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Comment by folkrav | Hacker News Reader

I'm a huge Mass Effect fan. I played Mass Effect: Andromeda for about 30h at launch. For a CAD$80 game, that wasn't a good investment.

I also love System of a Down. Probably paid sub-$100 for their discography. Must have hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. Isn't this a better value than ME:A?

I'm also a huge Star Wars fan. The $30 I paid for the movie ticket and the popcorn combo when I went to see Rogue One brought me much more pleasure than those 30h of ME:A, so was this a better value?

I know, that's one game, one artist, one movie, but that's just to illustrate that it's not that clear-cut.

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The parent was clearly talking about averages/the typical case. Sure, you can cherry pick cases where a single item under/over performs the average but it doesn't invalidate the above point.

If we're only talking averages, the average game isn't a very good value either - a whole lot of them suck bad and are, even at a discounted rate, a total waste of money. I'm still not really sold on this argument.

I did say a good game, and meant to imply the comparison to similarly good movies.

I was just ignoring the games and movies that suck and would be a waste of time and money.

We're not really talking about "the average game" either though, otherwise we'd have to include "the average movie" which must necessarily--like games--include amateur and very low budget projects.

We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment.

Other people might have a different overall experience, but let's at least compare the right things.

> We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment.

Fair enough. Really depends on the type of games you enjoy though. They really don't all have the same replay value. As you said, other people might have different experiences.

To short circuit discussion, I distinctly recall and can read above that what was originally said was a good game, not an average game.

I appreciate that games might not be your thing, and I am sure many share that sentiment and thus spend their time and money elsewhere accordingly. I am not sure, however, how you can objectively reach the above conclusion. I would encourage you to browse through https://steamdb.info/graph/ which, among many other metrics, tracks average and median hours played for each title on Steam. If you hover popular titles like PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS or Grand Theft Auto V, for instance, you will find average total hours of 330.6 and 165.6, respectively. You can naturally also find niche titles with fewer hours; e.g. Broforce at 10.5 hours, or Blood Harvest at 7.0 hours, though niche titles tend to be cheaper (and shorter!) than mainstream triple-A games. It thus goes without saying that for those who do enjoy games, many find dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours of enjoyment in a single title.

Games definitely are my thing. It's actually why I feel confident in saying a whole lot of them are terrible.

Average play time doesn't mean much in terms of actual game quality and value for your money. I've played games just to go through them, get the story and play the sequel, the one that's actually good.

But people don't play all games, they play games they like.

Same goes for music and movies, or pretty much any form of entertainment.

Yes, and in that calculation (price slash hours of entertainment) movies mostly lose.

I appreciate that you have found enjoyment in some games despite categorising most of them as terrible. However, whilst the quality of any game is entirely subjective, I would very much argue that most people would not spend time playing a game they do not enjoy. I thus reckon a metric like average time played is a telling one in terms of whether people who purchased the game actually enjoy it. Mind you, most platforms offer refunds with no questions asked should a given game not meet your expectations.

I never said the whole lot is garbage. But a huge portion of them are at best passable or forgettable.

Average time played is not a good metric because people on both extremes will skew it heavily, like any average - people who bought the game but never played it, or people who play it way too much. It also depends a lot on the game. On an okay-ish game that has a +/-20h campaign will be pretty easy to munch through just to check it off, but one can easily abandon an okay-ish game with 5-10 minute matches after a handful of hours.

I apologise, I misread your initial message. I have edited accordingly. Thanks for the heads-up! I understand that you consider a huge portion of games as being at best passable or forgettable; but that is your inherently subjective opinion. It is not one which you can assume everyone shares, nor one you can use to draw objective conclusions. Indeed, the same can be said about music and movies. I only distinctively remember a subset of the movies I have watched, for instance.

I understand the point you are making in regards to average time played, but surely the people who, quote-unquote, play the game way too much, enjoy that specific game very much? Please note that you can also see the median playtime on the abovementioned website.

most platforms offer refunds with no questions asked should a given game not meet your expectations

Is that a common practice? I once accidentally bought a "standard" version of a game instead of the "ultimate" on my Xbox One and had to deal with a couple of support people to refund my original purchase in order to get the other.

That is my impression, yes. If a platform operates within the EU, consumers have the right to withdraw from a purchase within 14 days. Platforms like Origin and Steam have gone above and beyond to simplify the process even further. As for Xbox / Microsoft Store specifically, I believe, today, you can simply click 'Request a return' on the item in your order history.

Support indie games! There are tons of great ones out there :)

www.humblebundle.com -> Great place to find indie deals

www.factorio.com -> Game I've invested 100s of hours into because building and number management. Plus Mods!

Seconding factorio: it is minecraft for engineers.

There are definitely great indie games out there - Binding of Isaac is excellent, Pillars of Eternity (I & II) are what a modern Baldur's Gate would feel like - yes, Obsidian was bought by Microsoft but that's after the release of these two, and they were still considered indie before then - and Into the Breach is easily in my top 3 for 2018 games.

> For a CAD$80 game, that wasn't a good investment.

It cost you $2.66/hr for entertainment, that sounds like a great investment.

> Isn't this a better value than ME:A?

Not necessarily. One required active mental participation, one was passive. The big question is what value did you get out of each one?

Active mental participation? Surely you should be getting paid for that!

Are you paid for playing with LEGO?

Your fault for playing an EA game at launch.

You should have been alert to EA screwing up the Mass Effect franchise from all the garbage they pulled on Mass effect 3 (Weak ending, making Javik DLC when he was clearly a main character, etc.)

Waiting 30-60 days meant that the game was available for less than half that.

I massively enjoyed ME3. I've already bought other EA games at launch without regretting my decision. BF4 is an example.

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