The Shrine

This is pretty much how I look at it. From http://www.gamespite.net/verbalspew/arc ... .php#e1638

Jeremy Parish wrote:You will notice I didn't mention price in my review, because I never mention price in my reviews except to say, "This is a great deal." I prefer not to think of games as commodities, and I refuse to evaluate fun in terms of dollars. Money is a tight resource for me these days, but time is even more precious; if a game is entertaining enough to make me want to spend my fleeting free time on it, then it's surely worth whatever dollars the publisher is asking for in return. In short, cost should be regarded as a secondary consideration to real value, not the determining factor thereof.

Here's a secret between you and me: Any time I see a reviewer dismiss a game because of its price -- especially if length is the primary issue cited -- I make a silent mental note never to pay attention to that person's opinions again.

Thats a narrow minded approach, which is fine if that is what you are looking for. I, for one, agree with him because i am able to cough up $20 or $120, if i need to, and only want my valuable free time spent wisely on something i will have fun with... to an extent. BUT, i also can sympathize with the 12 y/o who only gets $50 a month and wants it to go a long long way.

Logically, price matters! Its apart of the game since it is something you have to give up to enjoy the game. People talk about price when they rate cars, houses, fuck, even fans. I saw the new Dyson fan and thought thats cool as shit, but no way do i want to pay $300 for one. If the new Mario Brothers was $1000, its not a good game. Or maybe it is a good game, but at the very least it needs to be mentioned! Since when do we, as a capitalistic society, only review the product and ignore the obvious, 'how do we get it?'.

Its the statement of a pompous jerk, to be honest. Hooray for you, Parish, and your deep pockets. I really hope the next Halo is $50 for everyone else and $500,000 for you.

I don't like what Parish has to say on most things but I agree with him here. Assuming no game will suddenly cost $1000 you can be pretty safe to say games will probably range between $5 to $60 in the foreseeable future so it's unlikely that buying a game will actually cause you financial duress (if it does just don't buy it). In an ideal world something should be both enjoyable and lasting, but this is rarely actually true. If you can only pick one I'd go with a shorter game that was fun to play rather than a game that sucks but takes a very long time to finish. Of course if you go this method most likely you'll just see games that charge $60 that's both short and uninteresting, as opposed to $60 for a game that's long and uninteresting and the latter is still a slightly better value, but you really shouldn't be buying either.

As an aside, MMORPGs are very expensive games but people pay that kind of money because of its value. WoW makes more money than rest of ActivisionBlizzard put together based on the last quarterly press, and that didn't happen because WoW was a cheap game. Yes people always claim you can take the $15/month and divide it by the number of hours in a month, but there's nothing stopping you from playing Tetris for 720 hours a month for $0/month too. In general I think most people are aware that value is more important than money, or MMORPG games are definitely way too expensive and will not succeed, but they obviously do.

In short, cost should be regarded as a secondary consideration to real value, not the determining factor thereof.

Thats fine with me, but for some people it is a determining factor and should be respected as such. So, Parish writes reviews for a segmented portion of the gaming population, which again, is perfectly fine. What is patronizing about the whole issue is that he dismisses other reviewers who mention price. That kind of arrogance wasnt needed for him to state his acceptable reasoning on why HE doesnt, besides to be a jerk.

Ha, I don't have deep pockets. But I have even less time. I bought DQ9 a week ago, and it will probably be the only game I buy this year. Consequently, even a spread of $30 wouldn't have changed my decision to purchase the game. I guarantee you've spent more money on games this year than I have.

For the record, Parish also does not have deep pockets. Quite the opposite. But when the first question is "Is this game worth my time?" considering price is a distant second.

Sorry, not possible. Every single person who buys a game does a value analysis on it whether they think they do or not. Hell, you do it when you buy anything. He may not do it consciously like I do, but he sure as shit does it. He even admitted he did

I think the reviewers Parish is talking about is ones that will say like: "This game sucks because it's only got a few hours of gameplay" and give it say a rating of 6, and then you'd see some game rated an 7 with a review like: "Throughout the 50 hours of gameplay nothing interesting ever happens and if I'm not paid to do this I would never have done it." Yet apparently the latter is better than the former because it lasted 10 times as long.

I haven't bought a game for a long time because the prospect of wasting 20 or 40 hours of my time on something that never got good is more daunting than the cost. I thought about buying Raiden 4 for $50 not because it's better than any game out there but rather I'm pretty sure Raiden series are good for a few hours of entertainment without getting angry at the game being too hard since it's got a generous continue/difficulty system.

I consider cost to be a fairly large factor; but for a different reason. I tend to only play about 50% of the games I actually buy more than twice. So if I am spend 50 bucks on a game and don't really find it worth playing after a couple of trials (Madworld, No More Heroes, etc...) then I am going to be a little disappointed; and I won't sell them either because I always think that there will be a time when I want to play these! Maybe even really like them as well. Some games I have picked up 5+ years later. However, if I spend ~$20 or less on a game and I don't play it, then it's just the same as me not getting the right meal at the restaraunt, no biggie.