How many hours is worth the money?

[Kolvarg]

You're welcome to your opinion, but there's no way I'm paying even $30 for a meal that leaves me hungry, and there's never been a game that was 6-10 hours that I walked away feeling good about playing. And I couldn't care less about the cost if development when most AAA games are dog shit and indie has been making amazing games these past years like terraria, hollow knight, Hades, valhiem, etc

Fair enough. All I'm saying is that at least for most people when you buy a game you're not just buying X hours of entertainment, you're buying an experience. And a short experience (for instance a ~10h linear game with a great story) can be as valuable or even more valuable than a long experience (for instance a survival game where you *can* spend 100s of hours). It's subjective. Just like having 5kg of food in your plate doesn't mean it will taste amazing, or that you'll enjoy yourself trying to eat it all.

It's also totally fine to not particularly enjoy the production value that AAA games bring (that for sure doesn't make them amazing games by default, but definitely offer a different experience that most indie games can't offer), but let's not pretend that AAA games are the devil and indies are all amazing. Most games are not amazing - that is true for both AAA and indies.

Like it or not, a lot of people in the world don't have infinite funds and the price (and thus price per time) will be a very important metric for many people. I feel like "the length of a game doesn't matter" comes from a very privileged perspective of not having to worry about the money you spend at all. Imagine having only 30$ to spend a month on games. Do you still prefer to spend it on a "memorable and innovative" 3 hour game rather than a 100 hours of fun gameplay time?

I understand that making a short game may cost a lot, or even as much as a different game that lasts 100 hours. I don't expect all games to be priced by length. I understand there are people who are fine paying a lot for short games, I'm just not in that audience.

That is true, of course monetary situation will play a big part, as well as what other hobbies you have available to pass the time and how much time you have to play in the first place. Although between bundles and subscriptions like game pass you can get access for a LOT of games (both on the short and long side) very easily for even less than 30$ a month.

I do get the point when it comes to individual purchases, and of course value is subjective and will depend not only on your taste but also context and situation. I dont' think anyone is defending that *everyone* should be ignoring gameplay time. It's simply that a game being longer doesn't make it automatically better generally. Especially for people with not a lot of time to play, shorter games can actually be better. It also depends on the genre a lot, because most games with a focus on story would feel severely watered down if the story is "locked" behind 100s of hours of gameplay.

[Beefhammer]

How many hours would you say is worth the money from a game?
Say you buy a AAA game for 60 EUR/USD, how much time playing the game would you say, "This was worth the money"?
Also, do you expect less game time when paying less, say an Indie game or any cheaper game from a big company?

EDIT: The reason i picked Time as a unit here is because it's a generic, adding gameplay, graphics etc, alot of it comes down to personal preferences. While if you measure it in time, you can see a bit more general overview. Say you read a review of a game from someone playing it for 10 minutes and saying the game sucks. Compares to someone playing it for 2 hours or more claiming it sucks. Which opinion would you trust more? Maybe the beginning is really bad, but it becomes better etc.

Also, you are paying say 60 EUR/USD for a game, which you would have spent real hours trying to earn, so kinda wondering if you spend 6 hours getting the money, how much hours do you expect in return from a game then. Hope this answers why i picked Hours and not anything else to measure it

It all depends on the game. I played a 4 hour game that was worth the $50 I paid for it. No amount of time would make the money I spent on CP2077 worth it.

[Ragnarohk]

Also game length is very subjective, with some people enjoying a certain game for 100s of hours, and others not wanting to spend more than a few.

I think not many people take this into consideration. I try and avoid anything that lasts more than 20 hours

[Super Kami Dende]

So what IS padding then? Do note - I am not even negative about W3. I did clear all those places, too.

Padding would be the Riddler Trophies in Arkham Knight, which literally gatekeep the full ending of the game.

[Easo]

I don't know how many of these are in W3, but if it's like a million of them and they're largely overlapping with other points of interest/reasons to go to those locations then yeah, I'd say that's some padding.

More than 60 smugler's caches alone in the world, then you can add monster nests, bandit camps, etc. It was a slog to clear them (though that makes you rich and you will need to be rich for the damn runewright).

[Qnubi]

Depends on the genre.

MMO: 200+ per expansion.
Classic RPG (Pillars etc.): 100+
Generic Open world title (Days Gone, Horizon etc.): 50+
Action RPG: 100+
Single player shooter-action games (Resident Evil, Metro etc.): 30+