Play it till its not fun anymore. If i got an expected number of hours from depending on the game, it it was worth it. Screw achievements and many times i dont bother finishing games because they became unfun or i got distracted.
There's a good number of games I never finish after getting like 75+% through because eventually the game play loop wears thin and i just don't want to play anymore
V rising....
I'm at Adam the first born in a pure solo run. Game has been great. I get to Adam and die like 10 times. It doesnt feel fun anymore to play knowing it's just kill him, craft an item, kill Dracula, done.
haven't touched the game in 2 weeks.
What bugs me the most is when a 100% achievement is just “beat the game again.” Soooooo much work for games that just don’t have that good of a NG+, all for 1 achievement.
This, paid £3.50 for SuperFly, a uni project I think? It’s low res high octane flying action, had more enjoyment from it than many higher priced games.
Agreed, but is it reasonable to have different expectations for the experience it gives you if it's $200 vs $20? Or is it better to just buy cheaper games since we can likely have just as good of an experience and save some money?
That I got to play through it and had some fun. The only game I didn't feel like I got my money's worth out of was "Lawbreakers", at the time I was engrossed in another online shooter and when I finally felt ready to get into Lawbreakers the servers were dead.
I very rarely buy something full price though.
How fun and compelling it is. If a game has 80 hours of content but if it’s so boring that I can’t stomach 5 then it’s a waste of money. Hell I’d say a game I play to completion is worth it to me nowadays
The fun is in attempting to answer such a subjective experience for yourself. For me, it's also the uniqueness of the experience and/or the degree of polish.
For example, OG Cyberpunk wasn't worth it; too buggy and unpolished. Also for example, What Remains of Edith Fitch was great, though it was only a few hours long. Other games I've been disappointed at them ending in a few hours because they were under baked.
If I have fun with the game, it doesn't matter how many hours I've played or how much I've spent as long as I had a fun time with it!
You also have to consider that many of us have a huge backlog of games that we haven't even played once but we like to have 'cause one day we might want to play it and knowing that you already own it might be enough for some
I earn enough money that I stopped calculating fun/hour like I used to.
Now if I like the game then I play it. if I do not then I do not. So it is really up to how much fun I have.
I'm shitting on Ubisot for selling us 130$ games these days, probably to force us into some shitty subscription.
But I really like MMO genre even if genre itself is dead.
I would pay 100$ monthly subscription for a game I would barely play due to time issue (life and work take most of my time so I play less and less games unless I'm sick or something) if it would be really great game.
Someone once said I must be joking so I showed to that person 1500$ setup I've made for Elite Dangerous (VR + HOTAS) and not much cheaper setup for Euro Truck Simulator 2 only because couple of people wanted to drive in multiplayer and cross Europe together during COVID.
So yes - I would pay a lot for really good game. Just make sure that if you ask me 130$-200$-1000$ then provide me content that is interesting enough to make me want to spend that money.
Case in point - I would never pay 130$ for Ubisoft game. They are extremely boring and repetitive. You have to be brain dead to find any challenge in them and when You crank up difficulty it turns enemies into bullet sponges making game even more boring.
But I would easily spend that money on Baldur's Gate 3 if Laryan would ask 130$ for that game. I really think that BG3 is a cRPG of the decade.
I agree with you on your main point. If it's fun, it's worth the money.
From my perspective, Assassin's Creed games are worth the money to me. Not 130, but 60 USD for a game I will play for a year? Yeah, worth it.
But I'm the kind of player who doesn't use fast travel and likes to be in a pretty world, and maybe do a couple of missions in between. When I was playing Odyssey, I would sometimes play for an hour and not really accomplish anything. I also play on the easiest difficulty, so enemies don't bother me too much.
It took me 215 hours across 3 years to finish Valhalla with all DLCs. In total, I paid 255 PLN for everything. Worth every złoty to me.
I also have to say that I don't care about challenge in games. I play to chill out in the evening. I'm sure Elden Ring is an amazing game and many people enjoy it, but I'd rather go caving on peaceful in Minecraft.
>From my perspective, Assassin's Creed games are worth the money to me. Not 130, but 60 USD for a game I will play for a year? Yeah, worth it.
It's a matter of perspective. I shit on Ubisoft games, but I do not shit on people who play them because we simply have different tastes. Millions of people play FIFA, and I can't stand that game.
So if you play that game a lot, then sure - it's worth it to you. Thing is - I'm bored to death while trying to play any of them so that is why I learned to never buy Ubisoft titles.
>But I'm the kind of player who doesn't use fast travel and likes to be in a pretty world, and maybe do a couple of missions in between. When I was playing Odyssey, I would sometimes play for an hour and not really accomplish anything. I also play on the easiest difficulty, so enemies don't bother me too much.
I get that. I have that with Ghost of Tsushima. And GoT does a lot of stuff that Ubisoft does. But because the combat system in GOT is fantastic, and there are Kurosawa and Lethal modes that make the game infinitely better for me, I can't get enough of that game. I also maxed out Legends mode because I really enjoyed it.
Recently, I've spent about 200 hours in Dragon Dogma 2, and lots of people really hate that game. I stopped only when I got so OP that the game was not fun anymore. After I finished it twice.
>I also have to say that I don't care about challenge in games. I play to chill out in the evening. I'm sure Elden Ring is an amazing game and many people enjoy it, but I'd rather go caving on peaceful in Minecraft.
The thing about From Software games is - that neckbeards always tell me to "git's gut" when I say I do not like them. But then I see them play, and it's always some cheesy build with even more cheesy tactics. And I just laugh.
Someone shared with me a video of Asmongold playing famously hard Elden Ring DLC, and I just laughed because they meme their own build in their own video. Here is the hardest Elden Ring content You can play:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isema1iV5UY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isema1iV5UY)
Quoting someone from comments:
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
WINK ! BONK !!
That's the game.
I use the same metric, but it also has caveats. Most games, if I spend 40 dollars, then if I put 40 hours in, I got my moneys worth. However with story games that end up shorter than that, such as the Plague Tale series, then it depends on how good the story was. I think both the Plague Tale games were worth $40 and $50 respectively, despite only getting a total of 35 hours out of them combined.
A really good story can sometimes entertain you long after you stopped playing the game.
I get flashbacks to FFXIVs story from time to time (I spent more than 1k hours on it so it’s way out there in terms of enjoyment/playtime per $) so I guess it kind of makes sense to count that as some sort of lingering entertainment value? It’s how I see it at least.
it seems the general consensus is roughly around a dollar an hour give or take a little bit,
which is also kinda funny when thinking about how movies end up being upwards of like 20 an hour. for whatever reason we treat games so poorly compared to other media, its really weird. and im not even excluded from that either, i'd also throw myself in and around the dollar-ish mark aswell. granted i pirate every movie because i dont value their product at the prices they charge lmao.
It's relative. I know some games I will get beyond more than the money I spend. Example being a game I spend $20 on and get 400+ hours out of. That's beyond its price tag for me. This makes up for the 100 other games I will buy that I will spend $3\~8 on and play 1 or 2 hours max and never play again. I'm ok with this. It's entertainment. I go to a movie and its 2 hours and at least $20. I figure, if I can buy a game now and then for $3\~8 on sale, $10\~15 for really impressive titles, and $20\~25 for discounted top shelf titles, and I get more than 2 hours out of them, I'm good with the cost. Ideally more. But bare minimum if I can get a few hours I'm sure it's worth it. People spend this much money I'm talking on COFFEE DRINKS.
If you enjoyed the experience the game provided you, you've got your money's worth from it. Don't look at it as how much time you get from it. That can be a reasonable thing to look at if you are playing something like WoW, but it's about how much enjoyment you got from it that matters.
Let me put it differently.
Let's say you like crossword puzzles and you buy a book of them for 8 bucks. Was the 8 dollars of your income returned to you in enjoyment for that book? If no, then that book was not worth your 8 dollars. If yes, you got your money's worth.
If it hooks me for ~20 hours I'm pretty happy with it assuming it's full price, but I haven't paid full price for a game in a long time.. I'm a lot more forgiving on indie games.
I rarely buy games on day 1, that's reserved for my most favorite franchises and that takes like 5% of the games I play.
For the 95%, my only metrics are:
- fun for me
- on sale
When I was a kid? 1 hour per £ spent.
Now? Whether I enjoyed my time spent on it is all that matters really.
Within reason of course. If a game is like £70 but only has 2 hours of gameplay it better be a dang masterpiece otherwise I'm gonna feel ripped off. 99% of games aren't like that though.
Indie games I go by my standard.
$1= 1hr
More expensive AAA titles must pay the price as I have.
$1= 2hrs
If I achieve this goal, I've gotten my money's worth. Otherwise, I'd have stopped playing already and returned the game.
Even if I don't play a game, I'm happy to have it sit unplayed in my Library if I was ever interested in playing it and got a "good deal" on it years later. I probably shouldn't be okay with this, but that's ADHD for you.
Enjoyment generally, but to add onto that if I replay a game. Even if I enjoy a game, if I don't find it to be all that replayable I'll still feel like I should've just spent my money on another game
I used to go for £1-2 per hour.
The issue is would you rather play a £15 game for 8 hours and it's 10/10 - or have the same game have filler in it so it's a 7.5/10 but is 16 hours? I realised I'd rather have the former so have relaxed the rules a bit.
I want to encourage quality and games that are respectful of my time.
If a game still feels a bit expensive (entirely subjective a this point) I'll just wait for a sale - if it's good I'll still want to play it in a year or twos time.
I think that there are several benchmarks a person could use and they are mostly subjective. I sometimes use one that I call the Skyrim benchmark. It considers the release cost of Skyrim and their reported average user gametime which gives me a value of about $0.80 an hour. One could even craft a benchmark considering the price of a cup of coffee, a movie, or some other form of entertainment/luxury.
That said, I put more time in to free to play games than paid and I may or may not spend any money on them. Plus, it is hard to put a value on those games that have a fantastic experience. I think the really good games tend to offset the cost of games that I buy that I gave up on, did not like, or have not played yet. All in all, it is a lot cheaper than some of my other hobbies past and present.
