Welcome to MassDebate! We take a controversial topic, form a proposition, and set two contenders the challenge of stating their case in favor of and in opposition to the proposition. After which, users may vote to decide which contender they support. Rules for voting are at the bottom of the blog, but it is recommended that you read the contenders' cases before you cast your vote.
The proposition: Full price retail releases should promise a certain amount of play time.
Daniel Starkey argues in favor of the proposition:
Gamers, fellow members of the Dtoid Army, lend me your ears! For how long have we had to put up with 5-8 hour games at $50-60 per title? We accept less and less and shell out more and more. I for one have had enough. We have a right to games that take more than a day to finish; we deserve value, we deserve replayability, and we deserve more than just bullshit, tacked-on multiplayer.
I’m here to back the gamers on a budget; the people who can’t afford more than one or two new games per month. I am more than willing to wager that the majority of gamers are in this precocious position. I know I am. I'm aware that trying to tell other people what to charge and such is a bit presumptuous, but my proposal is simple: Developers should adjust prices based on the expected length of a game, as well as replayability, multiplayer, etc.
I’d like to begin by looking at Portal 2, widely regarded as one of the best written, funniest games in recent history. There was a tremendous amount of hype built up around its release. It was a sequel to one of the best games of ’07, it had a massive ARG to promote it, and the full support of Valve, instead of a small secondary team as they had for the first one. I, like pretty much everyone else I knew, pre-loaded Portal 2 and started collecting potatoes. When it finally launched on the evening of April 18th, I tore into it.
I finished the game before sunrise.
I paid $50 for around six hours of playtime. I was really disappointed, but I thought; “Well, maybe the Co-op will keep me going for a while longer”. So the next night, I got my friend Ian to play with me, and again, we were done in a few hours. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Portal 2, but I got barely more gameplay than Portal, for more than twice the cost. It wouldn’t even be that big of a deal, if it wasn’t for the fact that it had exceptionally low replay value. We aren’t talking Marvel vs Capcom 3 here. I only played it once all the way through and have had no inclination to replay it at all.
I contrast this with Fallout 3. I bought it on launch day for the PC with all the pre-order bonuses for around $130. I got the Pip-boy and the lunch box and the bobble-head and all of that good stuff. I then proceeded to buy it again for the 360. I spent over $200 on that game if you consider the double DLC purchases too. However, I have played it for over 300 hours total, (I know, I have a problem) so it came out to less than $0.66/hour of game. Compare that to Portal 2’s $5/hour. One could make the argument that quality can balance that out. And I’d usually agree, but Fallout 3 had such a glorious mixture of poignant, hilarious, and totally fucking badass moments that I think it wins there too.
I know that ultimately, these arguments come down to a combination of taste and personal circumstance. Therefore I have a couple of simple, perfectly reasonable solutions. First, as I mentioned earlier, I think prices could be adjusted based on how much playtime the average player can likely get out of it. This could very well increase the number of people purchasing the games new and help offset the lost revenue from price reduction. For example, I have never had any interest in the Call of Duty multiplayer. If the single-player campaign was available for around 15 dollars though, I’d happily pick that up. Everybody wins: The developers get a few more dollars, I don’t tax anyone’s servers, and I get to play through another mediocre jingoistic campaign.
It would take some market research and due diligence on the part of developers and publishers to find a solid equilibrium, but ultimately we’d be expanding the audience for games. Fewer people would feel cheated by the fact that games are getting shorter and shorter, while simultaneously becoming more expensive. Making longevity a value marker will actually net more cash for the developers that deserve it, and allow more folk to legitimately enjoy what modern, no expense spared gaming has to offer. That can only be seen as a good thing for all parties.
Isay Isay argues against the proposition:
It’s funny that when I was younger and had more time to spend on games, I would relish expansive timesinks. Now, with more responsibilities and less time for gaming, I see the premium in a shorter, more focused experience. I also understand that a short, focused game is not by definition any cheaper to make. If developers start to shoehorn in fluff to meet some mythical target length, I’d rather spend that unnecessary extra time on something else. I don’t want some arbitrary play time requirement to be forced on every game.
The length of a game should only be a bullet point. Rarely should it be one of the most important features. Games like Skyrim or competitive multiplayer experiences such as the military shooter/fighting games du jour are acceptable exceptions; their goal is theoretically infinite play time. However, a benefit to some can be a deterrent to others. Some games marketing sees fit to publicize an impressive chunk of time on a box. The larger it is, the more hesitant I am to believe that I’ll actually enjoy all those hours they are touting.
