This Hobby is Cheap!

Google defines cheap as: Low in price; worth more than its cost. This is spot on when it comes to gaming. In yesterday’s entry I very briefly mentioned how over these past few months I have discovered that gaming is so cheap compared to other hobbies it’s almost incomprehensible. Let me share just a very brief insight into my own discovery process.

The average game runs about $64 including tax. I can get a bare minimum of 10 hours out of almost any game, and most actually exceed 30 hours. Some even breach the 200 hour mark like Battlefield or Call of Duty.

The average dinner for me and my fiancé runs about $35. I’m not talking a trip to Taco Bell. That’s more like $12 or less. I’m also not factoring in those $100 dinner nights or the even semi-nice $40-50 range. Straight up average costs about $35.  One night of dinner costs half the price of a video game. One meal. To make things a little more fair, I should probably calculate this on an individual basis.

Let’s itemize a few more expenses I’ve been able to experience over the past few months.

  • Movie Tickets: $12 each
  • Admission into Disneyland: $150’ish? (We have passes) / Halloween Party: $63 (or $56 with our passes)
  • Going anywhere: $3.45 / Gallon of gas (I get my gas at Sam’s Club and that’s what it was to fill up yesterday)

Those are just travel and event type hobbies or recreational activities. If you buy comic books, Magic the Gathering cards, modeling clay, or anything else you’ll also start to see how the prices quickly surpass gaming. Granted, there are single moments of greater expense that can be absolutely worth the higher price tag. A trip to Disneyland can be a magical experience and worth that price of admission (especially for young children) but on the balance these activities are premium for the entertainment value.

A monthly subscription to a MMO costs me $15. That’s like the gas to the theater and a ticket for one stinkin’ night. I can potentially get 30 days of play time. Let’s be uber conservative and say I’m one of those guys who can only play on Friday and Saturday nights. That’s still 8 nights or 8+ hours of entertainment for $15 vs. ANYTHING else.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to complain about the cost of the games or their upkeep when I can’t do anything else without paying substantially more. I’ve always been a value driven person. I’ll stop paying for a subscription to a MMO when I feel the MMO isn’t good enough to justify it — I’ve NEVER stopped because $15 is too much money. Looking ahead, I can’t imagine ever reaching a point where I’m having to tighten my belt and say, “Gee, I have to cancel that subscription to my MMO so that I can go to the movies once this month.”

Think about what you pay for in the world then think about gaming in terms of value. Everyone won’t agree, but I think most of you — if you’re being honest — will have no choice but to see the same thing.

Free to Play is a manipulation of the way our minds think. We don’t really need our games to be free. I’m happy paying such a relatively low price for a quality product that will give me 2-200x the value. I don’t need an even cheaper product for an even cheaper price. Just keep providing me with great value.

  • “Looking ahead, I can’t imagine ever reaching a point where I’m having to tighten my belt and say, “Gee, I have to cancel that subscription to my MMO so that I can go to the movies once this month.””

    But that isn’t necessarily the right comparison. Sure, if I only ever subscribed to one MMO, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

    But if you move back and forth between three, five, or more MMOs, that starts to add up. And $15 while a month for something I am playing regularly isn’t a bad deal, if I am not playing… well… I have other bills to pay and other things I would rather spend my money on, why would I let something like that drain off even a little bit of my money? Some of us have figured out that little expenses tend to add up. If you can’t be concerned about $15 on that front, what other expenses are you not concerned about?

    Money is a finite resource for most of us, and looking at a single item and saying it is too cheap to be concerned about misses the point of having to manage your money for all of your needs.

  • One major problem in this reasoning is that you are using Money/Time ratio, and not Money/Value ratio. If you want a far better Money/time leisure, let’s just walk in the park or in the street and chat with your neighboor or even cheaper, at home ! The cost is very near zero ! And I hope you enjoy speaking with the people living a home, or you life can become really miserable… 😉

    The problem is Diminishing returns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns) : the more time you spent somewhere, or doing something the less the value. And the value diminish more or less quickly depending of the hobby. Nobody has “going to restaurant” as a hobby for 6 consecutive hours !

    This model explain clearly why people are just not sleeping working and gaming, but sill enjoy going out with friends, significant other, or going to cinema.

    So now, we can reconsider : are games good value : I think yes, because they lose values less quickly than other media : you will not view the same DVD 10 times (around 20hrs) whereas some games support easily 20hrs of gaming without losing too much value. But maybe 15$/months to play the same game for the whole month for years, is not such a good deal when you can buy 3 games at 5$ and you play less than 30hrs a month.
    On the opposite side, for some games there is “increasing returns” : you enjoy more the 50th hour in EVE or ArcheAge than the 6th hour. For those type of game, ypu have to invest a lot of time to have a good Value/Time return on investment, and thus for such games a Fix amount by month is a good deal – *if you can afford to spend this amount of time*.

