I'm @Jason_Kopplin on twitter. Samit was cool enough to read my question from twitter on this week's Podtoid. The problem is, it's difficult to ask a nuanced question in 140 characters.

Here's my actual question and point I was trying to condense:

Should games have variable pricing? The example I used was Mass Effect and Dragon Age, two series from the same developer. You can get through the core of Mass Effect in 10-12 hours while Dragon Age is a 40-50 hour experience. Let's assume Mass Effect 2 and three will be of a similar length. That means The whole mass effect trilogy will presumably cost $180 new for a 30-40 hour experience compared to $60 for Dragon Age.

Would anyone flip a shit if if Bioware had split Dragon Age into thirds and released each chunk for $60? I realize more work is being done to tweak and refine Mass Effect entries, but Valve is doing the same thing (slowly) with the Half Life 2 episodes. Those episodes are almost as long as some stand alone games, yet retail for a third of the full original Half Life 2.

That's not to say length equals quality or that a short game can't be good and worth full standard price. However, it's clear more effort/money/resources go into certain games. Different media have variable pricing. I know comparing media is tricky business, but join me as we go down this rabbit hole...

Video games cover such a large swath of experiences compared to most other media. Look at motion pictures, however. A single film on DVD costs less than a season of a television show. Star Trek goes for $15.99 new on Amazon while the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation goes for $52.49 even though it's much older. Why is that? Sure, there's a cost involved with physically printing more discs, but the television season costs more because there's more content there.

Most modern action games last 10-15 hours while an RPG can last 50-100 hours. Those 10-hour action games are comparable to a film while a long epic is more like miniseries or season of a show. Shouldn't that longer game with more content, which cost more to produce, cost more at retail?

Length doesn't always equal price. I don't even want to know how much Uncharted 2 cost even though it's not a terribly long experience. So length isn't a perfect metric, but can be a useful indicator of production cost. We see this a little with budget titles. Wet, for example, came out under the standard $60 price point because it wasn't a top tier game. Something like Uncharted 2 is probably worth $60 and so is Dragon Age. But Something like the last Prince of Persia game maybe should have came out at a $40 price point.

It's hard to articulate this point without sounding like I'm just whining about games costing too much or that shorter games should be cheaper. I don't feel I got my point across in a single tweet, or even here for sure. But I think it's worth pondering.