Should price be taken into account to a game review?
In a perfect world, a game would be judged purely objectively on its own merits.
In a world where capitalism is king, it is impossible to separate a product's price from its measure of quality.
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Yes, since price does determine the quality or the amount of content you expect from what is bought (70%)
So, let me get this straight- when I want to include mention of a developer's negative business practices (be it something unrelated to gameplay like bigotry or something related like lying about sales) in my reviews, SG overwhelmingly states that isn't important (even going so far as to mass-downvote one of the reviews I linked at one point), despite being a static factor related to the game. However, judging by the poll results, something that fluctuates as dramatically as price should be a factor in determining if a review ends up being labeled as positive or negative?
Is this where I'm supposed to call BS? o.O
Furthermore, given that people don't review based off price on AAA games that- let's be frank, really are rarely worth their price, and the norm of subsequent price drops really does help emphasize that fact- it's certainly not something that even a noticeable minority actually include in their reviews, which makes the poll results all the more suspect. In fact, the only times I see negative mention of price is when people are trying to slam a game for being "too short", regardless of how good it is- which is about as subjective a factor as there is! Who cares if it's short, if it's good?! Certainly better than needlessly grindy, overly empty games..
No, seriously, what are you all smoking?
Mentioning price in your view adds another facet of consideration, and thus is constructive. Basing the outcome or core premise of the review off of price is nonsensical.
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Gross, don't post this as a reply to me. People will read your comment, I promise.
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I was responding to your " it is impossible to separate a product's price from its measure of quality.", but apparently leaving a comment doesn't actually mean you expect relevant replies. I'll keep that in mind for the future.
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But you were quoting OP, seems like a weird hijack
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I didn't quote the OP once... o.O;
No, seriously, what are you all smoking?
Anyway, I was trying to build up foundations for my reply to you, which was at the very end of my post.
Basing the outcome or core premise of the review off of price is nonsensical.
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What? The first sentence in your post is quoting OP's poll.
It makes it appear as though your entire comment is directed at that.
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...I referenced the current poll statistics (and even stated as much! "However, judging by the poll results,"), as a way of adding substance to your comment, which I then proceeded to try and express incredulousness toward and negate.
Besides, what you seem to be implying about my replying to you being a special circumstance is rather unreasonable, given that simply scrolling down the page would readily evidence considerations to the contrary.
I was very directly replying to you (especially given that, y'know the OP's perspective seems to be the opposite of yours, which makes your claim unfathomable in its premise), which I am now thoroughly wishing I hadn't done. If you don't want to give that response actual consideration, that's fine, but flinging around unfounded (and frankly, nonsensical) accusations is pretty daffy (not to mention needlessly rude).
As for my part, I apologize for not feeling like quoting half of a two-sentence post as being necessary- I didn't realize context would be so challenging under such circumstances. o.O;
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I mean, okay, that's simply how it read. I understand if you meant something else, but I know I'm not the only one who would have interpreted it likewise, given the context. You know I have no beef with you Sooth. I've had you whitelisted for ages, which is why I was so candid.
Anyway, I wasn't necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with OP's assessment. I was only saying that in our current society/culture, it's impossible to completely remove price from the idea of value.
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To be clear, I was trying to negate the 'impossible to', by indicating that it was in fact rarely done, despite poll results indicating otherwise. I then tried to indicate that such considerations are silly in the larger scope of how reviews are considered, how price is an unreasonable thing to put much weight on, and how actual implementation of the poll perspective was generally unreasonable in basis.
Was that a roundabout way of responding to you? Perhaps. But your comment was fairly generalized, so I thought that a reasonable approach. I, uh, apologize for not making it feel more personalized..? :P
Candid I'm always in favor of- but y'know I find irrational rudeness to be distasteful.. and if we're in the topic of poor presentation of context, I think I've got the lesser hand in play for this matter. :P
Also, you just provided contrary statements, so could you clarify?
First you state: "It is impossible to separate a product's price from its measure of quality.", which appears to clearly refer to the item's worth, or intrinsic value, which is easily arguable against.
Now you stated "I was only saying that in our current society/culture, it's impossible to remove price from the idea of value.", which is pretty impossible to argue against, as value is subjective and fluctuating, and pretty reliably ties into price.