  • I agree generally that gaming is a good value, even monthly subscription games. However, the issue I have run into in my family is that I game with my wife and my boy is getting old enough that there are games he wants to subscribe as well (currently he is sub’ed to Roblox and previously was sub’ed to games like Free Realms, etc., that run ~$5-$7 per month). Occasionally, there have been times we have wanted to play more than one MMO, so we will be sub’d to WoW and FF14 for instance. During those times, our family is chucking out ~$65 per month for games. Then we have to shell out for two copies when a new release that we want to try comes out, etc. It does add up. I think the value part is still there, but it starts pulling away from what I would call “cheap” at that point.

  • Keen, as you embark on starting a family, you’ll quickly find that time, not money, is the more valuable asset. You won’t have as much time for an MMO, nor will you want to spend your time like that anyhow when you have small children that are infinitely more entertaining. And Unless you’ve found a future wife that’s also a gamer, you’re going to be giving up gaming time by default when you spend time with her.

    The ability to play an MMO in anything resembling a “hardcore” fashion is gone. Nights that you can sit down and do a 3 hour gaming session will be absolute marathons.

    Welcome to the world of the casual gamer! Where a 30-45 minute focuses league of legends match is not often possible, but squeezing in a 7-10 minute battle on World of Wartanks is considerably more feasible without a child somehow maiming themselves unattended. These are the lines of thinking you’ll begin to make when deciding what type of games you’ll be able to play.

  • Cheap and expensive are all relative to how much you own or make.

    To someone barely making ends meet 15$ a month on a subscription can be a lot.
    Yet that whale that blows thousands if not 10 thousands on a f2p game a month says hes getting good value.

  • Do you still pay for Cable/Satellite TV? We did a similar breakdown a couple of years ago and decided cable TV wasn’t worth the ~$1200 / year. Netflix, HD local TV over the air, and Amazon Prime get us everything we want to watch except live sports and the sports definitely don’t justify that cost.

  • Welcome to adulthood 😉

    But seriously, you beautifully capture why I no longer take any issue with spending money on games.

    Games development costs *a fortune*. We’re talking big budget, AAA money. At the same time, the nature of the market locks games in at a given price point.

    Gaming, cost to value wins out, second to NONE. I’ve had friends spend more on drinking every Friday night than I do in a year on games.

  • “To someone barely making ends meet 15$ a month on a subscription can be a lot.”

    True, but if someone isn’t in the position to spend even $15 for a month of 24/7 entertainment then the concept of entertainment value is a bit of a moot point for that individual.

  • That being said, my counterpoint is that in the age of STEAM it is the relative value within the gaming market that turns me off of recurring gaming fees.

    “The average game runs about $64 including tax.”

    I don’t remember the last time I spent over $60 for a game, and for that matter most games I buy on STEAM these days are under $20, many under $10.

    As an example I was considering buying Shadow of Mordor which retails at $49.99 and I even had a 25% off GMG coupon, but after seeing that they were already marketing pre-launch DLC in the form of a Season’s Pass I decided to say “Screw You Guys I’m Going Home” and wait until they release the Ultramega Premium Platinum Edition including all DLC for $15.

    It is a buyer’s market for those not prone to impulse shopping.

  • I won’t hit up all of your comments individually since a lot are making similar points. I’ll just tackle topics:

    Subscribing to more than one MMO at a time
    It’s still economical. It’s like going to multiple movies a month or buying multiple comic books, etc. There has to be a logical line drawn. If you subscribe to more MMOs than you can play in a month then you’re essentially buying movie tickets and not using them.

    $15 is a lot for someone scraping by
    Chances are all hobbies are too expensive and the point is moot. Gaming, relative to other hobbies and entertainment, is still cheap regardless of one’s ability to afford it.

  • Fully agree overall, even if you are playing and enjoying a sub MMO once a week for a few hours, the $15 a month you are paying is nothing compared to just about anything else, even Steam-sale gaming (Any title on sale that you get for around $15 has to be played more than a month to ‘win’ against an MMO, and every title you pick up that lasts you a week or so heavily turns the favor towards MMOs).

    That said:

    “The average dinner for me and my fiancé runs about $35. I’m not talking a trip to Taco Bell. ”

    Where are you eating that two adults can have a dinner for $35 that ISN’T Taco Bell? Even if you go to entry-level chains like TGIF or Chilis, one drink each, one app, two dinners is going to push you above $35. Go to a decent (15-25 per plate) restaurant, one bottle of wine, two apps, two dinners, one desert+coffee is going to be pushing $100 easy.

    Even going dinner/movie combo is $60+ easy for me now. Premium tickets are $20 each, bar drink is $10 each, theater dinner plate is $15 each. Still consider that great value, but still not in the same realm as an MMO sub.

  • @Syncaine: Well, we don’t drink and we play it economical. Places like BJs have the 2 for $22 where you get 2 salads, a pizza, and a pizookie (dessert thing). Toss in beverages and we’re out of there under $35. I’m still all about being conservative in my spending. We don’t have any premium theaters near us. 🙁 We have to drive 20 min to get to one and that makes it slight annoyance when a normal Edwards is 5 min away. But yes, I do agree that I’m on the cheaper side of that (especially given I don’t drink).

