Summer of 58 Dev quits over steam return policy

DPI said:
No offense since we're all friends here but consider that if everyone had this attitude, videogames would stop being made.

If a lot of gamers feel this way, I am suddenly feeling a lot less sympathetic to the GPU shortage impacting them.
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If video games were to stop being made then the industry would be doing us a favor. For the past 2 years not many games are released that I would consider to be a must play. Too many games with micro-transactions and DLCs that I feel like playing them is a waste of time. I bought Fallout 4 years ago and now they have like 8 DLC's? I can't even get achievements because I used mods.

As a game developer, you are standing on an industry that is enormous and you have to compete not just against new games but older games as well, because games don't age. You know this is true when Undertale a $10 game that has many hours and replay-ability is mimicking graphics from a Super Nintendo. Clearly gameplay is all that really matters. God of War is $17 on the PS4, Uncharted 4 is $17, Doom Eternal is $25, MGSV is $18, DMC5 is $24, so don't let me catch you buying Summer of 58 for $8 and telling me this is a good game that you get to play for 1hour, and yes it's 1 hour not 2. I don't know why people gave it a good review when it's clearly not a good game.

There are so many timeless classics that you could be picking up for much less than $8 that I'm sure most people haven't played. I know you haven't played Contra HardCorps for the Sega Genesis. I know you haven't play the original American McGee's Alice. A game like Summer of 58 is just one of many games dependent on YouTubers promoting their games to sell to a younger and ignorant audience who doesn't know what a good game is if it fell on their lap. People who bought this game felt they were going to miss out on something, but what they actually missed was their $8. You can't tell me that serious effort was put into this demo of a game when it can be finished in an hour. This is early access at best but even that has gained a bad reputation. You want to make $8 then do more than make a mystery game in 3D. There are flash games that do this better. Friday Night Funkin is free and that game will last you more than an hour to finish with replay-ability. They even got funding to make a full game that they will eventually release. That game was based on an old and forgetten game called PaRappa the Rapper from the 90's, much like Undertale.

 
DukenukemX said:
If video games were to stop being made then the industry would be doing us a favor. For the past 2 years not many games are released that I would consider to be a must play. Too many games with micro-transactions and DLCs that I feel like playing them is a waste of time. I bought Fallout 4 years ago and now they have like 8 DLC's? I can't even get achievements because I used mods.

As a game developer, you are standing on an industry that is enormous and you have to compete not just against new games but older games as well, because games don't age. You know this is true when Undertale a $10 game that has many hours and replay-ability is mimicking graphics from a Super Nintendo. Clearly gameplay is all that really matters. God of War is $17 on the PS4, Uncharted 4 is $17, Doom Eternal is $25, MGSV is $18, DMC5 is $24, so don't let me catch you buying Summer of 58 for $8 and telling me this is a good game that you get to play for 1hour, and yes it's 1 hour not 2. I don't know why people gave it a good review when it's clearly not a good game.

There are so many timeless classics that you could be picking up for much less than $8 that I'm sure most people haven't played. I know you haven't played Contra HardCorps for the Sega Genesis. I know you haven't play the original American McGee's Alice. A game like Summer of 58 is just one of many games dependent on YouTubers promoting their games to sell to a younger and ignorant audience who doesn't know what a good game is if it fell on their lap. People who bought this game felt they were going to miss out on something, but what they actually missed was their $8. You can't tell me that serious effort was put into this demo of a game when it can be finished in an hour. This is early access at best but even that has gained a bad reputation. You want to make $8 then do more than make a mystery game in 3D. There are flash games that do this better. Friday Night Funkin is free and that game will last you more than an hour to finish with replay-ability. They even got funding to make a full game that they will eventually release. That game was based on an old and forgetten game called PaRappa the Rapper from the 90's, much like Undertale.

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I think in this case that people are taking the steps to buy it for $8, play it, and then return is the dick move. I agree with you that there's a lot of classic games worth playing, and that $8 might even be to much for this. But if someone actually buys it, beats it, and then returns it...that's pretty uncool. I'm sorry, when I was young, $8 bucks mattered...but still I wouldn't exactly done something like this. I would of not even considered buying the game initially and just waited for steam sale for 90% off.

