Median playtime of games would be immensily helpful.

[S0FL]

It is incredibly valuable to know how much I'm expected to play a game for. It gives a good sense for the value for money the game offers, and might give a perspective on how long the game is.

This could be done by calculating the median playtime of users who left reviews with their public playtime on it, with an option to exclude negative reviews. This way, the data would come only from users who really played the game, and "median" instead of "average" would mean that players with a very high playtime wouldn't skew the results. The median playtime at the time of review would reflect how long it took to finish the game, while the median overall playtime of the reviews would be best for games with high replayability.

It could be as simple as a text field on the game's page, and it is trivial to calculate such data. I don't get why it isn't a feature yet. Even the most basic version, without options, would be useful.

[Start_Running]

DOes it really give a sense of value for money. Is a long game you don't enjoy more valuable than a short game you do enjoy?

[Ogami]

There are addons who can do that for the browser version of Steam at least.
"Augmented Steam" has the option to show the "How long to beat?" website statistic for each game on the store page that will tell you the average playtime for normal and 100% completion.
Pretty useful.

Looks like this:
https://prnt.sc/PejXnlHC6-_K

[BJWyler]

It would not be useful, nor is it simple to calculate. And that data alone is completely meaningless unless you take the full context of why one person may be below this artificial median and why someone would be above it.

Getting good value for the money out of a game has nothing to do with hours played and everything to do with the quality of the content contained therein.

[S0FL]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

DOes it really give a sense of value for money. Is a long game you don't enjoy more valuable than a short game you do enjoy?

When browsing games, whether I enjoy a game or not is something I can only discover when playing, so I need to rely on other information to decide what to buy. And if two games have the same price, look about as fun as eachother and one has double the median playtime than the other, that'll be the deciding factor

[S0FL]

Originally posted by Ogami:

There are addons who can do that for the browser version of Steam at least.
"Augmented Steam" has the option to show the "How long to beat?" website statistic for each game on the store page that will tell you the average playtime for normal and 100% completion.
Pretty useful.

Looks like this:
https://prnt.sc/PejXnlHC6-_K

I really like howlongtobeat, but it fails me on not so popular indie games. It would be best if this was implemented in the steam client.

[S0FL]

Originally posted by BJWyler:

It would not be usefu [...] And that data alone is completely meaningless unless you take the full context of why one person may be below this artificial median and why someone would be above it. [...]

Many would beg to disagree. Like Ogami said, there are already tools for similar purposes that are used widely. All these people would benefit from an official implementation in the steam client, and many more. Also, the position of a person relative to the median doesn't matter, as this feature is related to the game itself, and people with uncommon statistics will, by definition, not influence the median much.

Originally posted by BJWyler:

[...] nor is it simple to calculate [...]

It would be really simple. To extract the playtime from every review is easy enough, as steam does much more, many times a second (So do many websites, like mentioned before). Then you'd just need to calculate the median, which can be done in a single line of code.

Originally posted by BJWyler:

[...] Getting good value for the money out of a game has nothing to do with hours played and everything to do with the quality of the content contained therein.

Unfortunately there isn't an objective metric for quality of content, as each person will enjoy it differently. But you can use the median playtime to imagine how much "fun" you're expected to get from a certain game. The point of the feature is not to perfectly categorize which games are good or bad, but rather give more information to the buyers, so they can buy games based on more factors.

[Dan5000]

To me it is crazy to think that you can't figure out, wether you'd probably like a game or not before buying it. Ofc I also buy games that I rate negatively when reviewing, due to bugs or other things being annoying in it, but I still usually like them enough to play through them completely.

There are so many sources available, from the shoppage, youtube videos, reviews on steam or simply googling what others think about it from reddit to official gaming sites... I may make a bad purchase once out of 100 bought games.

Also if a not so popular indie game had it shown and only had a handful of players and the majority of them just opened the game and let it run for a day, even though its just a 2 hour game, you'd be coming to the forum to complain how the playtime is much shorter than advertised.

Generally, I'd take a good 5 hour game above a mediocre 100 hour game anytime.

[Ben Lubar]

As an experiment, I want you to take a glance at the reviews for Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop and guess what the median playtime is.

Then, once you have that number in your head, look at this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/RTc359m.png

And now, the important part of this experiment: did any of the numbers you just looked at help you determine anything about the game? Were you significantly more or less likely to play the game after seeing the real numbers compared to the numbers you guessed? Does any of this matter?

[S0FL]

Originally posted by Dan5000:

To me it is crazy to think that you can't figure out, wether you'd probably like a game or not before buying it. Ofc I also buy games that I rate negatively when reviewing, due to bugs or other things being annoying in it, but I still usually like them enough to play through them completely.

My idea with this feature is not to decide whether you're going to enjoy the game or not, as I agree that is pretty easy to figure out. I frequently am in situations where I can maybe only buy one or two games, but there are many that interest me, and knowing how any hours I'm expected to play them for helps me decide which ones I'll buy out of the many options I'm very likely to enjoy.

