Topic: Revolution taking 1st place in sales/marketshare? And what would that mean to us?

[jasonditz]

Except for RPGs, I don't even want to hear an estimate of playable hours. You can beat RE4 in 2-3 hours if you rush through it, does that make it a 2-3 hour game? A game that's replayable doesn't necessarily need to be 40 hours long from start to finish to get way more than 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

I'd love to see some RPGs that push 100 hours of gameplay with 100 hours of actual content. Might and Magic 2 for the Genesis was a perfect example of this. I got easily 100 hours of original gameplay out of this, doing side quests... exploring obscure dungeons off the beaten path, creating extraneous parties to explore certain dungeons that were off limits to my race/class combos. I paid $70 for it when it came out, and I got every dime out of it and more. If there was a current game like that, for any system, I'd gladly do it again.

[KDR_11k]

Baldur's Gate series? Planescape: Torment? Fallout series?

[IceCold]

So we paid $60 dollars for the game and at are current rate of $5 an hour we have sunk 12 hours into that game alread by just buying it. To make up for this "lost" time we therefore need to get 12 hours worth of gameplay out of this game.

But then you'll "lose" 12 MORE hours by playing the game

[JonLeung]

Oooh!  Opportunity cost!  I always liked that concept, though I think I've used it too much that I've forgotten the original point of it.

Like, opportunity cost makes things scary.  Like buying lottery tickets.  By the law of opportunity cost, where maximum value is concerned, that means every time I'm NOT choosing a winning number, I'm losing an average of a few million dollars.  o_0

But yes, time of playing the game could be considered a "waste", as much as I often think otherwise.

I really like Pokémon and Animal Crossing because of the hundreds (or couple hundreds) of hours of play time they can give me, but for most people my age (mid-20s) they wouldn't even look at them.  That's another issue altogether, of course, but I'm not sure they can justify some of the purchases they've made in the past - skipping class to buy and play The Bouncer, and then finishing it in one sitting?  Come on.  I still often wonder why more people aren't like me - playing the majority of games I ever play on rentals since a rental is all it takes to finish most games, even 100%.  Now that Blockbuster has one-week rentals on even new games and the elimination of late fees, and various online rental alternatives, why even buy games that you have the slightest chance of getting bored with at any point?  But not buying games is also another issue.

(Funny thing is, I live in Canada, so when you say $60, if I'm, thinking 60 Canadian dollars, that sounds to me like a normal price of a game.  Or at least, not a ridiculous amount.  The two North American dollars are much closer now than they have been so it is now on the high end, but that used to be the average NES game.  Or maybe I was getting ripped off.  )

Most of the game library I have bought is comprised of first-party games.  Though I hope that third-party developers can create something on the Revolution that will encourage me to throw money at people OTHER than Nintendo themselves, as much as I love to, and if Nintendo moves higher up in marketshare/position/whatever, those developers will hopefully make more games for the Revolution than recent Nintendo consoles and be more experimental instead of by-the-book genre clichés, which is of course aided by the fact that it has a unique controller and who-knows-what-else in store, if anything.

[denjet78]

I remember way back when I got my first NES in August of 1990. We grew up poor so it was difficult to talk my parents into anything as extravagent as a video games console over eating for a week. However, after enough time I managed to ware them down. I had played games like Mario and Zelda at a friends house and just couldn't wait to get one myself.

After the first SIX HOURS of trying to figure out how to hook the damn thing up and my sister had her turn first because she was the oldest, I finally got my chance with Mario. As simple as it seems today it was still incredibly complex to my tiny mind. I could go left, I could go right, I could run, I could jump and I could even jump while running? Who's brain could think at that speed??? Still, it was an incredible experience and magnificent just to be. I didn't feel anything like that again until Mario 64.

So I spent a while stomping Goombas and kicking around turtle shells as I got the hang of the controls. Finally I reached the end of the first level. Slowly I climbed the stairs and then lept for the flagpoll. And do you know what I did to try and help Mario to reach the top? I slowly raised the controller above my head. It wasn't a conscious action at all. If you had asked me about it I probably wouldn't have even realized what I had done let alone known why.

After 15 years I can look back and understand why now. It was instinctive. Afterall, the controller was used to control Mario. It just made sense that if I wanted Mario to jump higher that moving the controller up would lead to that. I didn't know that the controller couldn't recognize that motion, I just assumed that it would instinctually. It took years for me to breed that trait out of my actions. I had to learn how to limit MYSELF to the technology on hand.