Concerning your first point about not to many games being released not being must plays. Obviously that's subjective to the user. I do believe much of that is because we have become so saturated and spoiled as a userbase that we have the luxury of being picky. There's probably even more games coming out now than there ever was as we grew up, and we have can look back to our classic days of gaming with rose tinted glasses. Even back then though there was so much shovelware.

Oh, and people probably gave it a good review because they liked it. Something that's shocking is people have different taste :) Funny enough about 80% of the games you listed I do like, so our taste probably parallels in a lot of games.
 
Criticalhitkoala said:
I think in this case that people are taking the steps to buy it for $8, play it, and then return is the dick move.
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You know, even if this is the case, this title is getting a lot of publicity out of it.

I would image that some are doing it only because they know they can, but I think the larger portion of refunds are unsatisfied customers.
 
Sounds like people didn't feel like they got their money's worth. There are free games and other cheap games that offer insane replay value. You can't expect players to research the exact playtime of the games they buy, but I would refund any game that offered less than 2 hours of play time just on principle. And all I can do is heartily laugh at the upset people who are mad that other people don't share their opinion at what's worth $9.

I'll refund any game that I feel like I didn't get my money's worth. Not sorry about it either. If these refunders wanted the game for free, they would have simply pirated it. Fact of the matter is that it's the developers who failed to fulfill the value proposition, and that's the end of the story.
 
DukenukemX said:
If video games were to stop being made then the industry would be doing us a favor. For the past 2 years not many games are released that I would consider to be a must play. Too many games with micro-transactions and DLCs that I feel like playing them is a waste of time. I bought Fallout 4 years ago and now they have like 8 DLC's? I can't even get achievements because I used mods.

As a game developer, you are standing on an industry that is enormous and you have to compete not just against new games but older games as well, because games don't age. You know this is true when Undertale a $10 game that has many hours and replay-ability is mimicking graphics from a Super Nintendo. Clearly gameplay is all that really matters. God of War is $17 on the PS4, Uncharted 4 is $17, Doom Eternal is $25, MGSV is $18, DMC5 is $24, so don't let me catch you buying Summer of 58 for $8 and telling me this is a good game that you get to play for 1hour, and yes it's 1 hour not 2. I don't know why people gave it a good review when it's clearly not a good game.
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I find that I can easily go back to 2008-2009 or so, and it is great. I just disable the vintage AA and enable 4.00x DSR and play them at 8K on my 4k screen. It still looks a little dated, but not in a bad way. Go much further back than that though, and it starts getting pretty difficult to get used to. I can eventually get used to it, but for the first hour or two it is tough. I replayed the original Deus Ex from 2000 a while back, it it took a good long while before the dated graphics stopped bothering me.

In general though I agree. Good gameplay and a great story will trump great graphics any day, but great graphics can be nice too.

DukenukemX said:
There are so many timeless classics that you could be picking up for much less than $8 that I'm sure most people haven't played. I know you haven't played Contra HardCorps for the Sega Genesis. I know you haven't play the original American McGee's Alice. A game like Summer of 58 is just one of many games dependent on YouTubers promoting their games to sell to a younger and ignorant audience who doesn't know what a good game is if it fell on their lap. People who bought this game felt they were going to miss out on something, but what they actually missed was their $8. You can't tell me that serious effort was put into this demo of a game when it can be finished in an hour. This is early access at best but even that has gained a bad reputation. You want to make $8 then do more than make a mystery game in 3D. There are flash games that do this better. Friday Night Funkin is free and that game will last you more than an hour to finish with replay-ability. They even got funding to make a full game that they will eventually release. That game was based on an old and forgetten game called PaRappa the Rapper from the 90's, much like Undertale.
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I've played a series of older titles as of late, and really quite enjoyed them. A couple of years ago I played the No One Lives Forever series, which I somehow missed the first time around. It was pretty rough on the eyes at first, but once I got used to it, quite enjoyable.

Right now, I'm actually quite enjoying Portal 2. I bought it over a decade ago. At the time, I installed it and started playing the intro scene and then got distracted and forgot to get back to it. It is actually a much better game than I expected. Anyone who wants it right now can get it for 10 bucks. Less probably if they wait for a sale.

You don't have to scrape the bottom of the 1990's barrel to find good cheap games though. As someone pointed out in another place I was discussing this topic, they spent less money for Phasmaphobia, an indie title which came out last year, than Summer of 548 was selling for, and they have over 100 hours in it.
 
