A couple things have been running through my mind recently which have prompted a relook at my stance on monthly fees from 2010. The first is the whole favourite game of all time project I've been working on and the second is starting to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'd planned out much of this post on the bus back from work today and then discovered I'd actually written a lot of the same stuff in a first relook at that post. Have things changed in the last year and a half?
I have yet to write posts beyond the pre-NES era but I spend a fair amount of thinking downtime (bus to work, lying in bed trying to get to sleep, showering, etc...) trying to remember games played in different eras. The SNES era, for example, has hundreds and hundreds of games played. My brother and I would rent a game pretty much every weekend for years on end and several a week each summer. Sometimes we'd get a game we'd previously played (Pacific Theatre of Operations, Romance of the Three Kingdoms III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, and King Arthur's World were all rented multiple times) but for the most part it was a new game every week. At $4 per game and split two ways it was like paying an $8 per month entry fee for a constant stream of new games to play.
Then I think about the xBox 360 era. Other than various rhythm games there's pretty much nothing here. When I lived with Mark I'd play some of his games every now and then (Oblivion and Dead Rising primarily) but compared with the SNES there's pretty much nothing there. And if I think about it I was spending more time per day playing video games during the 360 era than the SNES era! The difference? World of Warcraft. It was a huge winner in my hours of entertainment per dollar spent analysis but the other side of that is it was pretty much all I did. I wasn't making much money at the time so having a really cost efficient game that I loved was great but I'm sure I missed out on some great games.
How about now, with Star Wars: The Old Republic? I'm not looking at it as a long term game (Diablo III is going to trump everything when it comes out) so it's more like a single player game with a good plot/voice acting/cutscenes. I have some friends who are using a different game to bridge the time until Diablo III... Diablo II! They asked if I'd want to play with them and I turned them down. Why? Because I feel obligated to play SWTOR. If I want to play Diablo II it's going to be there later. If I want to see the stuff in SWTOR it has to be now unless I want to shell out a monthly fee sometime later.
Right now I'm actively playing many games. Final Fantasy IV, League of Legends, Civilization V, SWTOR, The Everything Game, and a plethora of board games on Yucata.de. There's not enough time in the day to play them all as much as I'd like. Something's gotta give. Right now it's been Final Fantasy IV that's been put on the back burner. I know that I can hold off on playing it and come back at any time and pick up right where I left off. I can play today, or next month, or next year. It'll be there waiting for me. SWTOR won't be.
I'm really feeling the obligation Jeff talked about that prompted my second post on the subject. And I'm not liking it!
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