Around how many hours of enjoyment would you say would be worth it for a 70$ game?

[Lufia Erim]

Games are expensive. They are expensive to make and expensive to buy. Some people wait for discounts and others buy games games day one. Game length is also a factor into peoples buying habits. I know few people who would spend 70$ on a 2 hour game. However if a game is 30 hours long, most people wouldn't have a problem with that.

My question for you is :

How many hours of enjoyment is worth dropping 70$ on a game for you personally?

Now this is a hypothetical question. I want to talk about Enjoyment . So long drawn out games will fluff and filler need not apply. I'm just curious of how many hours of fun would a game need to have for you to personally think it is worth full price. It is hypothetical because there is no way to know how much fun you would have before actually playing the game.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Hard to say.

At REAL enjoyment, and I mean blow off your socks, best per minute game of all time, I'd probably say 15 hours worth.

At the 'I'm having a pretty good time' level, I'd probably say about 40-50 hours.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

6 hours of pure unadulterated fun.

Back when I was a kid game length was everything. I didn't have much money and needed to stretch every dollar. Now I have the opposite problem, I have tons of disposable income but not a lot of time. Picking up a 40 hour game makes my head spin, and something bigger, like Witcher 3? Forget about it, I'll never have time to finish it. The longest game I played recently was GTA5, which clocked me about 45 hours, and after I finished it I was like "man that took a while" even though I had only been playing it for a few weeks.

Having said that, a 6 hour game would need to really grab me in order for me to spend $70. It would have to have something really unique about it. Games like Mirror's Edge, Vanquish, or Metal Gear Rising come to mind. They need to be a heart-pounding adrenaline rush the whole way through.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Its not a matter of length so much as it is the quality/quantity ratio. A game with a huge amount of decent content is worth the money (most open world games, for example), while a game with a small amount of amazing content is also worthwhile (TLoU). Where a game fails on the value proposition is when it has neither good quality content or a good quantity of content.

The Order 1886 is a good example of a game that fails to pass the quality/quantity test - it was extremely short (~6-8 hours), but the content that it had was pretty poor. If The Order had been 6-8 hours of amazing quality content or had been 20+ hours of the same content, there would have been far less complaint about the game.

 

[Dalisclock]

Any game where I felt that I enjoyed the game enough to justify the money I spent on it. There's no number attached because for me there's no arbitrary # of hours that's gonna suddenly make it worth it/not worth it.

To be fair, I've more or less stopped buying games at launch or even near launch for AAA/$60 titles because of both my huge game backlog and the fact that waiting pretty much always means I can get a more complete(DLC), less buggy game(because patches) for less.

 

[lechat]

4 hours of non repetitious thought provoking or mind straining gameplay would do it.
something that keeps my brain active the whole way like portal or talos principle or something revolutionary and thought provoking like papers please or spec ops the line (I've played neither)

 

[Strazdas]

none. I am pulling over 150 hours right now (over the course of three months) out of a game i payed 15 dollars for. why would i pay 70 for a game?

 

[Erttheking]

Hard to say. I'd take 10 mindblowing hours of fun over 100 hours of mediocrity any day. It's hard to equate fun into exact numbers.

 

[pookie101]

im usually of the $1usd = i hour of game play or it really blows my mind

 

[Bad Jim]

If it's a good game, it's likely that I'll play it again, so I'm not overly concerned if I beat it in a few hours. But it does have to be substantially better/different from all the other games I bought in sales for $5 or less that have 20+ hours gameplay.

 

[Saelune]

I'm good at getting replay value from most games I at least somewhat enjoy, though games I really like I can play a lot. I got almost 50 non DLC hours out of Dishonored, a supposedly 6-8 hr long game.

That said, I rarely buy new games that I am not super sure I am going to really like, especially a game that goes beyond the standard game price of $60.

I suppose with that in mind, 10 hours, but that's if its a solid 10 hours of good. But most games I buy new are longer term games where I am likely to get 20+ hours of play time.

Ya know, I thought I wasn't going to be all prudish, but as I wrote and thought this out, I kinda am super prudish when it comes to game time vs cost. When I buy brand new games, its usually open-world RPG games like Skyrim, or super replayable games like any Koei Warriors game (which often are 40-50$ anyways).