Once you start making promises about how long a game should be and all of a sudden it falls short of that, you give customers reason to complain. There are some developers who can keep their vision going for an extended period of time, but there are far more who can’t sustain that focus to tell the story they desire. We are all painfully aware of the tropes we see as a result of those who can’t keep it going:
Oh hey, there are these things that you didn’t know about that are totally important, but luckily they are all over the places you’ve already been. Go back and get them in order to advance further.
Oh, this action sequence that started to drag after 5 minutes? Let’s bump that up to 15 minutes and duplicate it a few more times.
You are level 15 and now all enemies are level 20! Grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind.
Etc, etc…
Consider the Portal series. The original Portal is lauded as one of the best examples of gaming ever. It is a simple, well-paced gem that was quick to finish (unless you’re Samit), but provided ample opportunity to experiment and play around if you wanted to. However, it was packed in with 3 other more expansive titles, famously dubbed The Orange Box and generally considered one of the best value packages in modern gaming.
Four years later; enter Portal 2, a standalone, full priced retail sequel. The environments and puzzles were more refined. New mechanics were introduced and seamlessly integrated into the game’s established formula. Overall, pacing was good, but I could see where some could complain the second act dragged. It took me around 8 hours to complete the single player game. Does that then simply equate that my game cost $7.50 per hour? Is that a fair way to calculate market value for a game? Who orchestrates this minimum play time requirement? Will the nebulous game length committee issue the Time Commandments so I can make sure I got the best bang for my buck?
Time is a finite and precious resource. When I purchase a game, I only have two expectations; that it works and that it will entertain me. The more I feel I’m not making any relevant progress in a game as a result of any of the design decisions, the more likely I’ll wish I had spent that time on a different (hopefully more intriguing) game.
Is it not better that I evaluate my time spent with Portal 2 based on how much I enjoyed the experience in total? Could those 8 hours have been better used on another game? I do not think so, but that is the dilemma you run into when you expect XX hours from every game you buy. Gamers will vote with their feet if they feel they are getting ripped off. We don't need to watch the clock to find that out.
Many thanks to Daniel Starkey and Isay Isay for their contributions.
The vote total will be accumulated and the results given on Mon 5th December. Ensure you get your vote in by Sun 4th December.
My knee-jerk reaction is yes, also budget and remake titles should be priced accordingly. Not every game should be or deserves to be 60-freaking dollars at launch.
I have played over 1000 hours of Minecraft since I bought it for £15. That equates to 0.0015p per hour. This game has so much re-play value. Obviously I can't compare Minecraft to a game with a linear story. But I bought Bioshock 2 for £2.50 pre-owned and I have re-played that several times and each play through lasted around 10 hours. I do agree that the price should reflect the amount of playtime but games don't have to be expensive to have a large play time.
I would want to argue against, because seriously, picking an arbitary number is just stupid. Not to mention it's easy to circumvent how much playtime a game gives with cinematics and simply using lower skilled test players.
But, when I get to Shooter Season games, and I see how poorly they try, how bad we got full retail games treating single player under the roose of being multiplayer series, and even then, mistreating multiplayer by locking weapons and maps as paid for DLC, my mind shifts entirely, and I would much rather put restriction on the asses of those fags, if not for improvement, just to piss those "low effort" off for longer / force them to waste more on stupid cinematics ie: worse games that will hopefully lose interest faster.
The amount of play time someone gets out of a game completely differs from person to person. Take Super Mario 3D Land for example:
A) There are some people who think they "finished" the game because they cleared the original 8 worlds when that's really only 1/4 the content of the game.
B) There are people who consider getting a 5-star file completion, so they get 5-10 more hours out of the game than person A.
C) There are people who can get a 5-star file and then continue to play the game for years to come by trying to perfect their times on each level by speed running with Stone Fox Luigi.
The game is $40 regardless of who buys it, but person A, B, and C all get completely different amounts of play time out of the game based on their tastes in gaming.
I absolutely love how they both chose the same game as their example. It was fun to see both sides of that coin, and both make excellent points. Ultimately though, I side with Isay.
The two sides are two extremes, so although I did go with Daniel Starkey, some of my favourite games are short games: Max Payne 2, Arkham Asylum etc. ON the other hand, I enjoy longer experiences like GTA games or any open world games. But I am on Isay Isay's side in that the games should have actual stuff and not just filler and JRPG grinding bullshit.
If I really enjoy a game I'm ok with it be 2 hours 8 hours or 100 hours. The 60 dollar price point should reflect the quality of the game IMO. 2 hours for 60 bucks would be outrageous but Portal was 2 hours and is one of the most fantastic games of all time.
