I have a theory that one can price the value of a game to its players. By this I mean that there's a quantity of money that someone interested in that game is prepared to spend on that game in order to receive a certain quality of experience.
For example, I bought Empire: Total War off Steam as part of a Total War collection. I have a memory of this costing me around £50 (even if it wasn't, let's suppose it was). Out of that package, the only game I've played is Empire: Total War. Thus, I paid £50 for E:TW with the potential of playing some other games too. I've probably played E:TW for around 12 hours but then I was caught by a bug that destroyed my save game and I've not gone back (and have no intention of doing so until they can demonstrate they've fixed that). Thus, I've paid £50 for 12 hours of play. I'd characterise the actual play as pretty good but my overall experience as poor given the play-loss issue.
Given that scenario, I believe there is a fairly simple formula that describes the value of that, or any, game.
An obvious controlling factor here is how one measures and quantifies quality and it's not an entirely linear scale. However, quality should be a sense of personal worth where a small value (e.g. 0.1) indicates an entirely disappointing experience, and a large value (e.g. 10) indicates a hugely rewarding experience.
Quality is clearly highly personal, of course. What I give a 10 to someone else may give a 0.1 to and both quality scores are valid. However, to compare a game's overall "value" the actual scale must be the same and quantified in the same way.
So, were I to throw some figures at that for E:TW, I might get:
I choose 6 as a score to indicate that the game was interesting but not really something that I found captivating. I have ignored the impact of the save game data loss as this is already captured in the artificially short play time of 12 hours.
Answer of 1.44. Doesn't mean a lot individually so let's pick a game I did like, Fahrenheit.
12 hours play for a quality of 9, meaning I really enjoyed it. I estimate the cost as it was a rental so really it's an apportionment of my rental subscription.
Total of 21.6. Said a different way, 15 times more "value" for me. That smells about right, actually, given that I talk about Fahrenheit even now but all I really feel about E:TW is irked and out of pocket even though I enjoyed the bits of the game I played.
Really, though, the point of this is to consider how much a game is really worth to us individually. Commonly, a short but good game can be considered a poor investment where it may actually turn out to be better value / more overall enjoyment than a longer game that was somewhat mediocre.
Now, I wonder how an MMO would factor in here...? Probably, one might have to consider it a game of phases, where you had more and less fun (i.e. more or less value), and also need to factor in subscription costs. That'd be an interesting test of this method of analysis.
For example, I bought Empire: Total War off Steam as part of a Total War collection. I have a memory of this costing me around £50 (even if it wasn't, let's suppose it was). Out of that package, the only game I've played is Empire: Total War. Thus, I paid £50 for E:TW with the potential of playing some other games too. I've probably played E:TW for around 12 hours but then I was caught by a bug that destroyed my save game and I've not gone back (and have no intention of doing so until they can demonstrate they've fixed that). Thus, I've paid £50 for 12 hours of play. I'd characterise the actual play as pretty good but my overall experience as poor given the play-loss issue.
Given that scenario, I believe there is a fairly simple formula that describes the value of that, or any, game.
Code:
( Play Hours * Play Quality ) / Price PaidAn obvious controlling factor here is how one measures and quantifies quality and it's not an entirely linear scale. However, quality should be a sense of personal worth where a small value (e.g. 0.1) indicates an entirely disappointing experience, and a large value (e.g. 10) indicates a hugely rewarding experience.
Quality is clearly highly personal, of course. What I give a 10 to someone else may give a 0.1 to and both quality scores are valid. However, to compare a game's overall "value" the actual scale must be the same and quantified in the same way.
So, were I to throw some figures at that for E:TW, I might get:
Code:
( 12 * 6 ) / 50I choose 6 as a score to indicate that the game was interesting but not really something that I found captivating. I have ignored the impact of the save game data loss as this is already captured in the artificially short play time of 12 hours.
Answer of 1.44. Doesn't mean a lot individually so let's pick a game I did like, Fahrenheit.
Code:
( 12 * 9 ) / 512 hours play for a quality of 9, meaning I really enjoyed it. I estimate the cost as it was a rental so really it's an apportionment of my rental subscription.
Total of 21.6. Said a different way, 15 times more "value" for me. That smells about right, actually, given that I talk about Fahrenheit even now but all I really feel about E:TW is irked and out of pocket even though I enjoyed the bits of the game I played.
Really, though, the point of this is to consider how much a game is really worth to us individually. Commonly, a short but good game can be considered a poor investment where it may actually turn out to be better value / more overall enjoyment than a longer game that was somewhat mediocre.
Now, I wonder how an MMO would factor in here...? Probably, one might have to consider it a game of phases, where you had more and less fun (i.e. more or less value), and also need to factor in subscription costs. That'd be an interesting test of this method of analysis.