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I think its immoral and detestable that a person buys software, gets full usage, completion, enjoys it, then returns it.

Youre not renting a reusable kayak, and even then they keep your rental fee. If you want more great content then you need to let the dev get paid. It take money to make big stuff for people to enjoy. A man should get paid for his hard work period.

If youre one that returned it after enjoying it to the full, you should be deeply ashamed of your self period!
 
Sad that the developer declared it quits... I mean, you gotta enjoy making games first, right? It's hard as hell to get good reviews, so I really hope they see the positives here and push on to create a greater/longer game that sells better. The first Psychonauts game didn't sell well either, but it was good enough to build a pretty strong cult following and keep a dev team afloat
 
tangoseal said:
I think its immoral and detestable that a person buys software, gets full usage, completion, enjoys it, then returns it.

Youre not renting a reusable kayak, and even then they keep your rental fee. If you want more great content then you need to let the dev get paid. It take money to make big stuff for people to enjoy. A man should get paid for his hard work period.

If youre one that returned it after enjoying it to the full, you should be deeply ashamed of your self period!
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It depends.

If they bought it knowing it was a short 1 hour game and enjoyed it and then returned it just because they could, then yes, shame on them.

If they bought it expecting a real game, and got to the end in less than an hour and were surprised and pissed that it was already over and felt ripped off? Then I don't blame them.

This whole issue could probably have been avoided with more upfront disclosure of what they were actually buying. Then again, most developers probably wouldn't care to call attention to the fact that their game is unusually short.

If the Steam Store page collected and displayed the average time it took everyone who finished the game to do so, there might be fewer surprises. This might actually not be a bad idea. It wouldn't help the very first buyers, but at least it would allow the experiences of the early buyers to help the later ones.
 
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tangoseal said:
I think its immoral and detestable that a person buys software, gets full usage, completion, enjoys it, then returns it.

Youre not renting a reusable kayak, and even then they keep your rental fee. If you want more great content then you need to let the dev get paid. It take money to make big stuff for people to enjoy. A man should get paid for his hard work period.

If youre one that returned it after enjoying it to the full, you should be deeply ashamed of your self period!
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So what happens if you are playing the game and then all of a sudden, the game ends abruptly after a short time and you are like...WTF. Is it acceptable to refund then?

What it comes down to is that it can be abused on both sides, but I'm glad we have the option.
 
Criticalhitkoala said:
I think in this case that people are taking the steps to buy it for $8, play it, and then return is the dick move.
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How many people find a game good and then return it? Don't know about you guys but I cherish my games if they're good. I loved Fallout 4 and must have played it like several times and still want to pick it up again. If the games good you don't want to return it. This was not a good game.
I agree with you that there's a lot of classic games worth playing, and that $8 might even be to much for this. But if someone actually buys it, beats it, and then returns it...that's pretty uncool. I'm sorry, when I was young, $8 bucks mattered...but still I wouldn't exactly done something like this. I would of not even considered buying the game initially and just waited for steam sale for 90% off.
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There are some games I feel they should have payed me to play it. It doesn't matter that I used the game and finished it, if I felt the game was bad. The fact that the game can be finished in an hour just makes it easier for people to get their money back. The unfortunate fact is that some games claim that you need to put a certain amount of time in before you can start to see the game get good. So there are times I've played a game until the end only to find that the game was shit. Hollow Knight is a good example of a game that I was almost ready to quit but as I played the game it got a lot better. Same went for Dark Souls as I serious started the game and went towards the skeleton section and got super frustrated trying to kill things I had no business trying to kill.
Concerning your first point about not to many games being released not being must plays. Obviously that's subjective to the user. I do believe much of that is because we have become so saturated and spoiled as a userbase that we have the luxury of being picky. There's probably even more games coming out now than there ever was as we grew up, and we have can look back to our classic days of gaming with rose tinted glasses. Even back then though there was so much shovelware.
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Games made in the 80's and 90's was like 99% bad. Games so bad that AngryVideoGameNerd is making a living reviewing them and making fun of them. Most games made in the 2000's and 2010's are mediocre as in the game isn't broken or unplayable but it does nothing special that hasn't already been done better. Mass Effect Andromeda for example was broken and buggy but got fixed and it still wasn't as good as previous Mass Effects. Mediocre is the new bad. Simply making a game doesn't justify entitlement to money.
Oh, and people probably gave it a good review because they liked it. Something that's shocking is people have different taste :) Funny enough about 80% of the games you listed I do like, so our taste probably parallels in a lot of games.
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You played Summer of 58? I haven't heard of this game until this post was made. Steam reviews can be as unreliable as Amazon reviews as in many people can be paid to post positive reviews for what is a bad product.

