How many hours of gameplay should a $60 game give you?

[TheGhost]

I find myself in threads lately always bringing up the fact that I'm less likely to spend $60 on "one and done" games. I don't think that is necessarily a disdain for single player games but the feeling of a waste of money after completing them not even a week later.

Did I really need to buy it brand new, should I buy these games used years later when they are heavily discounted?

This gen I've been spending less because the games I've been playing games that have offered 50 - 100's of hours of replayability for $60.

I feel anything less than 20 hours is a wait for discount or flash sale type of buy. That's not to say the production value of said game was a waste of money the entry fee is just unjustified to me personally for time commitment.

I should never feel like "20 years ago this would have been a $5 rental"

 

[Vilam]

A nice 6 hour campaign is the sweet spot.

Also, what's up with people posting threads where the title and poll question are different? Makes no damn sense.

 

[Sorel]

The length of a game has never been a factor in whether I buy a game or not.

 

[Spaltazar]

6 - 8 hours for an action game, 20 - 40 for an rpg

 

[Callibretto]

15-20 hours of fun is alright with me. And it didn't have to be a single playthrough either. I like Uncharted and God of War games (shorter last gen version) enough to beat them multiple times. So I got my 20 hours of fun from those games

 

[nsilvias]

i dont care as long as its good but please gamers stop judging the price by the amount of hours you get out of it.
most of these games dont justify being long nowadays

 

[TheGhost]

6 - 8 hours for an action game, 30 - 40 for an rpg

Click to shrink...

Yeah see I can never drop $60 on a game so short.

 

[Drayco21]

An hour count doesn't have any effect on the value I place on a game. Anymore, I'd rather have them shorter than they are; everything feels over bloated and padded out these days.

 

[Strings]

I think the minimum I'd want out of a full-priced game is ~8 hours. Otherwise, I don't care as long as the quality is there (outside of general preferences, like wanting a JRPG to be above a certain length, or an action game below one, etc).

 

[Pineconn]

More than 0.

It's highly dependent on genre, overall quality, content density, etc.

 

[Ojli]

Less than 25 hours for any game for me. After that I get fatigued and stop playing (nowadays, used to play a lot more just a couple of years ago). As long as the time is quality time, then it's all good.

 

[tenderbrew]

Length isn't a factor I consider.

 

[cowbanana]

I don't mind if a game is short as long as long as it is excellent, focused and respects my time instead of wasting it. So many games would be far better if they weren't padded out with repetitive shit to appease the misguided time/$ crowd.

 

[Heromanz]

Depned on how good the game is

 

[PrimeBeef]

However many it needs to tell its story, finish the levels, complete all the puzzles, or until you are tired of the MP.

Trying to quantify a time played vs cost of the game is stupid IMO. It prevents you from enjoying things for what they are. So what if one game took 6 hours to beat and another 100 a d they both cost $50. Were you enjoying both? I spent $60 on MW1 only for the SP it was what 4-6 hours long and it was fun. I spent like $5 on MSGV which is 30hrs+ and it sucked and I have less than 2 hrs played.

 

[Mack]

Don't care as long as the game itself is good. Quality over quantity.

 

[Rosebud]

I don't think about that. Payed $60 on God of War but waited AC: Odyssey to be $20

 

[TheGhost]

I don't mind if a game is short as long as long as it is excellent, focused and respects my time instead of wasting it. So many games would be far better if they weren't padded out with repetitive shit to appease the misguided time/$ crowd.

Click to shrink...

It respects your time but is it really respecting your wallet?

 

[mario_O]

Production cost is a better factor for pricing. 'Hours' is meaningless. Or tetris, for example, should be an incredibly expensive game.

 

[Doc Laserstein]

The length of a game isn't going to stop me from buying/convince me to buy a game one way or the other, but I guess my expectations depend somewhat on the genre.

 

[Hektor]

10 Mintues would be enough if those were the best 10 minutes of my life.

 

[cowbanana]

It respects your time but is it really respecting your wallet?

Click to shrink...

If the game is good then yes. Length of a game as a metric for value is completely meaningless to me. I'll take a great 6 hours long game over a good 20 hours long game where I felt that 10 of those hours were filler best left out. The shorter game would be the best value to me.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

Somewhere between 10 and infinity. It varies a lot by the game.

For example, Persona 5 goes on way too long, and I had a better time with bayonetta 1/2 despite them being maybe a tenth of the length and not really being a fan of the genre in general. As a result, I'd much rather spend full price on bayonetta 3 than persona 5 royal when the two come out. Something taking much longer isn't necessarily a boon when it pretty much shows its entire hand really early on like persona does.

 

[Siggy-P]

If it's gonna be short it better be really, really good.

Personally I prefer 20-30 hours of decent content. 15 at minimum.

 

[NeoBob688]

An hour count doesn't have any effect on the value I place on a game. Anymore, I'd rather have them shorter than they are; everything feels over bloated and padded out these days.

Click to shrink...

