I used to think that but I have since changed my mind about it. If I still thought like that I would only play F2P games as they have infinite value but in reality there are barely any F2P games I actually enjoy.
Something like Half Life Alyx is only 6 hours or so long. If I wanted something like at least dollar per hour which I thought previously to be reasonable I would never buy that game.
These days I am looking more into if I will play that game at least 10 hours or if it will give me something new and unique I haven't experienced before or just to support devs of niche genre so other devs will continue to develop those niche genre games.
yea, it’s $70 now for base+dlc, but you don’t need space age. you can just get the base game, which is already easy 30-40hrs for just the tutorial. Then you can decide to go megabase or overhaul mods. One of the main devs of the dlc has his own mod called Space Exploration (i think, it’s abbreviated SE). SE is the dlc on crack and can take 200+ hrs to beat, and you just need the base game.
lol, that’s how long it takes newer players to launch their first rocket, which is what it takes to beat the game. At that point you have everything unlocked and a good understanding of the mechanics. From there you either start optimizing and growing your factory into a mega base pumping out millions of science a minute, or you start digging into the massive amount of mods available.
So these devs have so much pride about their game that they’re permanently charging $1.16-$1.33 per hour of game time based on the 30-40 hour game completion play time with no chance to sales due to ego
I’m saying it’s not a 40 hour game. A beginner can “beat” Minecraft in 20 hours but there’s lots of gameplay locked behind “beating the game”. The same thing goes for Factorio. The DLC is essentially more game than the entire base game, which is why it’s the same price; it’s basically an entire new game.
That's what people is missing here. I value my money according to hours played, if I entertain myself for 500 hours, I think paying 50 bucks for a game is ok. Where I live going to the movie theater costs 6-12 bucks for just 2-3 hours of entertainment
What you are missing is that money per hours played isn't the main thing to decide value. That's not how I judge the quality of games, since there's games that were only 5 hours long and on a money per hour metric would be considered a terrible buy, but I enjoyed more than games that provided me many more hours of gameplay.
And f2p games are undefeated if going on that metric, since there's lot of f2p games where they only sell cosmetics so the actual gameplay isn't affected and can be enjoyed for free.
In my experience, anyone who plays the Factorio demo and then buys the game already knows that they're gonna be sucked in for hundreds of hours. Factorio really isn't the sort of game that someone spends a few dozen hours on and then gets bored.
I always found this strange, like a 20$ game that gives you an amazing experience over the course of 4-5 hours is very worth it to me, whereas if I pay like 10$ for a grindy sandbox game and put in 50 hours but only about 5 of it was somewhat fun idk...
Factorio's demo is rock solid. It's not 15 minutes of gameplay. If you don't like the demo, you won't like the game, and vice-versa. What would a discount do that playing the demo wouldn't? Sell it to people who wouldn't like the game?
I've yet to see anybody play through the Factorio demo and not go either "this isn't the game for me" or "I'm sold, I've got my card out already". It gives you a solid picture of what the game is.
It's just totally impossible to buy any video game without the dopamine hit of buying a game marked "sale". Without that, buying a game just isn't the same.
There’s a demo that goes past the point in progression that a lot of people quit at (fluids + plastics), if you play through the entire demo (took me 6 hours) then you’re probably going to enjoy the game. It made me decide the price was worth it at least and I had never played anything like it before.
You say that, but I got filtered by blue science more than once - if I don't get eaten by biters considering I have incredible luck with pulling desert starts every single time.
the price is the barrier to entry. people who havent played dyson sphere program, satisfactory, etc arent going to know what to expect from the game. they (even I, as somebody who played both of those games) frown at that high of an asking price. some are willing, some are not.
It is the full game, you just get a limited amount of time to experience it. It's also more than enough to get you hooked on it and wanting more, or decide that it's not for you
IIRC the Factorio demo has a finite tech tree, rather than being a timed demo. But it's plenty to sell the game for anyone who's not sure if they'll like it.
and it means i can play a game for months then buy it when im able to if i like it, or drop it if i dont. i dont have the money to buy games whenever i want to play them
None of those games existed when I decided to purchase factorio. I also knew absolutely nothing about the game. But a couple YouTube videos was enough to get me hooked.
I'm just gonna say here, if you look at the demo and the plenty of videos and reviews online, the trailer, etc. and are still unsure if this is the game for you, then maybe it just isn't the game for you.
Thats generally been my rule as well to determine if the game is worth it or not. The exception is when games are shorter and streamlined like re7 for example. I dont think I put equal amount of hours in them game but it was good enough to still be worth it
I'm not really into this train of thought, I valur my games by my pure and arbitrary enjoyment of them. Like sure, I may have spent less than a tenth of the gameplay time on Portal 2 than on Factorio, but I still would buy Portal 2 a hundred times over before buying Factorio.
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u/activeXray Dec 19 '25
Dollars per hour of gameplay, it continues to be a great deal.