Zarathustra[H] said:
I find that I can easily go back to 2008-2009 or so, and it is great. I just disable the vintage AA and enable 4.00x DSR and play them at 8K on my 4k screen. It still looks a little dated, but not in a bad way. Go much further back than that though, and it starts getting pretty difficult to get used to. I can eventually get used to it, but for the first hour or two it is tough. I replayed the original Deus Ex from 2000 a while back, it it took a good long while before the dated graphics stopped bothering me.

In general though I agree. Good gameplay and a great story will trump great graphics any day, but great graphics can be nice too.
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Graphics were only a problem for the PS1 and N64 era, with some PS2 games thrown here and there. This is why a game like Resident Evil 2 made sense to remake it while a game like Mass Effect 1,2,3 didn't. Mass Effect 1,2,3 remaster or remake isn't all that much better than the original games from over 10 years ago. 2D games though hold up better since there isn't much more one can do for 2D graphics.
You don't have to scrape the bottom of the 1990's barrel to find good cheap games though. As someone pointed out in another place I was discussing this topic, they spent less money for Phasmaphobia, an indie title which came out last year, and they have over 100 hours in it.
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Each generation of consoles had their "must play games". NES has Blaster Master, Castlevania 1,2,3, Zelda 1,2, and DuckTales which a lot of people don't understand how much this game influenced the industry. SNES has Chrono Trigger, Dunkey Kong Country 1,2,3, and EarthBound which influenced the creation of Undertale. You'd be hard pressed to find a console generation of games that didn't at least have half a dozen of unique and timeless classics that can't be replicated today very easily. That's just consoles, because PC has a lot of unique games that nobody maybe aware of. Games like Decent 1,2, Thief 1,2, and American McGee's Alice which I already mentioned. There's so much more that is lost to time because nobody wants to remember old games when newer games are trying so hard for your attention.
 
DukenukemX said:
You played Summer of 58? I haven't heard of this game until this post was made. Steam reviews can be as unreliable as Amazon reviews as in many people can be paid to post positive reviews for what is a bad product.
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Not to mention Steam only reminds people with a significant number of hours in a game to review it. It doesn't remind people who just played a little bit and then quit in disgust. This skews reviews towards being more positive than they should be, because many people who didn't like a game simply aren't reminded to review it.

DukenukemX said:
Graphics were only a problem for the PS1 and N64 era, with some PS2 games thrown here and there. This is why a game like Resident Evil 2 made sense to remake it while a game like Mass Effect 1,2,3 didn't. Mass Effect 1,2,3 remaster or remake isn't all that much better than the original games from over 10 years ago. 2D games though hold up better since there isn't much more one can do for 2D graphics.

Each generation of consoles had their "must play games". NES has Blaster Master, Castlevania 1,2,3, Zelda 1,2, and DuckTales which a lot of people don't understand how much this game influenced the industry. SNES has Chrono Trigger, Dunkey Kong Country 1,2,3, and EarthBound which influenced the creation of Undertale. You'd be hard pressed to find a console generation of games that didn't at least have half a dozen of unique and timeless classics that can't be replicated today very easily. That's just consoles, because PC has a lot of unique games that nobody maybe aware of. Games like Decent 1,2, Thief 1,2, and American McGee's Alice which I already mentioned. There's so much more that is lost to time because nobody wants to remember old games when newer games are trying so hard for your attention.
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Interesting choice of games for the NES. I was a big NES fan when I was a kid in the 80's, but by 1991 I had my PC and I pretty much forgot about the NES and with a few notable exceptions never really touched another console.