And now here comes Nintendo, 15 years later, with the controller that I wanted all along. Anyone who thinks this controller is a dead end or a gimmic, just watch a child play a game for the first time. They'll wriggle the controller around all over the place as if moving it will actually cause something to happen. This isn't a gimmic. This is where nature has been telling us to go. Buttons and control sticks, they're merely limited representations of true motion, it's like a baby learning how to crawl. And now we're finally about to take our first true tentative steps.

...

Now that that's all out of my system:  As for game length I think we can all agree that good games are too short and bad games are too long. And now that I've made a completely vague comment that can only make sense in the context of an individuals own perceptions I will take my leave.

[BlkPaladin]

I find opertunity cost is at most times a waste of time. Especially if you dwel on it. Its nice to say what if.

[KDR_11k]

Maybe it's because I grew up with controllers that had those suction thingies on the bottom to attach them to the table and my first game was Pong with the potentiometer control but I never tried to control a game by moving the controller. Sometimes I oversteered on the joysticks of my C64 and the thing tilted to the side but that's it.

[Spak-Spang]

Ok.  Here is another means of looking at it.  You are talking cost of game/profit made at job.  Well, you also need to compare the experience to other forms of entertainment.

1)Purchasing a $60 game.  Lets assume that the single player experience gives you 5 hours of enjoyment, and if you play multiplayer lets assume it is good enough for 10 hours of enjoyment.  

So you just spent 60 dollars for 15 hours of enjoyment or That is only $4.00 an hour.  Or about 10 cents a minute.  Now lets go around and see if you can get that deal with other forms of entertainment.

Going out to eat you are looking at $10-$20 a person if you are on a date that is $20-$40.  Going out to eat usually lasts 2 hours but it gets bonus points for feeding you body.  That brings the total to $10 a hour for a date or expensive dinner minium.  

Going to a movie.  If you forgo the mantinee prices then you are looking at 8-10 dollars without a date or food.  Double that for a date, and add 5 dollars for food of each.  The average movie is less than 3 hours long.  But with trailers we will assume 3 hours.  I will assume $15 dollars trip.  5 dollars an hour or about 8 cents a minute.  

Although this is a cheaper return on investment, you are still only getting 1 movie to enjoy.

I am sure you can play with the numbers more.  But there is one more thing I need to place into the equation.  Replaying the game.  I have beaten Super Mario World, 5 times, and will probably play and beat it again.  The same is true about Zelda A Link to The Past, the GBA Metroid Games, Yoshi's Island and more.  I have two reasons why I have played these games so much.  1) They are fun to play.  2)They are short enough to beat quickly and still enjoy.  A Link to The Past took me about 8 hours to beat the very first time (along time ago) Now it takes me about 4 hours or less.  

I guess the real point is when you start playing with numbers to qualify worth of a product you realize that A) nothing is worth your money or B) to even attempt this cheapens the product or experience into a false quanitification of your joy.

[JonLeung]

I think Spak-Spang brings up some truth.  I mostly agree but it's possible to play devil's advocate.

There so many alternatives to buying new games (ie. buying similar old games, renting games, borrowing games, and, GASP, pirating games).  You can't rent/borrow dinner.  You can't rent/borrow a movie until it comes out on DVD.  And you shouldn't rent/borrow a date.  And just as with anything else, people want more value for their dollar whenever possible.  A game may be a good deal comparing it to other forms of entertainment but $40-$60 all at once isn't something people are willing to part with all at once.  Plus I think people are more willing to spend money on a date, and most people still don't consider playing a game a date activity.

It's hard to say how many people don't finish their games but enjoy them, or how many people replay games and how many times they do.  So in that sense it's definitely hard to quantify.  But I still think a longer game is better than a shorter game, and I don't need numbers (specific ones, anyway) to know that.

I've heard that you can't use numbers to quantify joy, as much as one of my favourite university courses told me (PHIL 325 - Risk, Choice, and Rationality...all about assigning numbers to choices to deduce what the best choices are).  Or shouldn't, anyway.  However, sometimes when I do, it just makes me want to spend more money.  It just depends on how I look at them.

