Game Value: Penny Arcade vs. Aquaria

A lot of people have been complaining about the $20 price for Penny Arcade’s “On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness” (RSPD). RSPD has about 8-10 hours of gameplay for $20, which is a high price for 8-10 hours of gameplay, especially on a game with incredibly low replay value.

The counterargument is that compared to other forms of entertainment RSPD is a good value, and that $20 isn’t that high a price tag anyway. The thinking is that you could, comparatively, rent $20 worth of movies, that’s $5 per movie, and let’s say on average every movie is about 1 hour and 30 minutes long. That’s 4 movies you could rent total for about 6 hours of entertainment. RSPD then is worth 2 hours more entertainment, and let’s not even get into the hypothetical question of comparing RSPD’s value to actually going to a movie theater (if you measure time=value...) The other counterargument is that $20 isn’t that hard to come by if you limit yourself to how much you can spend in a given week on entertainment, not to mention you could pick up Portal from the Orange Box for $50, and Portal has a short gametime as well.

The problem with the first counterpoint is that we shouldn’t compare the amount of time/value of one product for the amount of time/value of another unrelated product. Movies and games are different, and thus comparing their price values will always be a tricky thing (unless you’re only watching movies or playing games specifically to kill time.) Conversely I could spend $200 on a hooker for 45 minutes of entertainment and I doubt there’d be a soul alive who would say playing a videogame would be time better spent. There’s a plethora of indie-games out there for $20 and less, and most of these games cost less than RSPD, last longer than RSPD, and have better replayability than RSPD. Aquaria also costs $20, but is incredibly longer, deeper, better polished, and in general a better game with infinite replay value (dev tools are included with each purchase, and an intuitive map creator.) This of course doesn’t even include Xbox live games, considerably cheaper and with a greater value.

RSPD does give less value per dollar than most other choices, and the complaints of people who purchased the first game are very valid. Of course fans of Penny Arcade will purchase this game, and any games after it for the same price tag, in the long run I think it’d be wise of PA to simply drop the price down to the $10-$15 dollar range. I’d believe they’d reap far more than their $20 offering for a game that, is fun, but not $20 worth of fun... Unless you’re a hardcore PA fan.