Did a quick calculation and found that a 60$ game needs to be 35hrs to break even with movie prices edit: *where I live
Although I rarely think about game length when buying games. I find that what my gut says is a justified price is far more influenced by a game’s reputation/store page/reviews/what kid of game I feel like playing at the moment. What I’m pricing is my perception of an experience, not an amount of enjoyment for an amount of time. After I buy a game then unless it’s unexpectedly bad or broken I don’t really think about whether it was worth the price. Edit: In fact for longer games I find myself thinking if it was worth the time more.
I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t buy games with a hype wave behind them, so the “perception of experience” is closer to the actual experience than if you apply the same to new releases.
For game length, I find that left to my own devices I like when games are 10-20 hrs in length. For longer games I prefer when there’s a driving story that I can strive for, and even then it gets boring around the 30-40 hr mark. Some open ended games captivate me for 100+ hours but that’s not my expectation from a game.
I see that people are shouting out games in the comments, so I’ll add one. Cyber Hook is a fantastic runner/platformer game. It’s really fun (especially the beginning and dlc) and it’s pretty cheap. It’s not very long especially if you don’t bother getting good times in levels but the experience alone is worth it. Although, for some reason it requires internet connection for game progression so take that into account when buying too.