made today, would be at least 5x longer, there'd be awards for certain actions, and there'd likely be a speedrun component.  Stages would be simpler, but the same replay value would be built in.

If I owned Contra as a kid, I could have easily seen my self playing for over 30 hours, and probably more like 50-100.  I did borrow it from friends, and played it at their home.  I never beat the game that way, but I did play it several times, for hours.

The metric isn't how long is a game--it's how many hours (or minutes) does it take to get pretty much all there is to get out of a game.  Now, if OPs original Roomba game is like Contra and is tough-as-nails and it takes 30-50 playthroughs for the average gamer to beat, then yes, it's worth the price tag.  However, I read OP as saying it was a 30 minute experimental game and after 30 minutes, you pretty much got all there is to get out of the game.  THAT is not worth it, to me.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,043]

10 hours ago, fcgamer said:

What if it were the price per hour of going to a movie? Going out to eat? Visiting an escort? Going to a museum?

All of the above provide different lengths of enjoyment/entertainment, with drastically different prices.

[Sumez | 3,171]

I always thought measuring a game's worth by hours spent was really damn weird and makes absolutely no sense. Do you play games just to pass the time? Do you really have so much time left over that you feel like you need to spend as little money on it as possible to make sure it's getting used? I for sure don't 

Oh yeah that's another odd one. The cost. I can understand wanting games as cheap as possible. But there's no logic dictating when a game should or shouldn't cost twice as much as another one outside maybe whether you want it twice as much...

[fox | 1,778]

Buys $5 steam game for 6x its price.

Likely never beats or opens game.

Complains about length x cost.

[JamesRobot | 6,049]

I'm way more likely to shell out for a short game that is fun enough to play over and over again, than a 50 to 100 hour game that may still be fun to play but I am generally sick of the thing by the ending.  I'm waiting for a sale or PS+ release to even try most of those.  20 hours is kind of my max for a single playthrough.  Once it gets beyond that my satisfaction seriously starts to wane. 

Now back to Mega Man 2 for the 10,000th playthrough.  

[GPX | 1,416]

19 hours ago, avatar! said:

Maybe if you're wealthy. I'm willing to bet the average consumer would say "hell NO I'm not paying $100 for a 30-minute game don't care how good it is!"

So in my above example, would you rather spend the $1 or the $100?

My biggest actual spend I would say was SF2 back in the early 90s. The game itself lasts for 15-20 minutes on average to beat, but it took me ages to actually master the skills of Ken/Ryu to beat the end boss, and then spending more time to learn the skills of the other characters. Then there was that infinite replayability when playing against other players over several decades.

I guess the point I was making can be summed up by “worth to me isn’t about how long is the game, but how long I’m willing to spend time on it”.

Edited July 13 by GPX

[Khromak | 837]

Laughing at all the people in this thread saying the number of hours played doesn't matter and then immediately talking about how they replay the game, as if those hours don't count.

The question is about dollars per hour of entertainment, not dollars per hour to complete a single playthrough of the game. If you're satisfied with purchasing a game because you've played it 10,000 times for a total of 3,000 hours, you're satisfied with your purchase because you got 3,000 hours of entertainment out of the game. It doesn't matter if the game is 5 minutes or 3,000 hours start-to-finish, you appreciate the game because of the high number of hours you were able to enjoy it for.

I do think the "quality of hours spent" is another metric but IMO this is just another way of saying # of hours because if it's not fun you (theoretically) will stop playing it. The fact that someone plays something for 1000 hours means they were entertained the whole time. If they stopped being entertained on hour 5, they would've stopped.

I believe there are levels of enjoyment, obviously, you can be playing a game just to finish it or can be enjoying things more or less than another game. I also think this is part of the calculation of whether or not you "got your money's worth" but I would argue that the quantity is more important, at least IMO. If I had a REALLY good time playing a game for 3 hours (and being completely finished with it) and then had a good time playing a game for 60 hours (and being completely finished with it), I would say I got a better value in the second one.

[GPX | 1,416]

3 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Laughing at all the people in this thread saying the number of hours played doesn't matter and then immediately talking about how they replay the game, as if those hours don't count.

The question is about dollars per hour of entertainment, not dollars per hour to complete a single playthrough of the game. If you're satisfied with purchasing a game because you've played it 10,000 times for a total of 3,000 hours, you're satisfied with your purchase because you got 3,000 hours of entertainment out of the game. It doesn't matter if the game is 5 minutes or 3,000 hours start-to-finish, you appreciate the game because of the high number of hours you were able to enjoy it for.

I do think the "quality of hours spent" is another metric but IMO this is just another way of saying # of hours because if it's not fun you (theoretically) will stop playing it. The fact that someone plays something for 1000 hours means they were entertained the whole time. If they stopped being entertained on hour 5, they would've stopped.

I believe there are levels of enjoyment, obviously, you can be playing a game just to finish it or can be enjoying things more or less than another game. I also think this is part of the calculation of whether or not you "got your money's worth" but I would argue that the quantity is more important, at least IMO. If I had a REALLY good time playing a game for 3 hours (and being completely finished with it) and then had a good time playing a game for 60 hours (and being completely finished with it), I would say I got a better value in the second one.

It’s an incalculable equation, that’s really the point. 
How long is an infinitely replayable game? How do you know how many hours you’ve spent on a game or how many quick sessions you’ve had with it? 

[Link | 2,887]

52 minutes ago, GPX said:

It’s an incalculable equation, that’s really the point. 
How long is an infinitely replayable game? How do you know how many hours you’ve spent on a game or how many quick sessions you’ve had with it? 