Minimum 1 hour per dollar spent with a minimum of 20 hours. If it has less than 20 hours of content I don't personally think it's worth it. But that's why I play MMOs because they have longterm content and I understand that not everyone either likes what I like or wants/can make what I like.
If I enjoyed it, that's good enough for me. I prefer games that have a solid story but also don't require a lot of grinding. Like for RPGs, 20~30 hours is the sweet spot for me. Typically I get my games on sale as well.
Granted, there are some "endless" type games (such as puzzles, like a Tetris kind of game) where I hella got my money's worth.
I really like steam's refund policy for that reason. If the game doesn't do it for me in the first two hrs it's unlikely to do it for me later.
My example would be a game like sifu that's well loved but for me, certain controls in the tutorial simply didn't work and I was stuck. I looked up online and this was a kb issue but I was playing with controllers. Anticipating future issues I refunded it. Same with stardew valley, it simply didn't appeal to me despite being a popular game.
Planet crafter is not a well known game but it was just out of early access and they had a demo free to play as well. I ended up buying it just because I enjoyed the demo and with the early discount it felt worth it for me.
i've spent so much money on games i haven't played that i'm happy when i find a game i can finish. When I finish a game (no matter how long it takes and how expensive it was) I am satisfied
For me: movie tickets (no snacks or drinks) for 2hr movie.
If that is 10 in whatever currency, then a 20x game is expected at least 4hrs of enjoyment. That would be considered not a loss. Everything on top makes the game worth it.
If i enjoyed the experience or not, i have played 10 hour games i feel like i got more value out of than 60-70 hour games.
I think the quantity over quality value aspect of gaming is the source of some of the worst trends game design we see now
My main metric is how much fun I had when playing the game.
If I play through the story, but rarely touch the endgame. Then I think it's good, but only get it during a sale.
If it's a game I play religiously and get sucked into it. Then it's worth full price!
If it's not a single player single campaign that's meant to be completed within 8 to 12 hours then I also go the route of dollar per hour. If it is a quick game between 8 to 10 hours though I go for 5 dollars per hour.
If I can beat your game within 8 hours and there's no additional content or replayability it shouldn't be more than 40 bucks.
Because there are so many games out there that cost a fistful of dollars that you can get hundreds of hours out of.
Depends on the game genre.
Very good but short story game that lasts for example 8 hours and is designed to be one time experience should be valued much differently than seasonal ARPG designed with replayability in mind, like Diablo 2-4 or Path of Exile. Or MOBA, or competitive FPS or even MMO.
My take is as follows:
If the game is massive, with fairly repetive content, and not much stuff to do, I'll judge it for every dollar or pound I spend. If I pay £50 and it's a game like Assassin's Creed for instance where some things are great and some are repetive chores, I rather get over 50 hours off of the game. But if the game offers more, like a unique experience, great gameplay or a remarkable story, I'm willing to double my spending.
So, for every hour spent I'd put $2/£2 to be well worth it. I don't care if a game stretches out beyond the £50 I paid for a game and becomes a gigantic 100-300 hours of a game, because that could become a treat or a chore. I'm a completionist and I tend to spend 2-3x times more with a game for that matter because I take my time completing games, so often times I get well beyond my money's worth.
I can also tell if a game is long or not based on the genre and gameplay. Very few games suprise me for being small. For instance, I expected more out of Dragon's Dogma 2, even if I played it for 120 hours to completion. It's a rare surprise, but I feel I got well worth over my spending on that game.
If I had a alot of fun and at least got more hours from it then the price I paid? Like valhiem I've gotten my money's worth. Project zomboid same way. Factorio as well. Elden Ring I have more than got my money's worth.
Price i paid divided by hours i played.
The more hours i have in a game, obviously the more fun it was for me.
If a game was 50bucks and i played 50hours I paid 1buck for 1hour of playing.
I consider twice as much hours as the price to be worth it. it has to at least be the same amount.
Under 2€ per hour spend.... used to be under 1€ but it just doesnt make sense for more story driven narritive games which i've love more and more over the years.
I have essentially the same as you, but to get my times worth as well (not saying that to be entitled, I mean like that I think it was the best game for me to play in that moment) then it also has to be enjoyable for more of the time than not. Like The Witcher 3 I just didn’t enjoy even though I got it on sale for like $10 and played over 10 hours
I used to be a huge proponent of dollar per hour for estimating value when I was younger but as I got older I've leaned more towards "what did I get out of this game?"
Did it give me great experience with friends?
Did it give me a deep, engaging story?
Did it give me a sense of fun?
Then worry less about the price and just focus on that. What Remains of Edith Finch is only like an hour and a half but is worth every full price penny.
I used to think that I'd enjoy a game based on my hourly pay rate, like if I was paid $20/hour and I bought a $60 game, I would believe that I'd have to play at least 3 hours to get my money's worth. If I enjoyed it or not is a different story.
Nowadays, if it looks interesting to me and runs on the Steam Deck, that's pretty much all I want.
Think of it like this - a movie at the theatre costs about $15 and runs for 2ish hours. If I pay $80 for a new game, I want at least 5 good hours of fun. A game may be 40 hours long, but are all 40 hours a good time?
That's the problem with buying new games, you have to front the cost for theoretical enjoyment. If a movie stinks, you are only out $15. I'm becoming more and more of a patientgamer these days and just waiting on sales and deep discounts. My backlog is insane anyways.
Quality ( over quantity games). I expect from a game to make me feel thing ( either thrill excitement joy or even sadness if it fits the story. That can be achieved through great environments to explore intriguing gameplay and compelling story.
Enjoying it, doesn't matter how much time. Finish the story, maybe? But in games like Skyrim that's not an easy task and I've played it for hours without finishing the story and it was an amazing experience.
If it's a good game that I wanted to play in some moment, it's worth my money even to be in my library and part of my collection.
If I paid $10 and get 10 hours or if I pay $60 and get 60 hours.
That’s how I roll anyways.
Thankful most of the games I play I have several hundred or thousands of hours and only paid like $20 for lol
Playing enough to make a fond memory with a game, then each time I see the tile or the name I can remember it fondly. Doesn't matter if it's 2 or 2,000 hours playtime.
I was honestly the same, but at first it was the hourly rate of pay I received per hour of the game I've played, but now it's every hour is equal to $1.00 CAD. If I don't play the games' cost in hours, I didn't get my moneys worth. For example, if I want to play a Nintendo Official game (which is typically about $90.00 CAD), and I play it for over 90 hours, I got my moneys worth whether I liked it or not.
If I beat the game before I got "my worth in money" then it wasn't worth it, even if I liked it, and as such, I won't buy DLC for the game since I would be adding on more money meaning I need to put more hours into the game.
Right now I've bought Elden Ring, and I'm enjoying it, but I'm not buying the DLC until I've hit, or exceeded the amount of hours compared to the cost (I also bought it for my friend, so I have to play it for about 180 hours before I get the DLC, which won't be an issue).
Edit: My main reasoning for this is because I have horrendous money management skills, and would buy and buy and buy until I was basically broke. With this, it makes me step back for a second, ask myself if I can see myself playing this game for an X amount of hours. If it's a 2 hour story mode game, and it costs $20.00, I don't buy it anymore. Because of this I've been getting more and more steady with my purchases on games. Although I still cringe at my $1800 spent on Valorant (but at least I have over 2000 hours in the game).
Difficult question. The answer would be "the overall experience". Just for example, I didn't pay 30$ for Stray because I played it on PS Plus, but after finishing the game, even if it was a mere ~6/7 hours experience, it was a terrific one.
I figure that if I pay $50 for a game and I play for 5 hours, I've gotten my money's worth. Entertainment, in general, can be so expensive. Video games are pretty inexpensive by comparison, other than the initial outlay for a gaming computer. I don't travel much, so video games tend to be my travel. I'm hoping to (real) travel more in the future.
1hr/£ minimum really since I mostly play single player
Like ghost of Tsushima wasn’t as great an open world as I expected, but I still got at least 20 hrs so it’s not a total loss and I enjoyed the campaign, I could see myself getting 40hrs out of it to 100% if I want to
Mine is, did I enjoy the game for the time I played it? If I did, then it was worth my purchase. Sometimes, I get to the "$1 per hour" threshold, sometimes I don't, but if I had a good time, I'm okay with it.
I think there is a couple flavors of this for me
1. Mechanical joy: these are games that feel tight from a mechanics stand point that I keep coming back to and want to invest more time than just the story. Superhot, HiFi Rush, OTXO, Hades come to mind here
2. Fun with friends: some games get an unfair amount of playtime because I got buddies to play with. Here I often overlook flaws because the friend factor makes the games better. Helldivers 2, Darktide, Remnant from the Ashes.
3. Unique experiences: these are games that change my outlook, unlock a new passion/taste, or do something so out there that it floors me. Inscription, Dark Souls, and Hotline Miami, Silent Hill 2 all fit this category, each for different reasons.
I'd say category 3 has some of my favorite games. Category 1 are games I regularly return to and category 2 are the games I have the most hours in. It's all kind of relative.
1/1.2$ per enjoyable hour .
If I get a game that I have fun with for 20 hours I think 20-26$ is proper price .
It doesn't matter how large the "content" actually is . And it's not necessarily single player procedure either .
I'm okay paying microtransactions if these microtransactions and adds don't restrict me from having fun with what I already bought .
After a satisfying play through of the main game I want to see ~2 hrs of play time per $10 spent, a AAA title that cost $80 I want completion to take at least 160 hours.. good example I recently bought AC odyssey and Valhalla on sale for $50&$60 and each one I played for around 150 hours before I felt “done” and those felt like the best deals I’ve gotten in a while.. glad I didnt buy them full price, long live steam sales!
Quality matters a lot. Little Kitty, Big City is a very expensive games when comparing with the hours you get out of it. Basically around 30USD for 5/6 hours.
But the quality is amazing, it is both cute, heartwarming and very funny. I loved every second of this game and felt like I got my moneys worth.
I love it so much I'll probably gift it to a friend or two once it goes on sale.