My argument was that something as erratic and unrelated-to-the-game as price shouldn't be used as a measure of the game's quality, as it in no way actually affects such. I in no way would argue that gametime isn't one of the many valid considerations to be had in determining if a game's current price is an acceptable point at which to purchase the game. My argument was against people treating gametime as being more important than actual content quality, and in being more relevant than other elements which actually do relate more significantly to the acquisition of the game.
I mean, for example, I don't generally mind if music and voice-acting are awful in a game, since they're easily mutable (assuming subtitles for the latter, anyway), but I certainly won't argue their inclusion in a review either (especially if it's a favorable inclusion). Price is the same thing- and unlike music, isn't part of the actual gameplay. As such, while both components are highly relevant to the purchasing decisions of some gamers (and while music should factor into the overall considerations of a review), price shouldn't be a factor in determining if the review ends up positive or negative, or the game's score review, or anything concrete- it should simply be a 'wait until this price, then my review is accurate to my considerations' element, nothing more.
It's like SteamTrades feedback- feedback should be based on the actual trade (ie, actual gameplay), not to the pre-trade circumstances (though such can be mentioned within the feedback). If a user (developer) starts behaving extremely inappropriately, that's something that's relevant to feedback. If the games aren't what you expected, that's relevant. If they first send you an unreasonable offer and then later change it to one you accept, that isn't relevant (to the final review outcome).
Really, same concept. :P
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Come on man, there are only a couple of rules in life, and now you've gone and broken one.
- Never leave your wingman
- Never start a land war in Asia
- Never get into a semantic argument with Sooth on SG
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I want the price to be taken into consideration in reviews. Of course, everyone has a different view on what "a lot of money" is, but yeah, I'd probably be more than happy with a 1€ game and really disappointed if I found the same content in a 60€ game.
Because said content could be great for what I expect when paying 1€, but when I actually put all my spare money for a month on the table, I would expect more hours of gameplay/ better graphics/ better story or whatever. In the end, I would definitely expect more than from a 1€ game, so if that game doesn't offer it, I'd be more than glad to know that beforehand through reviews.
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Yes, but price shouldn't be the biggest factor.
Just think of No Man's Sky. That would have been a great 15 dollar Early Access game, instead it was 60 dollars and quite underwhelming.
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No. Because in a year's time the price will have changed but the quality of the game (unless it's patched out, of course) won't.
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Usually in the inverse sense, however- short and condensed is as a rule easier to provide quality content for than extended gameplay is. In fact, while collectibles do appeal to a certain crowd, they're a solid example of artificial gameplay extension that doesn't add anything to the core gameplay (and in a story-driven game, often detracts heavily from game flow).
Likewise, I find classic JRPG grind relaxing- but there's no doubt that it's an unnecessary gameplay inflation tool that detracts from the flow of the game.
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That's not what I meant, I was referring to the quality of the gameplay degrading and not aging well.
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So is whatever changes the latest updates did to the game.
By that logic you can't review any game that could be patched in the future just because games are not staric and monolithic any more...
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I think prize is a valid feature to take into your review, but when done the time spent for a playtrough should be taken in comparsion.
So if a 99ct game entertains me for 30min its something different then a 10$ game entertains me for 30min. In the first case its totally "worth", in the second it isn't. (obviously^^)
Of course the labeling of "worth" or not is totally up to everyones personal taste/finance, but reading some reviews gives a good hint. (Especially when some good reviewers tell us about the avg.time of completion.)
I personally always compare it with going to the movies: There you pay ~10bucks for 90-120min of entertainment. So a game for 10$ should'nt have less content then 2hours. At least.
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While you responded based off your personal considerations, I'm getting a pretty generalized vibe from the comments in this thread; please note that I'm responding to that, so apologies if your considerations are less strictly applied.
I compare it to going to the movies: There, you pay 5 times what a film rental would cost you. So a game at full retail should have similar content length.
While this works for personal evaluations, it's arbitrary when applied to more generalized considerations.
For example, I don't feel that any videogame is worth purchasing for more than $20, and few that. But, y'know, I wait on sales, just like I wait on rentals (which range from $1-$2, to free from your local library)- in fact, a lot of films, TV, and anime are hosted for free online now ( I mean, by their official sources or sites like Hulu (though yech to Hulu specifically) ).
Basing personal opinions off of price makes sense, because that relates to consistent personal habits. On the other hand, general evaluations based off something as erratic as price (which may even vary at significantly [at retail] region to region on Steam) aren't ever going to have firm foundations to work with- especially when you consider gamers such as myself, who don't care at all about game length, only quality.
