7 ms·

A good game provides hundreds of hours of entertainment for $60. That's much better entertainment value than a $20 movie.

jmcunningham 8y ago
A good album can also provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for $10. However, not all games, music, or video provide 100s of hours of entertainment so I'm not sure I understand your generalization.
- learc83 8y ago
  They specifically compared games to movies. If we're talking about theaters, then no individual purchase will ever provide hundreds of hours of entertainment. Even if we are talking about blu-ray/dvd/digital download, very few people are going to ever get hundreds of hours of entertainment out of any single movie. > A good album can also provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for $10. Passive/supplemental entertainment maybe. Outside of a very small percentage of serious audiophiles, I don't know anyone listening to 1 album for hundreds of hours other than as background noise.
- lostgame 8y ago
  Crank it up to $25-30 (LP) and, if you're anything like me, you'll get those hundred hours for sure. :)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
folkrav 8y ago
I'm a huge Mass Effect fan. I played Mass Effect: Andromeda for about 30h at launch. For a CAD$80 game, that wasn't a good investment. I also love System of a Down. Probably paid sub-$100 for their discography. Must have hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. Isn't this a better value than ME:A? I'm also a huge Star Wars fan. The $30 I paid for the movie ticket and the popcorn combo when I went to see Rogue One brought me much more pleasure than those 30h of ME:A, so was this a better value? I know, that's one game, one artist, one movie, but that's just to illustrate that it's not that clear-cut.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  The parent was clearly talking about averages/the typical case. Sure, you can cherry pick cases where a single item under/over performs the average but it doesn't invalidate the above point.
  - folkrav 8y ago
    If we're only talking averages, the average game isn't a very good value either - a whole lot of them suck bad and are, even at a discounted rate, a total waste of money. I'm still not really sold on this argument.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      I did say a good game, and meant to imply the comparison to similarly good movies. I was just ignoring the games and movies that suck and would be a waste of time and money.
    - pmichaud 8y ago
      We're not really talking about "the average game" either though, otherwise we'd have to include "the average movie" which must necessarily--like games--include amateur and very low budget projects. We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment. Other people might have a different overall experience, but let's at least compare the right things.
      - folkrav 8y ago
        > We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment. Fair enough. Really depends on the type of games you enjoy though. They really don't all have the same replay value. As you said, other people might have different experiences.
max76 8y ago
A music streaming service provides me with hundreds of hours of entertainment for $120/yr, guaranteed. If you include hardware costs I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on video games. The number of games I've spent more than 200 hours playing is in the single digits.
- learc83 8y ago
  >A music streaming service provides me with hundreds of hours of entertainment for $120/yr, guaranteed. And that music streaming service probably comes close to maxing out the entertainment most people can get from purchasing music, so for most people, music isn't really competing against games in their entertainment budget.
  - max76 8y ago
    > And that music streaming service probably comes close to maxing out the entertainment most people can get from purchasing music There is a large population of concert goers, and large market for music merchandise and musical instruments. I'd be surprised is music streaming services comprise 50% of the total music market, although they might be more than 50% of all recorded music.
    - learc83 8y ago
      >There is a large population of concert goers If we're talking about concerts though, you're talking about a higher cost per hour than movies. Not comparable to $120 for hundreds of hours. >market for music merchandise I'm going to avoid merch because games have merch too, so it doesn't really seem worth comparing. >and musical instruments Musical instruments, for people who are interested, probably do provide a higher entertainment value per dollar than games, but they are definitely a much smaller niche market.
- briankelly 8y ago
  I don't think you should get down voted. I spent $60 and listened a little under 600 hours on Spotify in 2018. I understand the reasoning, but time spent is not really a great measurement of value. I probably spent hundreds of hours on a couple of games back in middle/high school and I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret at least some of that.
JansjoFromIkea 8y ago
I wouldn't directly equate the quality of a product by how much time it kills for you. I've seen 90 minute films that enriched my life far more than games I've played for dozens of hours.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
I consider this a poor way to look at entertainment. A day at Disney World costs far more per hour than a movie. Does that mean people should stay away from Disney World? There's a huge continuum beyond the "am I entertained?" binary, and that matters much more than dollars per hour.
- elicash 8y ago
  I think you want a score that's a function of (a) the time spent doing the thing, (b) the time spent reminiscing about and talking about the thing, and (c) the quality of the thing. A trip to Disney for somebody might conceivably be something that they remember for the rest of their lives and that has value.
thomnottom 8y ago
How do you define "entertainment value"? It's going to be different for different people. I enjoy video games, spend money on them, and have played some for a couple hundred hours I'm sure. But personally there's not a single one that I would take over my favorite albums, movies, or books. So while there is a greater value per hour of use for games, that does not necessarily equate to a "better entertainment value" for all users.
dfxm12 8y ago
Why is dollar per hour a good metric of entertainment value? I don't think entertainment is a binary yes or no. Entertainment is a scale, and it's possible you get more total entertainment from something that you enjoy intensely for 30 min vs something you mildly enjoy for a hundred (or so) hours.
- Asquil 8y ago
  Dollar per hour is not necessarily a good metric, but it is a metric. And we need a metric like that to quantitatively compare different mediums. What you say about the complexity of entertainment is absolutely true, but we somehow need to model it in a relatively easy way, and that means throwing out some details. And from in naive guess, people don't enjoy themselves significantly more watching film than playing videogames. So dollar per hour is a good enough metric for our purposes.
asdjasldkjkljd 8y ago
I've listened to some albums for 20 years. I've inherited some vinyl from my mom that's 50 years old. There are some movies I've watched dozens of times. So I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so quickly.
Eleopteryx 8y ago
Sure, but 2 hours of playing a video game isn't necessarily as compelling as e.g. seeing a 2-hour film. One of the things I've been paying attention to as I get older is how many unique experiences a thing offers. Games that are hundreds of hours long, or otherwise provide hundreds of hours of entertainment, generally involve a lot of repetition. Repetition is intrinsically unmemorable. The games keep you busy, and you might not describe yourself as bored while playing them, but it's not like you can remember all of the riveting times you fought a Zubat. And in that sense, was it an optimal use of time? Sometime I find it disturbing to think about. There are games where my total playtime adds up to literal months, but the number of unique memories I have of actually playing are depressingly few.
gnopgnip 8y ago
On the opposite end is scratch off lottery tickets.

