Hey, Rob, I've heard that worry before and can quickly dispel it using logic.
A. If you like the game so much that you fear you will lose productivity time--good god, you're getting old. Everybody deserves to have some fun, and you can always turn it off if you really need to do something. It's almost like being scared to try a game because you think you'll love it. We're not talking about crack here! :)
Ok, there's some validity to your logic here, but as a "gamer," you know the same thing all gamers do: a good game can "absorb" you to the point that many other life tasks gets pushed to the wayside. That's what every game aims to do to you: make you lose track of your "real" life and get asorbed into the game world. If you're "on fire" in the middle of a good gaming session, it's hard, or at least very irritating, to switch it off for "real life." This doesn't happen to me as much anymore, thanks to my "advanced" age (as you've noted), but while I do miss that feeling, I also fear starting a gaming session on Friday night, only to suddenly realize "Oh, $&@%, it's Monday morning, I gotta go to work!"
As for your comment, "We're not talking about crack here," we may indeed be talking about crack! I have literally lost touch with a friend due to his involvement with one of these MMORPG's in the past (I think it was "Everquest," but I'm not sure). In fact, I just last week bumped into his daughter, who was working at a local store, and was surprised that she had grown so much (hey, she's actually working now)! I asked her about her parents, and she said "they're always on the computer playing games now." It looks like not much has changed in the years since I last spoke to them. It appears their daughter turned out OK, though, thank God.
Matt Barton wrote:
B. I like to think of games as being worth more or less how much I play them. Most games are what, about $50? If you earn $20 an hour, that's 2.5 hours worth of your life to pay for the game--so you need to get *at least* that much recreation out of it.
At the risk of being philosophical, I don't think a dollar amount (to use U.S. wages) is an accurate gauge of your free time. Yes, if you're working, you get paid a dollar amount, but when you're off work, do you put a price on the time you spend with your loved ones? The time you spend doing household chores? The time you spend smelling the flowers? If you start looking at life that way, you start thinking "I'm minus 20 minutes for washing the dishes, minus 1 hour for having an argument with my wife, minus 30 minutes for watching a below-average episode of 'The Simpsons,'" and so forth. Few people really look at life that way, and I don't think it would be good to do so.
If you make $20 an hour on your job, you can (according to your equation) "break even" at 2.5 hours of videogame play time. But what if you only make $5? That means you have to play the game 10 hours to break even! If you make $100 an hour, you only have to play the game 30 minutes to break even! Looking at it that way, videogaming doesn't make sense.
I've played even the junkier games I've bought for more than two hours before I gave up on them. Some of them were "bargain bin" games. Although it's hard to say these games weren't worth $5, I can say that I don't have fond memories of them. If I break it down hourly, I only made $2.50 an hour on a $5 game if I played it for two hours. As bad as those games were, I don't look at them that way.
I do have fond memories of many games (as do we all). It's not the fact that I paid $25 for a game and got a week (or more) of entertainment from them, it's the fact that I fondly remember the experience of playing them! I don't even remember what I paid for most of them, but I remember enjoying these games immensely. For example, the memory of the original "Prince of Persia"is still with me many years later, even though I only paid (probably) $25 for it. That goes for many other games. If there was a "money per minute" ratio of videogaming, NONE of us would be here on this forum!
Matt Barton wrote:
Ideally, it's something you'd want to play far more than just 2.5 hours, and the more you play it, the better the deal. But that doesn't mean you have to play it when you're bored of it!! What kind of crazy talk is that?
This might work for other gaming genres, but based on what I've heard about MMORPG's, they tend to work against non-regular gaming. If you're friends are there every night in WoW, it sounds like you will be compelled to participate regularly to maintain your position in the clique. You play a couple of hours one weekend, lay off for a week, and come back the next weekend, and now your friends are "Level 7" and you're still a Level 1! Now you're just a drag on the party, and they cast you out!
As others in this forum have stated, it sounds like MMORPG's can be "work" to maintain your character. It sounds like it's either addictive or you feel "obligated" to participate in some way. Yes, I could just chuck the game after a few unenjoyable gaming sessions, but what if I enjoy it, but don't want to play every night? It sounds like a non-crackhead gamer would be at a disadvantage in such a game.
