In today's episode of Speak-Up on Kotaku, commenter Phantomlink ponders the research that goes into buying a new game, and proffers a mathematical formula for determining if a game was worth your time and money.
I was just wondering how fellow Kotakunites go about on purchasing their incoming games, especially with everyone being conscious about their money lately? Do you grab games anymore without doing much research but knowing it "should" be good based on its IP or developer? Or is there some math and science behind your purchases now?
Myself, I rarely buy a game off the shelf anymore. Not just cause of saving money but primarily my record with blind purchases has been bad over the last few attempts. I do look up reviews from some gaming sites or dev diaries and things like that to get a feel for the games potential to me. Word of mouth from some friends/co-workers. Unfortunately I don't play more than one game at a time for the most part so when there's a period of various games being released some of the latter games drop in price before I get around to them ( either buying or renting, good old Gamepass from Blockbuster next door )
The newest way I've been determining my investment in a game or not is the game's price vs. hours played. Here a movie is typically $10. Cut that down to an hour and it's about $6/h or so. If a video game I buy is $60, and I get more than 10 hours out of it then it's a deal to me. If the game is $30 and I get 20-30 hours out of it? Even better deal. It lets me enjoy my game AND I save my money as well which means more games!
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