 

[Kae]

I don't think I'd pay $70 for a game, it's been too long since I've paid more than $20 on one, but if I had to say it's inconsequential, I don't like long games, I get tired of them, lose interest or generally get frustrated, for example, I really liked how Batman Arkham City played, I enjoyed that game but when I finished I was absolutely completely sick of it, it was too long and I never bothered playing the DLC, so who knows, the length of a game is ultimately inconsequential so long as you still enjoy it, and the games you end up playing the most aren't always the ones you'd expect, for example I've played over 200 hours of Risk of Rain, and that game is worth like $10, enjoyed it much more that Batman or Fallout.

Of course I do lie there are certain games that are worth that much to me, for example to me Smash Bros. U is worth buying a Wii U, all the DLC, the and the gamecube controller adapter, why? Because after over a decade I still play Melee all the time, it's unlikely I'll ever stop playing that game if I buy it, of course right now I don't have enough money to do that, so anyway, it depends more on what game is it rather than how long it is, I'd pay more for Smash or Transistor than I would for GTA or Fallout.

 

[the.chad]

Big fan of $ per hour ratios of games.
Comparing to any other past time i.e. movies and it totally blows them out of the water

But OT, highly dependant on the genre of game.
RPG like Skyrim or Fallout - depending how committed you are, could potentially be hundreds of hours!

 

[Leg End]

I'd pay $70 for the best hour of my life, which I got hundreds off of from a $30 game. So much so I bought it again on another console. So much goddamn fun, I bought a friend a copy, which funny enough totals $70 for all three, not including DLC I bought.

Spoiler: Hell, I'd pay $70 just for the soundtrack, and I plan to buy two copies of it.

But my point is, I'd measure it in the amount of sheer fun and enjoyment, which I totally got from that game. Even if it was 2 hours, it'd be two of the best hours I spent $35 each on. And I think my save clock is somewhere in the 350+ hour mark.

 

[Zhukov]

As other have said, it depends on the quality of enjoyment.

I'd pay $70 AUD for two hours of utterly mindblowing unadulterated gaming bliss.

I'll generally only pay about $20 AUD for 40 hours of, "Yeah, it was okay I guess."

 

[Yopaz]

Its not a matter of length so much as it is the quality/quantity ratio. A game with a huge amount of decent content is worth the money (most open world games, for example), while a game with a small amount of amazing content is also worthwhile (TLoU). Where a game fails on the value proposition is when it has neither good quality content or a good quantity of content.

The Order 1886 is a good example of a game that fails to pass the quality/quantity test - it was extremely short (~6-8 hours), but the content that it had was pretty poor. If The Order had been 6-8 hours of amazing quality content or had been 20+ hours of the same content, there would have been far less complaint about the game.

That's kinda implied in "hours of enjoyment" though.

OT: I'd say 10 hours and I would be pretty satisfied. I mean 7 dollars per hour for having a great time is actually quite cheap. That said the most recent game I paid full price for was Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (think it cost 50) and I am still enjoying that 300 hours later. I am extremely satisfied with that one.

I also don't understand why people grumble about video game prices. Buy Deadpool on DVD and it'll set you back $20 for about 2 hours of movie. For $60 you can get a 10 hour video game. Or a 20 hours video game. or a 100 hour video game. Even a 6 hour video game is on the same price per hour ratio as most movies. It does however suck all the more when you do buy a full price game and it turns out crappy though, but games are in no way expensive.

 

[CritialGaming]

Everyone is going to have a different answer to this. IT really depends on the game, and the player. You see every player likes different games, and has a different value for different games. Some people would pay 70 bucks for The Witcher 3, others pay 70 bucks for Street Fighter 5.

It really depends on what you want from a game. If you want a big epic adventure, then you probably wont pay full price for a fighting game. That's not to say you wouldn't buy fighting games, but you would probably wait for a sale to pick them up. Whereas the fighting game player would do the opposite.

There are limits to that as well. I mean complained about paying the 30 bucks for Firewatch.

For me, I just want a good experience for what I am about to pay. If I am buying an RPG, then it better clock at least 30 hours. But if I buy in action game, then 7-10 hours is fine so long as it kept me excited.

I mean if I pay 70 bucks for a game that is 15 minutes long, I better be jizzing my pants from the moment I press start.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've never paid over $30 for a game. A good equation though is $1 per hour (factoring in replayability).

 

[CaitSeith]

It depends. If I enjoy almost 100% of its content, I'll certainly replay it; effectively increasing the number of hours of enjoyment without affecting the price. If I can get 16 or more hours in total, I would consider it worth it.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Just about the quality of the experience for me so I suppose in theory there is no minimum amount of time a game has to keep me entertained or indeed any limit on the amount of money I would pay beyond my own personal means ofc.

In reality I am unlikely to buy a game at 48 pounds to start with.