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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Jimquisition: The Old 'How Long Should Games Be?' Debate

Normchacho on 23 February 2015
sundin13 said:
Normchacho said:

I'm saying hard like rigid, not hard like difficult and why would you do it anyways? Is somebody going to go "aww damn, this game will probably cost me $1.15/hr, better find something else." If you were deciding between a game like The Order and a game like Bloodborne, it should be a wide enough gap that you'd never need to bother with the math, and if it's close enough that you need to do the math, does the value difference really merit any thought?


True...I guess its more of something that is done out of curiosity and as a rough guideline as opposed to something more rigid. Still, I will look up how long a game is and use that to determine if I'm willing to pay the cost of entry by doing the math in my head (as something that just happens...like I said, its really easy math, I barely think about it and I have the ratio).

As for when games are really close together, no it doesn't really matter. Its more of a tier thing, where games between a set of values are worth a certain amount of money to me, but as with every discussion involving length, length isn't the only factor to take into consideration.

That makes sense, there are just people in this thread saying things like "I won't buy a game unless It's going to cost me less than $X/hr" or something along those lines...just seems like either A. b.s. or B. odd.



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ArchangelMadzz on 23 February 2015

People who complain about a game being too short for $60 probably would be mad about a $120 200 hour RPG. The hypocrisy.



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sundin13 on 23 February 2015
ArchangelMadzz said:

People who complain about a game being too short for $60 probably would be mad about a $120 200 hour RPG. The hypocrisy.


Errrrr...I don't think thats hypocrisy. i think thats just being having a ceiling when it comes to how much they are willing to pay. Two completely different factors when it comes to determining worth.



SanAndreasX on 23 February 2015
Normchacho said:
Wait? Do people actually think about the $/HR ratio when debating an entertainment purchase? Like...will you avoid a game/movie if it doesn't meet a certain ratio?


Speaking for myself, I haven't gone to the movies in three years at the prices they want now and will not miss a thing if I never set foot in a movie theater again for the rest of my life. Ten bucks a head for a two-hour movie that's probably shit anyway? Hell no. And as I said before, unless a 3-hour $60 game is the equivalent of one hell of an orgasm, that game is going to get skipped in favor of a 20+ hour game at the same price.



Kuksenkov on 23 February 2015

I think $64 is still too much for a 10 hour long game, as a customer I want my money's worth and thus I usually don't pay $64 unless I'm 99% sure that the game will be fun regardless of length, though the latter makes it feel much more worth it if there is plenty of it.

Only game I've ever payed FULL retail price for, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. 450 hours and some of the funniest times I've had with a videogame. Though I wouldn't mind having payed full for Arc Rise Fantasia, Symphonia 1 and 2, Megaman X Command Mission, Smash, since there's tons of gameplay time. But there's games such as Fragile... Which lasted 18 hours for me, but it was a unique experience that I actually regret buying it for $20...



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binary solo on 23 February 2015
TheGoldenBoy said:
shikamaru317 said:

It's very subjective. They spoke about this on the latest Co-optional Podcast, everybody has their limit. For some people it's $3 per hour of content, for some it's $2 per hour of content, and for others it's $1 per hour of content. Personally it's 1:1 for me, I feel like a game should have at least an hour of content per dollar, though depending on the game that can come from singleplayer alone or singleplayer + multiplayer, and I also factor in rather or not I think I'll replay a game's singleplayer at some point. I have a tight gaming budget and I want to feel like I'm getting my money's worth. Some would argue that I'm taking a quantity of quality approach, but there are plenty of long games that are also very good, so that argument kind of falls on it's face. Fortunately most games are long enough for them to have an hour of content per dollar after they go on sale, so if a game doesn't have that 1:1 ratio at release I usually get it on sale or rent it and still feel like I'm getting my money's worth. 

So should games that are longer than 60 hours (greater than 1:1 ratio) be priced more because they have more content? Something like Skyrim for example?

It is crazy for anyone to suggest a simple formula of hrs:$ for pricing. But it is also very odd for pretty much all games that are released on disc to have a standard price. If a company does it's market research well it will be able to come up with a prediction of optimal price vs sales. Activision deliberately raised the price of CoD a few years back, because it knew fans would pay, and they did in huge numbers. It had nothing to do with hours of gameplay, because every game with competitive multiplayer has a theoretical infinite number of hours of game play. All it was was Activision seeing that the market would buy millions of copies of CoD at an elevate price and that it was worth making and extra $5 per game as a trade off for losing a negligible amount of sales at launch because of the higher price.

But at a diffrerent scale, if your market research says you will sell 500K-1 million at $60, but you will sell 1.5M-2M at $45 what do you do? Do you launch at $60, grab that high price market but risk putting the lower priced market off, and if you take too long to get to $30 then the lower priced market might have moved on ot other games. Or do you launch at $45, and reap the benefits of a higher uptake at launch which gives you the bonus of positive PR on sales. Or does the market look at a $45 price tag and say "the game must be shit for launching at a low price, because all good games launch at $60", and you get rubbish sales anyway because of gamer perception?

I'm pretty much with Jim Sterling on this in terms of his length is largely irrelevant compared to quality of the enetertainment. Whether I agree with him or not about the flaws in the game that lead him to score it 6.5/10 remains to be seen, as I've not played it yet.



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ArchangelMadzz on 24 February 2015
sundin13 said:
ArchangelMadzz said:

People who complain about a game being too short for $60 probably would be mad about a $120 200 hour RPG. The hypocrisy.


Errrrr...I don't think thats hypocrisy. i think thats just being having a ceiling when it comes to how much they are willing to pay. Two completely different factors when it comes to determining worth.


It is, if a game is too short to be worth $60 that means that the length of a game = $ paid. The shorter a game is the less it should be worth, which means the longer a game is the more it's worth as people are using length as a measure of a games worth. 



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TheSting on 24 February 2015

Idk how long is to long for video games. Red Dead was long as fuck but i really liked it.

Wasn't everyone complaining way back about the length of Terminator Salvation being like 4-5 hours?



Nem on 24 February 2015

Well, he says more than that. He says duration shouldnt matter if you are having a good experience ( so for tge reviewer), but duration does matter to the consumer, with good reason. The point beeing that some games should risk different price tags.
There is no doubt that when you buy dragon age or when you buy the order you are getting a very different bang for your buck.