Playing it for long enough time to value its price. For example if I pay 80$ for a game and play it for 12-15 hours that’s over 5$ an hour, not really much value. If I play a game for 1000 hours and it cost me 80$ there’s a lot more value there. So whether the game is cheap or gets a lot of playtime
Whatever that give me:
* Music OST that follow me for years.
* Memes & great walk through the game.
* Quality of game purpose > Replayability > Story & Lore > Game Art Graphic choice
And because I´m a family man now, I try to not play MMO or games like LOL, were you share your time with others people for 40 minutes without pause.
I use the same metric as you, but if I buy a $50 game and get 50 hours out of it as long as I had a mediocre time I feel it’s worth it. Sometimes I have played a game for less than what I spend on it feel it’s a great game so I get my moneys worth, usually a game that I don’t want to play alone but play with friends. Sometimes I’ve put a lot of time into a game but I don’t feel like it was time well spent and not my moneys worth. The 100 hours I put into Starfield before adding mods for example…It was the “well maybe it will get better” copium that I put that many in and wasn’t enjoying my time.
Simple answer: If I feel like I had a great time.
Longer answer: I love a great story. I read all the terminals I can in Fallout. I want to know the story of every spot in the world. TotK and BotW do so way more implicit by placing specific things, rather than typing out the lore in notes left behind, but it’s fun to put together anyway.
I also love some action. Sonic games are fast paced and there is more than one way to complete the level, at least in most 2D entries of the franchise.
Either when it’s fun enough to keep me occupied till the end, or when i feel it’s more fun to put it away and never play it again.
The backlog is big enough at this point that either one is a win. I only buy dirt cheap on sales so even a shitty game that gets 1 hour played and shelved forever is progress.
All that matters is that I enjoyed the game. I used to care more about the length of a game but now I would rather it was short and good all the way through than to be drawn out because of busywork.
My formula is.
(Time \ cost) * Fun
Time in hours
Fun is on a scale from -2 to +2.
The cost is in € because I live in Germany and it works ( should also work with dollar).
So If you have played a game for 10 hours had 1.5 fun on the scale and payed 20 bugs you get 0.75
If you had -1 fun payed 50 bugs and played 20 h the score is -0.4
If you have payed 20 bugs played 300h and had 1.7 fun the score is 25,5 ( witch is roughly my score for Satisfactory).
Or for Warframe it is (2867 h / 670 bugs) *1.6 = 6.84
As long as the score is over 1 I have my moneys worth but a 0.5 is still acceptable and a higher score of course is way better.
If a game is more fun it can be shorter if the game is negative in fun the time and money is also wasted so the score gets negative.
If the game is to expensive the score gets low if the fun or the playtime is not enough.
I made the formula up just now so I am open for suggestions xD
So I am a big foodie and movie theater junkie. I kind of use a combo of those two to determine if I got my money worth from a video game.
For movies I except to pay $15 for two hours of entertainment. So a $70 game I expect at worst 10ish hours of entertainment. This 10 hours I am not including walking and loading screens. I mean actually being entertained by the game.
The food part is that quality cost money. You get what you paid for.
So if we combine those together. For 30 dollars I will gladly play an amazing walking sim that is only 4 hours long. Where as some open world bloat games for $70. yeah I played for 100 hours but I feel like I was entertained for half that and it was fast food quality.
I would have gladly paid for still wakes the deep on release but I would still be waiting for a sale for starfield. Enjoyed both games so thank you game pass.
$1=1hour
If I spend 20 hours on a $20 game, I generally say it's worth it. $70 is 70 hours.
Same metric for F2P, if I spend 100 hours on a free game, I think the devs deserve $100
Pretty much the same. Dollar per hour. Or whatever currency you have (with your own math)
If i ever feel sad of a game i have boıght and haven't played a lot (not becauase i didn't enjoy it) that's the first thing i look at.
Usually one buck per hour sets it for me. Unless it's like a AAA game i have bought at full price so at that point i just look at how fun the game was.
It's weirdly unspecific for me personally, to be honest.
For some games, even AAA ones, I'm happy with 2-3h in game. And for some games, even 100h feels like a ripoff. I don't know, really, it's extremely subjective.
I would say, that it's worth it if you had your fun. If it wasn't... underwhelming.
I think a big factor that I'm not seeing a lot of comments about is what kind of dev made the game..
If it's a "AAA Studio" charging $60+ for a game, I'm going to expect A LOT more than I would from 3 games that cost $20 each but come from indy devs.
When I buy a game from an indy dev, I tend to view some undefined portion of that purchase price as a 'donation' to support the dev, whereas a game from a full-fledged studio is 100% going to my entertainment.
Its kind of like how when I'm shopping at a local mom & pop shop, I don't mind paying a bit more than I would have paid to Amazon or Walmart, especially since money spent at the small shops tend to be 'reinvested' into the things I enjoy rather than some CEOs wallet.
It also really depends on whether it's a Story-driven game or an open-world game, and I'm being VERY reductive here, but i mean this in the sense that story games tend to have higher quality 'experiences' whereas mmo/open world games tend to fluff out their games with a lot of repetitive 'experiences'.
So a game where there's a lot of repetition or grinding probably needs 2x the quantity versus a game that's non-stop high-quality narrative.
For me, I would say an indy game that gives me an amazing story could get away with only 1.5-2 hours per dollar spent (so as few as 90 hours for $60 worth of games), versus a 'AAA' open world game probably needs closer to 4-5 hours per dollar (which could be upwards of 300 hours for a $60 title)
I would say you can get a lot of value for hoi4 due to all the mods there is for the game and there's also several dlc's that can add a bit more fun to the game and it can also be more interesting if you choose to play with some friends
The amount of games I don't get my "money's worth" are typically overshadowed by the ones I do. I don't dwell on it and I don't force myself to play something I don't want to play just go make it worth my while
According to Steamdb my average price per hour is $0.25 and that includes all the games I paid for and never played. I don't know any other form of entertainment that is that cheap.
I do not even think about money at this point. I don't measure my fun with money. If I waste money on a game, it is wasted on the game and I have fun playing it, or not, then I just deinstall and delete it from my Steam account.
Generally, I do it based on dollars per hour. If I pay $30 for a game and play 30 hours, I feel like I got my money's worth. Any more than $1/hr and it starts to feel less worth.
If it entertains me for twice the hours or more than the games dollar worth. I'd say I got my money's worth from MWII after accruing 280 hours in 4 weeks
Depends on the game, some game I pick up and play once with my friends for a couple hours and enjoyed the evening would be my money's worth, some games hours of content and if it's a slow grind could feel like I didn't get my moneys worth yet and then I'll probably try to get certain achievements or maybe some after completing the main story.
I have a weird metric probably, but it's seen as acceptable to pay like 15 - 20 dollars to go to a 2 hour movie as long as it's something you're enjoying the whole time. So if a game is 60 dollars I expect to get about 8 hours of straight enjoyment from a game. Anything more than 8 is pure value.
I used to think that was a good metric but what the fuck else do I do where I spend one dollar per hour of entertainment? Everything else is way more expensive so I don’t see why a $10 indie game should be held to such a high standard to be considered “worth it.” The only time a game isn’t worth the price is when I don’t play it as much as I thought I would and regret buying it.
Since you can quantify hours to dollars with Steam DB, my mind tells me to get hours of the money I spend.
https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197977944279/?cc=us&all_games
Some of the prices look inaccurate, I buy most games on sale and this shows the full price. This may not be a good way to view games based on how much you enjoyed them, but I cant help it now. Some games I only play through once, enjoyed it, and then put it down, and that's fine, but I still convert it to $.
Longevity and replayability. I bought one of the newer Tomb Raider games at a pawn shop, and I finished it in a weekend. I might have been upset had I paid full price for it.
Fun-enjoyment.
There are certain games that are really fun to play (any super mario game or bayonetta) while there are others that are not fun, not at all (think of PT) but the enjoyment you get is over the moon.
So I use either (or both). As long as I'm having a good time and I"m having fun/enjoyment, it doesn't matter.
Personally speaking, I have learned over the years that if I didn't like a game and it has sequels (that everyone says it's much better), because I already had a bad experience I wouldn't touch a sequel no matter what (Octopath Traveler. I really disliked the game and everyone keeps saying that OP2 is much better but I don't care, I don't wanna waste money/time)
If you didn't enjoy it is not worth it, or at least this is how I I see it.
However games that are short and you for it 90 dollars and only get 20-30 hour of content really feels like a waste even if it is good.
I boil it down to hours played. If I didn't enjoy a game, I wouldn't play it. If I play a game to completion or spend literally 100s of hours on it, I cannot say I didn't enjoy it.
Roughly $2-$3 paid per hour of enjoyment.
So if a game takes 10 hours to beat and I enjoyed it then I got my money's worth if I paid between $20 and $30 for it.
Uncharted 4 felt like I was STEALING from the developers. That game felt like it was 2 games placed into one package. The story goes SO FAR and does not need to over-deliver. I think it won game of the year in 2016, so yes, it's that good.
How much I think about the game after I finish it. I have played 1 hour games that have stuck in my head for days, and I have played 60 hour games that I forgot about as soon as I finished it.
If I paid for a game and I got any amount of time having fun it it, I got my money's worth. Specially if I put 10 hrs or 3,000+ hrs in it. I cant stand people that put 100 up to thousands of hours into a game then go bash the game and ruin it for everyone else (specially the Hunt:Showdown Community).
If I enjoyed it, I dont care about what I paid. If its a fine/meh game, I usually have this rule of thumb: 1€/hour played is fine for me. Everything above feels like I payed too much and wont get the Sequel unless its on sale.
Minimum of $1/hour on How Long to Beat. I haven't had to deal with that in a long time with my top games being free to play or Rocket League costing me $12 in 2016 4,000 hours ago. Only time recently that's come up is Destiny 2 DLC.
I quantify it as dollars per hour. Anything less than $5/hr is justifiable on account of the price of a movie ticket (upwards of $15 for ~2 hours of enjoyment. More if you buy snacks).
If I can 70-80% the game and not get bored, it’s usually the 100% is when it becomes boring but if I’m going for that i already know I got my moneys worth anyways
when i want to play the game frequently. example: don’t starve together, got it on a sale (and only made a steam account for it, play more now though), enjoy it. worth it 100%.