Well, modern consoles do keep track of that for you to check if so desired.

[avatar! | 1,948]

11 hours ago, Rhuno said:

I don't know, man. A lot of people are still pretty okay with dropping a couple hundred on Contra.

Greatness endures! 

Uhhhh, for their collection, definitely! It's a classic and will always be so. But, I don't know anyone that is going to spend $200+ on a used NES game and then say "finally, I can play this!" when you know, there's the rom files floating about everywhere and you can easily purchase the Contra Collection for a fraction of the price!

[Sumez | 3,171]

On 7/13/2024 at 11:04 PM, Khromak said:

Laughing at all the people in this thread saying the number of hours played doesn't matter and then immediately talking about how they replay the game, as if those hours don't count.

It has nothing to do with the amount of hours though.

People replay games they enjoy because the games are so enjoyable. Not to get more hours out of them.

Ultimately that's the only thing that matters - how much fun you had.

[Link | 2,887]

2 hours ago, Sumez said:

People replay games they enjoy because the games are so enjoyable. Not to get more hours out of them.

Ultimately that's the only thing that matters - how much fun you had.

Can fun not be measured in hours?

[T-Pac | 8,148]

I'm almost inclined to say I'd spend MORE money on a short game - even one with little to no replay value. 

Time is precious - and I'd love to fill mine with a large amount of great, short, memorable experiences as opposed to a smaller amount of mediocre, drawn-out ones (at least as far as video games are concerned).

When I was younger I loved spending my time on endless hours of stuff like Animal Crossing, though. Maybe I'll appreciate that approach again someday - but certainly not today.

[T-Pac]

[Rhuno | 163]

On 7/13/2024 at 5:04 PM, Khromak said:

Laughing at all the people in this thread saying the number of hours played doesn't matter and then immediately talking about how they replay the game, as if those hours don't count.

The OP never said you can't replay the game. The question was just: 

"Do you have a dollars per hour value in the back of your mind for games you intend to play?"

Only speaking for myself, but that's not something I take into consideration. If it's a great game, and "fabulously fun" as suggested in the initial post, of course I'd play it again.

A game that you never want to play again sounds like it's not a good game to begin with.

If you're going for some theoretical question as a thought exercise, that's fine, but that's not what was asked. It's not something that would ever play out in reality. If I buy a game I really enjoy, I'm not going to limit myself to a single play session.

[avatar! | 1,948]

11 minutes ago, Rhuno said:

A game that you never want to play again sounds like it's not a good game to begin with.

Actually I would have to disagree with that -- Last game I played that I really enjoyed was Stray. It was unique, memorable, and short at around 5 hours. Definitely worth the $30 or some dollars it cost. But, I just don't have any desire to play it again. Just none. Again, truly a fine game, but I don't see myself playing it again not in the near nor far future

[Tabonga | 2,533]

 the quality of the game is more important than length - but a good long game is always appealing to me.  Being retired means I have lots of free time - I recently completed some lengthy ones like Sea of Stars and Unicorn Overlord.  I an well into Rainbow Moon - somewhere well north of 200 hours.

I also like the idea of there being a plus version on replay - the Mercenaries series by Rideon is a great example of this - they have a system that allows transfer of skills/attributes to weapons/armor etc. that works great on replays.  

[Rhuno | 163]

47 minutes ago, avatar! said:

Actually I would have to disagree with that -- Last game I played that I really enjoyed was Stray. It was unique, memorable, and short at around 5 hours. Definitely worth the $30 or some dollars it cost. But, I just don't have any desire to play it again. Just none. Again, truly a fine game, but I don't see myself playing it again not in the near nor far future

There are exceptions to every rule, but in general, I don't find myself finishing a great game and saying "Wow, that was fun! I never want to play this again!"

Also, you're allowed to disagree with me. 

[Sumez | 3,171]

8 hours ago, Link said:

Can fun not be measured in hours?

I'm not sure how that even makes sense honestly  

[GPX | 1,416]

On 7/14/2024 at 7:32 AM, Link said:

Well, modern consoles do keep track of that for you to check if so desired.

We’re talking about general games though, and a lot on here have made reference to the retro stuff, so most of the gaming we’ve done have unknown amount of time spent on X, Y and Z games that we love/loved. 

The other issue is say we’ve spent a total of 20 hours on a game as of today, and there is still hunger to play more,  how do we know how many more hours will be spent to put it in a quantifiable equation? The total amount of time spent playing into the future is a deadset unknown number of hours!

[GPX | 1,416]

On 7/15/2024 at 9:49 AM, T-Pac said:

I'm almost inclined to say I'd spend MORE money on a short game - even one with little to no replay value. 

Time is precious - and I'd love to fill mine with a large amount of great, short, memorable experiences as opposed to a smaller amount of mediocre, drawn-out ones (at least as far as video games are concerned).

When I was younger I loved spending my time on endless hours of stuff like Animal Crossing, though. Maybe I'll appreciate that approach again someday - but certainly not today.

[T-Pac]

Just expanding on this, I think the sweet spot for the length of a game is dependent more on its genre, and what genre we favor more as a gamer.

Currently I don’t have the attention span to play anything more than 1 hour in a session. So games like Geometry Wars or Defensive Grid hits my gaming palate very well. For a great RPG with 80 hours of excellent content has no real meaning to me personally in this current phase that I’m in.

Edited July 17 by GPX