Hypothetically speaking, wouldn't game devs charge more for games with more replayability?I'd see the 59.99 cap being obsolete before too long. I could only imagine how much a game like Skyrim would cost in a situation like this. Bethesda could easily charge 89.99 for there basic game edition and most ES fans would still buy it because some would still see the value in it. I'd dish out 90.00 for the barebones game edition. Sans bugs,of course.
What Ahoyhoy said. What a game is "worth" in terms of quality and playtime can vary greatly from person to person.
Also, games are not the same price the entirely of their life cycle. There are plenty of $50 I didn't get until they were $10-$15 on sale. Because that was what they were worth to me, personally.
Guarantees of length isn't so important to me as the promise of a complete experience.
Take Batman Arkham City and Saints Row the Third and place them against Skyrim and Zelda: Skyward Sword. Hell, place it against Portal 2.
Who brought the goods and who held back to fleece you for some extra cash?
I bought Skyrim at $59.99 - more than worth it
Got the zelda:SS Collector's Edition - again, totally worth it.
Portal 2 I picked up used, but Valve is so classy with the free DLC that I'll be picking up the next Counterstrike new.
Batman and Saint's Row were ready to roll out paid DLC within a week of retail release. This is content that UNQUESTIONABLY could have been in the retail release, but blatantly was not and if that wasn't repugnant enough, they had online passes, too.
I think Arkham City and SR3 should have been $30 new at launch for their gutted content. Skyrim, Zelda and Portal 2 were worth the asking price at launch.
I always judge a game's price wrothiness based on how much time I get out of it and how much I enjoy said time. For example, Bayonetta has about an 8 hour campaign. However, I enjoyed that 8 hours so much that I went on to sink about 40 or so hours into it.
I'd argue against. Time spent in a game is a pretty arbitrary thing to choose to determine how much a game is worth (and if games were priced based off of game-time, wouldn't that just promote meaningless extension of gameplay through fetch quests, cutscenes, etc?). I'd much rather game games priced based on their quality, but that's very subjective itself. Having a standard price for games is just the simplest alternative, so you can weigh the value of a game however you like and decide whether or not it's worth purchase.
I'm going to have to side with Isay on this one. I hated how long FF XIII's tutorial was and to platinum the game it took me 106 hours, but 22 of those hours were pretty boring. I don't want developers to put in a ton of fluff in their games just to hit a minimum of 80 or so hours. On the other hand I platinumed Uncharted in roughly 10 hours but every single minute was fun so I felt I got my money's worth. In all a game's worth should be based on its fun value which is of course subjective. Although I do agree that overall games are getting too expensive and pricing should be considered further.
I have little time to spend in games but I also like to enjoy them as much time as possible. Right now I alternate between Skyward Sword and Kirby's Adventure Wii and I take my time with them.
In Zelda I catch every bug, kill every enemy, talk to every npc, and try to do every optional quest and side-exploration I can. In Kirby... lol, I'm replaying levels all the time. It's so damn fun. These games have excellent incentives to play them. And I'm sure I'll be back to them in a couple of years.
So, I think if a game doesn't have that it's not a fair deal to spend over 60 dollars in it. It may be a long and engaging main game, replayability, a fun multiplayer, lots of modes... whatever. But they need that. I'm going to vote for.
@Silent
"Guarantees of length isn't so important to me as the promise of a complete experience."
Bingo. You can argue "long game is boring" and "short game is super fun" all day, but if all things are equal, most consumers who can only afford one game will go with length.
For instance, if Skyrim gives you 100+ hours of guaranteed fun, and Arkham City gives you around 20, the choice is easier to make. If you can buy nearly all new releases none of this matters.
Both sides raise good points, and it's not easy to make a decision like this, but I think it would be in companies' best interests to make longer games, mainly because if your game takes more than a day or two to complete, people will be less likely to rent said game, and more likely to buy it so they can take as long as they wish to sink time into it.
Why pay $60 for a game and play for 6 hours when I can spend a fraction of that for the same experience?
Games like CoD would probably suffer in the long run though, they would sell lots more in the short term but due to their failure to innovate the market would saturate much faster.
But that might be a good thing too, forcing progress because we're bored with boring shit.
I'm with Isay Isay on this one. I would actually rather experience several great short games than one long one. If I have to pay $60 for a great six hour game, that seems like $10/hour well spent to me.
You can't really use the price of Valve games on Steam as an example, considering all of the DLC is for free. However, the console versions are a different story...