So yeah, personal valuations based off of price are worth including in a review, to help establish the perspective that the reviewer is attempting to convey- however, once it is used in any way to determine the positive/negative end evaluation, it's no longer a reasonable element of the review. In fact, in using it to determine if a game is good or bad, it's as dubious a thing as using IMAX pricing for a film which is already out on DVD- the reviewer'd be basing the review on how it appeals to a niche, not off of the game's internal merits (or lack thereof).
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Yes, because if a game goes for 40 dollars and offers the same kind of gameplay but half the length as a 20-dollar one, then said game is simply not worth it. Or the other way around: one of the returning elements in reviews and even forum topics on Mad Bullets that it is a 2-dollar game that offers so much that it could have been a much more expensive one.
Additionally, SteamDB also lists a "price you paid for each hour played" column on the library view, meaning price/length is a pretty important stat for many enough people to put it there.
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Additionally, SteamDB also lists a "price you paid for each hour played" column on the library view, meaning price/length is a pretty important stat for many enough people to put it there.
With bundles and whatnot price occasions? Pointless, for the guy around here,
for the average "i buy me games only in the steam store pleb" perhaps not.
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Yeah, "worth the price" figure of speech is useless because it's totally subjective, not only the prices for games vary depending on where reviewer lives but also their whole consceince and subconscience differ from a reader's one.
For example,
"This cheesecake is excellent, totally worth the price, I reccomend it."
phrase from my review on a 200$ cake. It's like an iceberg, you can see that it's the positive review but on the other, invisible, side there are such conditions as :
[ I love this sort of cakes + I earn $4.000/month + it's the nearest store with a decent service + I have a habit buying it there and eating it with my family on holidays + I have only tasted 3 cheesecakes so far so I can't compare to those you tested + I like exactly this recipe/technology of cooking, you may like another one].
The whole bunch of things that led to the conclusion this cake is great, conditions which you may not meet.
For someone, buying a 20$ episode of a 5-episode Early Access VN might be "worth the price", while someone's monthly income is $100 and it isn't "worth" anymore.
One may not like the game but it's good because it's "worth the price" and only costs as a pack of crisps, while one can live a whole week for this money.
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I try to give insight as to who is most likely to find it worth their time and then let everybody make their own choice.
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"worth their time" is something very similar, right?
Some people even say that they want to "kill" their time, as they have absolutely nothing to do and they'd do anything, one of them can review a game and write it's worth spent time but it's as subjective as price.
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Yes it's similar but since income varies much more than free time from person to person and each hour you play a game is an hour you're not playing an alternate game then the quality of the game compared to similar games conveys more information for people to make an informed choice.
For example, many people find Civ 5 to have inferior play quality to Civ 4 and that Civ 4 is a better value even at the same price.
The same thing has been found for various revisions of the Tribes series, Battlefield, etc.
Even for Free 2 Play games like Puzzle Quest: Magic the Gathering vs Candy Crush to somebody like me PQ:MtG is clearly better but others may care much more about the larger audience of CC.
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to find it worth their time
Actually, for a game to be 'worth time', it'd have to have a higher rate of quality-per-time-spent; that's actually pretty close to being the opposite of the point you're arguing for, of valuing a game based off raw duration.
Edit: Actually, reviewing, I'm not sure which side you're arguing for. Do feel free to clarify, lest I misattribute. :X
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My line of thinking is that everyone gets 24 hours in a day but people's income varies by orders of magnitude so comparing time is more useful than comparing price.
For example, there's games I don't want to play even if people paid me. The same goes for many movies and TV shows.
I also try to compare FPS to FPS and RPG to RPG given that people are more likely to know what type of game they want even if they don't know the relative quality of each game. For example, Half Life is one of my favorite game series of all time but if somebody only enjoys puzzle games then I would say Puzzle Quest: Magic the Gathering is a better use of their time.
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it's totally subjective
So are games and reviews, it's idiotic to expect all reviewers to approach games from the same perspective. It's related to the context of the reviewer as all other things are. Just because you don't/can't relate to them or their preferences doesn't mean that review is "useless".
Even if a game being "worth the price" doesn't give you useful information, to anyone in a similar economic situation/with a similar focus on value to the reviewer will find it useful.
