I just found out from multiple sources that Child of Eden can be finished in about an hour, yet the game is selling for almost the full retail price of $50 dollars. To me that is absurd. This games seems like it would have been a much better choice as a downloadable title for $10 dollars. Even then, $10 is still a lot of an hour of gameplay. Sure there you can go back and try to perfect your scores or whatever the game has, and try to unlock everything, but for those who are just playing through for the experience, they can expect to finish it in one short sitting.
Child of Eden
Game » consists of 10 releases. Released Jun 14, 2011
Q Entertainment's music shooter for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It features support for the Kinect and Move controllers, and is considered a spiritual successor to the cult classic, Rez.
$50 for 1 hour of gameplay?
Normally I'd agree with you, but it's one thing to make that argument when a single player campaign is 5 hours long. But an hour to an hour and ahalf? Single player in games has been getting progressively shorter this generation, and it just seems like some weird test of how far the boundaries are to release a game that can be completed in an hour for 50 dollars. People used this excuse to justify it when FPS games fell below 8 hours of campaign, and again when a game like Homefront was only like 4 hours long. And now we have one that's an hour to 90 minutes long? At some point it doesn't doesn't cut it anymore. There has to be some sort of limit on how far that line carries, IMO.Time is not a factor when buying games, if the experince can justify it.
According to this review it lasts about "six hours for anyone with a competent level of hand eye co-ordination"
One, shouldn't this be in the Child of Eden forum?
Two, I played and finished it last night and it will definitely take you about 90 minutes if you don't die (you will, probably), but it's not about "beating" those five areas and never playing it again. There's a challenge mode in a new area that unlocks after you beat the game on normal, a hard difficulty, tons of stuff to collect, and if you're into achievements, then you will be spending an unholy amount of time getting them all because they are hard. You absolutely have to play through it once to even get good enough at it to bother with anything else the game has to offer. It wasn't until the last area that I finally felt really confident and solid at the game. Now I just want to play it again.
Anyway, may not sound like your thing, but even if I never played it again, my $50 was in no way wasted. It's incredible. I would buy this game at full price once a week for the rest of my life if it meant I could go back in time and not pre-order Homefront, for example. How long a game lasts should be one of the last things you concern yourself with. Its quality is all that matters, and Child of Eden is of major quality and endlessly replayable.
We forget how expensive NES games were ($40-$50 in the 80s) and how many of those you could blaze through in half an hour.
@rosebud04: Here are two of the reviews I read. One is from gamespot, and the other from joystiq
"You can finisht the five main levels and see the credits in a little over and hour"
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/child-of-eden/review.html?tag=topslot;title;2
As each of the five archives lasts around 10 to 15 minutes"(there are five archives, making it about an hour to an hour and a half)
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/14/child-of-eden-review/
Granted, the joystiq review does say that it is an essential game regardless of the price, especially if you played the first one, having never touched the first game, there is nothing that would compel me to buy it at this price
I really liked the look and feel that I'm getting from this game, and I'm sure it'll have a high replay value to me. But it's not worth that full price to me as of right now. Maybe when it drops down a bit.
As I see it, it's similar to Flower. If you loved that game and adored the experience you had with it then it'll be similar with Child of Eden, if not then don't buy it.
I'm in the 'it's all about the experience' camp when it comes to Child of Eden. Same with Rez.
Rez was EXACTLY THE SAME. So suprise suprise the sequel to it, made by the same guy is also short and sweet and can be finished in a hour or two. I have played Rez and Rez HD more times over the last 10 years than any call of duty campaign that you play once and never touch again.
I'm waiting on my copy to arrive. It will be like a breath of fresh air after duke nukem, the perfect example of length not meaning shit if the game is boring as fuck.
If you pick up CoE play it for an hour or two then afterwards have your first thought be "That was short" and put it on your shelf and never play it again or take to back to the store then I think you're missing the point entirely.
Rez was EXACTLY THE SAME. So suprise suprise the sequel to it, made by the same guy is also short and sweet and can be finished in a hour or two.Who the hell cares? This is 2011, not 2001/2002. Standards have changed and the reason we have downloadable games now is because it provides a great avenue for short games that don't justify, from their length or scope, a full retail release. Tons of super short games came out like that back in those days, it was because we had no choice but to have them out as retail releases.
