What is the value of a game to you?

[Aria Genisi]

Recently, I've been thinking about the value of a game. Specifically, how much we, the players, value a game compared to how much it costs to purchase. A common way of going on about it (though I personally haven't seen it as much lately) is that the length of a game is what matters most, where the number of hours you spend in a game, usually going from the beginning of the game to the end credits. If you're looking at the AAA game market alone, then there's arguable merit to this way of going about it, given how you're being asked to spend $60 on the next Big Thing. But there's more than just big budget open world AAA games that lasts hundreds of hours. There's shorter indie games, there's lower budget retail games, multiplayer only games, there's MMOs, and all sorts of various other shit in between, not to mention all the casual mobile and free-to-play games that exist out there.

Personally, I don't have a specific ratio or anything I'm looking for. To me, a game is worth it to me if I'm having fun with it, and it leaves a notable impression on me in some way. Replay value is big to me, but not all the games that I'm willing to shell out for are games that i'd immediately go back to after clearing it. Some games, either by design (like an Ace Attorney game) or by choice (like Nier Automata), I'm willing to only want to play once but still feel satisfied with it. Shorter games and even bad games don't bother me as much as long as they're still enjoyable in some way.

So, I'm curious. Do you have some sort of time spent vs money spent ratio that you use to determine if a game has been worth your time and money? Do you go by some other set of guidelines for yourself to determine if it was worth it? Or do you just play whatever catches your fancy?

What determines the value of a game to you?

[Quanta]

I find it difficult these days to justify the price of any given game because it's going to largely depend on having played it to determine its value. Like, I'm hesitant to buy most games these days, especially in the AAA space, because a lack of demos and a lack of an ability to rent titles anymore means that you have no idea what you're paying for. Paying $80CDN for something that's going to sit in your library and fester until the end of time is not a good feeling; likewise, picking something up for $10 that could easily have sold for double that isn't a stellar feeling either. The length of a game seldom matters, and I'm over the linear/non-linear shit, so that's not a factor either. I'm mostly interested in if games tell a good story and are fun to play, neither of which can be properly conveyed in trailers or sneek-peeks.

[Gloomy Rube]

I don't have a solid, concrete set of rules to see if something's worth money to me. The fact is, except for games under 10 bux, I hold all other games to the same standard. Hollow Knight earned its keep as much as Dark Souls 3, despite DS3 being more expensive. And honestly I'm easy to sway. Like... if you have a game with cute things doing cute stuff I'm probably going to think it was worth it, even if the gameplay is sub-par. I end up really putting a lot of emphasis on story, aesthetics, characters, and multiplayer options.

Though, that last one isn't used so much, but if something has unusual multiplayer like dark souls, I'm more likely to enjoy it. Drop-in surprise multiplayer is hecka fun to me, though I find other people don't think so, considering how many people play dark souls offline

[Venusy]

There's lots of different factors that go into this, like interest in the genre, or respect for the player's time or other resources like hard drive space - a game such as Assassin's Creed might take me a lot of hours to complete, but I have little interest in it, and so will only get those games as part of a bundle or if there's some kind of ridiculous pricing glitch (which is why I ended up owning Watch_Dogs 2 near launch).

I don't preorder many games, so let's take a look at some of those from this year for an idea of how I see value:

I paid £90 for Yooka-Laylee as a Kickstarter backer. It took me about 45 hours to 100%, and I didn't enjoy large parts of the game. Y-L now goes for about £15 in stores. I would say £15 is the price I would probably want to pay if I was paying retail, but I don't feel especially cheated as a backer - crowdfunding is always a roll of the dice, and I just hope they learn from their mistakes in future patches and/or their next game.

I paid £35 for Sonic Forces. I completed the main story in about 3 to 4 hours. There is a lot of bonus content (red rings and S ranks) left to go for, but unlike Generations, the core gameplay and level design isn't good enough for me to want to do that - particularly not on the Switch version, where the cuts made to every visual aspect of the game just make everything blend into the background and control even worse. I'm going to trade in the Switch version tomorrow (I very rarely trade in games that I don't already own on a different platform), and maybe I'll get the PC version in a bundle at some point down the line.