Originally posted by Dan5000:

There are so many sources available, from the shoppage, youtube videos, reviews on steam or simply googling what others think about it from reddit to official gaming sites... I may make a bad purchase once out of 100 bought games.

I believe every opportunity to include those sources inside the Steam client should be evaluated for implementation. And again, it is not about deciding if the game is good or bad.

Originally posted by Dan5000:

Also if a not so popular indie game had it shown and only had a handful of players and the majority of them just opened the game and let it run for a day, even though its just a 2 hour game, you'd be coming to the forum to complain how the playtime is much shorter than advertised.

I can't see this happening. For the majority of a playerbase of a certain game to leave the game open for hours on end and leave a review seems pretty unlikely. I'd bet the majority of people play the game for about the same time as they have it open.

Originally posted by Dan5000:

Generally, I'd take a good 5 hour game above a mediocre 100 hour game anytime.

Me too! But if I think both games are good, I'd prefer the good 100 hour game than the good 5 hour game.

[S0FL]

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

As an experiment, I want you to take a glance at the reviews for Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop and guess what the median playtime is.

Then, once you have that number in your head, look at this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/RTc359m.png

And now, the important part of this experiment: did any of the numbers you just looked at help you determine anything about the game? Were you significantly more or less likely to play the game after seeing the real numbers compared to the numbers you guessed? Does any of this matter?

This feature is really not about whether a game is good or bad. But to answer your question truthfully: Even though that is not my type of game, watching the trailer made me think the multiplayer mode might be fun. I guessed the median playtime would be around 10 hours, and it was 5. But that number is taken from all players of that game, including folks who played around a bit and quit, which is why I think it's important that the median is only calculated with the reviews. In general, I wouldn't download it unless one of my friends asked me to, but I might've given it a try if the median playtime was very high and I liked the genre.

[Jzson]

love this idea

i'm sure you already know but just in case, there's a website called howlongtobeat which obviously shows how long users took to beat games, and a different number for completionist playthroughs. i find it pretty accurate

[Tito Shivan]

I wonder how much bias would median playtime show on Steam...

Originally posted by Dan5000:

Generally, I'd take a good 5 hour game above a mediocre 100 hour game anytime.

I've played some 20 minute games I've enjoyed more than some +80 hours ones.

[S0FL]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

I wonder how much bias would median playtime show on Steam...

Originally posted by Dan5000:

Generally, I'd take a good 5 hour game above a mediocre 100 hour game anytime.

I've played some 20 minute games I've enjoyed more than some +80 hours ones.

I for sure would buy a game with median playtime of 20 minutes, overwhelmingly positive reviews and of genres like puzzle, horror, adventure and etc., but probably not if it was a roguelike or rpg. If the playtime doesn't match the expectations, it could be a real deal-breaker.

[TBS AlexDK]

Originally posted by S0FL:

It is incredibly valuable to know how much I'm expected to play a game for. It gives a good sense for the value for money the game offers, and might give a perspective on how long the game is.

This could be done by calculating the median playtime of users who left reviews with their public playtime on it, with an option to exclude negative reviews. This way, the data would come only from users who really played the game, and "median" instead of "average" would mean that players with a very high playtime wouldn't skew the results. The median playtime at the time of review would reflect how long it took to finish the game, while the median overall playtime of the reviews would be best for games with high replayability.

It could be as simple as a text field on the game's page, and it is trivial to calculate such data. I don't get why it isn't a feature yet. Even the most basic version, without options, would be useful.

Go and look up reviews of the games, if you need more information then what is on the store page

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

Originally posted by S0FL:

It is incredibly valuable to know how much I'm expected to play a game for. It gives a good sense for the value for money the game offers, and might give a perspective on how long the game is.

This could be done by calculating the median playtime of users who left reviews with their public playtime on it, with an option to exclude negative reviews. This way, the data would come only from users who really played the game, and "median" instead of "average" would mean that players with a very high playtime wouldn't skew the results. The median playtime at the time of review would reflect how long it took to finish the game, while the median overall playtime of the reviews would be best for games with high replayability.

It could be as simple as a text field on the game's page, and it is trivial to calculate such data. I don't get why it isn't a feature yet. Even the most basic version, without options, would be useful.

HAHAH....

So like ....then Valve is gonna tell you how close you are to the point where you can ask for a refund?

Yeah... that would be nice but considering that it would have a negative effect on sales I kinda think this will never happen.

But I'm all for it! I mean...Pushing DEI looses massive amounts of money all the time and it just keeps going on. It would be awesome if major corporations would just push monetary incentive programs designed to promote service quality....but that's like a fantasy land I think.

can you imagine? Businesses receiving subsidies for providing excellent services even when it looses them money?

What would the world even look like?