The games I remember from the NES era as being the biggest and most significant titles were (In the order they randomly pop into my head):
- Ice Climbers
- Super Bario Bros 1 & 2
- Duck Hunt
- Zelda 1 & 2 (Link)
- Metroid,
- Ghosts 'n Goblins,,
- The first Castlevania,
- 1942,
- Gunsmoke,
- Bubble Bobble,
- Boulder Dash
- Kid Icarus,
- The Goonies II
- Bionic Commando,
- Contra,
- Double Dragon series,
- Excitebike,
- Rush 'n Attack / Green beret
- Ikari Warriors Series
- Megaman Series, (at least 1 2 and 3, not sure after that, don't remember ever playing them)
- and maybe even the first two Ninja Turtle games.

At least these are the titles that were common in my town when we were all trading and borrowing games from each other. I know my experience is an anecdotal n=1 type thing, but there were often multiple copies of all of these games floating around being borrowed where I grew up, so I guess I just presumed that by how common they were, they were the more popular and influential titles.

I've never heard of Blaster Master, didn't realize there was a Castlevania 2 or 3, and never heard of the Duck Tales game either.

And I'm not really familiar with any of the SNES games, as I had completely abandoned consoles by the time the SNES came out, and apart from being subjected against my will to Golden Eye on an N64 someone brought up to college (ugh, controllers and split screen was brutal when used to Mouse and Keyboard and a dedicated screen) and that one time in between College and my first job I stayed at my parents place binge watched Lost and got totally addicted to my siblings Katamari Damacy I never played another game on a console again. They all seemed uninteresting.

So, essentially with the exception of that one semester in college where I was trying to be a good sport and play GoldenEye with the dorm mates, and Katamari Damacy, nothing console exists to me after ~1991.


As far as your selection of PC titles go I do remember Descent. It was huge for a while there, but I always found it kind of uninspiring and boring. I do remember the name Thief being mentioned in games circles, but am not familiar beyond that. I'm pretty sure I've never heard of this American McGee thing.

There are lots and lots of PC games I love dearly from the late 80's through the 90's, but very few of them that I would say are worth going back and playing today. They were great for their time, and very influential, but kind of meh by today's standards.

After I switched to PC in 1991, I gradually became more and more primarily focused on First Person titles, and that's really how I tend to think of the development of PC Gaming.

- Wolfenstein 3D - First FPS game
- Doom - Developed the FPS Significantly
- Quake - We start seeing modern mouse and keyboard controls really become the norm
- Half Life - FPS games are starting to have a story element now, that is awesome
- Deus Ex - FPS games now have engrossing stories, and added RPG elements, even more awesome.
- Counter Strike - Holy shit, team on team gunplay with "realistic" guns. This has never happened before and man is it awesome

And then it kind of forked with the single player story games becoming more and more engrossing and the stories better and better, with open worlds equipment upgrades, better RPG elements, etc. and the multiplayer games being more of a mixed blessing, with some being really awesome, and some leading us down the sad trail to Fortnite.

In the beginning of my time on the PC there was great variety in the type and style of games, Simulators, FPS titles, race games, etc, but as time went on I focused more and more exclusively on First Person and by the time Half-Life was out, it was pretty much First person or nothing for me. The exception being Sid Meier's Civilization which will always hold a special place in my heart and I buy and play every version of.

Anyway, I got side tracked meandering down memory lane.

The point I was trying to make is that just because a game was great and influential 30 years ago, does not mean that it would be particularly fun today. Wolfenstein 3d? Pass. Doom or Quake? Nah, pass, who needs a dull run and gun gibfest or deathmatch game, that was really cool in the 90's but really boring today.

Some older games really do retain their value as a game and are worth going back to and re-playing, but they are pretty damn rare. The original Deus Ex still has it, though th egraphics are tough to get used to at first. Half life, Half Life 2 and sequels are still good, but not quite as good as they felt when new.
 
Well since this article broke it’s now 23% off has more positive reviews and I don’t know if it was there before but in the games description it does say it’s a 90 minute game.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
$8.99 is cheap, but it is not 2 hours cheap.

I expect to get a AAA single player game on sale at $29.99 or less depending on the title, 2-3 years after launch, and I expect to get 40 hours for that. Not 40 hours of useless padded content, but 40 hours off true game and good story.

For 2 hours? I'd expect it to cost $1.50, and I'd expect to be warned about the short gameplay in advance so it wasn't a surprise.

I'm not going to lie, if I bought a game and only got two hours out of it I'd probably be pissed off and possibly request a refund as well.
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I'd like to buy two hours of your time for $1.50. I have trees that need felling, fence posts that need setting, house repairs that need doing, painting that needs doing. I'd like to hire you for $0.75/hour, and then when you do your job properly tell you that you did a great job and still demand a refund.
 