If I can buy two games with a day's worth of wages, anytime I want to buy a game and see a $50 price tag, I go, "oooh, that's half a day of work."  If I think I had a recent half day of work that was pretty easygoing then I'd be tempted to think it was a good deal.  Well, as I said, I don't buy games that often but that raises the temptation.  If I think, "oooh, that's half of a tenth of a thousand bucks" then I wouldn't want to buy it.  Though that's more numbers...maybe you're right, numbers can't quanitfy joy, but rather dilutes it.

Maybe ECON 101 (opportunity cost) and PHIL 325 (assigning numbers to choices) aren't courses to totally live by, interesting as they are.

I don't know if I made any good points or counter-points there.  

[KDR_11k]

Spak-Spang: Not really a comparison, the level of entertainment is important. While a GOTY candidate will provide a lot of fun during the 15 hours or so that you play it, the average game has a lot of filler or repetition meaning you don't enjoy all 15 of those hours. So it depends on whether you're talking about great games/movies or bad ones. Additionally, if you buy a game and don't like it at all (zero entertainment value), you have wasted 60 Euros (average console game) while watching a movie and not enjoying it sets you back 6-8 Euros. You also forget books, which often provide hours of entertainment for a few bucks and they're free (barring small membership fees) if you get them from the library.

PHIL 325 - Risk, Choice, and Rationality...all about assigning numbers to choices to deduce what the best choices are

Sounds a lot like Artiicial Intelligence. Well, actually it's exactly what AI is doing.

[Ceric]

Go Alpha-Beta Pruning Tree.  I will live my life by thee.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Baldur's Gate series? Planescape: Torment? Fallout series?

Those're all great games... fallout in particular is along the vein of the type of games I want (games where you can lose yourself for 5 hours just dicking around and not accomplish anything germane to the overall quest).

I'd like to see something modern, particularly for a console though, something about playing a console based game I enjoy more.

I should've pointed out that in the several hundred hours of gameplay I got out of M&M, I never managed to beat the game, and indeed at the point when I stopped playing (god... probably 5 years after I bought it) I wasn't even really all that close, at least that I could tell.

It wasn't a straight quest the way Planescape was... it was like... you get a vague sense of a higher quest, get dropped off in a city and then it's an immersive experience of doing whatever. That's what I want again... and what doesn't seem to be on the market in newer games.

[Spak-Spang]

KDR:  I was assuming that you enjoyed the entire experience.  If you get bored with the game or the game is filled with filler then it was a bad purchase for you, or a bad game for you.

That is the thing, when you are tight with game design and create an enjoyable experience you can revisit a short game, because each level had a unique experience not filled with boring filler.

I personally can't play those free roaming do whatever you want games, because 70% of those games are filler and boring.  So no matter how good Grand Theft Auto is, I won't enjoy it.  Its just not my type of game.  

However, I can play Super Mario World and beat it 10 times and enjoy it each and every time.  Because each level of Mario World is alittle different offers unique challenges around a basic theme and is enjoyable.

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: jasonditz

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Baldur's Gate series? Planescape: Torment? Fallout series?

Those're all great games... fallout in particular is along the vein of the type of games I want (games where you can lose yourself for 5 hours just dicking around and not accomplish anything germane to the overall quest).

I'd like to see something modern, particularly for a console though, something about playing a console based game I enjoy more.

I should've pointed out that in the several hundred hours of gameplay I got out of M&M, I never managed to beat the game, and indeed at the point when I stopped playing (god... probably 5 years after I bought it) I wasn't even really all that close, at least that I could tell.

It wasn't a straight quest the way Planescape was... it was like... you get a vague sense of a higher quest, get dropped off in a city and then it's an immersive experience of doing whatever. That's what I want again... and what doesn't seem to be on the market in newer games.

What's your opinion on Morrowwind I wonder?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ceric]

Yet again, I'm with Spak-Spang on this.  I don't like things in games that are just there to be there.  I view games like I view good Cartoons, think Batman: The Animated Series (the Fox one).  Everything in the cartoon to is deliberate and placed for a purpose.  When done well in a 30 minute time frame a cartoon can tell a story that would take any other medium more time to tell and do it in a complete way.  I like sidequest but I feel that should pertain to the main quest even if it's a loose connection.  That said I don't mind it taking most of the game to figure out what that tie in was.

I guess what I'm saying is there shouldn't be anything in a game that doesn't advance the game itself in someway. That is all.