This. 100% this.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

It's hard to say because you can so easily inflate a players time in countless ways, all of which make the game worse. Bullet sponge enemies, unnecessarily large levels with nothing in them, making you repeat the same mission/content over and over again, etc. So saying a game is "100 hours" doesn't really mean anything.

With that being said, 15-20 hours of quality content is desirable, it's a bummer burning through a great game is 8 hours because it's built on rails with no exploration or backtracking whatsoever.

 

[jviggy43]

The length of a game has never been a factor in whether I buy a game or not.

Click to shrink...

^^^

 

[MrS]

20 hours is acceptable

 

[No_Style]

I don't have a rule for this. It depends so much in the game, studio who developed it, reception, platform etc.

 

[StallionDan]

If I'm paying full price I want 20 hours out of a game at least, not counting any collectathon bullshit. Otherwise I can wait for a price drop.

Replaying a campaign differently can count as part of the 20 hours.

 

[MinusTydus]

I had more fun with ICO's 4 hours than I ever did with The Last Guardian's 12 hours. And I paid $60 for each.

Thanks, $10 GameStop tax for being the only retailer that had a copy of ICO on release day!

 

[janusff]

It doesn't matter how long the game is.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

I don't give a fucking shit.

Games should be experiences, not (always) merely entertainment or timesinks, and the more games I see that actually make me live a brief but truly memorable experience over being 100+ hour commitments that's 90% fluff, the happier I'll be.

I'll say one thing on pricing, though- I'm Turkish and basically for a full price game I pay much more, financial burden wise, than an American that pays $60. (I'd pay more than 350₺, and that's about 15% of the monthly minimum wage, to give you an idea.) So I won't comment on the price itself.

 

[khamakazee]

There's too many games now for me to jusstify spending $60 that I would play once. So to me I would have to know if it's worth playing again which would likely exclude any cinematic storytelling game.

 

[SweetSurrender]

8-12 is perfect for me

 

[Alex840]

Length isn't something that affects my purchases. Sometimes a long game will actually put me off buying a game.

Something mediocre like Watch Dogs I played for 30 hours but didn't offer me much entertainment.

Meanwhile something like Uncharted 4 was easily worth full price for the 12 or so incredible hours I had with it. I'd also be willing to pay $60 for indie masterpieces like Journey and Hollow Knight.

 

[PenultimateFantasy]

These threads abourt ghow much gameplay you should get for your money are gross and misrepresenrt what a game should be.

of course some people have limited budget and need to choose wisely but no one would buy a game on amount of time rather than quality.

close this thread

 

[giancarlo123x]

Uh the choices in the poll dont have the answer I'm looking for, hours is one of the last shit that matters. Theres more important variables like replay value, quality, etc.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

There's no set number of hours. As long as you feel you got your money's worth is all that matters.

 

[Wackamole]

Oh i don't really count. As long as it's quality and over 4 hours.

 

[taepoppuri]

Quality >>>>> Quantity

I prefer 5 hrs solid game much more than mediocre 50+ hrs game.

My favourite length is 10-15 hrs though :)

 

[R.T Straker]

Under 6 is the most optimal.

I ain't got time for long games bloated with pointless sections.

 

[Rosebud]

There's too many games now for me to jusstify spending $60 that I would play once. So to me I would have to know if it's worth playing again which would likely exclude any cinematic storytelling game.

Click to shrink...

With so many games, why replay things? Even worse if it's a long game.

I only replay my absolute favorites, and years after.

 

[Deleted member 8001]

I don't have a set requirement.

 

[DigSCCP]

It's a tough question on one side I'm always about quality over quantity so I try not to attach to playtime but also as the OP stated it's sometimes hard to justify dropping 60 bucks on a title that I can finish it under let's say 8 hours and it does't have replaybility for me.
That's why, among other reasons, we need more titles aiming for different price tags like US40 or US30 for exemple.
But it's funny because there are tons of games out there, specially Ubi ones, that obviously are US60 games and they should be but for me they only start to have my attention around US20~US30.
So in the end for my tastes even tho length it's an aspect that I account before making a US60 purchase it's not the most important one.
With all that being said I would say in my case a game that delivers around 10-12h, has some good production values on it, is well received and/or comes from the devs I trust is a game that has my attention no matter what price tag.

 

[nel e nel]

How much is $60 worth?

 

[Exist 2 Inspire]

I literally do not care about (potential) playtime, i would pay 60 bucks for an excellent 2 hour game just as much as i would pay 60 bucks for a excellent 100 hour game.

 

[Larrikin]

"Enough."

 

[lightchris]

Depends on the game. <10 hours can be fine, as long as it is great and there is a good probability i will play it more than once.

That said, I don't have any problem with long games either. There is no sweet spot.

 

[adit]

i love meaningful game, it means either the story or gameplay is so damn good and i'm happily spend the time with game like these 50 hours or so, Bloodborne, Witcher, Nier Automata, HZD, Persona 5 to name a few