I think sequels should get a bump in fun/value because it’s already established that they deserve to exist and, by extension, your time and money. And I think that bump should be incremental per sequel, so like Final Fantasy XV is probably the best game ever made.
Well, okay, then, so that’s how we know the math doesn’t work.
I don’t see any math on that page, ergo fake news.
Regardless of whether you have a lot of money or little money, cost is a factor when deciding to buy something. If you don’t believe me, search this very middle-aged forum to see how often people suggest to “wait for a sale”.
Furthermore, if you have very little time then you should be very interested in how other people spend their own time. If people on average stick with a game for 100 hours, then it’s unlikely you’ll quickly lose interest during your precious one hour play session.
True, but that’s like saying that giving a restaurant a Michelin star suggests that it is identical to another restaurant with a Michelin star. That’s obviously not the case.
The star is meant to make people aware of the restaurant, then you can visit and form your own judgment (or conversely avoid it). The same is true of any top ten list or other rankings. And likewise that’s how cost/hour can be fruitfully used.
I think the key factor missing isn’t just cost over hour, but also entertainment value over hour (a much more difficult factor to pin down).
So, it’s not just how many hours you put into Pillars of Eternity 2, but how much these hours entertained you. The metric above doesn’t give you that, so you are still on your own.
Everyone in this thread needs to redo their math. No one has factored in the 3-12 cents per sold trading card you can shave off the game’s cost. Some games even let you sell skins and hats.
Back to the abacus folks.
Team Fortress 2 might have provided the best ratio since I bought the game for $2.50 during a Halloween sale and sold my Apple earbuds skin for close to $60.
I trust people who consider cost/length a nonsense metric are perfectly happy paying full album prices for single tracks of music?
Like, I’m not here to argue that works of culture have some unified objective scale of value or that cost for length is the only significant criteria or anything like that. Nor do I want every game experience to be hundreds of hours long (I’d much prefer 3-5, given the amount of time I have). But I think most people have some basic expectations surrounding the quantity of an experience they’re getting for a given expenditure of money that are only so mitigated by quality. Like I say, a song might be the best thing you’ve ever heard by your favorite artist in the world, but I’m guessing most of us probably wouldn’t pay a whole $13-15 for that one song, and certainly not before you’ve listened to it. Nor would most people pay full novel pricing for a 20 page short story, or buy a movie ticket to watch one of those cute little shorts that go in front of Pixar movies and then go home.
Similarly, I’m not going to pay $60 for 4 hours with a game, even if it’s great.
Where each particular person draws the line is going to depend heavily on the person and the game, for sure. But that doesn’t mean there’s no value in having that information.
If people ever did the calculations of entertainment cost per hour, the whole concept of movie theaters would implode overnight. Not saying thats a bad thing :D
Well, it depends on how much you enjoy the movie experience. Not all entertainment is equal.
Indiana Jones 1 should cost about 10 times (or more) what Indiana Jones 4 would cost.
I was working in New Haven CT when they were filming 4. It was pretty neat to see how they transformed Downtown streets to look like 50’s America but I felt bad for all the extras wearing full wool suits in the dead heat of summer.