Lakados said:
Well since this article broke it’s now 23% off has more positive reviews and I don’t know if it was there before but in the games description it does say it’s a 90 minute game.
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According to the comments at one of the articles about this, the description was changed after the story broke, and it did not previously say it was a short game.
 
SunnyD said:
I'd like to buy two hours of your time for $1.50. I have trees that need felling, fence posts that need setting, house repairs that need doing, painting that needs doing. I'd like to hire you for $0.75/hour, and then when you do your job properly tell you that you did a great job and still demand a refund.
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That is an absolutely ridiculous comparison.

I'm not paying someone to entertain me for 2 hours. I'm paying to run a piece of software, where the costs of developing that software are spread out over thousands if not millions of other customers.

There is no expectation of mine or anyone elses income to be a 1:1 relationship with my hourly entertainment budget, UNLESS my entertainment involves actually paying a dedicated human being to do something for me in real time.

If you had to pay 1:1 for everything you used you would never own a car, or a house, or a computer or anything, because the hours of developing those products add up, and are shared among all the customers who buy them. Thats how the modern economy functions. If it didn't, we'd all be living in caves.
 
cybereality said:
Maybe the whole thing was a big (successful) publicity stunt. I bought the game.
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Doesn't sound too unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if they found a sympathetic journalist to help sell this bunk story of them being the victims to "evil gamers".

If only people would apply critical thinking to allegations of victimhood. Perception of victimhood, legitimate or not, is power - which people fight tooth, nail (& nose) for.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That is an absolutely ridiculous comparison.

I'm not paying someone to entertain me for 2 hours. I'm paying to run a piece of software, where the costs of developing that software are spread out over thousands if not millions of other customers.
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Trying to justify your entitlement mentality doesn't make it anymore petty. It's a video game. Yes, you ARE paying for two hours of entertainment. Your expectations of cost amortization are irrelevant, especially if you're one of those people that left a positive review.

And ffs, if 2 hours of entertainment costs less than your typical fast food meal, I'd say you got your money's worth.
 
SunnyD said:
Trying to justify your entitlement mentality doesn't make it anymore petty. It's a video game. Yes, you ARE paying for two hours of entertainment. Your expectations of cost amortization are irrelevant, especially if you're one of those people that left a positive review.

And ffs, if 2 hours of entertainment costs less than your typical fast food meal, I'd say you got your money's worth.
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You know what. That is insulting. It's not "having an entitlement mindset" to desire to not be ripped off.

If you are fully informed before making a transaction and know what you are getting that is one thing.

Most games have WAY more, like order of magnitude more entertainment value than the revised ~1 hour this title provided. It is not at all unreasonable that buyers expected something different than what they got, and were pissed when they didn't get it.

To play on your fast food reference, it's like paying for your big mac, only to hvae it given to you at the next window, but instead of a big mac it is a mini slider, and expecting you not to make a stink about it.

I didn't buy this game, I hadn't even heard of it before this news story, but if I had, you are damn right I would have made a stink about it. It is not being "entitled" to have an expectation of not being ripped off.

This shit dev was trying to pass off a fifth of even a short game as a full title, and I'm glad people pushed back.
 
So I just played and beat the game. Clocked in at 2 hours and it was amazing. If you are into horror like Outlast or Layers of Fear, this will be right up your alley (though not as fully produced as those other two games, it's clearly an indie title).

I was expecting something really budget, but the graphics were pretty nice and everything ran smooth on my machine at 120 fps. Game starts out slow, but really builds up by the end. Definitely worth playing.

Honestly, I don't know. I think people are entitled and also cheapskates and freeloaders. For $9 (or $7 which I paid on the sale) it was worth it for me. It was about the length of a movie, and the story is solid, so $9 seems fair. The game is good.

It's like, do you go to see a movie like Inception in the theater and be like "Well, the movie was okay, but it was only 2 and half hours. It should have been 40 hours at least" and then ask for your money back? Good luck with that.
 
If I spend $10 on a game, I expect AT LEAST 10 hours of entertainment from it, be it in 1 go or in replays.

With $18/month on Netflix, I get god knows how many hours of entertainment. $8/month for Crunchyroll premium gets me god knows how many hours of entertainment. Xbox game pass is like $10/month and you get a load of games. Humble Choice is $12/month for 12 games.

