The Nickel & Dime Generation 358
Phaethon360 sends in a piece that looks at how quickly game costs can add up these days, now that DLC, microtransactions and standalone expansions are commonplace, writing, "If you were trying to the think of the most expensive games to play, Rock Band or a monthly-fee MMORPG would come to mind. But Halo 3 is right up there, too." It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars.
Re:GranTurismo 5 (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153775 [1up.com]
Re:DLC (Score:1, Informative)
pretty much every other hobby costs a lot more per month, while still providing less in back in terms of time spent.
Try masturbation, its worth every penny.
MMOs are amazingly cheap entertainment (Score:2, Informative)
Might not have been his intention, but the author has basically proven that MMOs, in terms of the game fee itself, are incredibly cheap entertainment.
He also demonstrates that stupid people will spend stupid amounts of money on MMO-related bits and pieces. That's not the cost of playing the game.
And surely paying the 1-month-at-a-time fee of $15 is fine when you're trying it out, but surely at some point in the 4 year 8 month saga you realise you're going to stick with it for a while, and take one of the cheaper/longer sub options. Even if he takes 8 months of "eval" to arrive at that conclusion, using 6 month subs saves him $100 over the next 4 years.
Re:GranTurismo 5 (Score:5, Informative)
The microtransaction-focused game, Gran Turismo HD: Classic will be the online-focused entrant into the GT-series
That's not Gran Turismo 5 tho, but Gran Turismo HD (which is cancelled already - the news is from 2006)
Re:DLC (Score:3, Informative)
Knitting isn't cheap. My wife's been knitting for only a few months now and she goes through enough material to cost way more than WoW would.
Because, you know, once you invest hours into knitting socks or a sweater, it suddenly makes sense to buy quality material. Like alpaca or merino wool. You don't get those for free.
AFAIR, a pair of socks already costs more than a WoW subscription and it will definitely not take her a whole month to finish the socks.
This does not mean I don't see knitting as the superior hobby (I'm quite biased, but after all, it is only my opinion), it just means it's definitely not cheaper.
Re:If you can't afford it. then... (Score:5, Informative)
You're not wrong, but the OP didn't say anything at all about copying the game you don't want to pay for - he merely pointed out that if people (silently) stop paying for games, it'll be written off as being due to piracy, whether it is or not.
Re:Three Words (Score:4, Informative)
Magic The Gathering
Indeed. That was (is) the highest money sink I've ever played. And the Online version is ludicrous (you pay MSRP for DIGITAL cards !!! ) yet many people (myself included) play it (the "trick" is that the game is subsidized by heavy prize support, which you don't get if you just play casually).
And they added even more ridiculous stuff recently.
That said, it's only insanely expensive if you play competitively, or the "limited" formats (which are basically where you pay for a tournament where they give you the cards, as opposed to "bring your own cards", and you get to keep the cards afterwards, but they do charge almost retail for them).
Re:If you can't afford it. then... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DLC (Score:3, Informative)
Just as a bit of advice, if your wife really gets the knitting bug, you might want to look at online yarn suppliers. You can usually get superior prices for nice, high quality stuff.
Oh, and if she's not already a member, send her over to Ravelry [ravelry.com]. Best knitting resource *ever*.
I dunno about this dude, WoW saved me thousands (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, WoW saved me thousands of dollars over the 2 years I was addicted to it. I stopped going out. I stopped taking my lady out. I stopped seeing friends. Of course all those things are bad, but I've never had such a tremendous rise in my savings.
I was a pretty social guy before WoW, I probably went out 4 times a week. Let's say that each night was $20-40 dollars.
So WoW equaled about $15 a month. Going out was probably closer to $500 a month. So that's about $485 dollars in savings.
Or course I had no real life except the PVP ladder grind. I'm lucky my lady friend didn't abandon me. Luckily I was able to recover from my addiction.