I don't know, if I was a game publisher, I would start to think that 60 dollars is too little for a game. When people are dumb enough to pay 5 dollars for virtual avatar pants, 10 dollars to change their gamertag, 15 dollars for a map pack, and 40 dollars for a N64 port with 3D graphics, I would start to think that 60 dollars is a reasonable price for a decent quality HD console game, even if it is only 4 hours long. Nothing can be done about pricing until consumers wise up with their money.
I have so much games I need to play from the steam sales this summer, I'd much rather have a 6 hour game which is kickass than some 30 hour game where I'm bored half of the time.
For me it comes down to what the games offer as this really goes both ways for me.
Uncharted 3 was a blast, a blast that I beat in about 9 hours but it was a damn GOOD 9 hours. Games like Red Dead Redemption or GTA offer so much more gameplay time wise but I find myself becoming extremely bored after about 10-15 hours of playtime. I would side with Uncharted over GTA or Red Dead.
Skyrim on the other hand has me at about 40 hours in and I can't not set it down! If you had a toss up of Skyrim and Uncharted 3, Skyrim would get my vote.
I really think it comes down to what the game has to offer and how deep it goes as some 7-9 hour games absolutely destroy games offering infinite playtime but this pendulum swings both way for me.
My well thought out response is yes. Full price retail should promise a certain amount of playtime. Mostly because, if I pay $60 for a game and it gives me the best minute of playtime of my life, it's still $60 for one minute.
It doesn't need to be epic, but it needs to have some content. That's really the deciding factor of whether a game is worth it or not, does it offer worthwhile content, a worthwhile experience. If that one minute did somehow change my whole perspective on life and improve my life in a profound way forever, then maybe it would be worth $60. But in theory you would need more than a minute to do that, and some length is kind of expected in a game.
Nope, for REASONS. Reasons being, some of:
Who would do that?
How many players do you need to get an average, and which types of players?
Would absolutely every game need the rating to be allowed in stores?
What about games which can be replayed in a different way, does that second play add?
What about games that are exactly the same on a second play through but you play it 5 times anyway because of awesomeness?
What what what what...
I'll leave the job to tell me if a game is worth my money to this and other websites, youtube, my friends, rentals, and lastly from experience with the developer's history. Thank you.
If anything, price should be relative to quality and popularity rather than overall length. People are much more willing to gamble on an unknown if they know they're paying less for it.
Case and point: Deadly Premonition. No one would have bought that game at $60. But, having launched at $20, it gave people a glimpse of something they never knew they wanted. And once they want more, then you can charge $60. I'd easily pay that for a more polished sequel. Portal 2 has proven that for me, and that was a short game to boot.
I gamble with twenties often on things I'm unsure of, particularly on Steam. E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, Killing Floor, Recettear, Bastion, Avadon: The Black Fortress, fucking Minecraft, the list goes on and on. If big budget studios want my money for unfamiliar products (like for Rayman Origins, Ubisoft), the best way to get it is to charge less for it. Once I'm hooked, I'm in for at least two $60 sequels.
Now if you'll all excuse me, I need to try out Avadon.
You cannot complain about tacked on features and "require" games provide a certain amount of "playability" since the latter would obviously necessitate the former- we see this happening already per the complaints about tacked on features.
I think this is about how we judge games. Time is just more objective and quantitative than the enjoyability of the experience within that time.
If you are looking for a more variable pricing scheme among retail console games I think a better standard is the size of the dev team, resources available, resources used, etc. For instance, books aren't priced differently based necessarily on the quality of the book but on the size and materials used, etc. With digital media the "size" become less of an issue but the argument can be made in the same way by looking at my above-mentioned criteria.
Instead of "requiring" or requesting that games provide more play time (a silly yardstick in the first place) we should hope that publishers offer more flexibility in distribution such as seperate multiplayer and singleplayer SKUs, more variable pricing along the range of retail offerings, and more realistic, consumer and value oriented dlc and digital distribution.
Then games like Skyrim that can last forever, should be priceless? should be then way more expensive?
I had played MGS4 campaign, I dont remember how long, but I saw my record on Metal Gear Online and one day I realized that I spent like 300 hours on that baby, should then I have payed more for it?
Im against the games to be priced for their amount of content, but Im also in favor that the games are priced to high, I dont like to purchase games at $60, in fact I dont, games do only one thing, get cheaper with the time. So I play some of my backlog and purchase games that are 50% or more off, thats my solid message to the stores or retailers, I dont know who prices the games as they are now, I will only purchase a game when it gets the price I think is fair for a new game, and for me now is about $30.
