I hate games with very low playtime or just not very appealing to replay. Some of my best buys:

The ascent, Grim dawn, Shadow tactics blades of the shogun

Currently finishing Deperado's 3 (version 1 and 2 is not very good imo due to incompatible graphics updates).

R&D as an analogy, if the game does something new, creates a new experience then it's worth extra because you can't get it anywhere else until poor copies appear in a few years

Replayability and Flow. Length doesn't matter look at AC games. But I could re run RE games or Respec new build in Elden Ring and feel the rush of making decisions on the fly and anticipating the dodge when an enemy could almost touch me

Beauty, same as movies I guess when you get to experience people's creativity, not in overproduced generic stuff like Amazon or Apple TV shows or Asscreed, but when there is a good art direction. Good design beats out fidelity any time

I already have enough zillion-hour games to grind, I don't need every game to be that. As much as I love JRPGs I have a hard time setting aside time to finish one these days since I have too much else I also want to play.

I think it definitely depends on the sort of game. I don't mind paying AAA pricing for a game that actually feels like the studio gave a rat's ass about providing good value. BG3, for example, was very much worth what I paid for it even just with the ~100 hours I got out of my first playthrough.

Of course, there have also been value kings that I'm not sure will ever be beaten for me in terms of price to hours played. Minecraft and Terraria are good examples here. I got Minecraft during either late Infdev or early Alpha, and so I paid fuck all compared to the current price. Considering I've probably put tens of thousands of hours into that shitshow in the over 13 years that I've played it, and I'd say it's more than been worth it. The same goes for Terraria. At 1.5k hours of playtime and counting, it'd've been worth it to me even at far more than the $10 price tag that I (probably) got it at way back when.

So tl;dr, I'd say that if a game is truly well-made and enjoyable, then I don't mind paying whatever the devs need to charge to keep their doors open. Bonus points if I can purchase the game DRM-free somehow.

I'm usually fine with $5/hour if the game is literally fantastic. Lower quality games I hope for more time out of it though.

@berg honestly, when it tells me a good story, either through traditional storytelling or when it's through my own emergent gameplay.

Games that aren't going to do that aren't even worth downloading for free.

Surprised I haven't seen monster hunter world / iceborn yet. Just a very good fun game to play

Spelunky 2 - $20. One of my all time favorites here. Over 200 hours in, don't regret any of them. I could easily double my playtime without seeing everything.

Dark Souls 1 - $30(?). Back in my teen years on the 360 I bought Dark Souls without knowing anything about it. I played through it with a buddy, passing the controller on death, and we had a blast. That first run transcends money for me, I would pay anything to keep that memory. Recently that same buddy and I replayed the game together and are now reworking our way through the series.

Racingmaybe - $3. This game is amazing. It's a turn based drag racing game with an upgrade system. This is the best driving game I have ever played, far and away. It's a hobby project by a solo developer. At it's $3 price point this game is well worth the money. Seriously, if you're reading this, buy it. Or drop your Steam name and I will gift it to you.

Mount & Blade: Warband - $20. This game is really starting to show its age but I still love it. Endless mod potential gives it tons of replayability.

I could go on forever but these ones came to mind first.

WHenever I bouoght a game I suppose

Honestly its hard to say for me. Generally I dont usually pay full price for games unless its a franchise I know I know I really enjoy and the general critical and user reviews confirm it isnt a dud. I usually dont find myself unhappy with my game purchases though. If Im usure about something I wait for a sale.

$5/hr of playtime to account for hours I may enjoy and not enjoy as much. That puts it on par with a cheap night out.

My favourite games are $0.02-$0.50/hour of play time.

I will buy a game when:

The gameplay is up my alley, or the experience is worth the time invested into it.

And

The final cost of the game after dlc is equal to or less than 1/10th the cost of my PC. Usually aim for 1/20th if I'm iffy about the gameplay.

When I got my PSX in 1997, the games sure felt like a good deal at $50 after paying $70+ for cartridges for years. I only got one new game per year at full price for my SNES. I also generally felt happier buying on PC because new games were also less than consoles for a while.

Now with the indie scene, there is a lot more variance, even though I also occasionally grab top-shelf releases. I still think FTL might have been the best $10 I've ever spent on a game. At the same time, I paid $60 for Persona 5 Royal right at launch even though I had played the original game, and I still thought it was incredible value.

Did a quick calculation and found that a 60$ game needs to be 35hrs to break even with movie prices edit: *where I live

Although I rarely think about game length when buying games. I find that what my gut says is a justified price is far more influenced by a game's reputation/store page/reviews/what kid of game I feel like playing at the moment. What I'm pricing is my perception of an experience, not an amount of enjoyment for an amount of time. After I buy a game then unless it's unexpectedly bad or broken I don't really think about whether it was worth the price. Edit: In fact for longer games I find myself thinking if it was worth the time more.

I think it's worth mentioning that I don't buy games with a hype wave behind them, so the "perception of experience" is closer to the actual experience than if you apply the same to new releases.

For game length, I find that left to my own devices I like when games are 10-20 hrs in length. For longer games I prefer when there's a driving story that I can strive for, and even then it gets boring around the 30-40 hr mark. Some open ended games captivate me for 100+ hours but that's not my expectation from a game.

I see that people are shouting out games in the comments, so I'll add one. Cyber Hook is a fantastic runner/platformer game. It's really fun (especially the beginning and dlc) and it's pretty cheap. It's not very long especially if you don't bother getting good times in levels but the experience alone is worth it. Although, for some reason it requires internet connection for game progression so take that into account when buying too.

For me, it's more about how much I enjoyed the experience than a simple dollars per hour equation or something. It's a very case by case basis for me.

I remember when Alien:Isolation came out, I told people I got my money's worth in just the first hour from how scared shitless I was the first few times the xenomorph came out to hunt you.

On the other side, I got Starfield for $20 off in the release week, but despite how many hours you can sink into that game, I found the entire experience rather bland and dull and regret buying it.