You obviously aren't the target audience anyway by the sounds of it, just pick it up in a few years for a couple of bucks and stop whining.
I will be supporting more unique and risk taking games like this with my money.
@Tylea002 said:
I can beat the street fighter 'game' in about 12 minutes. This isn't how value works.
This is absolutely the best example of why price paid doesn't equate to value.
This is an outrage, how dare they! If only there was some way that you could not buy the game because you do not see it as a value purchase!
Wait.....
Oh ok, you wont mind if they charge you $500 for Skyrim then, because you can play that for a long ass time.
@nick_verissimo said:
@Tylea002 said:
I can beat the street fighter 'game' in about 12 minutes. This isn't how value works.
This is absolutely the best example of why price paid doesn't equate to value.
Eh, sure, yes. That is true: paying more does not imply getting more out of a game. But I can understand the complaint here. Each fight in a Street Fighter is potentially a different experience. You can switch tactics, characters, difficulty and in some versions, toy with the "dip switches" to further tweak your fights. That's not something you can do in a title of the nature of Child of Eden. I'm not criticizing the game per se, but rather the price tag. And the comparison you're trying to draw with Street Fighter, FIFA and other games that rely heavily on replay value. How can you justify that longer games with more replay value are less expensive?
This is an outrage, how dare they! If only there was some way that you could not buy the game because you do not see it as a value purchase! Wait.....You're right. People never have the right to express an opinion on anything. Ever.
Hey OP. Fellow Roma fan(if your avatar is indicative of you being a fan) here.
Also no I don't think it's worth it. I will be buying Eden on sale, it should be 20 on Amazon within a month or two.
@thabigred said:
Hey OP. Fellow Roma fan(if your avatar is indicative of you being a fan) here.
Also no I don't think it's worth it. I will be buying Eden on sale, it should be 20 on Amazon within a month or two.
Oh no it won't be. If it's anything like REZ, the price will go up over time. The only place this game is going for cheap is the Asian markets because the band this game is associated with released the album for this game in 2008. Stateside this game will just keep raising in price just like REZ so you're better off paying the import fees on Play-Asia or something.
@KaosAngel said:
@thabigred said:
Hey OP. Fellow Roma fan(if your avatar is indicative of you being a fan) here.
Also no I don't think it's worth it. I will be buying Eden on sale, it should be 20 on Amazon within a month or two.
Oh no it won't be. If it's anything like REZ, the price will go up over time. The only place this game is going for cheap is the Asian markets because the band this game is associated with released the album for this game in 2008. Stateside this game will just keep raising in price just like REZ so you're better off paying the import fees on Play-Asia or something.
I almost want to screencap your post and pm you when the price drops on Amazon. I don't think you know how Amazon works.
This is a really dumb response. There is a ceiling to the price of video games, and right now that is $60 for a normal edition of a game. Regardless of length of time, no one is going to pay more, and no one is going to charge more than $60 for a game in this current market and time. With that price point, or whatever price point underneath it, there is an expectation of a certain amount of value for the money spent. The purpose of the original post was to see how the community felt about the value being presented with Child of Eden compared to the price point.Oh ok, you wont mind if they charge you $500 for Skyrim then, because you can play that for a long ass time.
@thabigred said:
I almost want to screencap your post and pm you when the price drops on Amazon. I don't think you know how Amazon works.
If this turns out to be the next REZ, they under produced copies on purpose to inflate the price. There are a lot of obscure Japanese games that keep raising in price due to the demand.
This is a case of the old adage; don't like it? don't eat. This game is obviously not for everyone, comparing it to other games that are so unlike it on such a basic level is both pointless and idiotic.
Value is perception, the people that bought Rez and enjoyed it are going to be the people who will pay the asking price for this game. The people who never touched Rez but are seeing this game getting high praise (therefore wanting it) and then realising the reviewers are stating its 90minutes long are in my opinion wrong to bitch and moan about the price because of some preconceived value of games by length that are unrelated to THIS game.
@KaosAngel said:
@thabigred said:
I almost want to screencap your post and pm you when the price drops on Amazon. I don't think you know how Amazon works.