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I guess your reviewer feelings were offended if you decided to call me an idiot for no reason =D
Huh, how do you know that you're
in a similar economic situation/with a similar focus on value to the reviewer?
Because if you don't, you will not find it useful, by your logic.
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decided to call me an idiot
Did I? or is your reading comprehension lacking?
idiotic to expect all reviewers to approach games from the same perspective
Means that the belief that all reviewers are a monolithic objective entity devoid of personal experience and taste is idiotic. Nothing is said on the people who would hold such an idea. I guess you just felt identified.
Anyhow, my point was that the context of the critique permeates the whole review, not just discussions on price, so if you think it useless because you can't relate to the reviewer financially why would you in terms of taste.
How do you know(...)?
Know for certain?
You might not be able to, but you can gain that context through getting to know the reviewer and his track record by watching a few reviews, just like you do to understand their taste in games. Again, this complaint you have is just a matter how to read reviews; the same subjectivity you dislike in terms of value permeates the whole endeavor.
PS: You are missing a line skip after the quote.
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The idea of watching one's previous reviews, if it isn't the only one, and trying to understand and relate to their value measuring just to make their words not useless is idiotic.
Especially, if you've read a few texts of one reviewer, discovered that their "worth the price" doesn't match with yours and then you either have wasted your time, the second time after you've read "worth the price" line, or you have to keep looking for your match <3
Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that writing about the price and its correlation with the content provided isn't useless because if you check every review with such a line and then follow some of the reviews, written by the same person, you can build a subjective opinion of what they call worthy and then use it as the base of how to interprete their subjective valuing?
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The point is that the same subjective nature is in the whole review. If you think subjectivity makes the information useless then no review is going to be useful for you whether or not they mention price.
Something subjective can still be useful if you understand the context it was written: no reviews are written in a vacuum. Their context doesn't have to match yours, you just have to take it into account for it to be useful for you.
You are failing to comprehend what I'm writing.
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What I call useless is mentioning the worth of game in money in the eyes of a reviewer and it's indeed subjective but I never said everything subjective is useless.
And you consider the information useful because after some research(short or long) it's possible that your opinions of worth match with the reviewer's and all their reviews become handy for you as a relative information.
While of course you can't track the change of his current state,maybe they got fired and now the valuing of every game is higher, maybe they got a new job and the valuing is lower.
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Yes but only in the conclusion, you judge the game then consider the price.
A game's merits and demerits exist independent of the cost and should be treated like that, it is only when you have attributed value to the game that you can make a meaningful comparison to price. And being through on what the game does well and what it doesn't allows people with different tastes all to get useful information from a review.
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It's all about expectations vs. reality. If you pay $45 for a fancy meal at a restaurant, there are different expectations that go with it than if you paid $7 for a meal. If you put the two meals next to each other, most would probably agree that the $45 food tastes better, but if you take the two experiences separately, the $45 meal might take too long to prepare, maybe it's only as good as the $20 meal you got last week, who knows.
It's the same with a game. If I buy a $60 game, then I have certain expectations of how long the game will last, the quality of the graphics, the depth of the story. I don't have the same expectations of a $5 game, so when it has all of those things, it can be surprising, making that game seem much better.
When you rate a game, you're not just saying whether it's good or bad, you're also letting people know if it's good for the price it's listed at. No Man's Sky is the perfect example. Expectations were high for it and it didn't deliver, for a $60 game. If it had come out at $15, there would have been a lot fewer angry people, and the reviews would have been much different. Price is absolutely tied to the reviews.
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Yep.
Also on the amount of polish. A $60 title should be a better technical experience with less bugs/glitches, but with the complexity vs time of today's games it's the opposite.
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Most definitely. Grow Home is so good because it's a quality product for a small price. The game would've been way worse if it were $60, wouldn't it? Grow Home's small, but very polished. Paying $60 for a small game isn't really acceptable, because it's also the developer hyping the game up, saying "Yeah, this is worth the $60 and you'll enjoy it enough to pay us a price of 3 weeks of groceries."
This isn't really a debate on quality vs. quantity hours either. Grow Home is 2-3 hours of quality. Paying $60 for that is non-sense.
It's value at the end of the day and value's literally the most important thing in a game review. If a game's graphics are bad, then the game can still be worth it. If anything is bad, as long as the other aspects are good, it'll do fine.
