How do you personally define what a game is "worth"?

[Oly J]

Hi all, haven't posted anything that wasn't a noob PC gaming question in a while so thought I'd try to get a discussion going, put simply, what is any given game worth to you, and how do you work it out?

if it's my first time playing a game I normally go with money spent vs. time spent playing, then think about how much I enjoyed the game (or not, I can be a little masochistic sometimes, a game has to be a special kind of bad for me to not even attempt to finish it.) and also replay value and the amount of content in a game, and whether or not I personally tend to use it, also factors in

a good example for me would be Skyrim, which I have bought 3 times (I lent my first console copy to someone and never got it back, so replaced it, then later when I got a good rig, bought it on PC) so altogether I've spent about £80/$136 on it (across all copies, 2 console, 1 brand new on release day, and the other used, and the PC legendary edition at a reduced price during a Steam sale also including the DLC for the console version)

now, on the console version I remember having 2 characters both clocking at least 200 hours, and I have 35 hours on record on Steam, that's at least 435 hours total (almost certainly more, but I only remember it being over 200), I think that puts about 3 hours to a dollar,

and obviously I enjoy the game or even I wouldn't spend that amount of time on it, especially on PC, mods are fun, and I will probably go back to it at some point and spend even more time on it,

so yes, to me, that game is absolutely worth the amount of money I paid for it and then some.


now another example, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z

now I was already apprehensive about buying this game full price after playing a demo, but on a whim, and because I wasn't playing anything else of note right then I did anyway, hey, the full game might have been better,

the gameplay was all right, or would have been if not for the mandatory 4 person teams getting in the way of everything, (my best team was of 3 Yamchas believe it or not) the A.I was horrible and once all the levels were done there was literally nothing to do, sure there was online multiplayer but the need to choose between 8 human players or anything up to 6 NPCs with horrible AI killed any interest I had in that, and there was no local multiplayer, in a fighting game of all things.

so after realising there was nothing more I could do to squeeze any value out of it, I traded it in with about 12 hours of gameplay 5 days later, luckily it was still new and a nich title so I got most of what I paid back for it.

Didn't change though that this game was NOT worth the money it was being sold for, honestly, I'd probably drop £10 on it if I had nothing better to do, (not that you'll find it that cheap anywhere).




so yeah, how do you guys decide whether a game you bought was worth it, or how much you would ideally pay? any examples?

 

[Elfgore]

Money spent vs. Enjoyment.

Mine is very liberal and completely based on me. A game well worth its weight would be Oblivion. Which I've purchased about six times now, twice on each console. A total of about a hundred dollar, which I would consider well worth the amount of fun I've had playing them. A game I've been burned on is Watch_Dogs. Sixty bucks and I only enjoyed the first two hours. The other couple I've played for the achievements and to say I beat it... which I still haven't done after a month.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I can tell you what a game is NOT worth: anything over $20. Never spent more than that on a game and I'm quite happy with my collection.

EDIT: Just did some math - on average I spend $13 on each [physical copy of a] game. HOWEVER this number is entirely dependent on a bunch of Sony collections (GoW, inFAMOUS, Uncharted, ICO & Shadow) that in all total 11 games, as well as getting the Ezio Trilogy dirt cheap, which flattens the average considerably. It also helps that I've bought a game upon release only once, and that all other games were old by at least a couple of years by the time I bought them. So there you go boys and girls and gender neutrals, with great patience you can wait out the industry.

 

[Artaneius]

For me to spend 20+ dollars on a single game, it better give me at least 50+ hours of enjoyment. Anything less and it was a rip off. When I can just play old games including console games with emulators that give me thousands upon thousands of hours of gameplay for absolutely free, new games definitely have to step it up and stop dumbing down for the casual masses. A game is only worth anything to me if it exceeds expectations. No point in wasting money when I can play older better games for free.

 

[Zhukov]

The degree to which I enjoyed it and/or was engaged by it.

Time spent doesn't reeeeeally factor into it for me. At least after a certain point.

In fact I'd rather a game be short and sweet than big and bloated. For example, I have played Amnesia: The Dark Descent precisely once. It took me roughly nine hours. But they were nine every intense hours. On the other hand, I played Fallout 3 for over forty hours. But they were forty hours of "meh... good enough I guess". I value the former much higher than the latter.

 

[wooty]

If I get one hour for each £ spent, then I'm perfectly satisfied. If I get a lot of hours out of a cheap/pre-owned game, then I'm very happy indeed.

But really, money isnt the issue with me as a whole. As long I enjoy the hell out of a game, no matter the cost, then its worth more to me than a few quid.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I'll basically only pay more than $30 for a game if I am pretty sure I'm going to enjoy it or get recurring joy out of it. Example - I gladly spent $60 on Borderlands 2 because I have played through it multiple times and have enjoyed it each time. Same goes for games like Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., or the newest Halo. Just something that I know will last.

