I’ve often come across this sentiment in Steam reviews and it’s very reductive to judge games based mainly on this metric. Getting older I have less time for videogames and I value shorter games more. There are games that are extremely valuable because of their high quality even if very short, like the first Portal.
This is why we have companies like Ubisoft trying to game the system constantly with low quality content to pad the game to 100 hours or whatever is fashionable in open world these days. I will take 6 hours of quality single player anytime over 100 hours of AssCreed grinding and ridiculous ‘story’
I also have less time to game, but I sure as hell don’t want to play shorter games. I like to play games with good stories, who are engaging and with fun play. Witcher 3 is a prime example of how even the majority of the side quests can be meaningful and not feeling too generic. I also enjoyed the last of us part 2. And I usually feel sorry when I finish a good game.
And shorter games should naturally command a lower price which isn’t always the case.
It is debatable, but would you pay 70$ for a 2-hours game and another 10x70$ for DLCs and expansions that would extend the original content?
But this also doesn’t mean that you should feel your game with generic content in order to make it longer either. It is a fine line but I know that I would have a real problem justifying 70€ for 2 hours of game content without replayability, even if the game is amazing.
And shorter games should naturally command a lower price
This is exactly the thing that doesn’t make any sense. Should The Last of Us be priced at a fraction of The Witcher 3 because it is shorter? What about Bioshock? It’s half the length of The Last of Us 2
The problem is an hour of what. Me wandering around trying to find something described vaguely and being frustrated, is not the same as an hour of well written and interesting dialogue.
Morrowind has good writing in it too, though. I think we can all agree nobody should be paying ‘dollars per hour’ while wandering completely lost and annoyed ;)
If that cost goes above $1/hr I’ll probably just not buy. That’s my base cost I’ll accept for paying for a game. If I’ve gotten $1/hr I find that I’ve gotten my moneys worth
Nobody is saying that you should be paying minimum $1/hr, I’m saying that if I’m getting less playtime than equates to $1/hr I haven’t gotten my moneys worth and I don’t find that the game would be worth buying.
"breaking news: a czech man known only as kovarex has rocketed to the top of the most wealthy men in the world list. Legislation is currently being drafted to regulate the use of the drug ‘factorio’ with several legislators describing as ‘extremely addictive. Like, so addictive. Really guys.’ "
The interest in or aptitude of is irrelevant for the position of CEO. The CEO's skill lies in increasing shareholder value, period, end of discussion. I don't get why people still buy into the idea that CEOs give a good god damn about consumer's opinions of quality - they never have.
Because it's deeply dysfunctional how much of our society is driven by this shortsighted approach. A lot people are not surprised by it at this point, but just explaining and accepting that shareholder value is the only thing that matters to them doesn't really fix the issues. And there's a lot more issues caused by this than just how fun some games are.
We are beyond asking how it works or why, we should be asking what should be done about it.
Returning to a feudal economy is a sensible idea, lighting with renewable materials, making hay while the sun shines and executing traitors is much more productive than playing games
If video games were priced by hours of dev time, I could kind of agree (with the theory, in practice it doesn’t really make sense). But let’s be honest here - that’s not what he means at all.
Not only is it not what he means but this same asshole would probably force devs to add padded objectives just so he could claim it takes more hours to finish. The new GTA will have 1000 missions where you have to walk across the whole map to retrieve some object that needs to be walked back to the other side if this dick gets his way. It’ll be the first game in history where it takes 2 years to 100% it and costs $200 so it’s a steal - only $100 per year of gameplay!
For some reason I can’t see your answer on the post: despite us being both from lemmy.world and me being able to otherwise access your profile and see your posts and comments, the only way I can see it is in my notifications, not as an answer to my post. Anyway.
That’s why the original argument is inherently flawed: for the same price, I’d rather have 20 hours of carefully crafted content than 500 hours of AI generated fetch quests in a basic, procedurally generated open world from the latest version of the Ubisoft game framework. As a customer, I’m not buying playtime, I’m also buying the quality of that playtime.
This is also why we don’t pay for a movie, an album, or even a show or an exhibition by their duration.
I hate dollars per hour to determine how something is good value. I could sit and watch a 3-4 hour movie but if it’s a genre I dislike then I’ll probably not feel I got value out of it. Likewise if I buy a 70 quid game but it’s 15-20 hours and it’s got a great story, impressive visuals and solid mechanics then I’ll have got my money’s worth but if something is 70 quid and it’s filled with things that feel like a checklist to do then I’ll end up regretting the price that I paid.
It also means that companies that would release a tight and cohesive 15-hour game will instead release a jumbled sloppy episodic 150-hour mess to pad their pockets.
It would mean worse games coming out that cost more money
forbes.com
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