Game length = Price?

CaptainRAVE · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:21

Lately, I keep noticing a certain philosophy many people have nowadays regarding the pricing of games.

It seems a lot of people don't believe a game should be worth a full price tag if its single player only, with no multiplayer. The same goes for games with a singleplayer that lasts under 10 hours.

What do you lot think of this? Should price really be proportionate to the hours of gameplay? Should singleplayer games be sold for less than those with multiplayer? And is a generic COD clone shooter with multiplyer really worth more than something much more enjoyable, fun and original, but only lasts 5 hours?

Thoughts, people

Tefal · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:24

Apples and oranges.

A short SP game compared to a Long sp game 9assuming both are decent) yeah the shorter one should probbaly be cheaper.

mp games- depends if the mp is any good but in most cases with a good one you'll get 100+ hours so it makes no real difference if it's 20 or 30 pound.

Yosiah · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:24

Should be Budget + Man Hours = Price.

Tefal · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:27

Yosiah said:
Should be Budget + Man Hours = Price.

what games should be sold at cost? (well below cost)

why would anyone make games then, or more importantly sell them?

gropingmantis · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:27

Hmm I am inclined to agree. I don't want to pay £30 or £40 for a game that has a 5 hour campaign with no replay value where the multiplayer servers are empty within a month.

Sure a quirky Indie game or IP with 5 hours of great single player is nice (Portal) but is that ever worth £30-40? I don't think so.

Also a game that depends solely on multiplayer to bring players in, CoD, BF etc etc should not be charging full price either. I dont see why CoD doesnt just drop the SP and give us MP only for £15. (Rhetoical question, its all about the benjamins baby!)

Look at games like CSS, TF2 (before it was free) and other MP only games, they are way cheaper so why is it ok to charge full price for CoD or BF which (for most people) is a MP game and they wont touch the SP. There are plenty of people who have said they wont play the SP on BF3 so why the hell are you paying £30-40 for a MP only game that will have paid for DLC?????

IndexRated · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:29

I'm not into multiplayer/online all that much, dropping the price of single-player only games surely is only going to lead to more five-hour games, and a less demanding story arc.

Quality over quantity for me, but can you put value on a quality game? COD sells massively over-priced, and that's value on hype nothing more.

Sunbed · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:30

It is crazy really. I suppose you may pay £30 for perhaps 30 hours of good single player gameplay. Conversely, on multiplayer games like counterstrike and cod etc, people will rack up 5000+ and maybe have paid £10 for the game.

I'm surprised more games aren't pay to play tbh. I'm not totally against it either, it keeps support for the game etc.

gropingmantis · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:33

Sundance said:
It is crazy really. I suppose you may pay £30 for perhaps 30 hours of good single player gameplay. Conversely, on multiplayer games like counterstrike and cod etc, people will rack up 5000+ and maybe have paid £10 for the game.

I'm surprised more games aren't pay to play tbh. I'm not totally against it either, it keeps support for the game etc.

No pay to play is bad. That would further stagnate and already stagnating genre. CoD doesn't advance anyway but you would never get games like BF3 in a pay to play system there would be no need. You make one game and then just tweak it and add a few new bits FOREVER. Look at WoW.

Random Guy · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:37

Personally, the absolute minimum value I would want from a game (SP or MP) is £1 an hour. I would classify the value of that game as "just about acceptable".

Sunbed · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:42

gropingmantis said:
No pay to play is bad. That would further stagnate and already stagnating genre. CoD doesn't advance anyway but you would never get games like BF3 in a pay to play system there would be no need. You make one game and then just tweak it and add a few new bits FOREVER. Look at WoW.

Yeh but WoW is generally considered to be GOOD. It gets support and has longevity. I've not played it but I know a few people that do. It must have made so much money too.

