Hacker News Reader

Comment by c2h5oh | Hacker News Reader

Video games take an average of 18h to beat now: https://howlongtobeat.com/stats and on average players will play less than half of that https://deathisawhale.com/2021/01/20/how-many-players-actual...

Excluding multiplayer games with huge replayability AAA titles cost closer to $8-10/h of entertainment.

A LOT of AAA titles can be completed in about 10 hours and still cost $60

View on HN

Important to remember that the distributions here are multi-modal, so averages don't represent the data well. For AAA games I think you're way off. Looking at the 5 top played games in 2023, "main story" to "completionist":

    Title                  Main Story (hrs)      Completionist (hrs)
    Baldur's Gate 3              57                    146
    Super Mario Wonder           10                     19
    Starfield                    22                    145
    Zelda: ToTK                  59                    235
    Hogwarts Legacy              27                     68

Of these, the first two are co-op but not the same kind of multiplayer I think you allude to. Super Mario Wonder is not, I think, what many people would call "AAA".

If we add Spider-Man 2, that's still a 17 hour main story, and has been criticized for being "too short". Many people who purchase AAA titles do expect 20-30 hours of entertainment, for a ~$2/hour return. And the Game of the Year is the title with the second best ROI!

Depends on the type of the games you are looking obviously:

- 2023 shooters average just over 12h to complete

- 2023 RPGs 37.5h

- Battle Arena (all time) 433h

All in all average for 2023 releases is just under 20h _to complete_, which doesn't necessarily mean people actually played that much - the other article I've linked suggests that on average people got to less than half of the main story..

Shooters are focusing more on the multiplayer right? So the story modes are de-emphasized and also many players don't bother with it.

That's possible, but in general action games are shorter (unless padded with "open world") - e.g. all recent Tomb Raider games are around 12h mark, horror games average around 9h etc.

Since I can't filter data by "AAA titles only" I'm assuming that on average they are no different in length than all games in general - under 20h to complete. Add average completion percentage of less than 50% it gives you average play time per title of less than 10h.

To me, that's well worth it if the experience is unique, interesting, emotionally moving, etc.

I think that measuring something like that in terms of dollars per hour is a bit reductionist. I'd rather have a short but impactful game over something that sprawls for 40+ hours but doesn't do much with that time. Cocoon was around 5 hours for $25, but I don't regret that purchase for a second.

But when there are so many games out there vying for attention - and I don't know if the game will 'click' with me in advance, I myself often wait for sales. Most of what I buy ends up being in the $10-$30 range, and I frequently play games many years after their release. By then, computers have advanced so the game runs better, bugs have been patched, expansions released, etc.

The value proposition of AAA video games is actually just sad compared to indies.

Stardew Valley comes to mind, but also infinitely re-playable games like The Binding of Isaac...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com