If a game's good, great even, and it costs twice as much as it should cost? That'll be the determining factor at the end of the day.
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Your poll options are not quite mutually exclusive, both can be true at the same time(without Yes/No). But I choose "Yes" since I would expect better quality with higher production costs. Price wouldn't be a factor for me to say the game is good or not but if it's worth buying or not.
To me, any review that only says "worth the price" means "it's not bad, get it on sale( or a bundle)", unless it also explicitly says how many hours of gameplay or a good review why it's worth that $40.
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How could it not - a free game without awful micro-transactions doesn't deserve its balls busted when its somewhat decent and satisfying. You're getting something for nothing (that nothing being your time and attention and their potential brand/name recognition). Even nothing comes at a price.
DOOM 2016 is subjectively certainly a "better" game @ 10$ than it was as 60$ - even though, one could objectively tell
"hey this is pretty good" (lots of detail/work must went into it) no matter if you like it or not ... one could justify the 60$ as well.
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It's not so much that price determines the quality of the game, but the good cheaper games set a bar. When you pay $5 for a 7/10 game, you're probably pretty okay with that purchase. When you pay $60 for a 7/10 game, you're disappointed because you could have gotten a 7/10 game for $5 and you wanted a 9 or 10.
It's like if you go to the store and buy two loaves of bread. One costs you $1.50 and the other is $6. They both taste about the same. You're going to get the $1.50 bread next time you go to the store, because it's not worth paying four times as much for bread that doesn't taste any better. The $6 bread is still good, but any reviewer worth a damn is going to steer you to the $1.50 stuff, or to a different $7 loaf that actually tastes better for the price increase.
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Reviews are not used to rank games from worst to best - Reviews are used to decide whether to buy a game or not.
Price is always a factor when deciding whether to purchase.
Thus, price or at least the opinion on price:quality ratio of the reviewer is very useful when making the decision.
Would you choose a car based on parameters and reviews and would you ignore the price? Is it fair to compare third-hand car for 1000 € with brand new masserati without mentioning the price difference?
There is your answer.
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Even putting aside the enormous amount of money that often lies within the price difference between two cars (trust me, if two cars were within $60 of one another, you'd ignore that fact when reviewing them), new cars generally don't drop to below-95%-off discounts. Likewise, cars are often considered either for luxury or functional purposes, games are simply a luxury good- as such, they're more in the scope of cars where you're already overpaying, so nuances are more based on personal preference to begin with.
Your choice of comparison seems to actually argue against your stated perspective.
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Not really, here a $60 difference or more to the point, $40 between a $60 and $20 title is a 200% or 66.7% difference depending of how you look at it, which is far more noticeable than the $60 difference against a $20,000 or a $200,000 car in your strawman.
But, yes, if two games were $59.99 and $60.00 reviewers wouldn't focus on the difference...
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Avantyr -> precisely.
Sooth -> games are not luxury goods at all, luxury goods behave a bit differently. (I am senior in masters program in economics)
My point, mostly, was about the very purpose of the reviews. People use them to make purchase/leave decisions. And price is definitely a factor for those, thus the opinion about the price:quality ratio is significant.
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Luxury goods contrast against necessity goods. The first category is defined as goods which are intended to provide personal satisfactions but are unnecessary for survival, while necessity goods offer clear functional benefits (as any car does, regardless of the model, in offering transportation). (Furthermore, even if you're using older, outdated terminology, video games still exist as an upscale luxury good in many low-income nations.)
If your program or field of study uses the terms in different ways, that wouldn't be entirely unusual- specialized fields often utilize terms in different ways to the norm. (Keep in mind especially that common usage is quite normal in not matching to technical usage- luxury and necessity are especially known for being somewhat subjective in their application within common usage.) As such, by the most general definition, video games are most certainly classified as luxury goods.
Even within an internalized framework, however, one'd agree that basic functionality (eg, being able to play a FPS game, being able to have basic automotive transportation) is far cheaper [in terms of retail price] than (high profile FPS game releases, more stylish cars), and thus any difference between the two could be considered equatable to similar improvements over basic functionality within cars. As such, I believe the comparison I was making stands regardless of precise terminology used (in that functional considerations can't apply to high-end offerings from either category).
My point, mostly, was about the very purpose of the reviews. People use them to make purchase/leave decisions. And price is definitely a factor for those, thus the opinion about the price:quality ratio is significant.
