I was reading some spam email after work yesterday and browsed an email from 1UP.com with blurbs about articles on their site. I didn’t go read the article but one of them was about Lord of the Rings Online. Apparently it’s gone free to play, which caused the writer to consider checking it out. He never plays MMOs solely because monthly fees turn him off. Every few months I have basically this debate with Andrew since he’s morally opposed to continuing to pay for games after he’s bought them.
Now, I play MMOs, I pay monthly for MMOs, and I’m happy to do so. I’ve played WoW for almost 6 years. Before that I played Final Fantasy XI for 6 months. I’ve dabbled in City of Villains, Eve, and Star Trek Online. Heck, I just bought a new computer so I can play Final Fantasy XIV (and Civ V) next week… Pretty clearly I put a pretty high value on getting entertainment from games. But I’ve also spent a lot of time and money on non-MMOs as well. I mentioned Civ V above and I’ve played an awfully lot of games of its prequels. It got me wondering… How much value am I actually getting for my money when I play MMOs? There are a lot of console games I’d love to play but a lot of my video gaming time is spent on WoW. From a strict money per time point of view would I be better off dropping WoW?
Excluding MMOs, how much time have I spent on games in the past? I’m looking for max/min time to start and then I’ll try to extrapolate out an average time from there. Console RPGs tend to have a timer on them to differentiate save games among other reasons, and I can remember getting excited when Final Fantasy X had a third hour digit. I’ve played it three times and I rolled into that third digit every time so I’ve probably spent 400 hours on it. Technically I’ve never paid a cent for it, having played it on James’s copy, on my brother’s copy, and on Byung’s copy. (Only FF game I don’t own… Maybe I should rectify that.) Assume I did buy it for $50 though, and you’re looking at 8 hours of enjoyment per dollar.
Final Fantasy IV is my favourite game alltime and I’ve played it through somewhere in the 10-20 times range. It’s a pretty short game though, so each time through is only like 24ish hours. I don’t think I’ve played it as much as FFX, and I own 3 copies of it (Super Nintendo, Super Famicom, DS) so it’s probably more like 5 h/$. (This ignores the fact that many of those plays were made on a rented copy from Midnight Video in Riverview Mall, which would drag down that number. I can remember my save game still being there when I rented it again…)
Civ 2 is the 4X game I’ve played the most by far. I used to play it multiplayer a bit in University and on top of that I’ve probably played 50 games solo. Assuming 40 hours per game (much less for multi) I’m probably around the 2000 hour range. That’s like 40h/$.
Warcraft 3 is a game I didn’t play very much in and of itself but I played a ton of “use map settings” maps, particularly Defense of the Ancients and misc tower defense games. I played maybe 20 hours a week for a couple years? That would put it in the same range as Civ2 but for twice as much since I had to buy an expansion. 20h/$.
Mario Kart 64. I used to play this game with my brother and our friend Robin after school in high school all the time. It had to split time with Goldeneye 64, Star Fox 64 and various WWF games. Between them all you’d be looking at at most 3 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3 years. Combined that’s more than Civ 2 but split 4 ways? Not so much. Still, since Mario Kart 64 was the most played of them all it’d probably be around 15h/$.
NHL ’09. I played a couple seasons of Be A Player mode, including playoffs, which would be around 200 games. I played on medium length periods so maybe 45 minutes a game, which would make 150 hours total. So a little over 2h/$.
Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego. Probably my biggest video game mistake. I can remember slamming down $70 for this bad boy and it was really terrible. I played it a few times to try to get my money’s worth out of it but I’d be lying if I said I really enjoyed it and even then I’d only be looking at maybe 7 hours total. .1h/$.
Tales of Vesperia, which will have an even worse number, since I’ve played it for about half an hour. Yes, that would make it in the .008h/$ range, but I don’t consider it to be a big flop since I’d still like to play it at some point. It’s sitting on my shelf, mocking me, wishing I would stop playing WoW and Starcraft 2 and pop it into the 360.
