stop measuring games in "dollar per hour"

the concept of measuring games in hours, more specifically as "dollar per hour" is such a capitalist brain-worm way of valuing things, that doesn't even make any sense

first that games aren't always linear consistent experiences, a game can have a story line that takes 8 hours to go trough but it takes a 100 hours hours to get every collectible or achievement, or is a game with multiple story paths you can explore each time, or an 'endless' games like tetris, minecraft or every multiplayer title, none of those cases you know for how long you'll play the game until right after you're done with it, which is simply unpredictable and only applies to your experience

most important, enjoyment isn't quantitative, it's qualitative, you'll enjoy certain games a lot more or less, certain mechanics or stories might resonate better or worse with you, mechanics or stories might be better done with certain lengths and aren't scalable. your subjective enjoyment is not something that can be put in a bar graph as a function of time!

this mentality especially sucks because it tends to value more games that end up having more padding (lots of repetitive quests, shallow grinding, treadmills of content) than ones that have a solid vision of what they want to be and execute it well with a concise start middle and end

and this is more personal, but longer or "infinite" games feel like a trap, where you're captive to a singular experience, and don't get to experience variety. personally playing 10 games with 4 to 8 hours of unique stories and mechanics each is so much more enriching than spending 80 hours with the same game over and over again for days on end, you do you though

the capitalism brain-worm

art, entertainment is not - or at least should not be - a consumable like iron or coal, it doesn't have some objective value by utility, it is non interchangeable and personal, and anyone telling you otherwise is someone who doesn't truly value human experience, the same kind of view that pushes for ai "art" or the mistreatment of developers and artists, also why calling it "content" is such a reductive thing to do

Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

one can say that given the opportunity, gamers will optimize the fun out of gaming, where it's constant discussion about technical aspects, development cycles, revenue, competitive balancing, if it's woke or not, how many dollars per hour it is worth, about everything, except about "I'm having fun"