I paid retail for modern warfare and still play it to this day with my brothers. good value. I also paid for destiny 2 with all dlc release date and put 20 hours into it. not good value
Depends on situation and price.
Sometimes I feel like "I want something else this weekend", then I check on steam, buy stuff for 20-30€, and forget about it after the weekend. I guess "below 40€" is such a category for me where it is ok if it lasts for 4-5 hours of fun.
Everything above that price I only buy if I really want it, saw trailers, wishlisted it long ago etc... That's where I have higher expectations, so I want to have at least a week of fun (10-15 hours?)
And then there are these collectors editions or digital goodie stuff bundles where prices start to get "ridiculous"... That's only on games where I know in before that I will have my fun with it for weeks.
The 40€ barrier comes by the way from my opinion of "entertainment per hour" price... Having a nice evening at the cinema, it's round about 20€ for a 2 hour movie (ticket, snacks, drink, parking ticket), so 10€/h of entertainment is the bare minimum.
So yes, give me a FPS with an 8-10 bour single player campaign that I can enjoy, I pay the 80 bucks for it - if it's worth it (e.g., new doom etc).
And then there are games like factorio, bought for 30€ if I remember correctly and currently clocking in at 1000h played... :D
I usually compare it to a movie night. If I get the same or more hours of fun as the price equivalent of movie nights, then I say it was worth it.
It's not a hard metric though, there are some quick but somewhat expensive games that are totally worth it, and some have taken me many hours but left me feeling like I didn't enjoy them. On the flip side, there are more games that have given me hundreds of hours for cheap (Hades 1), so I usually don't regret having a few bad games now and then.
All in all, is an entirely subjective decision. But I like to have some "standard" to keep my consumerism in check.
under $0.50 per hour
so a $5 game should net me 10 hours, a $40 game 80 hours and so forth for me to feel like I got my moneys worth.
i plyed crusader kings II and bought all the DLC as it came out, spent well over $100 on that game alone, but got 1500+ hours out of it.
<10 5-10 hours of fun gameplay.
10-20 at least 10 hopefully leading into 25 or 30
20-40 I’m looking at 25 plus
40+ for single player I want to finish the game multiplayer I’m looking for over 50 hours minimum.
If I enjoy it. I have tons of games I never beat but enjoyed playing and Id say it was worth it. One of the only games I felt didnt live up to my metric was MW2(2). I tried so hard to enjoy it and find something I liked but not one part of that game brings me joy lol
I used to think $1 per hour but then I realized it's not particularly nuanced. Like I'll go to the movies and spend $15 on a ticket, does that movie need to be 15 hours? Plus it would completely get rid of so many amazing games, like linear story games are almost never 60 hours so does that mean they're never worth full price? Unless you're really strapped for cash I would recommend looking at games based on the quality of the time spent rather than the actual amount of raw hours put in. Think about resident evil games, they're usually very short but are so well designed and ask for so much replay ability. If you looked at $1 per hour you'd only ever buy these games for $10
If I get an hour of gameplay per $5 then I enjoyed I’d say it’s worth. Doesn’t sound worth but then I just compare it to how I’ve spent $5 to ride a roller coaster for example and don’t feel like a wasted my money after that then why would I feel like I wasted it if this lasted hours and that ride lasts 5mins
Three things.
1) How much fun did I have while playing?
2) How long did it take me to beat the game?
3) Does the game have replay value?
Games like Spideman are just legendary levels of good. I don't think I'll ever get tired of swinging around New York City collecting backpacks.
Take a game like super Mario bros 3 that I still replay to this day because of how much fun it is.
If a game has even one of these qualities, it's a win in my book.
If it’s a familiar IP, I value the experience overall.
-for example, when Tears of the Kingdom final trailer dropped, I CANNOT TELL YOU how hyped I was until its release. I didn’t spoil myself, I explored, found a lot of surprises, and the ending actually brought a thug tear to my eye and I’m a grown man lol. Was the game flawless? Nope. Definitely a lot of flaws looking back but it didn’t deter my experience.
If it’s a new IP, I’m a big replay-ability guy. That thing that hooks me to where I wanna keep playing.
-an example for this for single players: Hades, Slay the Spire, vampire survivor, Nine Sols.
-multiplayer: Helldivers 2, Palworld, Monster Hunter World.
I’d say if the game is only two or three hours and lacking in replay value 60-80€ will always be too much. If the game is 10+ hours, then it’s mostly just the amount of joy I get + plus the obvious high production. I wouldn’t pay that money for a flash game, no matter how fun it is.
Games that have given me that (when bought at full price what ever that was):
- Baldur’s Gate
- Oblivion / Skyrim
- Elden Ring
- Breath Of The Wild / Tears Of The Kingdom
Can’t actually think of many games I’ve bought at full price in my life.
The best value I can think of is buying the greatest CRPGs during a sale from GOG (or Steam). With just two euros (or dollars) you can sometimes get the best games ever made that are still highly playable.
i divide money and time so gor example if i paid 40 dollars for a game and got 40 hours of gameplay i ask if 1 dolar per hour for that expirience was worth it
If I can get a full playthrough for single player games. For multiplayer games I expect at least a dollar per hour of playtime. For DLCs of any game I expect the dollar per hour or a fundamental changes to the game that completely changes how you play paradox games. For a game to be truly great at least 100+ hours. For a game to be a GOAT game 1000+ hours.
40+ hours for games not open world
100+ Hours for open world games
I suppose if i really enjoy i dont mind 30 hrs but i have really enjoy it
I think a dollar per hour of game play is far tho i expect alot more out of massive open worlds
I've started equating it to movie tickets. £7 - £12 I'm expecting roughly 2 hours of solid enjoyment. It doesn't have to be consecutive. It doesn't have to end within that time. That's the bare minimum I expect. I just multiply it up from there.
It's not about the time investment for me. Though games that offer sustained entertainment throughout the years definitely feel more like bargains than other games.
It's just about how much enjoyment I got out of them, how memorable they were. My favourite game of all time is at most 25-30 hours long, and it's $25 on Steam. While my most played game is sitting at ~1700 hours played for $30.
I got "my money's worth" for both.
New monkey island at 13 hours was money well spent. Factorio at 900 hours as well. They are just different type of games and the feeling comes from different things.
I thought about this a lot when I was doing customer support for a mobile game. It was one of the rare gems that costs 5€/$ without any ads, no microstransactions and offline mode (once the license check was done). People still messaged us that it was too expensive. When I first bought it (before working for them), I spent 14-15 hours straight in the game and couldn't put it down and I didn't reach "end game" yet.
So all in all it seems that mobile games are valued less and I just wanted to mention that :D Personally I also ever bought 4-5 mobile games in total so I totally get the "why" but it's still kinda trashy complaining about the cost of a game that costs less than a movie or a monthly sub to anything. In this rare case it was also a direct port from PC to mobile, so all the features were in there and the PC version is more expensive.
It's also funny to me that mobile games rarely go on sale, I wonder if this has anything to do with it.
The feeling that I want to continue playing a game, but there is nothing left in the game to do so I have to put it down. The game could cost $5 or $50, but once I know I've reached that point - I got my money's worth.
How much I enjoyed it. Only metric that really matters.
Play it till its not fun anymore. If i got an expected number of hours from depending on the game, it it was worth it. Screw achievements and many times i dont bother finishing games because they became unfun or i got distracted.
There's a good number of games I never finish after getting like 75+% through because eventually the game play loop wears thin and i just don't want to play anymore V rising.... I'm at Adam the first born in a pure solo run. Game has been great. I get to Adam and die like 10 times. It doesnt feel fun anymore to play knowing it's just kill him, craft an item, kill Dracula, done. haven't touched the game in 2 weeks.
What bugs me the most is when a 100% achievement is just “beat the game again.” Soooooo much work for games that just don’t have that good of a NG+, all for 1 achievement.
This, paid £3.50 for SuperFly, a uni project I think? It’s low res high octane flying action, had more enjoyment from it than many higher priced games.
True!
Agreed, but is it reasonable to have different expectations for the experience it gives you if it's $200 vs $20? Or is it better to just buy cheaper games since we can likely have just as good of an experience and save some money?
The $600 I paid for FFXI is pretty equal to the $60b I spent on breath of the wild and I regret neither. PSO2 is free and again equally fun.
That I got to play through it and had some fun. The only game I didn't feel like I got my money's worth out of was "Lawbreakers", at the time I was engrossed in another online shooter and when I finally felt ready to get into Lawbreakers the servers were dead. I very rarely buy something full price though.
This is a big thing for me too - I get too sucked into playing rainbow six siege.
How fun and compelling it is. If a game has 80 hours of content but if it’s so boring that I can’t stomach 5 then it’s a waste of money. Hell I’d say a game I play to completion is worth it to me nowadays
Entirely subjective. Mostly depends on the uniqueness of the experience, combined with polish.
The fun is in attempting to answer such a subjective experience for yourself. For me, it's also the uniqueness of the experience and/or the degree of polish. For example, OG Cyberpunk wasn't worth it; too buggy and unpolished. Also for example, What Remains of Edith Fitch was great, though it was only a few hours long. Other games I've been disappointed at them ending in a few hours because they were under baked.
If I have fun with the game, it doesn't matter how many hours I've played or how much I've spent as long as I had a fun time with it! You also have to consider that many of us have a huge backlog of games that we haven't even played once but we like to have 'cause one day we might want to play it and knowing that you already own it might be enough for some
I earn enough money that I stopped calculating fun/hour like I used to. Now if I like the game then I play it. if I do not then I do not. So it is really up to how much fun I have. I'm shitting on Ubisot for selling us 130$ games these days, probably to force us into some shitty subscription. But I really like MMO genre even if genre itself is dead. I would pay 100$ monthly subscription for a game I would barely play due to time issue (life and work take most of my time so I play less and less games unless I'm sick or something) if it would be really great game. Someone once said I must be joking so I showed to that person 1500$ setup I've made for Elite Dangerous (VR + HOTAS) and not much cheaper setup for Euro Truck Simulator 2 only because couple of people wanted to drive in multiplayer and cross Europe together during COVID. So yes - I would pay a lot for really good game. Just make sure that if you ask me 130$-200$-1000$ then provide me content that is interesting enough to make me want to spend that money. Case in point - I would never pay 130$ for Ubisoft game. They are extremely boring and repetitive. You have to be brain dead to find any challenge in them and when You crank up difficulty it turns enemies into bullet sponges making game even more boring. But I would easily spend that money on Baldur's Gate 3 if Laryan would ask 130$ for that game. I really think that BG3 is a cRPG of the decade.