However, I will typically not go over $30 for console games and rarely do I go over $10 for PC, generally because I might only have enough time to play them once. I still don't own a copy of the Last of Us and probably won't for a while longer, since I played some at a friends house and determined that I would not spend the kind of money they're currently asking for on a game I'll likely not play more than once. I didn't buy any of the Uncharted games either.

Everyone values things differently, of course. I feel that sports games are absolutely not worth sixty-freaking-dollars, but sports fans may not understand why I'd pay 14.99 a month to play Final Fantasy XIV.

 

[evenest]

I don't have any concrete calculus on deciding whether a game is worth the money I've paid for it; however, I find that often go by a "gut feeling" about whether or not I felt the enjoyment was worth the cost. For instance, I paid $9 for a used copy of Singularity and felt that the game was well worth twice that--though I would not have been as happy had I paid $60 for it. Similarly, I bought used copies of The Darkness and The Darkness II and thought I got my money's worth.

I purchased an on-sale, new copy of Far Cry 3 and realized that I wouldn't have felt taken advantage of if I had purchased it at day 1 release prices. Contrasted to that, after having bought Thief (2014) on the day of its release, I felt that I paid far too much money for the game considering how much I enjoyed it. I write this acknowledging that I didn't hate the game; I felt that $60 was too much for what it offered me.

I don't look to an hourly exchange rate to decide a game was worth it or not as I wouldn't know where to begin. It all comes down to how much I enjoyed something during the course of its run. I think a five hour game that I enjoyed the hell out of that I bought new might not bother me as much as a hundred hour game that I felt indifferent toward.

Good luck with your attempt as fostering a conversation.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I guess I do the old how much I enjoy it thing, but I'm also kind of kooky in that I think what dose this game add to games as a whole. Like dose it have a new idea or a neat take on something. Even if that new idea or neat take isn't fun itself.

 

[Kukakkau]

Money spent vs enjoyment x time spent on the game.

An example is Brothers: A Tale of Two - I had a lot of fun playing that game, but it only lasted like 2 hours. If it hadn't been on sale I wouldn't have thought it worth the price.

Even if I find a game pretty dreary I find some comfort in playing it if I get a good amount of playtime in it (not fully, but some)

 

[Racecarlock]

How much fun it is to fuck around with the mechanics. Like in rigs of rods or beamng or even GTA IV's ragdoll physics. Those are all pretty fun. But also how many tools it gives you. Such as GTA V, which gives you planes and many other reintroduced vehicles. to mess around in. Those are fun.

I'm not very into story based games for this reason. Because some story based games may be good, but in my opinion in games such as heavy rain or the walking dead, the mechanics themselves amount to nothing more than overly complicated DVD menus. And that's no fun. I mean, how many of you on here are still coming back week after week to beamng or next car game? I bet a lot of you would if you knew how fun it is to just destroy shit in those games.

Do people play mario kart or mario party for their stories? No. They play them for sheer enjoyment. Do people play dark souls for it's narrative? Honestly, I don't really know on that one. But I'm assuming most people play that because it's some kind of mental equivalent to BDSM and you just really enjoy pain. Which is fine by me too.

I AM NOT SAYING STORY BASED GAMES SHOULDN'T EXIST. But as good fusion of narrative and gameplay? Uh, no. They kind of suck. I mean, good games like the stanley parable and portal and thomas was alone and even maybe papers please fuse story and gameplay together in good ways. I also hear brothers and bastion are that good too. David Cage's games? I would be surprised if NBC would pick one of his narratives for a TV mini series, and the only thing unique about his games are that they feel like DVD menus. And I don't think that's a good thing.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I find it very hard to quantify a game's monetary worth. Quality is probably the best way to get an idea, though. I'm willing to pay $50 (the most I really ever pay for games) for a very high quality 5-7 hour game, especially if I get the urge to play through it again. On the other hand, there are some 20-40+ hour games that I would never have bothered to pay more than $5 for if I had been able to know how much I'd want to pay beforehand.

There are also those odd games that I just can't put a real value judgement on. I bought BioShock Infinite the day it came out, despite rarely ever paying $60 for a game, and I was incredibly disappointed with it and didn't like it, despite there being a few really incredible moments in the game. However, the discussions I've gotten to be a part of, the way it got me to think (both intentionally and unintentionally) about storytelling and game design, and the way it made me appreciate other games more (such as its predecessors) all made it worth that $60. Sure, I've bashed it far more than I would most games I view as worth $60, but what it offered outside of the game itself made it worth more than most games I've played.

Normally, though, I just don't put a money value on a game. Did I like it or not? Furthermore, was I disappointed or nor, regardless of its actual quality? Generally, the answer to those questions will help me determined if it was well worth my time and/or money. Of course, sometimes (like with Infinite), I can't really make that judgement based on the game alone, which makes giving those values very hard.