Well, I was arguing against your metaphor alone, without any indications intended toward your perspective. As far as that goes, I believe I've elaborated my perspective enough across this page of the thread, if you're inclined to look into my other comments. However, to quote my first post in this thread:
Mentioning price in your view adds another facet of consideration, and thus is constructive. Basing the outcome or core premise of the review off of price is nonsensical.
We're not at odds in agreeing that it's a constructive element, just in the consideration that price is directly relevant to the game and its final review. This is especially true given that it's one of the absolute most subjective considerations possible for a game, and moreso, price is something which can differ dramatically based on circumstance. That's even before you get into how people are equating gameplay duration with cost-benefit, regardless of the actual quality of content within that duration. Finally, for further consideration, by my own perspectives on price, I'd have to negative review nearly every single game on Steam if retail price was a meaningful premise for core review score and upvote/downvote status. I doubt I'd be the only lower income individual to have such an outlook. Many high profile games are bloated, gaudy, shallow affairs that are dramatically overpriced due to their choice of content emphasis. They're not necessarily bad games, but they're designed to appeal to the AAA mentality, and thus tend to fall short of the quality-to-duration-to-cost standards some indie games offer. I'd much rather pay $7 for 2 hours of Charnel House Trilogy than pay $60 for 500 hours of Generic AAA Game of the Year X (especially given that such games typically drop in price at lightning speeds).
When someone includes mention of what they feel the game should be priced at, that's useful information to include, as it helps establish their perspective, and furthermore, helps clarify details to users who are already familiar with and agree with the reviewer's price valuation considerations. It's is, however, utterly unrelated to the actual quality of the game, and most certainly shouldn't affect recommended/not recommended status- at least, until that becomes phrased as "Recommended At The Reveiwer's Local Current Retail Price", which understandably doesn't seem likely to ever happen, given how useless that information is (and, well, there's also Valve's persistent lack of desire to update or offer any degree of concern with the community, but we'll set that aside for the point at hand :P).
To emphasize the point- what about a game that has never gone on sale, but has been bundled once. Is that game worth its price? Which price is that, the retail or the bundle price? How are you determining that worth? What value is your consideration toward that worth, when price isn't a gameplay consideration, but an economic one (and thus differs far more dramatically gamer to gamer than gameplay considerations)?
Your perspective toward this topic may be a sensible one, and avoid emphasizing matters to the point I just described. On the other hand, many of the other opinions expressed in this thread haven't struck me as even coming close to having had such consideration put into them (for the sake of providing useful, generalized reviews, versus providing highly subjective, highly personal ones).
In short, no argument that price matters to the individual, or that such has a place in being mentioned within reviews (especially in informing readers if a game goes on sale regularly, and to what degree)- but the utility of price as a foundational element in a review (for expressing accessible considerations as to whether a game is worth your attention or not) is rather limited.
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Put in simpler terms, game duration and game quality and sale information are all constructive elements to add to a review; quality-to-cost is a subjective extrapolation of those elements which is low in value even before you apply it to something as unreliable as retail price. Furthermore, in addition to the issue with those who equate duration with quality, you have those who make excuses for games (and will upvote them even if they're bad) just because they're low retail cost. Rather than those reviewers giving their subjective opinions toward the value of money, giving indications to why they feel the game is worthwhile is always going to have greater merit.
As such, if the reviewer's interpretation of cost-benefit is used to emphasize the aforementioned elements, it's useful information to include, but if what should be an end calculation is used as a justification for the outcome of a review, then that's decidedly non-constructive information to include.
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Saying that price is the most subjective is biased - the whole review, of course, is subjective. In numbers, though, they start to be very relevant. Likewise, the opinions on price:quality ratio are only relevant in large numbers or from "look-alike" source.
In economics, a typical game is not considered luxurious goods, as it is not rare nor unique (everyone can buy a copy). Although in the market of games, more expensive game can be classified as luxurious, but lets not take this rout.
You have said it yourself, you would rather pay x for A and y for B. This information can be interpreted by me easily, and I understand what you value more and why. Thus, when thinking about making a purchase, I can take your perspective into consideration. Merely saying A or B is better or overally good tells me less than actually including your willingness to pay. Saying A and B are both good, though it might be true, will not help me make a decision what to buy at all.