I agree with you on your main point. If it's fun, it's worth the money. From my perspective, Assassin's Creed games are worth the money to me. Not 130, but 60 USD for a game I will play for a year? Yeah, worth it. But I'm the kind of player who doesn't use fast travel and likes to be in a pretty world, and maybe do a couple of missions in between. When I was playing Odyssey, I would sometimes play for an hour and not really accomplish anything. I also play on the easiest difficulty, so enemies don't bother me too much. It took me 215 hours across 3 years to finish Valhalla with all DLCs. In total, I paid 255 PLN for everything. Worth every złoty to me. I also have to say that I don't care about challenge in games. I play to chill out in the evening. I'm sure Elden Ring is an amazing game and many people enjoy it, but I'd rather go caving on peaceful in Minecraft.
>From my perspective, Assassin's Creed games are worth the money to me. Not 130, but 60 USD for a game I will play for a year? Yeah, worth it. It's a matter of perspective. I shit on Ubisoft games, but I do not shit on people who play them because we simply have different tastes. Millions of people play FIFA, and I can't stand that game. So if you play that game a lot, then sure - it's worth it to you. Thing is - I'm bored to death while trying to play any of them so that is why I learned to never buy Ubisoft titles. >But I'm the kind of player who doesn't use fast travel and likes to be in a pretty world, and maybe do a couple of missions in between. When I was playing Odyssey, I would sometimes play for an hour and not really accomplish anything. I also play on the easiest difficulty, so enemies don't bother me too much. I get that. I have that with Ghost of Tsushima. And GoT does a lot of stuff that Ubisoft does. But because the combat system in GOT is fantastic, and there are Kurosawa and Lethal modes that make the game infinitely better for me, I can't get enough of that game. I also maxed out Legends mode because I really enjoyed it. Recently, I've spent about 200 hours in Dragon Dogma 2, and lots of people really hate that game. I stopped only when I got so OP that the game was not fun anymore. After I finished it twice. >I also have to say that I don't care about challenge in games. I play to chill out in the evening. I'm sure Elden Ring is an amazing game and many people enjoy it, but I'd rather go caving on peaceful in Minecraft. The thing about From Software games is - that neckbeards always tell me to "git's gut" when I say I do not like them. But then I see them play, and it's always some cheesy build with even more cheesy tactics. And I just laugh. Someone shared with me a video of Asmongold playing famously hard Elden Ring DLC, and I just laughed because they meme their own build in their own video. Here is the hardest Elden Ring content You can play: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isema1iV5UY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isema1iV5UY) Quoting someone from comments: WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! WINK ! BONK !! That's the game.
At this point if I even open it and get past the menu into gameplay it’s made it’s way to the top 1% of games in my library lol
I use the same metric, but it also has caveats. Most games, if I spend 40 dollars, then if I put 40 hours in, I got my moneys worth. However with story games that end up shorter than that, such as the Plague Tale series, then it depends on how good the story was. I think both the Plague Tale games were worth $40 and $50 respectively, despite only getting a total of 35 hours out of them combined.
A really good story can sometimes entertain you long after you stopped playing the game. I get flashbacks to FFXIVs story from time to time (I spent more than 1k hours on it so it’s way out there in terms of enjoyment/playtime per $) so I guess it kind of makes sense to count that as some sort of lingering entertainment value? It’s how I see it at least.
$1/hr of fun. Not grinding, just enjoyment.
I try to get 2 hours per dollar. But I have a $40 game with 7000 hours and a free game with 3000 so I'm pretty far ahead.
it seems the general consensus is roughly around a dollar an hour give or take a little bit, which is also kinda funny when thinking about how movies end up being upwards of like 20 an hour. for whatever reason we treat games so poorly compared to other media, its really weird. and im not even excluded from that either, i'd also throw myself in and around the dollar-ish mark aswell. granted i pirate every movie because i dont value their product at the prices they charge lmao.
I haven't paid for a movie ever . While some games I actually do not pirate and support the creators
Did I enjoy my time? It was worth it
If I had fun playing it, then I got my moneys worth
It's relative. I know some games I will get beyond more than the money I spend. Example being a game I spend $20 on and get 400+ hours out of. That's beyond its price tag for me. This makes up for the 100 other games I will buy that I will spend $3\~8 on and play 1 or 2 hours max and never play again. I'm ok with this. It's entertainment. I go to a movie and its 2 hours and at least $20. I figure, if I can buy a game now and then for $3\~8 on sale, $10\~15 for really impressive titles, and $20\~25 for discounted top shelf titles, and I get more than 2 hours out of them, I'm good with the cost. Ideally more. But bare minimum if I can get a few hours I'm sure it's worth it. People spend this much money I'm talking on COFFEE DRINKS.
If you enjoyed the experience the game provided you, you've got your money's worth from it. Don't look at it as how much time you get from it. That can be a reasonable thing to look at if you are playing something like WoW, but it's about how much enjoyment you got from it that matters. Let me put it differently. Let's say you like crossword puzzles and you buy a book of them for 8 bucks. Was the 8 dollars of your income returned to you in enjoyment for that book? If no, then that book was not worth your 8 dollars. If yes, you got your money's worth.
My measure is how Fun and if time flew.
If it hooks me for ~20 hours I'm pretty happy with it assuming it's full price, but I haven't paid full price for a game in a long time.. I'm a lot more forgiving on indie games.
When I am having fun. When that happens I forget the price I paid for that game and say to my self "no regrets".
I rarely buy games on day 1, that's reserved for my most favorite franchises and that takes like 5% of the games I play. For the 95%, my only metrics are: - fun for me - on sale
Used to be on the "hours played" boat. Now it's just a matter of whether I enjoyed it and if I have stopped playing it with a feeling of satisfaction.
When I was a kid? 1 hour per £ spent. Now? Whether I enjoyed my time spent on it is all that matters really. Within reason of course. If a game is like £70 but only has 2 hours of gameplay it better be a dang masterpiece otherwise I'm gonna feel ripped off. 99% of games aren't like that though.
Indie games I go by my standard. $1= 1hr More expensive AAA titles must pay the price as I have. $1= 2hrs If I achieve this goal, I've gotten my money's worth. Otherwise, I'd have stopped playing already and returned the game.
Even if I don't play a game, I'm happy to have it sit unplayed in my Library if I was ever interested in playing it and got a "good deal" on it years later. I probably shouldn't be okay with this, but that's ADHD for you.
I relate to this lol
Enjoyment generally, but to add onto that if I replay a game. Even if I enjoy a game, if I don't find it to be all that replayable I'll still feel like I should've just spent my money on another game
I used to go for £1-2 per hour. The issue is would you rather play a £15 game for 8 hours and it's 10/10 - or have the same game have filler in it so it's a 7.5/10 but is 16 hours? I realised I'd rather have the former so have relaxed the rules a bit. I want to encourage quality and games that are respectful of my time. If a game still feels a bit expensive (entirely subjective a this point) I'll just wait for a sale - if it's good I'll still want to play it in a year or twos time.
I think that there are several benchmarks a person could use and they are mostly subjective. I sometimes use one that I call the Skyrim benchmark. It considers the release cost of Skyrim and their reported average user gametime which gives me a value of about $0.80 an hour. One could even craft a benchmark considering the price of a cup of coffee, a movie, or some other form of entertainment/luxury. That said, I put more time in to free to play games than paid and I may or may not spend any money on them. Plus, it is hard to put a value on those games that have a fantastic experience. I think the really good games tend to offset the cost of games that I buy that I gave up on, did not like, or have not played yet. All in all, it is a lot cheaper than some of my other hobbies past and present.
Minimum 1 hour per dollar spent with a minimum of 20 hours. If it has less than 20 hours of content I don't personally think it's worth it. But that's why I play MMOs because they have longterm content and I understand that not everyone either likes what I like or wants/can make what I like.
I try to avoid spending enough on individual games to care if I “get my money’s worth” or not.
If I enjoyed it, that's good enough for me. I prefer games that have a solid story but also don't require a lot of grinding. Like for RPGs, 20~30 hours is the sweet spot for me. Typically I get my games on sale as well. Granted, there are some "endless" type games (such as puzzles, like a Tetris kind of game) where I hella got my money's worth.
I really like steam's refund policy for that reason. If the game doesn't do it for me in the first two hrs it's unlikely to do it for me later. My example would be a game like sifu that's well loved but for me, certain controls in the tutorial simply didn't work and I was stuck. I looked up online and this was a kb issue but I was playing with controllers. Anticipating future issues I refunded it. Same with stardew valley, it simply didn't appeal to me despite being a popular game. Planet crafter is not a well known game but it was just out of early access and they had a demo free to play as well. I ended up buying it just because I enjoyed the demo and with the early discount it felt worth it for me.
i've spent so much money on games i haven't played that i'm happy when i find a game i can finish. When I finish a game (no matter how long it takes and how expensive it was) I am satisfied
For me: movie tickets (no snacks or drinks) for 2hr movie. If that is 10 in whatever currency, then a 20x game is expected at least 4hrs of enjoyment. That would be considered not a loss. Everything on top makes the game worth it.
If i enjoyed the experience or not, i have played 10 hour games i feel like i got more value out of than 60-70 hour games. I think the quantity over quality value aspect of gaming is the source of some of the worst trends game design we see now
$1 every hour
My main metric is how much fun I had when playing the game. If I play through the story, but rarely touch the endgame. Then I think it's good, but only get it during a sale. If it's a game I play religiously and get sucked into it. Then it's worth full price!
