Comments on: Pricing games by length

By: zeek

zeek — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:21:13 +0000

I’ve played Dwarf Fortress ad nauseum. Now this is a game that is open-ended and not so repetitive as to lose interest after the first few rounds. Programmer Tarn Adams programs it as a hobby and makes a living for himself month to month based entirely on the donations of well-wishing gamers. I threw in my $20 to the cause and have been seriously considering tossing him another $20 at the next major version number.

By: Allen Pike

Allen Pike — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:29:27 +0000

It’s true that there are economic and social reasons why you can’t always price something at what it’s worth. If all players got as much total fun as you have out of Team Fortress 2, it really WOULD be worth $500, but it would be hard to convince people that it was a good deal. Likewise, publishers often create games that are so little fun that they’re worth less than they cost to make.

That being said, I think they SHOULD have to pay you to play bad games, just like they have to pay you to take toxic waste. Also, there is a way to charge $500 for a game that’s worth that much to some people. WoW is doing it right now, one month at a time.

By: Curtis

Curtis — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 05:18:38 +0000

Hum.

I don’t think that games chould be priced by fun. Most game companies are not going to go “Oh, our game? On the fun scale? Maybe a 2-out-of-10. Let’s price this sucker at $5.”

Pricing a game by length? I’d say it’s at least a little valid. Let’s imagine you calculate the ‘value’ of a game, post purchase, by (hours_of_glee * magnitude_of_glee) / price – because it’s impossible for a game developer to fairly determine ‘magnitude-of-glee’ pre-sale, the pricing could at least hinge on the ‘hours_of_glee’ factor.

And ‘hours-of-glee’ is important- while I’m a busy guy, my go-to game is Team Fortress 2. Thanks to the fact that the game delivers a consistently high glee-load, it has a “hours-of-glee” rating in the realm of 150+ hours and counting. As for Dawn of War, Left 4 Dead, or any other game that I’ve bought in the past year, they’re all in the < 15 hour range. It’s not because Team Fortress 2 is a long game (in fact, it has no real ‘length’)- it’s because it’s magnitude of glee is high and consistent, and it doesn’t suffer from the 8-hour-or-so “Glee Drop-off” of most games.

There’s also certain in-retrospect quality to the pricing. For example, based on a rough approximation of playing time and relative glee levels, I would be willing to re-purchase Team Fortress 2 for as much as $500, whereas I would actually ask EA to _pay me_ for Red Alert 3 and Spore.

By: Allen

Allen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:06:23 +0000

It really does. Maybe there could be a Firefox add-on that noticed when you made a blog comment and subscribed to that post’s comment feed in some sort of temporary way.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:51:25 +0000

You know what Wordpress needs? A fancy way of tracking the responses to all the blog posts you’ve commented on.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:50:52 +0000

Oh, I meant to infer that by “the instant of glee better knock me flat on my ass”.

It’s all about maximizing glee.

Interestingly, the value of glee is a function of time for me. As in, a little glee gained isn’t worth much if it takes 10 hours. But you point that out.

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:14:06 +0000

You make a good point, but I think there’s still a subtle distinction here. Rather than measuring a game’s value by the number of happy hours, it’s more like the amount of happiness per hour multiplied by the number of hours. So, if a game is twice as enjoyable, it can be half as long. This probably even overstates the value of the length variable, since a 1000 hour game where you’re slightly enjoying it should have a very low value compared to a 10 hour game that’s 100 times as fun.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:27:58 +0000

There’s a tiny bit of truth to the ability to judge a game by length. But not absolute length.

I like to think of the value proposition as an exchange for enjoyment. I give someone $5, I get glee. Now, I like my glee to last. Who doesn’t? I want to extend my glee as much as possible. Or, at least, that instant of glee better knock me flat on my ass and leave every muscle wasted and quivering from the impact.

Er, I digress. It should be evident then that I judge games on a value proposition of money for time spent happy. There is a lose connection to game length here, but as you point out, it’s quite flawed. You can beat Tetris in 30 min, but I’ve had enough glee to make that the best $35 (for the original GB cart) I ever spent on a commodity item.

So when I look at a game I think “How many hours am I going to spend on that, and will I be happier?” There’s also a secondary “will this improve my life?” which is rarely met.

Looking at my buying habits, it seems like around a dollar per hour is satisfying.