You mentioned you would have rated most games negatively if standard retail price was a criteria. Taking your argument - mentioning that the retail price is more than you were willing to pay for the experience carries significant information - first, I can get it cheaper. Second - full price may not be worth the money.
What I believe is the core of the argument is that you view quality as something absolute, while I view it as something very relative (relative to price and relative to other games in the genre). When I have a classic, ordinary pizza, which I would rate it 5/10 in the absolute scale, knowing the pizza is only 1 € makes it best buy, while knowing it costs 15 € makes it a waste of money. Merely rating the restaurant 5/10 would actually say much less to others (the people who use the review to make decisions) than including the price aspect and saying - the pizza is good and for 3 € you cant get better in the whole town / the pizza is good but you can get much more for that kind of money, go elsewhere, it is not worth it.
Quote / "To emphasize the point- what about a game that has never gone on sale, but has been bundled once. Is that game worth its price? Which price is that, the retail or the bundle price? How are you determining that worth? What value is your consideration toward that worth, when price isn't a gameplay consideration, but an economic one (and thus differs far more dramatically gamer to gamer than gameplay considerations)?" / Quote (I am not good with formating, sorry)
And this is precisely my point! The reviewers themselves need to decide and share with others, whether they would have (after playing the game) bought the game even for the full price, whether it is, in their opinion, worth the money - or not. They can say "25 € is outrageous, but take it for 5 € for sure if you like this kind of games". And this gives me much insight in the game content and quality. If this information was not included, the ratings from people that got the game for much different price would not have been equal. Simple "good" or "bad" tells me much less when I am thinking about buying it.
I must also mention that people do not rate the game itself. That never happens. They rate their satisfaction with the game. And, this is imperative, satisfaction is the difference between expectation and reality. And people expect more if they pay more, and rightly so. Therefore, the satisfaction (and the rating) of the game depends on the price paid for the game. Witholding information about price in the review would be very misleading.
Disregardin the price would also result in a problem - Witcher 3 is very good and very expensive (40 € GOTY). Lets set it as 10/10. Now almost every game below 5 € would be somewhere at 0-3/10. This would mean they suck, though they can be very good. Saying they are 10/10 would lead people to believe they are like withcher in the aspects of story, graphics, content, dialogues... but that is not definitely the truth. However, adding the price and saying - "Witcher is 10/10 for the price, grabbed it for 40 € and not regretting it!" and saying "This war of mine is very good game, I got it for 7 € and I would rate it 10/10, would not have paid full price, though" makes much more sense than this: Witcher 10/10 War of mine 1/10 OR Witcher 10/10 War of Mine 10/10.
I believe the information whether the game is worthwile is always included when talking about value:money ratio, but the information about value:money ratio is not always included when talking about a game being worthwile and excluding the price. Thus it makes it a less valuable review.
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Thanks for the comment, perrolijo, it is good to know that someone read it so I did not write in vain :)
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In economics, a typical game is not considered luxurious goods
Actually, games (and gaming in general) are luxury goods. Cheap ones, compared to Ferrari cars, but still an economical luxury goods.
Luxury goods are the ones you buy more the money you have - very ELI5 example, if you have enough money only for breed or only for game, you will buy breed, but if you have enough money to buy 5 breeds or games, you'll still buy 1 breed (because you need it to feed yourself), but rest of money you'll spend on games.
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If-If-If.
The nature of goods change with income and luxurious good can become normal or inferior, based on income. However, for typical middle-income family in EU/USA there is absolutely no reason to consider games a luxurious goods.
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Definitely. On one hand, we've got games like Event[0], which, while neat, are maybe 2 hours long and has only a few puzzles. On the other, we have Hollow Knight, 5€ cheaper, which has more content than most AAA games. It's insane, and it isn't stretched out, it's metric tons of new enemies, abilities, areas, bosses, etc etc.
However, I doubt any reviewer could include price in his review. Most of them get games for free, the rest write them off as business expenses. They've long forgotten how to value content to price.
It shouldn't be impactful on the game's reception, though. A reviewer should say what the game is ignoring the price, AND THEN say if they think it's worth the money.
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Sure. A bad game is always a bad game, no matter a price, but a 1h game with some neat concepts might be overpriced at 50€, but be worth 5€. That's just an extreme example, but all games do fall under that to some degree. And value is always in comparison to other products that occupy roughly the same space in the market. If other products offer better value for your money, then they are more worthwhile products and should be rated higher.
