One of the things we’re very much aware of in the Komplett offices is the dwindling amount of free time that people find themselves with these days. The fact is that an awful lot of people spend their hard earned cash on games and, very often, end up not finishing or even really playing them for any significant time at all.

Sure, you've got a monstrous rig, but when was the last time you finished a game?

Considering the amount that people spend on keeping their hardware up to date, to play the latest games at high resolutions or, in some cases, just to keep the old benchmarks impressive. Still, we were curious to see to what extent people felt they got value for money out of the games they opted to pick up, what the average gaming spend in Ireland might be and just what kind of games people got value for money from.

Games Per Annum:

One of the things we found particularly impressive about the survey was that it was almost perfectly equally split between people who classed themselves as console gamers or PC gamers. While fully 1/3 seemed to belong to both camps, not identifying themselves as either, the split between console and PC gamers sat at 51.3% to 48.7%, though the results could well have been weighted in favour of the PC by our readership on that one.

One of our readers estimated 45 games purchased in the last six months...

When we asked people roughly how many games they had purchased in the last six months we got some fairly impressive results. While some had to be discounted (as they’d simply written “Far too many…“ “Not enough, exam time,” or similar) we did come to a fairly round, and perhaps unusually high average figure. Of those surveyed, the average number of games purchased in the last six months works out at around the 8.56 mark.

That puts the number of games purchased on average at just a shade over 17 games per person, per annum.

From there, we asked users what proportion of those games they had finished, and were fairly surprised with the results. On average users finished or felt they’d gotten their money’s worth from 3.5 games they’d bought in the last six months.

At this point we have to point out that one of our respondents, who had bought 15 games in the last six months, simply wrote, “No” when asked about the number he felt he’d gotten his money’s worth from. We feel for him.

Still, that means that, in an average year, those surveyed finish around 7 games, significantly less than half of their total purchased.

Games Worth Their Salt:

Something we’ve long wanted to know about in more detail was which series, and indeed, which developers, manage to produce games on a regular basis that Irish gamers listed as being more than worth the asking price. It’s no small feat, to develop a game that wins that kind of affection, so we thought it’d be interesting to see what developers managed to come up in as many lists as possible.

Constant additions to Valve's Team Fortress 2 have kept the game fresh over the years

There were a few games and developers that came up time and time again when we asked people to name games they felt they’d gotten more than their fair share from. While everyone had their own favourite games and there were a few fairly obvious gems.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series was a surprisingly strong contender, but it seems that most seemed to prefer GTA 3 and Vice City over later installations, with only one respondent listing GTA 4. If nothing else, it’s impressive to see such single player focussed experiences so fondly remembered in a market rapidly gearing itself towards multiplayer.

Valve too made an awful lot of users lists, with many listing Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 as the games they feel they’ve gotten the most value from over the course of their gaming tenure. If nothing else, it’s curious to see the largely single player Half-Life games so well represented here, since, again, there would seem naturally to be more play time in multi-player games almost by-defintion.

Blizzard games topped a lot of lists from our readers

Blizzard tips the scale as the other most commended developer on the list, though surprisingly enough not for their practically market dominating MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Indeed, those who did list a Blizzard game all listed the 1999 2D RTS StarCraft, and given the professional scene and the active player base, it’s perhaps not entirely surprising. Moreover, the monthly subscription fee likely counted against the MMOs.

Modern Warfare 2 has also made an awful lot of lists, and while its October release marks it as by far the most recent of the games to have made it, it’s well worth consideration. Certainly, Infinity Ward’s record-breaking release still has the thrill of some novelty to it, but whether or not that sheen stands the test of time remains to be seen.

Physical versus Digital Distribution:

It’s worth noting that Irish gamers seem to prefer buying physical games by a fairly wide margin than shopping for downloadable content. Naturally, this will likely be stinted by the number of console gamers surveyed who are more less likely to find the same games on offer via digital distribution, but the results are still interesting.

There are few things as enticing as a well populated Steam list

Indeed, the statistic we’ve come up with is that 64.3% of Irish gamers prefer to buy their games physically, rather than via download.

It’s fairly curious, but the responses give a very firm indication of just why this is. In many cases, people listed the fact that a game will often cost the same for a physical copy as it would for direct download, which leaves those who don’t pick up a physical copy feeling as though they’re missing out (if only on the physicality of the disc, game and box). Indeed, questions of ownership were raised very frequently.

Aside from feeling that users don’t truly “own” content bought on services like Steam, many cited the fact that the connection speeds offered in their areas simply aren’t fast enough to allow for game downloading. It’s a fairly telling fact with respect to the state of communications in Ireland that the single biggest issue people took with downloadable content was that their connection speed wasn’t sufficient.

When it came to reasons for buying physical copies of games, other than those already included in the above, the biggest reason people had was they loved the option to buy pre-owned games, which is fairly hard to fault, given the savings that could be made.

Pre-Owned/Budget Games:

One statistic we were particularly interested in was the number of users who opt to buy games pre-owned or once they’ve dropped in price to become “budget” or “platinum” or bestseller options.

Even non-gaming focused shops are stocking pre-owned games now...

We found that gamers who buy games pre-owned in any kind of volume seem to buy a lot of them, while there seemed to be more clustering around the 10-20% side of things. Given the average numbers of games bought in a year (based on our stats) that would seem to indicate that most of our readers buy around 3-4 pre-owned or budget games per year.

Strangely enough, there was a massive number of users who simply don’t buy any budget or pre-owned games at all, with fully 18% of respondents apparently not feeling the pinch of the current economic crisis at all. Similarly, none of our respondents buy exclusively budget and pre-owned titles, while a little over 9% said that 70-80% of the games they buy are budget/pre-owned.

Conclusions:

Given the number of times that the question of price was raised when people were considering why they did or didn’t buy from digital distribution (whether because of special offers on digital services or because of the fact that physical shops can offer a wide selection of pre-owned games at knocked down prices, it’s clear that price is an important factor not only in determining people’s gaming habits, but also their shopping habits.

We were also curious to see the same developers being named time and time again in people’s lists of games that have been excellent value for money, especially considering the fact that, with the possible exception of Rockstar, they were developers that tend to be almost universally disparaged for their lengthy delays to game releases.

So, it seems that gamers, while they can, and often do, complain at great length about delays to game releases, the upshot of those often infamous delays seems to be that games end up being well remembered and offer great value when they do eventually release… perhaps delays aren’t so very bad a thing at all?

Thanks:

Aside from all that we just have to say thanks to the people who made this survey possible, not least of whom Damien Mulley, who was kind enough to link us on his blog and send the survey a lot more traffic than if we’d done it on our own. Also, the folks from our forum over at Boards.ie were excellent and helped us decide what questions we needed to ask as well as providing some of the inspiration for the whole thing.