I see where Starkey is coming from, but if games like Call of Duty were sold "a la carte," you'd see the developers abandoning the single player campaign by the following release of the game. Single player for those games does have an audience, but it's no where near as big as the audience for the multiplayer. They'd just stop sinking funds into the campaign and only release a multiplayer version. Also, just cause he didn't get that much out of Portal 2 (I've played through it 3 times + 1 playthrough of mutliplayer) doesn't mean it should cost less. If a notoriously short game comes out, just pick it up when it's on sale if you need to get a certain amount of hours for your dollars. Also, games like Skyrim would cost $100+ under his plan, making it not sell nearly as well as it did.
I do think that some shittier games should cost less than $60, but game length shouldn't be the only factor.
I'd still pay $60 for Skyrim if it were a 5-10 hour game -its just that amazing. I would have paid $60 for Majin and Enslaved because they were great games that really did need support (and look where the lack of it got them both). And I'd be that willy nilly with my lack of funds cash because I base my purchases on content, not the time it takes to tackle that content (which feels like it should really be the argument).
Like, I really don't want to pay $60 for something like Battlefield or CoD if I don't have to. Those games half assed campaigns can be "finished" in a handful of hours and I never have really any intent to dive into multiplayer, so that content is kind of lost to me because I simply don't like that kind of gameplay. I'm a single player-player and won't be putting the time into that. And like Daniel said, if the single player campaigns were available for $15 I'd probably jump at them instead of writing off the entire game because of the content I'll never use. I like shooting the enemy, I just personally don't like it when the enemy is a sea of 12 year olds endlessly cussing everyone out because they got shot and its "unfair" -Its simulated war, get with it. And that's where the long-winded taste/preference argument comes in.
I can take a game like Fallout 3, or even Skyrim, and finish the main storyline in 2 and a half hours and be done with it if I chose to, but I get so drawn in that I get to the point where even something like Final Fantasy 7 gets 100+ more hours pumped into it that the developers probably never intended you to (I rolled over my timer on FF7 twice in just ONE of my playthroughs, but I've rolled the timer over once in at least 3 other playthroughs). And its because I love the content and gameplay -not simply because the game allows me to be so mindlessly free wheeling with my time, like many multiplayer game imply- I'm much more willing to pay more for those games. To me, and my tastes, multiplayer doesn't add the content I'd like to pay for, so I generally avoid games that focus mostly on just that.
If the content of something like Portal 2 or CoD isn't enough for you to justify the $50-$60, then of course your going to feel boned. And I argue that's where reviews and research come into play -but I'd say that could be another long argument all together.
Bah, I hit add comment while I was editing/writing.. But you all should get the point: I feel the argument is more a matter of paying for content you like to spend your time on, rather then the amount of time spent.
Nah. I'm 23, and if I was still in high school or early college, I probably would have been in favor of this statement. However, now that I have a full-time job, I'd rather spend my decreased free time playing a shorter, more entertaining title than slog through shitty portions of a longer game.
Your time = money, and you become more conscious of it as you get older.
Full price games shouldn't be forced to reach a certain length, or quota, but knowing about that kind of information is important to a lot of customers, and can be a deal breaker to some.
Oh man it would be awesome to trudge around huge empty levels and repetitive pasted environments like they used to have, because if you want more assets with your playtime your not going to be paying current retail.
Skyward Sword is a perfect example for this argument.
Nintendo (Reggie) keeps going on and on about how the main story is 50 hours long, but 20 of those hours are completely pointless filler and backtracking with minimal variation to the aesthetics or gameplay and zero effect on the overall plot due to a certain event happening.
@The Silent Protagonist: "Guarantees of length isn't so important to me as the promise of a complete experience."
THIS, This so damn much.
@Magnalon: "You can argue 'long game is boring' and 'short game is super fun' all day, but if all things are equal, most consumers who can only afford one game will go with length.
For instance, if Skyrim gives you 100+ hours of guaranteed fun, and Arkham City gives you around 20, the choice is easier to make. If you can buy nearly all new releases none of this matters."
This is mostly true but here's the deal, fun is also subjective for example you can fall for the hype and review scores and buy Skyrim but if for some reason you really don't like the way the game, mechanics or something in it works it doesn't matter if it's 1000+ hours it will feel like you got duped. This is why trusty reviews (not review scores) from editors/sites are important before purchase, because they let you know the most about the game BEFORE you drop the hard earned cash.