Hey, Rob, I've heard that worry before and can quickly dispel it using logic.
A. If you like the game so much that you fear you will lose productivity time--good god, you're getting old. Everybody deserves to have some fun, and you can always turn it off if you really need to do something. It's almost like being scared to try a game because you think you'll love it. We're not talking about crack here! :)
Ok, there's some validity to your logic here, but as a "gamer," you know the same thing all gamers do: a good game can "absorb" you to the point that many other life tasks gets pushed to the wayside. That's what every game aims to do to you: make you lose track of your "real" life and get asorbed into the game world. If you're "on fire" in the middle of a good gaming session, it's hard, or at least very irritating, to switch it off for "real life." This doesn't happen to me as much anymore, thanks to my "advanced" age (as you've noted), but while I do miss that feeling, I also fear starting a gaming session on Friday night, only to suddenly realize "Oh, $&@%, it's Monday morning, I gotta go to work!"
As for your comment, "We're not talking about crack here," we may indeed be talking about crack! I have literally lost touch with a friend due to his involvement with one of these MMORPG's in the past (I think it was "Everquest," but I'm not sure). In fact, I just last week bumped into his daughter, who was working at a local store, and was surprised that she had grown so much (hey, she's actually working now)! I asked her about her parents, and she said "they're always on the computer playing games now." It looks like not much has changed in the years since I last spoke to them. It appears their daughter turned out OK, though, thank God.
B. I like to think of games as being worth more or less how much I play them. Most games are what, about $50? If you earn $20 an hour, that's 2.5 hours worth of your life to pay for the game--so you need to get *at least* that much recreation out of it.
At the risk of being philosophical, I don't think a dollar amount (to use U.S. wages) is an accurate gauge of your free time. Yes, if you're working, you get paid a dollar amount, but when you're off work, do you put a price on the time you spend with your loved ones? The time you spend doing household chores? The time you spend smelling the flowers? If you start looking at life that way, you start thinking "I'm minus 20 minutes for washing the dishes, minus 1 hour for having an argument with my wife, minus 30 minutes for watching a below-average episode of 'The Simpsons,'" and so forth. Few people really look at life that way, and I don't think it would be good to do so.
If you make $20 an hour on your job, you can (according to your equation) "break even" at 2.5 hours of videogame play time. But what if you only make $5? That means you have to play the game 10 hours to break even! If you make $100 an hour, you only have to play the game 30 minutes to break even! Looking at it that way, videogaming doesn't make sense.
I've played even the junkier games I've bought for more than two hours before I gave up on them. Some of them were "bargain bin" games. Although it's hard to say these games weren't worth $5, I can say that I don't have fond memories of them. If I break it down hourly, I only made $2.50 an hour on a $5 game if I played it for two hours. As bad as those games were, I don't look at them that way.
I do have fond memories of many games (as do we all). It's not the fact that I paid $25 for a game and got a week (or more) of entertainment from them, it's the fact that I fondly remember the experience of playing them! I don't even remember what I paid for most of them, but I remember enjoying these games immensely. For example, the memory of the original "Prince of Persia"is still with me many years later, even though I only paid (probably) $25 for it. That goes for many other games. If there was a "money per minute" ratio of videogaming, NONE of us would be here on this forum!
Ideally, it's something you'd want to play far more than just 2.5 hours, and the more you play it, the better the deal. But that doesn't mean you have to play it when you're bored of it!! What kind of crazy talk is that?
This might work for other gaming genres, but based on what I've heard about MMORPG's, they tend to work against non-regular gaming. If you're friends are there every night in WoW, it sounds like you will be compelled to participate regularly to maintain your position in the clique. You play a couple of hours one weekend, lay off for a week, and come back the next weekend, and now your friends are "Level 7" and you're still a Level 1! Now you're just a drag on the party, and they cast you out!
As others in this forum have stated, it sounds like MMORPG's can be "work" to maintain your character. It sounds like it's either addictive or you feel "obligated" to participate in some way. Yes, I could just chuck the game after a few unenjoyable gaming sessions, but what if I enjoy it, but don't want to play every night? It sounds like a non-crackhead gamer would be at a disadvantage in such a game.
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