I'm curious how pricing and game length affect everyone's buying decisions.

When you're deciding whether to purchase a game:

How important is the price?

Does the expected length of the game influence your decision?

What do you think is a fair price for a game and include what your expected duration would be for that?

Do you judge a game's value by hours of gameplay, replayability, overall quality, or something else entirely?

I'm interested in hearing what makes a game feel "worth it" to you and whether your expectations have changed over the years.

Thanks for sharing!

Ana

For me, it depends on the game. For a long-awaited Witcher or Vampire Masquerade game, I will pay the full price the day it is released.

For adventure games, yes, the hours of gameplay and replayability matter in whether I pay full price or wait until it goes on sale.

I have purchased games that were less than stellar because I want to support an indie developer.

My favorite games are adventure games with humor ala Monkey Island, Discworld, etc. The length and price are not as important as being able to get lost in the plot and enjoying the ride. I also have a soft spot for games with good puzzles.

This might be a long answer so I am putting it into a word doc to contemplate what I want to say. I will get back to the thread in the future.

If a game has a compelling story I will be very likely to give it a go regardless of the price 👍

The price is not my biggest criteria (and can vary so much depending on the type of game anyway) nor the graphics quality level, but I probably wouldn’t go for a really short game and would certainly hope for a trouble-free “techie” experience, considering what’s available these days.

So major features for me, personally, are a great story and definitely being able to save at will, irrespective of price

I think I would set the bar for games that are too short for me at 4 hours. I'd like to see at least 8 hours of adventure gameing for a new game price of 25 to 35 dollars. I'll buy a game for full price when it comes out if I am familiar with the developer and want to support them, but otherwise I tend to wait until I have finished the game I am currently playing and by then there are usually several games I am interested in getting, and some of them are typically on sale. Possibly this will change when I retire and have more time to spend on gaming.

I judge a game mostly by how much I can be immersed in the game world, and how satisfying the puzzles are. Good voice acting, decent graphics (not too pixilated) and a thoughtful story arc are part of the immersion for me.

I put my time limit of true enjoyment at a minimum of 20 hours +or- and that game would have to limit story, talking and reading the 3 things that could destroy my game play enjoyment. Of course I have played and enjoyed many adventures that have been much shorter.

Now this brings to my mind a different question for you all...
What is the most you have ever Paid for an Adventure Game?
The most I paid for an Adventure was way back in the ancient times before the Internet and Online purchases and you had to literally have to visit all your local stores daily for new releases in hopes that they have in stock a game you have wanted and this was in the Big Box era and this sometimes took weeks after a release date was mentioned in a gaming magazine and not always available then as stores took a while to get their physical stock.......'Phantasmagoria' in 1995/96 which is also the game that got me hooked on Adventure Gaming. Can't remember the price exactly but it was over $60 and I bought it from a Department Store, Montgomery Wards. My second highest was a few months later, 'Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within' was $56 and I purchased at Circuit City a PC store.

GreyFuss - I remember thinking for years that Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within was the best game I had ever played.

I buy very few games now due to straitened circumstances but when I do I wait for a big price drop, which often means I will play a new adventure game a couple of years after its initial release.

Years ago I paid about $50.00 for Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within and like SQ, I thought it was one of the very best adventures I had ever played. And I feel that way even now.

I will give some thought to your other questions, Ana. It is interesting to hear what people have to say about all of this.

I agree Space Quest Fan & Marian, GK2 has always been in my top ten. If it weren't for the last timed sequence maze of staying away from the wolf and trapping him, which to this day I have never completed it might have reached my top five for sure, It wasn't until many, many years later after the invention of the Internet was I able to watch a video of how it actually ended. I had spent a lot of money ($1.50 a minute) contacting the Sierra Hot line for hints by phone but could never master the final timed puzzle. Anyone else dropped dollars on the old Sierra phone Hint Line back in the day?

Yes, I sure did. And strangely enough, the hint line was coming straight from Ken and Roberta's house, where at which time they were living a few blocks away from my present residence (with my mother living here at the time). My next-door neighbor worked for Sierra for eight and a half years. Lots of immediate Sierra Online associations around here. I probably only called the hint line a few times, but it seemed like a very big deal when I did.

Anyway, to get back to Ana's topic. If I spend eight to fifteen hours on a game and it has cost me fifteen dollars or less, I consider that a good deal. But as I said earlier, it often takes a couple of years to get to that price point so it does require patience. Replayability does carry some weight with me, too.

I’ve been in “straightened circumstances” myself, Marian, and through no fault of my own, so I fully understand where you’re coming from. And I STILL have to be frugal in buying games - so only very occasionally manage to splurge on an expensive game.

