Yes, it’s a bad game anyway, but I think that it’s legitimate to say that nobody should be paying $60 for a 4 hour game. In the example you give I actually believe that the score is legitimate. I don’t want to pay fifteen bucks for a game that would take me at the most two hours unless I REALLY like the gameplay. I have a limited amount of money, and I want to know how I’m spending it.
Man SG, you’re pretty much saying here, “Don’t be realistic at ALL!”
What’s the point of discussing this then?
Even if you only look at the consumer side of the equation… the only way it would change how I buy games is that instead of only getting what I like, I’d just take one of everything that looks half-good. They’re free. That might result in me making a few different decisions about what I play, but I don’t think it would change how games are designed very much.
You run into a huge problem with that line of thinking. That is, you’re assuming that price point is an equal issue for everyone. It’s not up to the critic to say “this isn’t worth your money”, because money is a different object to everyone else. We should be critiquing games based on their merits - not their price. A gamer should decide for themselves if they want to pay for it.
There’s also the issue of putting an artificial time:money ratio on gaming compared to other things. What’s the pricetag of fun? Four movies in theatres. will be about six hours of fun, for eight bucks a ticket. You can double that if you’re watching it in 3D, and even triple that if you wanna buy soda and a popcorn.
Let’s be as realistic as possible and say you buy a candy and a soda at each movie. That’s at least another 7 dollars for each movie. 8+7 = 15 bucks for 90 minutes. Four movies, that’s 60 bucks. Would you pay $60 for 6 hours of fun at a theatre? Why is it such a big deal to pay $60 for a 6 hour game? Let’s pretend you didn’t buy anything but the ticket - that’s still $32. Is that worth it for 6 hours? How is $32 for 6 hours a good time:money ratio when $15 for two hours (plus being able to play it on muiltiple difficulty levels, or just being able to replay it at all) a bad time:money ratio? Who are you (or any game critic) to make that decision for someone else?
Most importantly, why do gamers have this sense of entitlement where we should be given hours and hours of fun for hardly any money at all?
I’m interested in why my assertion that we can change our perspectives and buy games based on what we like the most - rather than the discussion of free game logistics - is unrealistic.
I am not trying to make an argument about games being free. To say “they’d just take one of everything” is still discussing a hypothetical situation that I never advocated. It was just a means to make a point about the way we look at games.
Heh, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. It seems people are more interested in your hypothetical situation, SG, than the point you are trying to make. The price point is a significant factor because if you can’t afford it, you won’t play it, however, if the game isn’t good/interesting enough a low price or long playtime can’t salvage it either.
It’s just that it’s impossible to ignore the hypothetical situation if you’re talking about whether the quality of games will improve. If all you want to talk about it which games people would choose to play, then fine, I can ignore it, but I was under the impression that this topic was about changing the gaming landscape.
You’d be surprised, though, how many people are willing to deal with a game that’s less fun if the playtime is longer.
It’s about changing the gaming landscape by changing the way we look at games. One way to do that is to make all games free, cos we’d have no choice. Another way, is to just do it. It’s not like games HAVE to be free for that to happen. That’s the catch; the way we changed our outlook when games were free is completely doable in our actual reality, without games needing to be free.
Except that changing the way we look at games only changes what we play, not what’s made. At all. It only changes people, not games. I thought we were talking about changing games.