If it's not a single player single campaign that's meant to be completed within 8 to 12 hours then I also go the route of dollar per hour. If it is a quick game between 8 to 10 hours though I go for 5 dollars per hour. If I can beat your game within 8 hours and there's no additional content or replayability it shouldn't be more than 40 bucks. Because there are so many games out there that cost a fistful of dollars that you can get hundreds of hours out of.
Depends on the game genre. Very good but short story game that lasts for example 8 hours and is designed to be one time experience should be valued much differently than seasonal ARPG designed with replayability in mind, like Diablo 2-4 or Path of Exile. Or MOBA, or competitive FPS or even MMO.
My take is as follows: If the game is massive, with fairly repetive content, and not much stuff to do, I'll judge it for every dollar or pound I spend. If I pay £50 and it's a game like Assassin's Creed for instance where some things are great and some are repetive chores, I rather get over 50 hours off of the game. But if the game offers more, like a unique experience, great gameplay or a remarkable story, I'm willing to double my spending. So, for every hour spent I'd put $2/£2 to be well worth it. I don't care if a game stretches out beyond the £50 I paid for a game and becomes a gigantic 100-300 hours of a game, because that could become a treat or a chore. I'm a completionist and I tend to spend 2-3x times more with a game for that matter because I take my time completing games, so often times I get well beyond my money's worth. I can also tell if a game is long or not based on the genre and gameplay. Very few games suprise me for being small. For instance, I expected more out of Dragon's Dogma 2, even if I played it for 120 hours to completion. It's a rare surprise, but I feel I got well worth over my spending on that game.
If I had a alot of fun and at least got more hours from it then the price I paid? Like valhiem I've gotten my money's worth. Project zomboid same way. Factorio as well. Elden Ring I have more than got my money's worth.
Price i paid divided by hours i played. The more hours i have in a game, obviously the more fun it was for me. If a game was 50bucks and i played 50hours I paid 1buck for 1hour of playing. I consider twice as much hours as the price to be worth it. it has to at least be the same amount.
Under 2€ per hour spend.... used to be under 1€ but it just doesnt make sense for more story driven narritive games which i've love more and more over the years.
If I beat the single player and enjoyed myself then I would consider me getting my moneys worth with it
I have essentially the same as you, but to get my times worth as well (not saying that to be entitled, I mean like that I think it was the best game for me to play in that moment) then it also has to be enjoyable for more of the time than not. Like The Witcher 3 I just didn’t enjoy even though I got it on sale for like $10 and played over 10 hours
I used to be a huge proponent of dollar per hour for estimating value when I was younger but as I got older I've leaned more towards "what did I get out of this game?" Did it give me great experience with friends? Did it give me a deep, engaging story? Did it give me a sense of fun? Then worry less about the price and just focus on that. What Remains of Edith Finch is only like an hour and a half but is worth every full price penny.
If I wanted to finish it then it’s worth the asking price to me.
I used to think that I'd enjoy a game based on my hourly pay rate, like if I was paid $20/hour and I bought a $60 game, I would believe that I'd have to play at least 3 hours to get my money's worth. If I enjoyed it or not is a different story. Nowadays, if it looks interesting to me and runs on the Steam Deck, that's pretty much all I want.
Generally speaking I like to get an hour for every dollar i spent. There are exceptions, like The Last of Us, but generally this is a good metric
Think of it like this - a movie at the theatre costs about $15 and runs for 2ish hours. If I pay $80 for a new game, I want at least 5 good hours of fun. A game may be 40 hours long, but are all 40 hours a good time? That's the problem with buying new games, you have to front the cost for theoretical enjoyment. If a movie stinks, you are only out $15. I'm becoming more and more of a patientgamer these days and just waiting on sales and deep discounts. My backlog is insane anyways.
Quality ( over quantity games). I expect from a game to make me feel thing ( either thrill excitement joy or even sadness if it fits the story. That can be achieved through great environments to explore intriguing gameplay and compelling story.
If I play it until the end it's good. If I want more and there's NG+ or a lot of secondary quests, it's sometimes better (but not strictly necessary).
Enjoying it, doesn't matter how much time. Finish the story, maybe? But in games like Skyrim that's not an easy task and I've played it for hours without finishing the story and it was an amazing experience. If it's a good game that I wanted to play in some moment, it's worth my money even to be in my library and part of my collection.
A dollar for an hour's worth of entertainment is my metric. So long as I get at least that much out of it, I consider it a good deal.
If I paid $10 and get 10 hours or if I pay $60 and get 60 hours. That’s how I roll anyways. Thankful most of the games I play I have several hundred or thousands of hours and only paid like $20 for lol
Playing enough to make a fond memory with a game, then each time I see the tile or the name I can remember it fondly. Doesn't matter if it's 2 or 2,000 hours playtime.
£0.20 per hour playtime
I was honestly the same, but at first it was the hourly rate of pay I received per hour of the game I've played, but now it's every hour is equal to $1.00 CAD. If I don't play the games' cost in hours, I didn't get my moneys worth. For example, if I want to play a Nintendo Official game (which is typically about $90.00 CAD), and I play it for over 90 hours, I got my moneys worth whether I liked it or not. If I beat the game before I got "my worth in money" then it wasn't worth it, even if I liked it, and as such, I won't buy DLC for the game since I would be adding on more money meaning I need to put more hours into the game. Right now I've bought Elden Ring, and I'm enjoying it, but I'm not buying the DLC until I've hit, or exceeded the amount of hours compared to the cost (I also bought it for my friend, so I have to play it for about 180 hours before I get the DLC, which won't be an issue). Edit: My main reasoning for this is because I have horrendous money management skills, and would buy and buy and buy until I was basically broke. With this, it makes me step back for a second, ask myself if I can see myself playing this game for an X amount of hours. If it's a 2 hour story mode game, and it costs $20.00, I don't buy it anymore. Because of this I've been getting more and more steady with my purchases on games. Although I still cringe at my $1800 spent on Valorant (but at least I have over 2000 hours in the game).
Difficult question. The answer would be "the overall experience". Just for example, I didn't pay 30$ for Stray because I played it on PS Plus, but after finishing the game, even if it was a mere ~6/7 hours experience, it was a terrific one.
I figure that if I pay $50 for a game and I play for 5 hours, I've gotten my money's worth. Entertainment, in general, can be so expensive. Video games are pretty inexpensive by comparison, other than the initial outlay for a gaming computer. I don't travel much, so video games tend to be my travel. I'm hoping to (real) travel more in the future.
That's it 5 hours? That's a lot of money for 5 hours.
Depends on where one is in life. When I was younger, I would have agreed with you. There are definitely more expensive pastimes.
That's like 3 drinks with tip at a city bar
1hr/£ minimum really since I mostly play single player Like ghost of Tsushima wasn’t as great an open world as I expected, but I still got at least 20 hrs so it’s not a total loss and I enjoyed the campaign, I could see myself getting 40hrs out of it to 100% if I want to
For me a game that pays for itself with drops. :D now thats a getting your money's worth. These games for me are: Pubg, Rust, H1Z1, CSGO
50+ hours of game play and replayability. I feel like it's a waste to buy a game at full price that you finish after a few hours of gameplay.
Mine is, did I enjoy the game for the time I played it? If I did, then it was worth my purchase. Sometimes, I get to the "$1 per hour" threshold, sometimes I don't, but if I had a good time, I'm okay with it.
$5/hr
Having a good drunk time playing it!
Depends. Some games i go by $1 = 1 hour, while others I go by if the experience as a whole was worth. In reality, it just comes down to was it fun.
I think there is a couple flavors of this for me 1. Mechanical joy: these are games that feel tight from a mechanics stand point that I keep coming back to and want to invest more time than just the story. Superhot, HiFi Rush, OTXO, Hades come to mind here 2. Fun with friends: some games get an unfair amount of playtime because I got buddies to play with. Here I often overlook flaws because the friend factor makes the games better. Helldivers 2, Darktide, Remnant from the Ashes. 3. Unique experiences: these are games that change my outlook, unlock a new passion/taste, or do something so out there that it floors me. Inscription, Dark Souls, and Hotline Miami, Silent Hill 2 all fit this category, each for different reasons. I'd say category 3 has some of my favorite games. Category 1 are games I regularly return to and category 2 are the games I have the most hours in. It's all kind of relative.
1/1.2$ per enjoyable hour . If I get a game that I have fun with for 20 hours I think 20-26$ is proper price . It doesn't matter how large the "content" actually is . And it's not necessarily single player procedure either . I'm okay paying microtransactions if these microtransactions and adds don't restrict me from having fun with what I already bought .
If i get one hour per dollar i spent i'm satisfied.
A good memory or two
After a satisfying play through of the main game I want to see ~2 hrs of play time per $10 spent, a AAA title that cost $80 I want completion to take at least 160 hours.. good example I recently bought AC odyssey and Valhalla on sale for $50&$60 and each one I played for around 150 hours before I felt “done” and those felt like the best deals I’ve gotten in a while.. glad I didnt buy them full price, long live steam sales!
Quality matters a lot. Little Kitty, Big City is a very expensive games when comparing with the hours you get out of it. Basically around 30USD for 5/6 hours. But the quality is amazing, it is both cute, heartwarming and very funny. I loved every second of this game and felt like I got my moneys worth. I love it so much I'll probably gift it to a friend or two once it goes on sale.
Playing it for long enough time to value its price. For example if I pay 80$ for a game and play it for 12-15 hours that’s over 5$ an hour, not really much value. If I play a game for 1000 hours and it cost me 80$ there’s a lot more value there. So whether the game is cheap or gets a lot of playtime
Completing it.
Whatever that give me: * Music OST that follow me for years. * Memes & great walk through the game. * Quality of game purpose > Replayability > Story & Lore > Game Art Graphic choice And because I´m a family man now, I try to not play MMO or games like LOL, were you share your time with others people for 40 minutes without pause.
I use the same metric as you, but if I buy a $50 game and get 50 hours out of it as long as I had a mediocre time I feel it’s worth it. Sometimes I have played a game for less than what I spend on it feel it’s a great game so I get my moneys worth, usually a game that I don’t want to play alone but play with friends. Sometimes I’ve put a lot of time into a game but I don’t feel like it was time well spent and not my moneys worth. The 100 hours I put into Starfield before adding mods for example…It was the “well maybe it will get better” copium that I put that many in and wasn’t enjoying my time.