This is also the reason why length is mostly irrelevant for purchase decision, a developer can artificially add game time in countless ways (shitons of fetch quests, crappy multiplayer, BS backtracking, yada yada) but they can't avoid getting outed by a review from a trusted site/editor or they actually can by not providing a review copy before release date or taking other damage control actions but in these cases that in itself is telling, for example just take a look at how Activision handled X-Men Destiny, you could sniff something was way wrong.
Yeah, I wish it was in a time where grabbing a screen shot was easily attainable for a 14 year old (or that I just knew how to do it at the time), its one of my personal mile stones that I would have liked to hold on to -I poured so much time into that game (and like Isay Isay said, I had sooooo much more time back then then I do now. I feel kinda lucky I got just over 100 hours into Fallout 3 in the I-don't-know-how-many-months I played it, and I think I only did that because I'm a packrat who'd fully loot every vault he entered).
Don't really know why I did it either, I just remember looking at the timer the first time it rolled over wondering what it'd do (it just changed color and started to count up again) and then wondered if I could do it again so I kept playing. It did finally get to a point where I needed to start over though, so that's gotta mean something too..
But, kind of on point with the argument, I liked the story and content of FF8 more (not the most universal ideas out there, I know) yet somehow played it a lot less. Today, I'd probably pay higher for FF8 then I would FF7, but I'd have to think much harder then I can right now if thats because I spent over 300 hours with one, and played it out, over the other or not.
My solution has always been this if it's worth the full price I get it immediately, if not I wait for a price drop. Sales pretty much dictate how much a game should be sold if it's selling well at $60 then it's worth the money, if it's not maybe the price was too high.
Now that doesn't take into account marketing, but even still it's a good indication because many times a games sales don't really take off until there is a price drop.
So do I vote for Daniel or do I vote against Isay? Either way Daniel wins :p I think I go for Isay on this one. Is rather get a 10 minute blowjob from a woman than spend all day at six flags for my $60 ^_^ both are great but it all comes down to which is worth more to you?
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
4:00 PM on 11.29.2011 | 
Daniel Starkey argues in favor of the proposition: 
Isay Isay argues against the proposition: 
But, when I get to Shooter Season games, and I see how poorly they try, how bad we got full retail games treating single player under the roose of being multiplayer series, and even then, mistreating multiplayer by locking weapons and maps as paid for DLC, my mind shifts entirely, and I would much rather put restriction on the asses of those fags, if not for improvement, just to piss those "low effort" off for longer / force them to waste more on stupid cinematics ie: worse games that will hopefully lose interest faster.
Yes, because games TOTALLY weren't $80 back in da- oh, wait....
Oh yeah, I forgot. Gaming Shops still exist for stuff other than PS3 and DS.
The amount of play time someone gets out of a game completely differs from person to person. Take Super Mario 3D Land for example:
A) There are some people who think they "finished" the game because they cleared the original 8 worlds when that's really only 1/4 the content of the game.
B) There are people who consider getting a 5-star file completion, so they get 5-10 more hours out of the game than person A.
C) There are people who can get a 5-star file and then continue to play the game for years to come by trying to perfect their times on each level by speed running with Stone Fox Luigi.
The game is $40 regardless of who buys it, but person A, B, and C all get completely different amounts of play time out of the game based on their tastes in gaming.
Sort of hard to "MassDebate" this.
Also, that debate looked fun. Can I play?
Also, games are not the same price the entirely of their life cycle. There are plenty of $50 I didn't get until they were $10-$15 on sale. Because that was what they were worth to me, personally.
Take Batman Arkham City and Saints Row the Third and place them against Skyrim and Zelda: Skyward Sword. Hell, place it against Portal 2.
Who brought the goods and who held back to fleece you for some extra cash?
I bought Skyrim at $59.99 - more than worth it
Got the zelda:SS Collector's Edition - again, totally worth it.
Portal 2 I picked up used, but Valve is so classy with the free DLC that I'll be picking up the next Counterstrike new.
Batman and Saint's Row were ready to roll out paid DLC within a week of retail release. This is content that UNQUESTIONABLY could have been in the retail release, but blatantly was not and if that wasn't repugnant enough, they had online passes, too.
I think Arkham City and SR3 should have been $30 new at launch for their gutted content. Skyrim, Zelda and Portal 2 were worth the asking price at launch.
I always judge a game's price wrothiness based on how much time I get out of it and how much I enjoy said time. For example, Bayonetta has about an 8 hour campaign. However, I enjoyed that 8 hours so much that I went on to sink about 40 or so hours into it.