AND as you ALSO mention, most games I buy have to be good enough to re-play …. proabably several times over the years.

So I will certainly add that stipulation of my game criteria to my entries in this thread !!

P.S. Greyfuss
From the very early days Sierra Game endings could be really fraught .. Didn’t you find ??

I tend to have a blind spot for game prices. I don’t sit around waiting for the price to drop on a game that I want to play. I rarely buy very expensive games though, since I’m generally not interested in these games. So the cost isn't my main consideration.

I don’t care so much about ”expected length” either, partly because many games that are considered to be short seem quite long to me. But I have my limits of course. If the general consensus is that a game is very short, I’m always hesitant about playing it. But the price isn’t usually a factor in these cases either, since games like that tend to be rather cheap.

What greatly influences my decision on whether to buy a game is if it doesn’t have a conclusion. ”This is the first chapter of a planned series of 8 games” totally rubs me the wrong way. It’s entirely possible to plan an endless string of follow-ups to your game without leaving the first game open-ended.

GreyFuss: I also paid $50-60 for the Sierra games back in the day, converted to Swedish Crowns of course. That was A LOT of money back then. You paid $56 for The Beast Within. According to an online converter that would be $123 today. I can’t believe that I afforded it back then.

Interesting, I didn't think about using a converter Michael thanks. Don't think I would pay $123 today for an adventure game let alone if one would actually be worth it.

Well said, and I agree 100%.

I don't remember on what games but I for sure had to call the Sierra hint line before. We are so lucky to have a site like Gameboomers these days.

I don't worry too much about price! I mean virtually ALL the games I buy are on sale!! LOL! If its really pricey, I do a lot more research to see if I want to play it.

I don't worry too much about length, if its a good game it is not a problem. Most games are shorter than they they used to be. Although I played on the other day and I burned through it in 15 minutes! That kinda ticked me off!!

GreyFuss: I also paid $50-60 for the Sierra games back in the day, converted to Swedish Crowns of course. That was A LOT of money back then. You paid $56 for The Beast Within. According to an online converter that would be $123 today. I can’t believe that I afforded it back then.
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I remember plunking down 20 to 50 bucks for a game! Plus 10 bucks for a walk through manual!! But then again they came with big cool boxes with cool artwork!!! Ah The Good Ole Days!!

Like Mikael, I don't tend to worry about price if its a game I really want to play, but am happy to wait for the price to drop on most other things that I might play.
I will though be annoyed if I pay top $ for a very short game. I will be equally annoyed however if it lasts a long time but turns out to be a dud.
How short it has to be before I get annoyed is a bit of a moveable feast, given that games tend on the whole to be shorter than they used to be. Its a vibe kind of thing; if I really liked the game I will be more forgiving than if it was just an ordinary experience.
And I couldn't care less about replayability, largely becuase if I do replay a game I am likely to have forgotten the bulk of the puzzle solves anyway.
Which is a long way of saying that 'overall quality' is my value quotient.

What I will write below is very much not set in stone. I often veer away from it depending on the game, developer, or just if I’m antsy to buy a game.

My pricing structure is something like this:

Point and Click Adventures with voice acting and regular graphics (not pixels) - $15.00 or less is what I try to go for.
Point and Click Adventures with Pixel graphics and no voices (where there is a lot of conversation) - $10.00 and under depending on the game.
Games that are probably going to make me sea sick - $10.00 and under – maybe closer to $5.00 these days but depends on the game.

Length only depends if every review I look at says the game is only an hour long and the cost is more than $3.00 let’s say. I take longer than most people to play games. My gaming time is usually about double what flotsam’s is.
A good length game used to be around 15+ hours I guess, but these days I’ll settle for as low as 8-10.

I don’t worry about “replayability” as I believe all games can be replayed. I don’t care about making different choices or reaching different endings. I prefer not to do either of those things actually. However, no matter how much I like a game, I usually don’t want to replay it for close to 10 years anyway it seems.

To answer Grefuss’s question, I want to say that I once paid around $60.00 for a used game, possibly Grim Fandango, but I honestly can’t be sure of this memory at all. I do know that I used to pay a lot more for games in the past than I care to pay now.

I'll agree with Mikael regarding "open-ended" games. I prefer to have an ending of some sort and if there is no ending and I'm aware of that, I will usually wait. I may end up getting the game anyway after a while but do it with that knowledge in my mind.

There was also a time when I bought a rack that holds 28 single CD cases and 2 double CD cases and I thought that I would NEVER have enough games to fill it. HA! What a joke that turned out to be!