So tell me, why the hell should a 2 hour entertainment experience cost $10 these days?
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
If I spend $10 on a game, I expect AT LEAST 10 hours of entertainment from it, be it in 1 go or in replays.

With $18/month on Netflix, I get god knows how many hours of entertainment. $8/month for Crunchyroll premium gets me god knows how many hours of entertainment. Xbox game pass is like $10/month and you get a load of games. Humble Choice is $12/month for 12 games.

So tell me, why the hell should a 2 hour entertainment experience cost $10 these days?
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Because it's a value set by the creator, just like you set a value that your entertainment budget is worth $1 an hour. If you go to kart racing around here, it's 7 minutes for $25 dollars. Or $428.50 every 2 hours for entertainment. People think it's worth it.

Some people find value and entertainment because they paid less than others. Look at how many people who have thousands of steam games in their collection they will never play because it's either cheap or free from things like humble bundle. Some don't care that a 2 hour experience is $8 cause it was a unique and worthwhile experience, which seems like what Cybereality had when he played it.

For those arguing that it's not worth the price...you guys aren't wrong at all because your worth is yours to define. Some people might judge you for being cheap, but who cares. I just rather not be that guy who buys a meal at a restaurant, eat all of it, and then complain that it's cold and expect a refund. Or buy a game, play it to completion while enjoying it, and then refund it.
 
Right, I'm saying the game was worth $7 *for me*. I also enjoy playing short games because I can play and finish them in one sitting, or over a weekend, and not have to invest my life into it.

Also, I find that indie games tend to take more risks or do unique things that AAA studios don't try. So while you can get 40 hours out of a AAA game, it's a safe mainstream 40 hours, versus, I don't know, watching some weird arthouse foreign film or experimental electronic music.

If you have a different calculation, then that is fair too. It won't be worth it *for everyone*. You decide what your time and money is worth.
 
cybereality said:
Right, I'm saying the game was worth $7 *for me*. I also enjoy playing short games because I can play and finish them in one sitting, or over a weekend, and not have to invest my life into it.

Also, I find that indie games tend to take more risks or do unique things that AAA studios don't try. So while you can get 40 hours out of a AAA game, it's a safe mainstream 40 hours, versus, I don't know, watching some weird arthouse foreign film or experimental electronic music.

If you have a different calculation, then that is fair too. It won't be worth it *for everyone*. You decide what your time and money is worth.
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And that is great, and fine.

People just deserve to know what they are buying.
 
Thanks for the review. I will probably pick it up once it drops below $5.

I have Layers of Fear but haven't played it yet. My Favorite horror game is probably still Amnesia the Dark Descent. How does Layers of fear and Summer of '58 compare ?
 
Layers of Fear is one of the all time best horror games, maybe the best actually. Not a lot of jump scares, it's mostly psychological but very well done. Rooms melting, dolls crawling on the ceiling, that sort of thing.

Summer of '58 is alright if you go in knowing it's a short indie title. The graphics are good, but there isn't voice acting, for example. I mean, it is worth playing but not on the level of Layers of Fear.
 
cybereality said:
It's like, do you go to see a movie like Inception in the theater and be like "Well, the movie was okay, but it was only 2 and half hours. It should have been 40 hours at least" and then ask for your money back? Good luck with that.
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This is more like going to see a movie in the theater and thinking, "Well, the movie was okay, but it was 20 minutes long. It should have been 90 minutes at least".

On the flipside of the "$8 is good for 2 hours of entertainment" argument, I have huge amounts of time in tons of indie games; 200 hours in Hades ($20 when I bought in early access), 100+ in Hollow Knight ($15), 1000s of hours in League of Legends (free), just got up to 100 hours in Rimworld ($30), etc.

$8 is only $4 less than what I pay to HumbleMonthly for 10 or so games every month....
 
SunnyD said:
Trying to justify your entitlement mentality doesn't make it anymore petty. It's a video game. Yes, you ARE paying for two hours of entertainment. Your expectations of cost amortization are irrelevant, especially if you're one of those people that left a positive review.

And ffs, if 2 hours of entertainment costs less than your typical fast food meal, I'd say you got your money's worth.
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No, you're paying for a piece of software. You looking at it as time makes you entitled as a software developer. I can give a few examples that by looking at it as time spent is just stupid, and wrong.