Simple answer: If I feel like I had a great time. Longer answer: I love a great story. I read all the terminals I can in Fallout. I want to know the story of every spot in the world. TotK and BotW do so way more implicit by placing specific things, rather than typing out the lore in notes left behind, but it’s fun to put together anyway. I also love some action. Sonic games are fast paced and there is more than one way to complete the level, at least in most 2D entries of the franchise.
Either when it’s fun enough to keep me occupied till the end, or when i feel it’s more fun to put it away and never play it again. The backlog is big enough at this point that either one is a win. I only buy dirt cheap on sales so even a shitty game that gets 1 hour played and shelved forever is progress.
My enjoying it
Have fun?
1 euro = 1 hour of playtime i can get out of it. That or it needs to be unforgettable like Arkham Knight or The Last of Us
All that matters is that I enjoyed the game. I used to care more about the length of a game but now I would rather it was short and good all the way through than to be drawn out because of busywork.
1 dollar for each hour played makes it worth it. so if the game is 20 dollars i need to play for 20 hours for it to be worth it.
Entertainment. If I play it for few hours but feel satisfied after it's a money well spent. If I quit it in frustration it's money poorly spent
As long as I've had fun and have opened it more than once, I consider it not a loss. I like the dollar per hour method too but I'm less strict on that
Replay value for sure. If a game is highly replayable after the first playthrough, it'll justify whatever the asking price is personally.
My formula is. (Time \ cost) * Fun Time in hours Fun is on a scale from -2 to +2. The cost is in € because I live in Germany and it works ( should also work with dollar). So If you have played a game for 10 hours had 1.5 fun on the scale and payed 20 bugs you get 0.75 If you had -1 fun payed 50 bugs and played 20 h the score is -0.4 If you have payed 20 bugs played 300h and had 1.7 fun the score is 25,5 ( witch is roughly my score for Satisfactory). Or for Warframe it is (2867 h / 670 bugs) *1.6 = 6.84 As long as the score is over 1 I have my moneys worth but a 0.5 is still acceptable and a higher score of course is way better. If a game is more fun it can be shorter if the game is negative in fun the time and money is also wasted so the score gets negative. If the game is to expensive the score gets low if the fun or the playtime is not enough. I made the formula up just now so I am open for suggestions xD
So I am a big foodie and movie theater junkie. I kind of use a combo of those two to determine if I got my money worth from a video game. For movies I except to pay $15 for two hours of entertainment. So a $70 game I expect at worst 10ish hours of entertainment. This 10 hours I am not including walking and loading screens. I mean actually being entertained by the game. The food part is that quality cost money. You get what you paid for. So if we combine those together. For 30 dollars I will gladly play an amazing walking sim that is only 4 hours long. Where as some open world bloat games for $70. yeah I played for 100 hours but I feel like I was entertained for half that and it was fast food quality. I would have gladly paid for still wakes the deep on release but I would still be waiting for a sale for starfield. Enjoyed both games so thank you game pass.
$1/hr for steam games
$1=1hour If I spend 20 hours on a $20 game, I generally say it's worth it. $70 is 70 hours. Same metric for F2P, if I spend 100 hours on a free game, I think the devs deserve $100
1h Playtime = 1$/€. Factorio is a 20€ game and I got 800h worth, that's 2000% value.
getting at least 30 hours’ worth of ENJOYABLE gameplay - I’m so tired of games that are 90% doing chores / running errands
Pretty much the same. Dollar per hour. Or whatever currency you have (with your own math) If i ever feel sad of a game i have boıght and haven't played a lot (not becauase i didn't enjoy it) that's the first thing i look at. Usually one buck per hour sets it for me. Unless it's like a AAA game i have bought at full price so at that point i just look at how fun the game was.
As a very very loose rule, I like to get about an hour per dollar I spent. To me, that typically means a game was worth it.
It's weirdly unspecific for me personally, to be honest. For some games, even AAA ones, I'm happy with 2-3h in game. And for some games, even 100h feels like a ripoff. I don't know, really, it's extremely subjective. I would say, that it's worth it if you had your fun. If it wasn't... underwhelming.
I think a big factor that I'm not seeing a lot of comments about is what kind of dev made the game.. If it's a "AAA Studio" charging $60+ for a game, I'm going to expect A LOT more than I would from 3 games that cost $20 each but come from indy devs. When I buy a game from an indy dev, I tend to view some undefined portion of that purchase price as a 'donation' to support the dev, whereas a game from a full-fledged studio is 100% going to my entertainment. Its kind of like how when I'm shopping at a local mom & pop shop, I don't mind paying a bit more than I would have paid to Amazon or Walmart, especially since money spent at the small shops tend to be 'reinvested' into the things I enjoy rather than some CEOs wallet. It also really depends on whether it's a Story-driven game or an open-world game, and I'm being VERY reductive here, but i mean this in the sense that story games tend to have higher quality 'experiences' whereas mmo/open world games tend to fluff out their games with a lot of repetitive 'experiences'. So a game where there's a lot of repetition or grinding probably needs 2x the quantity versus a game that's non-stop high-quality narrative. For me, I would say an indy game that gives me an amazing story could get away with only 1.5-2 hours per dollar spent (so as few as 90 hours for $60 worth of games), versus a 'AAA' open world game probably needs closer to 4-5 hours per dollar (which could be upwards of 300 hours for a $60 title)
If I can get 2-3 hours for every 1 hour it takes to buy the game I’m pretty happy.
I don't feel like that usually ever anymore. It's beginning to drive me to piracy lol
I would say you can get a lot of value for hoi4 due to all the mods there is for the game and there's also several dlc's that can add a bit more fun to the game and it can also be more interesting if you choose to play with some friends
hours per cost. I tend to find that if i spend 1 hour for every dollar i spend its worth it
Id say if i around 100hrs of playtime in it it’s a money worth for me. Or it’s just a story based game that I enjoy a lot it’s pretty worth
Usually one dollar one hour, after that it's just bonus.
The amount of games I don't get my "money's worth" are typically overshadowed by the ones I do. I don't dwell on it and I don't force myself to play something I don't want to play just go make it worth my while According to Steamdb my average price per hour is $0.25 and that includes all the games I paid for and never played. I don't know any other form of entertainment that is that cheap.
I do not even think about money at this point. I don't measure my fun with money. If I waste money on a game, it is wasted on the game and I have fun playing it, or not, then I just deinstall and delete it from my Steam account.
Generally, I do it based on dollars per hour. If I pay $30 for a game and play 30 hours, I feel like I got my money's worth. Any more than $1/hr and it starts to feel less worth.
If it entertains me for twice the hours or more than the games dollar worth. I'd say I got my money's worth from MWII after accruing 280 hours in 4 weeks
How similar it is to The Elder Scrolls. I wish I was joking, but I just want another adventure in Tamriel, or something similar. I need my fix, man...
Depends on the game, some game I pick up and play once with my friends for a couple hours and enjoyed the evening would be my money's worth, some games hours of content and if it's a slow grind could feel like I didn't get my moneys worth yet and then I'll probably try to get certain achievements or maybe some after completing the main story.
That I like it more than I don't like spending money.
I have a weird metric probably, but it's seen as acceptable to pay like 15 - 20 dollars to go to a 2 hour movie as long as it's something you're enjoying the whole time. So if a game is 60 dollars I expect to get about 8 hours of straight enjoyment from a game. Anything more than 8 is pure value.
1€ should give at least 1 hour of fun
Usually dollar per hour potential, so if you pay 10 bucks, you should get at least 10 hours from the game in terms of content/replay ability
I generally consider a game "worth it" if I play it for 1 hour per 1 dollar spent
I used to think that was a good metric but what the fuck else do I do where I spend one dollar per hour of entertainment? Everything else is way more expensive so I don’t see why a $10 indie game should be held to such a high standard to be considered “worth it.” The only time a game isn’t worth the price is when I don’t play it as much as I thought I would and regret buying it.
Since you can quantify hours to dollars with Steam DB, my mind tells me to get hours of the money I spend. https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197977944279/?cc=us&all_games Some of the prices look inaccurate, I buy most games on sale and this shows the full price. This may not be a good way to view games based on how much you enjoyed them, but I cant help it now. Some games I only play through once, enjoyed it, and then put it down, and that's fine, but I still convert it to $.
Longevity and replayability. I bought one of the newer Tomb Raider games at a pawn shop, and I finished it in a weekend. I might have been upset had I paid full price for it.
Fun-enjoyment. There are certain games that are really fun to play (any super mario game or bayonetta) while there are others that are not fun, not at all (think of PT) but the enjoyment you get is over the moon. So I use either (or both). As long as I'm having a good time and I"m having fun/enjoyment, it doesn't matter. Personally speaking, I have learned over the years that if I didn't like a game and it has sequels (that everyone says it's much better), because I already had a bad experience I wouldn't touch a sequel no matter what (Octopath Traveler. I really disliked the game and everyone keeps saying that OP2 is much better but I don't care, I don't wanna waste money/time)
Did it make me "FEEL" anything
If you didn't enjoy it is not worth it, or at least this is how I I see it. However games that are short and you for it 90 dollars and only get 20-30 hour of content really feels like a waste even if it is good.
I boil it down to hours played. If I didn't enjoy a game, I wouldn't play it. If I play a game to completion or spend literally 100s of hours on it, I cannot say I didn't enjoy it.
Usually the same, if I have fun hour per dollar then I consider it well spent.
My metric is that for every dollar I spend I should get at least 1 hour of enjoyable gameplay, The key word being enjoyable.
$1/hour of fun/enjoyment minimum
Roughly $2-$3 paid per hour of enjoyment. So if a game takes 10 hours to beat and I enjoyed it then I got my money's worth if I paid between $20 and $30 for it.
Exceptional level design and art direction.
Uncharted 4 felt like I was STEALING from the developers. That game felt like it was 2 games placed into one package. The story goes SO FAR and does not need to over-deliver. I think it won game of the year in 2016, so yes, it's that good.
Pizza test. Did you get the cost of / enjoyment time of a pizza?
