When is a game worth?

[jarbAin]

So I have been wondering, when is a game worth its price.

How do you determine whether or not it was a good idea to purchase a certain game or not?

I personally think that a game is worth if I play it more that the amount of money it costs. I live in the Euro area, so it's pretty easy, for example, a game that costs 20€ is worth after 20 hours of play and so on.

But I don't know if this is a good way of thinking, since, for example Bastion, a game that normally costs about 20€, has received great praise in steam, but most people have played it only 8 hours or so. Same with some point&click adventures. This must mean that the game is good. However, I don't think that it provides enough entertainment, considering the price.

So, how do you determine a game's worthiness?

 

[ScarletShepherd24M]

not entirely sure if I would equate one hour to one dollar. Especially in cases where a game was designed to be beaten in a short amount of time. Or the cases where even though the base game is pretty short, but meant to be played multiple times. Like in any indie games with multiple difficulties. The game might be only 5-10hrs long, but has 1-3 harder difficulty settings that you unlock by beating the game on a regular playthrough.Whether or not the indie developer thinks a majority of the people, who purchased the game, will play through it multiple times is really up to how much effort was put into the core game. The effort to make an otherwise short game fun and with high replayability.

If I had to connect a price tag, then any game that I can beat in 7-12 hours is worth 15-30$ in my books. If the game gives me good enough reason to replay it(with just a single player campaign), then that price I'm willing to pay goes up to 30-40$. If there's both dedicated single player and multiplayer modes that I enjoy using, then I might be willing to pay 40-50$. If it's a game that contains all those prior criteria and is regularly updated, then I would probably be willing to pay a full retail price tag.

 

[finalark]

I don't think there's necessarily a time-to-money factor here. I think it's more about the fun factor. You can pay $20 for a forty hour game or $60 for a ten hour game. The time to money factor isn't even a thing if the forty hour game is boring beyond all reason and the ten hour game is a blast.

 

[Spak]

Example: I have Civ 5 and enjoy it quite a bit. I've spent 123 hours in Civ 5 over the past few years. With that said, if Steam took my copy of Civ 5 and said "We'll let you have it back for $123," I would be very upset about Valve taking my game and write an angry note, but wouldn't pay $123 to get my game back. I probably wouldn't even pay $50; I got Civ 5 on sale for about $20.