In Zelda I catch every bug, kill every enemy, talk to every npc, and try to do every optional quest and side-exploration I can. In Kirby... lol, I'm replaying levels all the time. It's so damn fun. These games have excellent incentives to play them. And I'm sure I'll be back to them in a couple of years.
So, I think if a game doesn't have that it's not a fair deal to spend over 60 dollars in it. It may be a long and engaging main game, replayability, a fun multiplayer, lots of modes... whatever. But they need that. I'm going to vote for.
"Guarantees of length isn't so important to me as the promise of a complete experience."
Bingo. You can argue "long game is boring" and "short game is super fun" all day, but if all things are equal, most consumers who can only afford one game will go with length.
For instance, if Skyrim gives you 100+ hours of guaranteed fun, and Arkham City gives you around 20, the choice is easier to make. If you can buy nearly all new releases none of this matters.
Why pay $60 for a game and play for 6 hours when I can spend a fraction of that for the same experience?
Games like CoD would probably suffer in the long run though, they would sell lots more in the short term but due to their failure to innovate the market would saturate much faster.
But that might be a good thing too, forcing progress because we're bored with boring shit.
Uncharted 3 was a blast, a blast that I beat in about 9 hours but it was a damn GOOD 9 hours. Games like Red Dead Redemption or GTA offer so much more gameplay time wise but I find myself becoming extremely bored after about 10-15 hours of playtime. I would side with Uncharted over GTA or Red Dead.
Skyrim on the other hand has me at about 40 hours in and I can't not set it down! If you had a toss up of Skyrim and Uncharted 3, Skyrim would get my vote.
I really think it comes down to what the game has to offer and how deep it goes as some 7-9 hour games absolutely destroy games offering infinite playtime but this pendulum swings both way for me.
It doesn't need to be epic, but it needs to have some content. That's really the deciding factor of whether a game is worth it or not, does it offer worthwhile content, a worthwhile experience. If that one minute did somehow change my whole perspective on life and improve my life in a profound way forever, then maybe it would be worth $60. But in theory you would need more than a minute to do that, and some length is kind of expected in a game.
Who would do that?
How many players do you need to get an average, and which types of players?
Would absolutely every game need the rating to be allowed in stores?
What about games which can be replayed in a different way, does that second play add?
What about games that are exactly the same on a second play through but you play it 5 times anyway because of awesomeness?
What what what what...
I'll leave the job to tell me if a game is worth my money to this and other websites, youtube, my friends, rentals, and lastly from experience with the developer's history. Thank you.
I bought vanquish for 60 and regretted nothing.
It was short but my play time with it was oh so sweet.
There's a lot of factors though in which a game should be priced at 60 not just it's play time.
Case and point: Deadly Premonition. No one would have bought that game at $60. But, having launched at $20, it gave people a glimpse of something they never knew they wanted. And once they want more, then you can charge $60. I'd easily pay that for a more polished sequel. Portal 2 has proven that for me, and that was a short game to boot.
I gamble with twenties often on things I'm unsure of, particularly on Steam. E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, Killing Floor, Recettear, Bastion, Avadon: The Black Fortress, fucking Minecraft, the list goes on and on. If big budget studios want my money for unfamiliar products (like for Rayman Origins, Ubisoft), the best way to get it is to charge less for it. Once I'm hooked, I'm in for at least two $60 sequels.
Now if you'll all excuse me, I need to try out Avadon.
You cannot complain about tacked on features and "require" games provide a certain amount of "playability" since the latter would obviously necessitate the former- we see this happening already per the complaints about tacked on features.
I think this is about how we judge games. Time is just more objective and quantitative than the enjoyability of the experience within that time.
If you are looking for a more variable pricing scheme among retail console games I think a better standard is the size of the dev team, resources available, resources used, etc. For instance, books aren't priced differently based necessarily on the quality of the book but on the size and materials used, etc. With digital media the "size" become less of an issue but the argument can be made in the same way by looking at my above-mentioned criteria.
Instead of "requiring" or requesting that games provide more play time (a silly yardstick in the first place) we should hope that publishers offer more flexibility in distribution such as seperate multiplayer and singleplayer SKUs, more variable pricing along the range of retail offerings, and more realistic, consumer and value oriented dlc and digital distribution.
I had played MGS4 campaign, I dont remember how long, but I saw my record on Metal Gear Online and one day I realized that I spent like 300 hours on that baby, should then I have payed more for it?