More generally I’d expect a console game that I liked to be worth between 20 and 60 hours of gameplay with a bunch of flops and a few homeruns tossed in. All told I’m probably getting 1h/$ with a max in the 15h/$ range. There’d have to be a lot of turnover though so I couldn’t stay in the top end of the range very long without having to get a different game. Almost every game on this list played alone is maxxing out in the 200 hour range. A few games went above that but they’re all games I played with other people. (Civ 2, DotA, Mario Kart, etc…) I definitely wouldn’t have played any of them as much as I did without other people to play with.
How about a board game? I’ve played Vegas Showdown maybe 40 times and it’s my most played game I own. An hour and a half per game and I’m up to barely 1h/$.
Television on DVD? I bought BSG for $150 or so. 75 episodes total, 45 minutes per episode… .375h/$ I’ll probably watch them again a second time at least and maybe more well into the future. To get up to even FFIV though I’d need to watch them 11 times. Possible, but unlikely.
Television on cable? At $90 per month I’d need to spend 360 hours a month or 12 hours a day watching to get to 4h/$. (Maybe that’s why so many people spend their lives in front of the tv… Just trying to get their money’s worth!)
A movie in the theatre? It’s pretty fixed at $13 for an hour and a half, or .11h/$.
How about a novel? I bought a few books a couple months ago in a series I liked. Paperbacks are like $10 each and I can plow through one in like 4 hours? So, .4h/$.
Now, how much time do you think I’ve spent on WoW? Any guesses? Today I went through and added up my total play time across all my characters…
396 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes, 16 seconds. In hour terms, 9526. For reference, there have been about 50000 hours total since I started playing WoW, so about 20% of my life has been spent in game… Wow. Now, some of that time was racked up when I was working since my old job had a lot of downtime so I would fish on my laptop while working on my desktop but that’s still a stupidly high amount.
How much money have I spent? Well, 1 game and 2 expansions is in the $150 range to start and then tack on 67 months at $15 a month and you’re looking at $1155, or ~8h/$.
So, I can think of 3 games which have ever yielded a higher time per dollar amount and another in the same ballpark. Of course, I can always go back to those old games and raise the bar on them. I wouldn’t mind playing FFX again, for example. (Maybe I’ll do another FF marathon at some point!) I have a reasonable collection of console games which I can always just plug in and play with no cost involved. WoW on the other hand is probably spiraling downward since I can’t play from work anymore. WoW is really fun because of my friends that play it too, but the same was true of everything that beats WoW. Mario Kart 64 wouldn’t have been the same if I couldn’t huck red shells at my brother. I wouldn’t have played DotA as much as I did if I wasn’t on a league team with Robb.
To maintain an 8h/$ rate I’d need to play WoW 30 hours a week which really isn’t happening right now, but will spike well over that when the next expansion comes out and will stay over it for months. (Unless FFXIV is awesome!)
I wasn’t sure what the numbers were going to end up at, but I’m not at all surprised that WoW has been a better investment than almost every other game I’ve ever bought. Every source of entertainment, really. Books, movies, television, games, icetime for curling or hockey… They’re all at least an order of magnitude away from the value WoW has provided in terms of hours per dollar.
You can argue that spending 20% of the last 5.5 years in an online game isn’t healthy, or that I’m a loser for doing so. I don’t know that I could dispute that. I’m not normal. But my WoW monthly fee is a sixth what my cable bill is. WoW may not have long lasting value but neither does cable tv and you have to spend an obscene amount of time watching tv to be as cost effective. Take into account commercials, interacting with friends, and just having your brain working and it seems obvious to me which way to go.
To be fair I live alone so cable is as cost inefficient as it gets here. Cable scales well with extra people in the house, WoW does not. I could go to the library to get books instead of buying them and get insane value out of it. I could have roommates that buy board games or console games so I don’t have to. WoW isn’t a godsend and it’s not the best possible way to spend money for entertainment but it’s not anywhere near as bad as the people who refuse to pay monthly fees on games assert. If you have the $15 to spend and like video games then MMOs can be awesome value for your money.
