Something has changed in the way we measure the value of games.
And I’m not sure when it happened.
Back in the 1990s, paying full price for a game that lasted 10–20 hours was completely normal. Many action games were considerably shorter than that. RPGs were usually the big exception.
You bought a game.
You played it.
You finished it.
If it gave you a great weekend, you were happy.
Today, things are very different.
Spend a few minutes reading Steam reviews and sooner or later you’ll encounter something like this:
“There's nothing left to do.”
Playtime: 327 hours.
Or:
“The game gets repetitive.”
Playtime: 614 hours.
And occasionally my favorite variation:
“Not enough content.”
Playtime: 1,000+ hours.
Now, before anyone reaches for a pitchfork, I’m NOT saying that someone who has played for 500 hours has lost the right to criticize a game.
Quite the opposite.
Those players probably understand the game better than almost anyone else. They can see balancing problems, late-game repetition, broken progression systems and design flaws that somebody playing for ten hours may never encounter.
A game can also change dramatically after release. Updates can make it better or worse.
But there is another question worth asking:
When did “I eventually became bored” start meaning “the game didn't have enough content”?
Because those are two very different things.
If a game entertained you for 200 hours before you became bored, perhaps becoming bored wasn't evidence that the game failed.
Perhaps you simply… finished what it had to offer.
THE HOURS-PER-DOLLAR PROBLEM
Modern gaming has quietly created a strange measurement for entertainment:
Hours per dollar.
A $20 game lasting 100 hours is considered fantastic value.
A $40 game lasting eight hours can immediately be described as “too short.”
On paper, the logic makes sense.
More entertainment for the same money sounds better.
But apply the same calculation to other forms of entertainment and things become weird very quickly.
We don't leave a two-hour movie complaining that it should have lasted 17 hours because the ticket was expensive.
We don't finish a novel and demand another 600 pages for free.
Nobody reviews an album negatively because it only contains 45 minutes of music.
Games somehow became different.
Part of this probably comes from the games that changed our expectations.
MMOs, survival games, competitive multiplayer games, sandbox games and live-service titles demonstrated that a single game could entertain someone for hundreds or even thousands of hours.
Then achievement systems, daily challenges, battle passes, seasonal content and endless progression arrived.
Somewhere along the way, finishing a game stopped being the obvious destination.
Games became places we were expected to live in.
AND DEVELOPERS NOTICED
This expectation inevitably affects game design.
If players judge value partly by playtime, developers have an incentive to make games longer.
So maps become bigger.
There are more collectibles.
More crafting materials.
More upgrade tiers.
More side missions.
More progression systems.
More things to fill bars with.
Sometimes these systems genuinely make a game deeper.
Sometimes they are wonderful.
But sometimes a fantastic 25-hour game gets stretched into an 80-hour game because “80 hours of content” looks much better on a store page.
And that's where the hours-per-dollar calculation starts working against us.
I'd rather play a game that gives me 15 memorable hours than one that gives me 100 hours while making me repeat the same activity 200 times.
Length and value are related.
But they aren't the same thing.
THIS IS SOMETHING WE THINK ABOUT WITH ORE BASTARDS
Developing Ore Bastards has made this question especially interesting for us.
Mining games naturally encourage long playtimes.
You mine.
You earn money.
You improve your ship.
You travel farther.
You find better equipment.
You become stronger and start looking for the next objective.
And we're adding systems intended to expand that journey considerably: the Skill Tree, Artifacts, factions, mining camps, player stations, drones, mercenaries and more.
But there is a danger here too.
We don't want to add systems simply so we can say:
“LOOK! 300 HOURS OF CONTENT!”
If those 300 hours contain 70 hours of interesting decisions and 230 hours of repetition, we've achieved nothing.
Our goal is not to keep someone trapped inside Ore Bastards forever.
Our goal is to make the time they choose to spend there enjoyable.
Maybe that's 30 hours.
Maybe it's 100.
Maybe somebody falls in love with mining rocks in space and plays for 700 hours.
All three are fine.
Eventually that player may say:
“Okay. I've seen enough.”
And perhaps that's fine too.
A game ending — or a player simply being finished with it — isn't necessarily a failure.
SO WE'RE CURIOUS
We'd genuinely like to hear what you think.
How long does a game need to be before you consider it good value?
Would you rather have an excellent 15-hour game or a good 100-hour game?
Does price change your answer?
And here's the question we're especially interested in:
If you play a game for 300 hours and eventually become bored with it, can you still say the game didn't have enough content?
There probably isn't one correct answer.
But as developers trying to decide how large Ore Bastards should ultimately become, we're very interested in yours.
Because games may be the only entertainment medium where someone can play for 800 hours and then write:
“Got bored: 6/10.”