Video games can be expensive, especially when you're taking a chance with something you haven't tried or seen much of. The eBay Deals team has put together a way to see a game's ROI (return on investment) so you can see what games—and DLC—may have the best value per your dollar.
Using a formula that includes factors like prices, review scores, and average time to completion, the team came up with a rating system to easily compare games and their DLC. I spoke with them about their method:
Assuming a longer game is a better deal than a shorter game, we looked at how many quality hours of gameplay you get per dollar spent on the game. Quality time is simply the number of hours to beat the main story multiplied by the games overall rating by users and critics. An important nuance here is that certain games, such as many in the FPS or RPG genres, are mainly about multiplayer action and have no set amount of time to beat a main story. For these games, we used the average length for all the other games combined. In order to be fair to every game we only used the game length for the main story, even though some people greatly enjoy doing all the side quests for their favorite games.
Using their information, you can look at a game and see the suggested retail price, the current price, how long it takes to beat the game on average, the average review rating for the title, and—most importantly—the Value Rating (VR). The higher the Value Rating, the better deal you're likely getting with that particular title or batch of DLC.
Of course, a game's value is subjective, and they are aware of that. The eBay Deals team just seeks to answer the enduring question of "What makes a video game worthwhile?":
We tried to treat every game equally by being as quantitative as possible in our measurements. This way we could cut through the pretty graphics and get to the heart of what makes a game fun. Additionally, many have criticized game developers for bringing lackluster products to market in order to generate more revenue by forcing gamers to purchase downloadable content (DLC) to get the full experience. We wanted to find out if there is any evidence to support that... Video games are quite personal for many people, so I think in order to have any sort of meaningful analysis you have to be subjective. Our approach tried to combine these two worlds.
For example, a game that costs $60 could be much less appealing—or valuable—to me than a game that costs $20 and has a much smaller ROI. If you have good idea of what you like, however, these ratings and stats can help you decided whether a game or it's DLC is worth your hard-earned money.
Not every game ever made is available, obviously, but they have a decent library of over 300 popular titles to browse through and compare in an easy to understand interactive graph. For those that want to see more games—particularly recently released games—the eBay Deals team encourages anyone who is interested to download the interactive data set on the landing page and add their favorite games to the mix. Head to the link for an interactive version of the graph below with a ton more games.
Video Game ROI | eBay Deals