If this turns out to be the next REZ, they under produced copies on purpose to inflate the price. There are a lot of obscure Japanese games that keep raising in price due to the demand.
They didn't under produce to inflate prices, they under produced because printing out discs are expensive and they underestimated the excitement for the game. It was a different era, Japanese companies rarely do this. You only hear about this now with weird imports and some DS games because carts are expensive.
They developed this game to be used a long side kinect, there is NO way they underproduced this time around.
If you don't see this as an "experience" or "art" then you're probably not the target market for this.
90 min worth of unique hand-crafted assets set to original music seems expensive to make. It's not like they're going the vector graphics route of Rez - it looks like there is a huge investment in the look of the game.
Ultimately you have a niche title giving a unique, high-quality, hand-crafted experience to the player that simply can't be found anywhere else. I want experiences like this to exist. I have absolutely no problem spending $50 for that. I never once considered how long the game would be.
(For the record, I'm not someone who buys a lot of full priced boxed games either... but I will pay full price when I think the experience is worth it.)
@craigbo180 said:Glad you came around.This is an outrage, how dare they! If only there was some way that you could not buy the game because you do not see it as a value purchase! Wait.....You're right. People never have the right to express an opinion on anything. Ever.
@christ0phe said:
@NeverDave said:This is a really dumb response. There is a ceiling to the price of video games, and right now that is $60 for a normal edition of a game. Regardless of length of time, no one is going to pay more, and no one is going to charge more than $60 for a game in this current market and time. With that price point, or whatever price point underneath it, there is an expectation of a certain amount of value for the money spent. The purpose of the original post was to see how the community felt about the value being presented with Child of Eden compared to the price point.Oh ok, you wont mind if they charge you $500 for Skyrim then, because you can play that for a long ass time.
It's dumb but it's accurate, if you want to start assigning price just to length then we need to change the cost of a lot of games. Or you know the price could just represent the quality and experience like it currently does which is just fine. If you don't know why or can't understand how they can charge this much for this game then you're not the target and probably shouldn't worry about it.
I'm enjoying listening to all these people who haven't played it try to decide whether it's worth the money or not.
I bought it, I played it, I more than got my money's worth.
Would you rather spend $50 on something that is not Child of Eden? Great. Do that then.
Would you like Child of Eden but don't want to pay $50? Great. Wait a few months.
/thread
@christ0phe said:
@NeverDave: So are you saying that this game is 5 times the quality and experience of something like Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Torchlight, Pac-Man DX, or Braid among countless others. Because they are similar, if not longer in length, and they cost significantly less. It's not about price, it's about value. And I'm definitely not the target audience for this. I don't really have an interest in the game at all, I just wanted to see what the rest of the community thought
All I said was, and in regard to the thread title is that you can't charge for games solely based on the length. Nothing more nothing less.
@christ0phe said:
@Shuborno: Oh, I'm definitely not the target market for this and I have no intention of ever buying it. This isn't because I'm some COD fanboy, who only likes shooters, but the "art" of Child of Eden doesn't really appeal to me. Something like the "art" of Limbo I find much more engaging, and a lot more accesible at $15. I mainly posited the question because i wanted to know how people felt about the price in relation to the game length, and if people thought they were getting appropriate value for their money.
That's completely fair. My expectation is that the niche who wants Child of Eden will happily pay $50 for it.
Did you watch the Deathsmiles Quick Look that came out a few weeks ago? It's that Japanese unlocalized bullet hell shooter that MS put up on Games on Demand for $30. Jeff was complaining that it didn't seem like $30 of value, but I figured that to the people who want that kind of game and don't have to import, $30 is a steal. I'm certainly not in the target market for that though.
Reviewers should be up front about the length just in case that's an issue for everyone else. The fact is that play time is relevant for a lot of people because games are expensive.
Limbo is another good example of when this argument came up. I haven't played it yet but I've purchased it, and I was happy with the $15 price point for 3 hours since I hear it's an experience that will stick with me. Braid was similar in that it was a $15 game with no replay value that was just dense with the quality of experience.
I understand that developers are getting lazy these days and putting less and less in to their single player "campaigns", but I don't think games like Child of Eden, Limbo and Braid are examples of that. I think the developers of those games understand the length of experience that is most suited to the game they are making and focus on making that time the best experience possible.
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