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IMO, a game price shouldn't be about how many hours of gameplay it provides... $30 for a mobile clicker game just seems too much to me. I don't think it holds

IMO, a game price shouldn't be about how many hours of gameplay it provides... $30 for a mobile clicker game just seems too much to me. I don't think it holds so much value. NES games were a lot harder to and took more time to produce (we're talking writing the game in assembly for a lot of them) and had less effective tools at producing content than we have today. You also had to assembly the cartridge and transport it to the retails. Hardware was not as cheap as today (nor was transport I believe). Compare that to your 2017 mobile game which can be distributed via internet (very cheap), produced at a high level language, and you can make in less than 2 weeks with less than 4 people.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
As someone who's playing the game - why do I care whether it took you and three friends two weeks, or a team of seventy people three years? That's all completely opaque to me.
duckmysick 9y ago
> I don't think it holds so much value. Don't you think that a game providing hundreds of hours of gameplay does hold a lot of value for the user? Getting hours (or even days) of entertainment for $30 certainly looks like a good deal. Especially if you compare it to $8.50 for a ticket to a 2-hour movie. It also follows the sentiment often found on HN, where freelancers and consultants are advised to price their services based on the value they provide to their clients. Pricing is more nuanced than just calculating the expenses.
CaptSpify 9y ago
To add to your point: Quality is an issue here. If you put Bastion, or Fez, or something else high-quality out, sure, $30 might be OK. Clicker games are not nearly as engaging as those games were. It's not just the cost/hour that we should measure with, it's also the quality/hour.