Cost to Playtime Ratio

[Roccondil]

This is one of those things that always made me crazy about people, when everyone complains that a game is too short for what they paid for it.

Basically, there are a lot of games out there that are very short, sometimes 5 hours to 20 hours. Many of these games sell at $10...
But if some developer tries to sell their game for any higher, everyone starts yelling at them for "ripping off" the players...

But then I look over on iTunes and other digital entertainment stores, and they are selling 2-hour to 2.5-hour non-interactive movies for $20 on a lot of new releases, and nary a peep about the price.

So apparently people place a higher value on non-interactive 2.5-hour experience than they do on an interactive 10-hour experience?

[Satoru]

I agree its stupid. I'd rather play a 2 hour game that is awesome, than be forced through 50 hours of back tracking unskippable garbage.

Because if you want I will engage in every shady terrible game design possible to give you the 'best' cost to playtime ratio, and you will HATE every nano-second of it.

1) UNSKIPPABLE game pre-load movies - 5 minutes of logos from AMD/Nvidia/Intel/Havok/Unity/Autodesk/publisher/developer and our pre-intro movie to the game
2) UNSKIPPABLE movies - Lets start with a great 20 minute unskippable movie sequence to start the game
3) UNSKIPPABLE cutscence - YOU WILL WATCH THEM
4) LOTS of back tracking - Please fetch me Item A from Zone B, then Go to Zone C then back to Zone B then back to Zone C, then come back. Thanks for completing step 1 of 50.
5) No running - HAHAHAHAH Yeha right this is a walking simulator, no running
6) No fast travel - You will appreciate my procedural grass generator or die playing the game
7) No quick save
8) Checkpoints are 1 hour apart with several insta-kill QTE events in between, please start over
9) No waypoint markers or hints, we are very 'Dark Souls'-y figure it out by wandering around for 10 hours
10) Terrible UI. Oh you want to access your inventory, wait 10 seconds while I give you this really nifty animation sequence of looking through the backpack, a delirium inducing zoom in and blur effect. Oh and we'll also be asking for confirmation for ANYTHING you do in the UI. That is also followed by a 5 second pre-post animation as well. What you want a button for healing potions? HAHAHAHAHA! No way, its the backpack or nothing. You'll also be chugging those thinks like its goign out of style.

I mean a designer can totally make you playtime much much longer.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

i would like it if the devs would put in a "skip cutscene" for every game they make or after the 1st playthrough.

[Roccondil]

But even a short but well-designed game gets flak for being too over-priced.

Actually, now that I think about it, even longer games like The Witness, which has been generally well-received, was getting people angry over being $40 rather than the $20 which they had expected, even though it is said to be a full 60-80 hours on average, at the minimum.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

i would like it if the devs would put in a "skip cutscene" for every game they make or after the 1st playthrough.

:qr:

Thank you for your feedback

New Game+ will reduce the speed of all cutscenes to 0.5x so that you can more fully appreciate the art and dedication that went into them. Oh and they're still totally mandatory to watch and unskippable.

Also if you try to press Esc, it will reduce the speed of the videos by another 0.5x for the rest of the game.

Oh and we've added new director commentary as well. These trigger at random times throughout the game. they are of course unskippable as well. Its actually just a looping video our producer snorting drugs off a donkey. But we think this will be very 'dank meme' worthy according to the marketing people. Dunno they made us put it in. Something about Reddit? Dunno whatever you're watching it. We also might rick roll you too. We're so hip.

We're very excited to see that the average play time of our game is reaching upwards of 80 hours on Steam

[Muppet among Puppets]

Speaking about cutscenes.
Got a "marine" game in a bundle where you spend literally the most time having someone calling you maggot and stuff in unscipable cutscenes. Again and again.
Its so mindbending stupid ....... i have a spare key that i wont give anyone. Its an insult even to get it for free.

[𝕙.𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕒𝕤]

I wouldn't call games with 10 or more hours of average playtime short and 5 hours of quality content for 10 $ is ok with me.

Many games offer no more than a few hours of game play for 60+ $ at release. As prices drop rather quickly question is if these games you're talking about were priced at 10 $ initially.

Anyways it's up to you what you feel comfortable with paying for content. Although I would say
15 $ or more for less than 2 hours is rather steep.

I agree with you that compared to movie releases games are undervalued if your only metric
is the time of enjoyment you can get out of your buy.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Speaking about cutscenes.
Got a "marine" game in a bundle where you spend literally the most time having someone calling you maggot and stuff in unscipable cutscenes. Again and again.
Its so mindbending stupid ....... i have a spare key that i wont give anyone. Its an insult even to get it for free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j3_iPskjxk

You maggots will watch these cutscenes and you will like it!

[Muppet among Puppets]

Even that guy would slowly shake his head, starting the process to get a refund on steam, which is quite difficult while facepalming.
If the refund gets rejected, at least he can wait for private paula getting mad one night.