How would you put a price on a videogame?

[archer9234]

Shadow1980 said:

archer9234 said:

Why not? The people who build the game, give the Q&A team logs. Then you average out the time. That's how people do it now. You just then make a universal pricing scheme. Like when they give the games rating. For hitting certain things. It acutally help people. The game shows up as 50$. Oh it's 10 hours. I have that time to kill.

There's just too many variables to take into account. Will average playthrough times determined during internal testing be representative of that of the general public?

If that's not the case now. Then why are they in reviews? People see a review of someone beating it. Lists how long. And then accept the time. We already do it.

If a game has multiple difficulty levels, do they use the average playthrough time for Easy, Normal, or Hard?  

Normal means the normal choice. If the other two didn't exsist. You'd use just that. Or are you saying no game has a default.

Does the game's genre come into play? After all, sports and racings games don't really have a story mode. As another example, for fighting games would completion time be determined by time to beat the story mode with all characters or just a single character?

I already answered that with being determined on the amount of content in those games. Roster size (fighters), comparible items that are normal to the series (Sims).  As for fighters, racers etc. Your primary goal is to unlock the cars/parts, or characters. I'd count that as the games time. 

What about MMOs and other games with no fixed ending?   

They have an ending. When the scripted story elements ends. The released length of the game determins. Not the future DLC.

Then there's open-world games, which offer but don't usually make mandatory a bunch of sidequests and the like.

You mean like Minecraft? Or GTA? They still have endings. You have a end goal. Same with Sim City. Or The Sims. It be harder to judge sure. But there is still a end point of the games. And these games cost $60 anyway. Minus Minecraft. Since it was a indie game. And would have to be based on what it had at public launch. Not now.

Speaking of which, do completion times include 100% completion or just simply reaching the end of the game or somewhere inbetween, and what about speedrunners who try to sequence-break?

I said ignoring sidequests. So that means no 100% completion. And speedruns are made up by people. Because then you'd count collecting 700 Pokemon, over beating the Pokemon League, as the real goal. Or Gltiching threw the floor, in Metroid.

How does multiplayer fit into the mix? People can invest dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours into playing online. Do we charge more for MP, and if so does it rate on number of maps, number of game modes, or some other metric?  

We don't any more or less account MP now anyway. Or COD would be worth $10,000. And if you want to talk about MP only games. Your goal is still to unlock everything, in the game. That would be the time.

Then there's replay value. Some people may play a shorter game more regularly than a much longer game because of the lower time investment, but others may simply may prefer to play a longer game over and over. Finally, there's often a massive disparity in completion times. Some single-player games can be beaten in 8-10 hours, while some offer many tens of hours of gameplay including sidequests and other extras.  

Again, I said not counting sidequests. The main story only. And persons personal replayablity isn't counted. Just like a person speed running a game wouldn't be. It's a PERSONAL choice to do these things. If a person wants to hunt down glitches. That adds hundreds of hours of playtime. It's their choice. Not the developers.

If we meter them at, say, $2/hour, a game like New Super Mario Bros. U might go for only $15-20, while a game like Skyrim would go for well over $100. Developers would be encouraged to pad the length of certain kinds of games to keep them from nearly being a giveaway while cutting material from others so the game could be released at a viable price point for the average gamer.

They do that now, anyway. Your point? It still doesn't invalidate a preset universal pricing scheme, based on time. People freely bitch that this game wastes your time, in certain places. And is really not this long. Bayonetta, as an example. Intentionally put in certain shit checkpoints, to pad out the ending. While the beginning and middle don't have this problem.