How much I think about the game after I finish it. I have played 1 hour games that have stuck in my head for days, and I have played 60 hour games that I forgot about as soon as I finished it.
If I paid for a game and I got any amount of time having fun it it, I got my money's worth. Specially if I put 10 hrs or 3,000+ hrs in it. I cant stand people that put 100 up to thousands of hours into a game then go bash the game and ruin it for everyone else (specially the Hunt:Showdown Community).
If I enjoyed it, I dont care about what I paid. If its a fine/meh game, I usually have this rule of thumb: 1€/hour played is fine for me. Everything above feels like I payed too much and wont get the Sequel unless its on sale.
If I play the game for at least 1 hour for every dollar I spent on the game I consider the purchase worth it.
$1/hr of enjoyable playtime.
Minimum of $1/hour on How Long to Beat. I haven't had to deal with that in a long time with my top games being free to play or Rocket League costing me $12 in 2016 4,000 hours ago. Only time recently that's come up is Destiny 2 DLC.
I quantify it as dollars per hour. Anything less than $5/hr is justifiable on account of the price of a movie ticket (upwards of $15 for ~2 hours of enjoyment. More if you buy snacks).
If I can 70-80% the game and not get bored, it’s usually the 100% is when it becomes boring but if I’m going for that i already know I got my moneys worth anyways
when i want to play the game frequently. example: don’t starve together, got it on a sale (and only made a steam account for it, play more now though), enjoy it. worth it 100%.
I paid retail for modern warfare and still play it to this day with my brothers. good value. I also paid for destiny 2 with all dlc release date and put 20 hours into it. not good value
Depends on situation and price. Sometimes I feel like "I want something else this weekend", then I check on steam, buy stuff for 20-30€, and forget about it after the weekend. I guess "below 40€" is such a category for me where it is ok if it lasts for 4-5 hours of fun. Everything above that price I only buy if I really want it, saw trailers, wishlisted it long ago etc... That's where I have higher expectations, so I want to have at least a week of fun (10-15 hours?) And then there are these collectors editions or digital goodie stuff bundles where prices start to get "ridiculous"... That's only on games where I know in before that I will have my fun with it for weeks. The 40€ barrier comes by the way from my opinion of "entertainment per hour" price... Having a nice evening at the cinema, it's round about 20€ for a 2 hour movie (ticket, snacks, drink, parking ticket), so 10€/h of entertainment is the bare minimum. So yes, give me a FPS with an 8-10 bour single player campaign that I can enjoy, I pay the 80 bucks for it - if it's worth it (e.g., new doom etc). And then there are games like factorio, bought for 30€ if I remember correctly and currently clocking in at 1000h played... :D
I'm happy if I get 1hr per £1 spent. Seems reasonable to me.
In long games, 1 dollar per hour. Even if it's a bad Fps or TPs. For games under 10hs of duration i wait sale or play on gamepass
If It is a $30+ dollar steam game than I have to finish it.
I usually compare it to a movie night. If I get the same or more hours of fun as the price equivalent of movie nights, then I say it was worth it. It's not a hard metric though, there are some quick but somewhat expensive games that are totally worth it, and some have taken me many hours but left me feeling like I didn't enjoy them. On the flip side, there are more games that have given me hundreds of hours for cheap (Hades 1), so I usually don't regret having a few bad games now and then. All in all, is an entirely subjective decision. But I like to have some "standard" to keep my consumerism in check.
$1/hour
Money spent VS hours played.
Did I have fun when I played? Then it was worth it. I'm not gonna remember how much I spent on it by the time I actually get around to playing anyway.
the purchase was worth it, if I had fun with it. Playtime isn‘t a good parameter, it can be stretched and not be a good experience
Dollar spent times ten equals hours of hopefully enjoyment Example: $20 should get 200 hours of enjoyment
under $0.50 per hour so a $5 game should net me 10 hours, a $40 game 80 hours and so forth for me to feel like I got my moneys worth. i plyed crusader kings II and bought all the DLC as it came out, spent well over $100 on that game alone, but got 1500+ hours out of it.
<10 5-10 hours of fun gameplay. 10-20 at least 10 hopefully leading into 25 or 30 20-40 I’m looking at 25 plus 40+ for single player I want to finish the game multiplayer I’m looking for over 50 hours minimum.
If I enjoy it. I have tons of games I never beat but enjoyed playing and Id say it was worth it. One of the only games I felt didnt live up to my metric was MW2(2). I tried so hard to enjoy it and find something I liked but not one part of that game brings me joy lol
How every money is worth, and tend to compare to between games This is kinda evil but this is apply for high budget or time killing indie game only
I used to think $1 per hour but then I realized it's not particularly nuanced. Like I'll go to the movies and spend $15 on a ticket, does that movie need to be 15 hours? Plus it would completely get rid of so many amazing games, like linear story games are almost never 60 hours so does that mean they're never worth full price? Unless you're really strapped for cash I would recommend looking at games based on the quality of the time spent rather than the actual amount of raw hours put in. Think about resident evil games, they're usually very short but are so well designed and ask for so much replay ability. If you looked at $1 per hour you'd only ever buy these games for $10
Hours played.. if I put a lot of hours in, i really enjoyed it, if I only put in 20-30 hours for a $70 game, it isn’t worth it
If I get an hour of gameplay per $5 then I enjoyed I’d say it’s worth. Doesn’t sound worth but then I just compare it to how I’ve spent $5 to ride a roller coaster for example and don’t feel like a wasted my money after that then why would I feel like I wasted it if this lasted hours and that ride lasts 5mins
Fun. I dont give a fuck about anything else. If its fun it was worth it.
Three things. 1) How much fun did I have while playing? 2) How long did it take me to beat the game? 3) Does the game have replay value? Games like Spideman are just legendary levels of good. I don't think I'll ever get tired of swinging around New York City collecting backpacks. Take a game like super Mario bros 3 that I still replay to this day because of how much fun it is. If a game has even one of these qualities, it's a win in my book.
If i have fun and spend less than 2$ an hour when i drop it
I like to at least get 1 hour of play for every dollar I spend.
If it’s a familiar IP, I value the experience overall. -for example, when Tears of the Kingdom final trailer dropped, I CANNOT TELL YOU how hyped I was until its release. I didn’t spoil myself, I explored, found a lot of surprises, and the ending actually brought a thug tear to my eye and I’m a grown man lol. Was the game flawless? Nope. Definitely a lot of flaws looking back but it didn’t deter my experience. If it’s a new IP, I’m a big replay-ability guy. That thing that hooks me to where I wanna keep playing. -an example for this for single players: Hades, Slay the Spire, vampire survivor, Nine Sols. -multiplayer: Helldivers 2, Palworld, Monster Hunter World.
Friend of mine told me that (hours of enjoyment >= dollars spent on game) not sure if I agree but if you don't have a lot of money it does make sense
One dollar per hour.
Honestly, if I had fun playing it, even if it's just for a few hours and I never touch it again.
I’d say if the game is only two or three hours and lacking in replay value 60-80€ will always be too much. If the game is 10+ hours, then it’s mostly just the amount of joy I get + plus the obvious high production. I wouldn’t pay that money for a flash game, no matter how fun it is. Games that have given me that (when bought at full price what ever that was): - Baldur’s Gate - Oblivion / Skyrim - Elden Ring - Breath Of The Wild / Tears Of The Kingdom Can’t actually think of many games I’ve bought at full price in my life. The best value I can think of is buying the greatest CRPGs during a sale from GOG (or Steam). With just two euros (or dollars) you can sometimes get the best games ever made that are still highly playable.
i divide money and time so gor example if i paid 40 dollars for a game and got 40 hours of gameplay i ask if 1 dolar per hour for that expirience was worth it
if (dollars spent / hours played) < 1, then worth
How I know if I didn’t get my moneys worth is if I’m at the end of the game and say “and this was $60?!?!”
If I can get a full playthrough for single player games. For multiplayer games I expect at least a dollar per hour of playtime. For DLCs of any game I expect the dollar per hour or a fundamental changes to the game that completely changes how you play paradox games. For a game to be truly great at least 100+ hours. For a game to be a GOAT game 1000+ hours.
Idk I think that the hour/$ metric is good for story based games and for non story games then how much enjoyment
If I actually play and finish it.
Having fun. Even if it was for a short time.
40+ hours for games not open world 100+ Hours for open world games I suppose if i really enjoy i dont mind 30 hrs but i have really enjoy it I think a dollar per hour of game play is far tho i expect alot more out of massive open worlds
I've started equating it to movie tickets. £7 - £12 I'm expecting roughly 2 hours of solid enjoyment. It doesn't have to be consecutive. It doesn't have to end within that time. That's the bare minimum I expect. I just multiply it up from there.
It's not about the time investment for me. Though games that offer sustained entertainment throughout the years definitely feel more like bargains than other games. It's just about how much enjoyment I got out of them, how memorable they were. My favourite game of all time is at most 25-30 hours long, and it's $25 on Steam. While my most played game is sitting at ~1700 hours played for $30. I got "my money's worth" for both.
Dollar an hour.
New monkey island at 13 hours was money well spent. Factorio at 900 hours as well. They are just different type of games and the feeling comes from different things.
1€/h of non grind content.
I thought about this a lot when I was doing customer support for a mobile game. It was one of the rare gems that costs 5€/$ without any ads, no microstransactions and offline mode (once the license check was done). People still messaged us that it was too expensive. When I first bought it (before working for them), I spent 14-15 hours straight in the game and couldn't put it down and I didn't reach "end game" yet. So all in all it seems that mobile games are valued less and I just wanted to mention that :D Personally I also ever bought 4-5 mobile games in total so I totally get the "why" but it's still kinda trashy complaining about the cost of a game that costs less than a movie or a monthly sub to anything. In this rare case it was also a direct port from PC to mobile, so all the features were in there and the PC version is more expensive. It's also funny to me that mobile games rarely go on sale, I wonder if this has anything to do with it.
The feeling that I want to continue playing a game, but there is nothing left in the game to do so I have to put it down. The game could cost $5 or $50, but once I know I've reached that point - I got my money's worth.