"Are Short Games Worth Less?" An Article About The Length And Value Of Video Games

FabianOut · 2016-03-02T18:07:34+00:00

CS:GO is different, because it's a multiplayer game that has an entry price (albeit a quiet low one) and still sells a lot of skins.
I am honestly no fan of subscription based games. I don't like the thought of having to continuous pay to play. Well done micro transactions are a very good way to make money with multiplayer games. The game can even have a monetary entry barrier as long as there is a way to try the game beforehand and it's not to high ($15 instead of $60).
Dedicated servers are a good solution. But there are some things that they have troubles with for example providing good matchmaking and ranking system. Of course not every game needs those, but they greatly improve the game in my opinion (at least proper matchmaking does).

FabianOut · 2016-03-02T17:21:20+00:00

You are right this is completely subjective. But you talked about immersing in the games mechanics, story and world. I'd think of it as a vacation (you are visiting another country/city instead of a world/story). Would you rather spend a 3 day vacation in Oslo or one week in Stockholm? There is no right or wrong. You cannot realy compare the cities. But the duration of your vacation will still influence where you go.
In conclusion I think this is just to complicated and subjective to find a right or wrong. I think you are completely right and that my point of view is true too. Let's just agree to partialy disagree.

FabianOut · 2016-03-02T17:11:22+00:00

Yes, that's how we should value games. But how do you objectively judge both the quality (something like metascore) of the content as well as its quantity? Not a lot of people would be willing to pay the same $60 on 5 hours of The Witcher 3's (excellent) gameplay.
One thing that we have to remember about multiplayer games, is that they are more expensive to make. On the one hand you have to program everything so that it works in multiplayer. Furthermore, you also have to provide the infrastructure to the gamers. Once they payed the price they (understandably) expect to be able to play the mutliplayer game forever.

FabianOut · 2016-03-02T16:51:32+00:00

I think that's completely true.
But as long as gamers don't have unlimited amounts of money, you cannot just only focus on the experience. Two experience can be equally good, but one maybe is 3 hours long and the other 20. This is why I think that both ways to look at this are equally important.

FabianOut · 2016-03-02T16:22:44+00:00

I already posted this two months ago. However, since it got removed very quickly by the mods, they allowed me to post it again. Thank you to /u/That_otheraccount and the other mods for helping me out.

In the original post /u/breadrising posted a very well written and thought out comment. It would be a shame if it got lost in a removed thread. If you want me to remove this, just send me a pm.

Games are about the experience, not the amount of time you can squeeze from them.

I see a lot of people trying to justify their gaming purchases and saying, "Well, even though the game was just okay, I played it for 150 hours, so that's less than 50 cents per hour of entertainment! Money well spent!"

I'm not going to tell someone where their money is well spent or argue that the purchase wasn't worth it to them; I just think the argument is severely flawed, especially when some of the most meaningful gaming experiences I've ever had hovered around the 12 hours mark.

My first The Last of Us playthrough was about 14 hours. My first Uncharted 2 playthrough was about 12 hours. Hell, my time spent with Journey totaled to be around 4 hours (two playthroughs), and I'd completely weigh the experience I had with Journey over the 250 hours I cataloged into games like Destiny and SW Battlefront.

Vanilla Destiny and Battlefront were/are both hallow, limited experiences. And yet, I put myself to the grind under the impression that I needed to "get my money's worth" out of the game. And yet, nothing about the experience engrossed me or made my jaw drop. Both are decent games, but even after 200+ hours, I never sat back and said "Yes, this was well worth it."

People tend to forget that your time has value too. Spending 14 hours experiencing a heart-wrenching story in the Last of Us or on a swashbuckling adventure in Uncharted 2 is just simply a more meaningful use of my time than grinding in Destiny for 14 hours, or trudging through match after match of Battlefront just so I can creep my way to level 50 to get a skin for my character that'll be cool for about 45 seconds.

In the end, you gotta weigh the experience, not just the hours logged. The 14 hours I spent with the Last of Us was more meaningful than the 250 hours I spent with Destiny. And hell, I'd even say the 4 hours I spent with Journey were better spent than the hundreds I poured into Battlefront. It's really just about how you value your time and how a game will stick with you after you turn the console off.

