War and Peace is great value, as is Les Miserables. I’d love to see the $ per hour of entertainment I have gotten out of those.
Fun fact: people often look at the page count of a book before buying, and yet novels of middling length are the most popular.
So books are the inverse of this rule? Shorter books have greater value?
I think it demonstrates more that people are capable of looking at a metric and not basing their decision entirely on it. Also like with book readers, I am sure there are alot of gamers who think ‘75 hours, I don’t have the time to finish that!’
If you were interested in discussion then wouldn’t you have said that you wouldn’t have any use for the metric instead of saying that it isn’t of use to anyone.That would come across as more of a discussion instead of a declaration that is true for all. That just comes across as belligerent.
I apologize that my posts do not meet your semantic standard. Just pretend I wrote whatever it is you think I should have written.
Just FYI it’s at 10.7% today. It’s a long game, and that stupid, terrible, stretch-goal second city was a deal breaker for a lot of players.
If you are choosing between two restaurants you’ve never been to, and see that Tripadvisor/Google/Yelp rates one of them 1/5 and the other 5/5, does that influence you at all? It would sure influence me. And why would anyone treat games differently?
I’d wonder why, certainly. I wouldn’t discard it out of hand. Especially if, for instance, it were an Ethiopian restaurant and I happen to really like Ethiopian food.
It’s quite revealing you don’t see a hours/buck counter in display in shops of any other form of entertainment that I know of.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that play time or cost per hour should be the only factor when deciding to buy a game. But it can still be useful, just like restaurant ratings.
If you can find decent evidence that you will be in the minority who enjoys a low-rated game or restaurant, then by all means try it.
That’s because most people know how long it will take to finish a meal or watch a movie. On the other hand, there is huge variance in how long you will play a game.
And there are other forms of entertainment that do vary widely in length, like guided tours. Sure enough, the length of the tour is usually displayed prominently.
I’ll quickly reply, but you are considering time alone.
What I find interesting is putting “more time/less buck” as a scale, which seems to indicate our hobby is made for people with tons of spare time but not willing to give much money for it. I gues we are still all kids in front of a NES or something, to people trying to sell us the games.
Edit: and to be clear, in my case, I have a little money, but even less time ;)
I mean, movies have run times, it’s basically the same thing.
Movies also don’t vary from 2 to 200 hours in length and have a cost that varies wildly regardless of locale.
The scale is important because games not only vary wildly in length, they also vary wildly in price. The range can span two orders of magnitude in both cases, and that’s kind of unusual for common entertainment. (EDIT: ShivaX beat me to it!)
If I noticed that a newly released game is available for $6, is that a good deal? If the game is Crusader Kings 2, then yes. If the game is Kamiko, then no. They are both enjoyable games, but Kamiko is only worth $3-5 to me purely because of its short length.
Oh I perfectly understand the playtime being displayed, and how that info is useful. For instance, as for me, I err… scourge(? sorry, my thesaurus is failing me today) the Steam reviews, and tend to stick away from games where talkative players have over 20 hours of playtime!
What I find striking in GMG’s move, is making a scale, one that is trying to quantify an experience. To take the movie argument, nothing would prevent movie producers to go: “hey, come watch Barry Lyndon, it’s 3 bucks/hour, while Big Sleep is 4/hour! 33% more value!”. But that way of trying to quantify two utterly subjective things is very… well, weird, to me. I don’t have any other word.
Again, I and anybody know how they value their own time and money. I do not question that. But GMG’s average cost per hour seems to imply there is an objective best value, while providing on the contrary a very indescriptive number I don’t think anybody can really relate to.
It’s weird because the difference is really quite small.
Now imagine theaters got into the practice of selling tickets to movie trailers, only 3-4 minutes long. If you paid $12.75 without realizing that you were only going to see a trailer, well, you might feel a little ripped off. Even if it was an awesome, Ragnarok-quality trailer.
Now suppose you walk by a theater that is selling tickets for $2. Is this a special matinee? Or just another trailer? If the answer matters, that means you are mentally doing the same arithmetic as GMG.
And again, this is standard practice for computer games. There are $5 games on the same page as $60 games. Some of those $5 games are a tremendous value, others are basically at the regular price. How to tell which is which?
Standard practice is to divide the price by MSRP. Our Bargain Thread constantly alerts us to games that are “80% off”. But if you think about it, that’s a much worse ratio to judge value.
Exactly! But taking away that from me is exactly what I find weird. Your exemple is spot-on. But in my case at least, if somebody reduces what is a “gut” feeling of how I value my time and money to some X$/hour value, it doesn’t feel as descriptive as just knowing what I am going in for. And I love maths ;)
Edit: I also think percents off are evil and manipulative, but that’s another discussion ;)
Sure, I get that a “gut math” may be the best indicator for you. But GMG’s ratios may still be useful a useful starting point. Scenario: you want to treat yourself to a small game, maybe $5-10, as a self-reward for meeting a minor goal.
So you go to GMG, and filter by cost. Yuk. So much garbage. Maybe filter by rating? Ok, still too many games all clustered in the 80-100% range. Why are tower defense games so popular??
Now sort by cost/hour, and what pops up? Arkham Asylum, for $8*? Never paid much attention to the Arkham series before… time to start reading reviews…
In short, its best use may well be to highlight interesting prospects that you overlooked but warrant more investigation, particularly on sites like GMG that have lots of cheap classic titles mixed with equally cheap casual titles.
* No, it’s not actually $8 on GMG. Yet.
There are statistics that are useful. And there are marketing nonsense that masquerade as helpful statistics.
Which one of these is it? That is the question.
Oddly enough I do tend to value length. I read novels but not short stories. I watch movies but not half hour TV shows (and even hour long shows I can’t get into unless I can have a whole season available). Short games no longer interest me except very rarely on my phone. If I am going to make time to game/watch something/read fiction I want to have an experience I can get immersed in over a longer period of time.
I’m also cheap when it comes to gaming. Some of this is from habits based on when I didn’t have as much money but most of it is based on the great proliferation of games out there and the fact that by looking at various metrics I can stick to finding mostly either dirt cheap games that I’ll play a little bit of or big RPGs, replayable strategy games, and long tactical combat games that will stay with me for years. This still doesn’t mean $/hour is very valuable but it isn’t the worst thing ever.
This is very important. I want to know how long people play the game not how long it takes to beat the game. With something like XCOM, Battle Brothers, or Battletech that might be very different numbers!
Also, shame on me. I hadn’t read the entire thread before my last post. @magnet really outlined my use of a $/hour metric when by describing using it as an alternative search method that might give a different means of finding hidden gems when review ratings, price, and percent off lead to games that you know you don’t want.