Im against the games to be priced for their amount of content, but Im also in favor that the games are priced to high, I dont like to purchase games at $60, in fact I dont, games do only one thing, get cheaper with the time. So I play some of my backlog and purchase games that are 50% or more off, thats my solid message to the stores or retailers, I dont know who prices the games as they are now, I will only purchase a game when it gets the price I think is fair for a new game, and for me now is about $30.
I do think that some shittier games should cost less than $60, but game length shouldn't be the only factor.
Like, I really don't want to pay $60 for something like Battlefield or CoD if I don't have to. Those games half assed campaigns can be "finished" in a handful of hours and I never have really any intent to dive into multiplayer, so that content is kind of lost to me because I simply don't like that kind of gameplay. I'm a single player-player and won't be putting the time into that. And like Daniel said, if the single player campaigns were available for $15 I'd probably jump at them instead of writing off the entire game because of the content I'll never use. I like shooting the enemy, I just personally don't like it when the enemy is a sea of 12 year olds endlessly cussing everyone out because they got shot and its "unfair" -Its simulated war, get with it. And that's where the long-winded taste/preference argument comes in.
I can take a game like Fallout 3, or even Skyrim, and finish the main storyline in 2 and a half hours and be done with it if I chose to, but I get so drawn in that I get to the point where even something like Final Fantasy 7 gets 100+ more hours pumped into it that the developers probably never intended you to (I rolled over my timer on FF7 twice in just ONE of my playthroughs, but I've rolled the timer over once in at least 3 other playthroughs). And its because I love the content and gameplay -not simply because the game allows me to be so mindlessly free wheeling with my time, like many multiplayer game imply- I'm much more willing to pay more for those games. To me, and my tastes, multiplayer doesn't add the content I'd like to pay for, so I generally avoid games that focus mostly on just that.
If the content of something like Portal 2 or CoD isn't enough for you to justify the $50-$60, then of course your going to feel boned. And I argue that's where reviews and research come into play -but I'd say that could be another long argument all together.
Your time = money, and you become more conscious of it as you get older.
Nintendo (Reggie) keeps going on and on about how the main story is 50 hours long, but 20 of those hours are completely pointless filler and backtracking with minimal variation to the aesthetics or gameplay and zero effect on the overall plot due to a certain event happening.
Longer does not equal better.
I can have a topped out party and both WEAPONs down in less than 70!
THIS, This so damn much.
@Magnalon: "You can argue 'long game is boring' and 'short game is super fun' all day, but if all things are equal, most consumers who can only afford one game will go with length.
For instance, if Skyrim gives you 100+ hours of guaranteed fun, and Arkham City gives you around 20, the choice is easier to make. If you can buy nearly all new releases none of this matters."
This is mostly true but here's the deal, fun is also subjective for example you can fall for the hype and review scores and buy Skyrim but if for some reason you really don't like the way the game, mechanics or something in it works it doesn't matter if it's 1000+ hours it will feel like you got duped. This is why trusty reviews (not review scores) from editors/sites are important before purchase, because they let you know the most about the game BEFORE you drop the hard earned cash.
This is also the reason why length is mostly irrelevant for purchase decision, a developer can artificially add game time in countless ways (shitons of fetch quests, crappy multiplayer, BS backtracking, yada yada) but they can't avoid getting outed by a review from a trusted site/editor or they actually can by not providing a review copy before release date or taking other damage control actions but in these cases that in itself is telling, for example just take a look at how Activision handled X-Men Destiny, you could sniff something was way wrong.
Yeah, I wish it was in a time where grabbing a screen shot was easily attainable for a 14 year old (or that I just knew how to do it at the time), its one of my personal mile stones that I would have liked to hold on to -I poured so much time into that game (and like Isay Isay said, I had sooooo much more time back then then I do now. I feel kinda lucky I got just over 100 hours into Fallout 3 in the I-don't-know-how-many-months I played it, and I think I only did that because I'm a packrat who'd fully loot every vault he entered).
Don't really know why I did it either, I just remember looking at the timer the first time it rolled over wondering what it'd do (it just changed color and started to count up again) and then wondered if I could do it again so I kept playing. It did finally get to a point where I needed to start over though, so that's gotta mean something too..
But, kind of on point with the argument, I liked the story and content of FF8 more (not the most universal ideas out there, I know) yet somehow played it a lot less. Today, I'd probably pay higher for FF8 then I would FF7, but I'd have to think much harder then I can right now if thats because I spent over 300 hours with one, and played it out, over the other or not.
Now that doesn't take into account marketing, but even still it's a good indication because many times a games sales don't really take off until there is a price drop.