Look at how many broken multiplayer games there are that are not going to be fixed because developers have moved on. I don't know how devotees of a game can still be moaning about updates years and years after it was released, they are basically demanding free entertainment. Developers like valve are very generous tbh. Imagine if TF2 or CSS went pay 2 play. People would still fork out, and imagine all the increased rate of bug fixes/updates you might get.

gropingmantis · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:46

Sundance said:
Yeh but WoW is generally considered to be GOOD. It gets support and has longevity. I've not played it but I know a few people that do. It must have made so much money too.

Look at how many broken multiplayer games there are that are not going to be fixed because developers have moved on.

But an MMORPG is different to an online FPS. Although saying that actually modern FPS games have a continuous character that you level up and improve through play. Hmmmmmmmmmm...

TF2 wouldnt be pay to play as it is now F2P. I think the TF2 model is a very good one and better than a Pay-to-Play system. It still makes money but you could never force pay to play on games like CSS as there is no incentive to keep paying whereas with games like CoD there is more incentive to keep paying (got to reach that next prestige/weapon unlock). Mind you its stuff like that that I hate about modern online FPS.

Sunbed · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:48

gropingmantis said:
But an MMORPG is different to an online FPS. Although saying that actually modern FPS games have a continuous character that you level up and improve through play. Hmmmmmmmmmm...

I'm really thinking about bug fixes, of which even the most competitive FPS games have many.

Tefal · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:48

Sundance said:
Yeh but WoW is generally considered to be GOOD. It gets support and has longevity. I've not played it but I know a few people that do. It must have made so much money too.

Look at how many broken multiplayer games there are that are not going to be fixed because developers have moved on. I don't know how devotees of a game can still be moaning about updates years and years after it was released, they are basically demanding free entertainment. Developers like valve are very generous tbh. Imagine if TF2 or CSS went pay 2 play. People would still fork out, and imagine all the increased rate of bug fixes/updates you might get.

well they do get money from the thousands of servers people pay money for every month......

bhavv · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:50

Sundance said:
It gets support and has longevity.

So do many other MMORPGs, even ones without fees.

I dont however think that WoW is worth the billions that Blizzard earn on it every year.

orderoftheflame · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:50

Amount of gameplay has never had a relation to cost for me. There's been adventure games I've got only a few hours out of and enjoyed immensely, and feel that I've got far more out of than a title I may have spent ten times as many hours on.

The cost of a game to me reflects the cost to the developer to get it to market. I'd rather pay for the quality of the experience I get over the quantity of hours I get out of a game.

It's why I'm happy to pay more for a quite short title such as Portal 2 compared to something like minecraft where you get a lot of hours. Portal 2 will have cost more to develop by a long way.

Pay 2 pay titles are an entirely kettle of fish though. Given how much it must cost blizzard to support the datacentres they use for wow, you're not paying for content with the fee. Smaller titles can get away with funding through other means, I don't see wow going F2P though.

Sunbed · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:51

Tefal said:
well they do get money from the thousands of servers people pay money for every month......

Didn't know they got money from that. I thought all the money for a server went to a third party host like multiplay or something.

How much of that amount do they get?

Shamikebab · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:53

Stupid idea really, would lead to lots of games being lengthened like Far Cry 2 was by making you go half way across the map for every mission.

Football Manager has given me about 1100 hours of gameplay this year
Deus Ex has given me 25 so far

How do you price that then? Deus Ex is a completely different type of experience that is equally as valuable to me.

And to the person who said £30/40, games aren't even that at release if you don't want to pay a lot then wait a few weeks and it will usually be £20ish. Honestly people have no excuses.

Judgeneo · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:54

If I can expect £1/hour of gameplay or better, then I'll consider a purchase.

panyan · 7 Sep 2011 at 09:56

gropingmantis said:
Also a game that depends solely on multiplayer to bring players in, CoD, BF etc etc should not be charging full price either. I dont see why CoD doesnt just drop the SP and give us MP only for £15.

i agree, the MP in the cod games is just there for when your internet is down

Judgeneo · 7 Sep 2011 at 10:14

panyan said:
i agree, the MP in the cod games is just there for when your internet is down

you mean SP?