How do you value game length

[NW/RL]

After reading through a thread on the game CARRION where people were concerned about the game's length it got me thinking about how I and others value game

Theoretically you could value game length literally by comparing it to your hourly wage. If you make 7.25 an hour (US minimum wage), and a game is 3 hours long, you'd expect it to be 21.75

I personally don't care about game length if the game is good enough, but I know others don't share that opinion. How do you value game time, and if you can put a literal monetary value to it, what is that value?

[Tristin]

The time you had fun is not the kind of value you can calculate in monetary terms. It varies by games and individuals.

[NW/RL]

Originally posted by Tristin:

The time you had fun is not the kind of value you can calculate in monetary terms. It varies by games and individuals.

:lunar2019piginablanket:

True, but I'm talking about before making the purchase

[REALiNSaNgAMingGODPrODIgY]

short hike is one of the best games ever made and bright memory is the best demo ever game. they are short for their prices but if you look at the effort put into a game thats what they for for.


i rather have a 1 hour game with really high effort and quality than a 200 hour slug fest of grind and stuff, the problem is they risk people playing and refunding it and that makes a dev very depressed but it actually makes it feel more rewarding since you know people actually enjoyed your game and let you keep the money. the money is more like a tip in a way.

[gugnihr]

It depends on the type of game and how much freedom it gives me.
If it gives me a lot of freedom and a lot of contents and I can use it as a life simulator oir sandbox or something like that well I want it to be playable indefinitely, I want to be able to decide by myself how much I want to play it. No matter how long, if it just throw me ouyt of the game at some point, when I complete the main story, and don't let me continue playing it is a bad flaw imo.

If a game is linear and you are supposed to follow its story with at most very little "customization" and freedom allowed then it is the opposite, time should be extremely optimized in such a game and the shorter it is (without damaging the quality of the game and its contewnts of course) the better.

If a game of this kind is very good, worth it, and requires 100 hours to be finishede ok fine I accept that, if it is good enough, but if just 4 hours are enough to experience all the best it can offer then it is even better imo.
Quality is much more important than quantity in this case.
I would be perfectly fine paying 60 euro for an amazing experience that last just 4 hours (not to mention that in most cases I will probably want to play it again, and again if it is very good), while instead a potentially good 15 hours game that becomes obnoxious, frustrating and annoying because it is full of fillers made on purpose to make it seem longer and eventually make you pray that it ends soon while you are playing it, no matter how good it can be, it just makes me angry and ruin the experience.

[Mr_Blank]

If I’m paying 80 dollars for a game I’m expecting at least a 20 hour experience, if I’m paying 90, a 30 hour experience.

So you pay 80 dollars for elden ring and get like 200-300 hours worth of fun, and you play 80 dollars for the halo infinite campaign and get like 15 hours of fun.

[Crazy Tiger]

Not much. I don't look up how long a game is before purchasing or not. I tend to always purchase on discount anyway, and many games I get via bundles. In the past I sometimes went by the 1 buck an hour principle, but I stopped trying to justify purchases long ago. I also stopped thinking that time spend on a game you end up not liking is "bad", it's actually good since without playing I wouldn't have found out.

Besides that, for every game that might have been negative in the "money spend/enjoyment had" ratio there's more that end up positive anyway.

[invision2212]

i only value the length of my dad

[Abaddon the Despoiler]

I've had some very cheap games take 100 hours or more to hunt all the achievements.

[NW/RL]

Originally posted by invision2212:

i only value the length of my dad

🤨

[GunsForBucks]

A game under 80 hrs - meh to ok
80 - 400 hrs decent enough
400 - 600 hrs good game
600 - 1500 hrs great game
1500 - 3000 hrs outstanding game
3000 + hrs top notch

Cost isn't a huge consideration as I get most of my stuff on sale

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

I don't.

I only have expectation on a game lenght depending on it's genre rather then it's price.