I paid £40 for Mario Odyssey, do not know how many hours I've currently put into it, and have been having a very good time (though I'm shortly going to run out of enjoyable moons, leaving only the more annoying ones like getting 100 on the jump rope challenge, the harder Trace Walking ones, and picture match). With Nintendo games where I'm interested, they very rarely come down in price, so I may as well get them for their full RRP - though saying that, Nintendo is still one of the worst about digital pricing in the UK, and the eShop has even less sales on these games than they do at retail.

For everything I'm not fully interested in and so don't preorder, it's either bundled, or about £10 for AAA games where I still have some interest - £10 was the point where I bit on Wolfenstein TNO, Fallout 4, and Doom 2016. (The latter two I still need to play at some point)

[!saak]

I bought Rocket League for 20 bucks some two years ago and since then I've put over 1100 hours into it. I've also bought probably 30 to 40 keys or so to get some cosmetic items I wanted, so all in all I spent maybe 70 euros on it in total.

I also recently bought Wolfenstein TNC at launch for 60,- and I spent some 10 hours playing that and will probably revisit to get the rest of the Commanders. I'm also thinking about getting the DLC but I'll do that at a later date.

Both games were worth it and then some imo.

Rocket League is purely a mechanics driven game. There's no story, no nothing. It's probably the most sportslike game out there and offers incredible replay value. The skill ceiling is super high and you can focus on learning different things at your own pace. Things like teamplay, positioning, how to hit powershots, aerialing, wallplays etc. The potential is insane.

Wolfenstein offers comparatively little freedom gameplay-wise and the game's value for me comes from the atmosphere it builds, the storytelling and the way it portrays its characters. I loved the New Order and it's probably the best singleplayer experience between 2010-2015 I think. Its developer, Machine Games, is an offshoot of Starbreeze, who developed The Chronicles of Riddick; Escape from Butcher Bay/Dark Athena and The Darkness, both games I love.

The storytelling reminds me of 70s Hollywood, with auteur driven, "risky" films like The French Connection and I love that. There isn't really anything like it, I want more of it so I support games like that.

Adding something else to the pile: Recent news surrounding Need for Speed: Payback and its lootbox system has pretty much soured me on the game, whereas two weeks ago I was thinking of buying it full price.

So to summarize for me it's highly situational, it differs per game, what I feel like it "offers me" in terms of either replayability, community, narrative richness, innovation, and it depends on various cultural trends that I'm for or against.

[Jill]

i don't value games on some linear scale which is likely why i never feel 100% confident when i say ____ is my favorite game of all time. there are so many ways a game can be worthwhile (or torturous) that you might as well be questioning the value of a human being

if we simply weigh playtime versus cost, Minecraft is far and away #1
if we go by "ratio of time spent actively thrilled" versus cost, Demon's Souls is #1
if we go by "heaviest emotional impact" versus cost, To The Moon is #1
if we go by "most fascinating game mechanics" versus cost, FTL is probably #1
if we go by "most intriguing story" versus cost, Ghost Trick is #1
if we go by "most speculated about" versus cost, Undertale is #1

i could probably go on, and weirdly none of those values would place God Hand or BIT.TRIP RUNNER at #1. yet altogether those two feel like more enjoyable games to me than the rest

[Gloomy Rube]

jaw dropping attacks from a roulette wheel

(a roulette wheel)

[Snowfire]

If I game is fun for me to play on a regular basis, I can overlook flaws.

Destiny has a lot of minor flaws that need to be fixed, but I enjoy playing it every day because of the stuff it gets right.

[Aramek]

I'm old so I'm still stuck in the "x amount of $ should buy y amount of hours of entertainment."

[drunkill]

I don't mind paying $60-80 for a game if I know I want it. That is like 4 movie tickets (here) but waaay more hours of entertainment.

Of course I don't buy a ton of new AAA releases, I often wait and but them on sale a few months later. I'd say I buy 2-4 AAA games at launch a year.

[West Filly]

To me a game is worth paying the staff who work on it and any ongoing costs like servers and updates. It's when the money starts to go into profits for people who are already well to do that I start to wonder why I need to part with that cash. The game got made and the costs including the wage bill got paid. Now if there was a way to withold the money that doesn't go into those things, that'd be perfect.