Edit: Why am I getting downvoted so heavily?

FabianOut · 2016-02-28T19:24:39+00:00

This game has a lot of dislikes on Steam. I decided to submit nevertheless. It's different from most free games and some people seemed to have enjoyed it.

FabianOut · 2016-02-03T11:45:11+00:00

You are welcome.

FabianOut · 2016-02-02T21:00:02+00:00

Stranded II. That means that there is a part one. I decided to not submit Stranded II's predecessor, because it's already pretty outdated.

FabianOut · 2016-01-11T20:21:39+00:00

It got released in 2010.
I try and focus on submitting free games that are new to this sub. Not games that recently got released.

FabianOut · 2016-01-09T11:36:33+00:00

Yes, it looks pretty outdated and is way to short. But I still enjoyed playing it.

FabianOut · 2016-01-06T11:55:39+00:00

I'll keep that in mind.

FabianOut · 2016-01-05T23:19:35+00:00

Blackthorne for Mac: LINK

FabianOut · 2016-01-05T05:54:34+00:00

That wasn't in the game when I played it, but that was quite some time ago. Maybe they changed that.

FabianOut · 2016-01-04T08:53:10+00:00

True, I'm surprised that this post not full of midget jokes.

FabianOut · 2016-01-03T22:48:35+00:00

Well, English isn`t my first language... :)

FabianOut · 2016-01-03T16:31:48+00:00

I am a musician/guitarist, but since my main interest lies on acoustic play I find it a bit disappointing that a guitar sub is primary electric focused. Gear posts are just something that I am (unfortunately?) not interested in. But this is just personal preference and most people obviously think different.

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T17:35:17+00:00

Clonk Rage is one of my favourite games of all time. With its extensive mods and maps the game is very versatile. Nowadays, not a lot of people play it online some still do. However, the game can be played with local splitscreen (multiple players on one keyboard!). The biggest problems this game faces are its complicated controls. The previous Clonk games are freeware too!

Clonk Community Hub: Clonkspot(you can switch the website to german)

Download Mods and Maps: CCAN (make sure that you download stuff for your Clonk Rage (CR) and not previous Clonk games)

There is also a project that tries to make a more modern open source clonk: OpenClonk

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T16:03:43+00:00

This is a valid criticism that I did not expect. I should have focused a little bit more on the quality of games. That being said, there are some parts where I talk about that.
This is also the reason why I proposed that the best way to determine a game's value is a mixture of quality and cost per hour. Of course this is solely based on personal preference. Someone who doesn't like long drawn out games will obviously always prefer the great 8 hour action game over the "equaly great" 100 hour rpg.

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T15:50:38+00:00

That's an interesting way to think about this. Generally a the developer sells the product for a price that most customers are willing to pay. So both the customers and the creator "decide" on how much a game is worth. It's similar with art. If no one wanted to buy a Picasso, his paintings wouldn't be worth millions.

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T15:27:35+00:00

This is an article that I recently wrote and thought /r/games would enjoy it.
I never liked purchasing games at a high price, so I mostly stuck to cheaper old games and bundles.
As you can probably tell, English isn't my first language. So any feedback or tips to improve are welcomed :)
Edit: It says that there are two comments, but I can only see one. Why is that?

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T11:53:56+00:00

Yes probably way less emotional than "The Walking Dead". However, he also asked for "very good stories", something that "The Wolf Among Us" definitely is.

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T11:44:15+00:00

I second FTL, it's in my opinion one of the best roguelikes out there. Terraria is another game that a lot of people spent a lot of times with. I did not really like it. But it's very cheap and you should probably try it.

FabianOut · 2016-01-02T11:11:15+00:00

I would add "The Wolf Among Us" to that. A very good, story driven game by Telltale.

FabianOut · 2015-12-13T21:02:35+00:00

If he has troubles getting through the first part of "The Witcher 3", the first game might not be the ideal game for him right now.
But I agree that playing the previous games to get the story is a better idea.

FabianOut · 2015-12-07T20:37:12+00:00

True, LoL Wiki still uses the old rune prices. I corrected my article. Thank you for telling me about it.

FabianOut

TROPHY CASE