Value for your money is a tricky concept to talk about though. A game with 15h of padding is not really "value", in fact the padding might make the game worth less.
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While as there's a difference between what's worth purchasing, and whats worth playing, by default reviewers are going to assume you want to purchase what you're going to play (unless you are going to play a friends / family members copy, or have a peg leg + eye patch + parrot on your shoulder). Thus, they need to take both aspects into account when making a recommendation.
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If you can afford to buy any game you wish at any time, then no, price should not be taken into account. However, if your funds are limited, as many are, then price should be held into consideration.
As per your example, you expect different things based on their cost. For a couple of dollars you may enjoy a certain game, have fun for an hour or two, but would you consider paying a day's wage for it? It can still be as fun, though the price may tarnish the fun a bit, but it won't contain the same value. For me, I try to value money against my playtime more than anything else. For example, if I got an hour of playtime for each three dollars I spent then I would consider it worthwhile.
That being said, "worth the price" could be a fair and concise review. If there is sufficient documentation about what the game is like, such as the pictures and videos on Steam, then what more do you wish? They most likely enjoyed the gameplay, visuals, audio, etc and didn't really have any real complaints. Do you really need to point out the positives? Taken your review "Game has really fluid controls", well if it didn't have fluid controls it would be difficult to play and annoying. As you enjoyed the game I would assume you liked the controls unless you mentioned otherwise. Though when you mentioned "The controls remind me the deceased Survival Project" that does provide helpful information as someone can potentially compare it to another game. Though when you continued talking about Survival Project it didn't provide me with any information regarding the game you reviewed.
Going into the minutia of what is wrong with a game would take a long time, and hardly anyone would read, and writing a few words on the downside could unfairly sway someone from getting the game if it is a trivial matter.
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It's not something I always bring up but a review is someone's opinion and at the end of the day sometimes I just don't feel like certain things are worth the price point. Usually it's something I take into account when a game is middle of the road. Not bad, not amazing, something that isn't bad to play but just wouldn't pay the price point for it.
(Not like I pay full price anyway with so many sales and bundles, but still.)
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Well both the yes and the no option contain a good argument.
If a game is bad it doesn't matter how much it costs.
But if a game is good but short the price matters.
Like DLC Quest. Really funny game but you can't play it more than 1-3 hours. For it's cheap price thats ok. For a 60$ AAA game 3 hours of gameplay would be devastating.
DH games stay crap even if you don't pay at all.
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SuperHOT is a good example to put this situation in. Its a fun great game but its biggest weakness is the very short campaign and its 25 dollar pricetag it has for said short length.
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Money has a function of comparison in it. (Beside trade or value storage functions). In a functioning market you expect,that the more expensive game is better or more desirable.(FIFA 17 < FIFA 16).
When the price tag does not fit your expectations you become disappointed. So price is one part of a good judgement.
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I think price absolutely factors into the value a game has. And in fact for every game on my wishlist, I have an idea more or less of how much I'm willing to pay based on what I feel to be the value the game offers. Value is a balance between the experience (visual and audio etc), the length of enjoyable gameplay (not just hundreds of hours of grind) and the price. I never pay full price for a game, but a big studio title with 50+ hours of solid gameplay and no major problems I'll pay $30 for it. If it's something I'm interested in but looks like it has some problems, I'll wait until it's $20 or less. If it's a decent indie game with medium length, then $10 - $15 is probably the sweet spot. And so on.
Obviously I don't always get it right, but generally I find I'm a lot more satisfied with a game if I paid the right price for it. "Sins" can be forgiven if I got the game cheap enough, but nothing would make me feel better about a game if I'd paid $60+ and it was broken. Recent example for me: I paid $12 for Batman Arkham knight premium edition and I love it. If i'd paid $80 at launch, I would have been pretty pissed off. It's an amazing game for $12, so if I was reviewing it I would recommend it.
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Sometimes I get confused when I see some Steam reviews. A lot of them take price into consideration, so you don't really know if a cheap or expensive game is good. Reviews just tell you if they "worth the price", which is not enough to give a game any objective analysis.
Thinking of it, for example, you could spend a lot of money on cheap games you expect to be good and get disappointed, since you could just have saved your money to buy something more expensive that's really good. So the concept of "worth" changes here: on the first case, it surely didn't worth your money.
I used Steam as an example, but the matter can be any kind of review or game.
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