  • I agree, and it’s why it’s annoying to me that personalities like Total Biscuit or Angry Joe spend large portions of their review times on whether you are getting your money’s worth. I’ll pay $200 for a game if it’s better than the next alternative and not blink. Time and quality are the constraining factors here, not money. This may only apply to those with more money than time (aka, not teenagers, the main market for video game reviews), so I guess I get it, but it’s still largely irrelevant to me.

    I should add I am not a rich person, I’m saying all this based on the realization that even if games were much more expensive it would still be relatively cheap compared to other luxeries.

  • Octobor alone is going to be like $400 worth of games that I’m interested in. And that’s a conservative estimate. I wish that seemed cheap.

  • What comes out in October? Let’s see… I know of two:

    Skylanders: Trap Team (I guess that alone could be $400)
    Borderlands: The Prequel

    What else?

  • 3DS
    Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS – 40 – must
    Fantasy Life – 40 – oct 24 – must

    PS4
    Alien: Isolation – 60 – oct 7 – maybe
    The Evil Within – 60 – oct 14 – must
    Lords of the Fallen – 60 – oct 28 – maybe

    Vita
    Freedom Wars – 30 – oct 28 – maybe

    Wii U
    Bayonetta – 60 – oct 24 – must

    Excerpts from my “Games I can’t afford” text file.

  • To be fair, your analysis needs to be broader. 😉

    It’s fine to compare expenses in games with other forms of entertainement, but this entirely assumes you need to spend this money on leisure. The real cost or, as economist would call it, the opportunity cost would need to consider the possibility of spending this money on non-leisure activities like investing this money in any financial vehicle, expanding your human capital, savings, etc.

    In the end, you spend this money on leisure because you have deemed it more valuable to you and it is spent on gaming because you put more value in it than other leisure activities. All this relates to the personnal preferences theory commonly used in social sciences. Value is a very subjective concept, there’s no right or wrong here.

    Putting this small econ talks, I’ll have to agree with others : the real limiting factor is not money, it’s time. How much time you put in a single hobby, how you balance leisure/work/misc activities and such.

  • I think you’re doing a lot of apples to oranges comparisons here (is games to restaurants a fair comparison really?), and focusing too much on cost/time ratio rather than value.

    There’s also some cherry-picking of examples here. Anyone can easily come up with cheaper hobbies than gaming, as you came up with more expensive things. For example, I play the banjo. I just bought a $1500 high quality instrument that will outlast me. My kids and grandkids could play it. That’s a way cheaper hobby in the long run than gaming.

    Anyway, we could all argue til our faces turn blue about which hobbies are more expensive. I think what is more productive is talking about value within the gaming genre itself. It’s a fact that game developers are finding more and more ways to monetize their products at every turn. Gaming is more expensive than it used to be, and we’re actually getting less in return. Are games today longer or better quality than games of the past? I would largely say no. They’re shinier, but that’s about it. More and more stuff that used to be included is being charged for. Collector’s editions are rising to $150 or more. And honestly, even if $15 a month is “cheap”, what MMO actually provides enough fresh content to be worth it compared to other games? Especially in the age of digital distribution and deep cut sales.

    It’s all about relative value. $15 a month + box fees is cheap compared to Disneyland and fine dining, but who cares? We’re talking about gaming, and it’s extremely expensive compared to every other game. When I can easily get just as much game for less, why bother?

  • MMO Subscriptions are not the cheapest entertainment available, no matter your viewpoint. For example, I just spent the last 20 minutes or so reading this thread, and was moderately entertained. It cost me nothing out of pocket except for my ISP fees (which are necessary for MMO/Steam/Netflix/whatever anyway).

    To me, and probably a lot of people in a point in their life where time available is much greater than money available, MMOs are only a “great value” if they allow you to spend countless hours per day multiple days a week engaged in such MMO without getting bored. Playing an MMO for the sole reason of having paid money to play it isn’t great entertainment value, period.

    At current, I pay $8 /month for Netflix, which allows me to watch most of what was on TV last year as well as all the previous episodes and seasons Id never see on TV in order. I pay $12 /month for an MMO sub that Ive been playing for the last 15 years off and on, which is a nice break from whatever else I have to do in a day. Both of these require my $55 /month ISP fee, which allows me to do other stuff online as well but this is beside the point. This makes for $74 /month just to be able to watch a little TV and play one MMO. Just over two dollars /day. If I was in good physical condition, I would get much more value out of going for a walk or getting into a real hobby like fly tying or gardening. A lot of churches have volunteer stuff thats actually pretty fun if you can tolerate the odd weirdo or two in a small group (which you’ll find in that MMO too, just IRL you cant /ignore them).

    On the other hand, being in my condition, I have a lot of time to sit around and stare at something. Might as well be a computer screen. That $74 /month could easily buy me 4 xbox games out of the value bin, but there are only so many games. When I bought Skyrim it was over $70, but I got easily 2 or 3 months out of it before I got bored. I paid $80 for the new FF a few months back, and was done within a week. Everything is relative not only to the individual, but to which forms of entertainment are of the highest quality.

    So here is the bottom line. Value is value, which is in the eye and not the hand. A company saying that their new game is worth $50 and another $15 /month is not going to give it value. If it is a game that you enjoy playing, and spend less money having as much or more fun for as much or more time /month than anything else you could be doing, then it has value.