1. Grinds! I don't know what game developer thought that grinding in a game is fun but fuck them. This is just a cheap and easy way to extend time spent in a game, which is typically found in MMO type games. Nobody said they enjoy grinding in a game, but I bet a lot of developers said they enjoy putting them into a game.

2. Micro-transactions. We're now seeing games that can save you time but spending real money. Assassin's Creed Odyssey with its infamous XP boosts is one example. MMO's with character boosts that allow you to skip the game for money. The list of things that can save you time in a game is ludicrous but somehow we overlook that this is just shit game design that's now profitable. Instead of just putting in fun quests or lowering the requirements to enter a certain part of a game. How many people wanted to skip Skyrim and just go to the main boss? Some people haven't even killed the main story quest in Skyrim because all the side quests are so fun.

3. Speaking of quests there's copy and paste quests. There's just so many of these in UBISoft games which is why I tend to avoid them for this reason. They aren't fun, and they aren't creative, but they do seem copy and pasted from other parts of the game. This is just busy work, meant to waste your time so you feel that this $60 you spent is actually worth $60.

I can also factor is how good of a gamer you are. Maybe for me it takes a weekend while for some people it took a month. Does that mean they got more value of their game? This is why time spent in a game is not a realistic fair value to give to a game because we see what they've done to artificially extend game time.
 
There's been too much fixation on price in this thread. People have different values and reaching universal agreement on the fairness of a price is unlikely within this lifetime.

The problem is one of expectations and it is solved by providing potential buyers with some indication of the game's length.

Edit: Hopefully the updated game description is all that's needed.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
$8.99 is cheap, but it is not 2 hours cheap.

I expect to get a AAA single player game on sale at $29.99 or less depending on the title, 2-3 years after launch, and I expect to get 40 hours for that. Not 40 hours of useless padded content, but 40 hours off true game and good story.
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I may have to walk this back a little.

I certainly hope to get 40 hours out of a good immersive open world title. (what I am usually interested in)

For a more scripted title, I'd probably be happy with about 20.

I just finished Black Mesa, and the ~20 hours it took me felt about right.

By the end the Xen levels were starting to feel a little too Doom/Quake-like and thus boring. It was time for it to end.
 
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I like games that are around 5 - 10 hours, but action packed. You can finish in a few days and it doesn't drag on.

Hellblade was 6 hours and it was an insane experience. It didn't need to be longer. It was perfect.
 
I don't mind paying $8 or even $10 for a game that I enjoyed. You people put too damn much value on dollar per hour. If you enjoyed it and wasn't a broken buggy mess you are a total douche bag for refunding it. Hell going to the movie theater will cost you more money for 2 hours. There were many games I have beaten in less then 10 hours and paid $60 for and didn't complain if I enjoyed it. I don't need 100 hour epic games. When games start approaching 40 hour I start getting bored and then they just become work and lose their appeal. I can understand if you are hard up for money but I like to believe the majority of people on this site are professionals with well paying careers. I find it ridiculous how anal you people are over $10.
 
Tengis said:
My kids conned me into buying some BS game a guy made in Unreal Engine. Some Youtubers were pushing it and my kids begged for it.... was some really basic horror game.

We beat it in about 20 minutes and it was $5. I need to make a super basic game and then get Youtubers to push it to kids.
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good ol SLENDER. that was actually pretty spooky at the time though.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Sure it could be. Look at the price of a movie ticket or buying a movie.
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Apples vs Oranges. Movies are a passive experience with a fixed length you agree to upon purchase (you did see the run time on the box/streaming entry right?). Games generally have no such equivalent on their sales pages or boxes.

I noticed they do have that on THIS game. So people knew what they were getting into IN THIS CASE. But for games in general this does not exist.
 
kju1 said:
Apples vs Oranges. Movies are a passive experience with a fixed length you agree to upon purchase (you did see the run time on the box/streaming entry right?). Games generally have no such equivalent on their sales pages or boxes.

I noticed they do have that on THIS game. So people knew what they were getting into IN THIS CASE. But for games in general this does not exist.
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The developer updated the page later to show the length, after the backlash. But in the absence of information, people should just not assume a game is 10 hours, or 40 hours, especially if it clearly is an indie game.
 
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