jmcunningham 8y ago

A good album can also provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for $10. However, not all games, music, or video provide 100s of hours of entertainment so I'm not sure I understand your generalization.

learc83 8y ago
They specifically compared games to movies. If we're talking about theaters, then no individual purchase will ever provide hundreds of hours of entertainment. Even if we are talking about blu-ray/dvd/digital download, very few people are going to ever get hundreds of hours of entertainment out of any single movie. > A good album can also provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for $10. Passive/supplemental entertainment maybe. Outside of a very small percentage of serious audiophiles, I don't know anyone listening to 1 album for hundreds of hours other than as background noise.
lostgame 8y ago
Crank it up to $25-30 (LP) and, if you're anything like me, you'll get those hundred hours for sure. :)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

folkrav 8y ago

I'm a huge Mass Effect fan. I played Mass Effect: Andromeda for about 30h at launch. For a CAD$80 game, that wasn't a good investment. I also love System of a Down. Probably paid sub-$100 for their discography. Must have hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. Isn't this a better value than ME:A? I'm also a huge Star Wars fan. The $30 I paid for the movie ticket and the popcorn combo when I went to see Rogue One brought me much more pleasure than those 30h of ME:A, so was this a better value? I know, that's one game, one artist, one movie, but that's just to illustrate that it's not that clear-cut.

Pfhreak 8y ago
The parent was clearly talking about averages/the typical case. Sure, you can cherry pick cases where a single item under/over performs the average but it doesn't invalidate the above point.
- folkrav 8y ago
  If we're only talking averages, the average game isn't a very good value either - a whole lot of them suck bad and are, even at a discounted rate, a total waste of money. I'm still not really sold on this argument.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    I did say a good game, and meant to imply the comparison to similarly good movies. I was just ignoring the games and movies that suck and would be a waste of time and money.
  - pmichaud 8y ago
    We're not really talking about "the average game" either though, otherwise we'd have to include "the average movie" which must necessarily--like games--include amateur and very low budget projects. We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment. Other people might have a different overall experience, but let's at least compare the right things.
    - folkrav 8y ago
      > We're talking about is the games you actually end up playing versus the movies you actually end up watching. For me the value for money is crushingly in favor of games, both in terms of hours per dollar and in terms of subjective enjoyment. Fair enough. Really depends on the type of games you enjoy though. They really don't all have the same replay value. As you said, other people might have different experiences.

max76 8y ago

A music streaming service provides me with hundreds of hours of entertainment for $120/yr, guaranteed. If you include hardware costs I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on video games. The number of games I've spent more than 200 hours playing is in the single digits.

learc83 8y ago
>A music streaming service provides me with hundreds of hours of entertainment for $120/yr, guaranteed. And that music streaming service probably comes close to maxing out the entertainment most people can get from purchasing music, so for most people, music isn't really competing against games in their entertainment budget.
- max76 8y ago
  > And that music streaming service probably comes close to maxing out the entertainment most people can get from purchasing music There is a large population of concert goers, and large market for music merchandise and musical instruments. I'd be surprised is music streaming services comprise 50% of the total music market, although they might be more than 50% of all recorded music.
  - learc83 8y ago
    >There is a large population of concert goers If we're talking about concerts though, you're talking about a higher cost per hour than movies. Not comparable to $120 for hundreds of hours. >market for music merchandise I'm going to avoid merch because games have merch too, so it doesn't really seem worth comparing. >and musical instruments Musical instruments, for people who are interested, probably do provide a higher entertainment value per dollar than games, but they are definitely a much smaller niche market.
briankelly 8y ago
I don't think you should get down voted. I spent $60 and listened a little under 600 hours on Spotify in 2018. I understand the reasoning, but time spent is not really a great measurement of value. I probably spent hundreds of hours on a couple of games back in middle/high school and I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret at least some of that.

JansjoFromIkea 8y ago

I wouldn't directly equate the quality of a product by how much time it kills for you. I've seen 90 minute films that enriched my life far more than games I've played for dozens of hours.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

I consider this a poor way to look at entertainment. A day at Disney World costs far more per hour than a movie. Does that mean people should stay away from Disney World? There's a huge continuum beyond the "am I entertained?" binary, and that matters much more than dollars per hour.

elicash 8y ago
I think you want a score that's a function of (a) the time spent doing the thing, (b) the time spent reminiscing about and talking about the thing, and (c) the quality of the thing. A trip to Disney for somebody might conceivably be something that they remember for the rest of their lives and that has value.

thomnottom 8y ago

How do you define "entertainment value"? It's going to be different for different people. I enjoy video games, spend money on them, and have played some for a couple hundred hours I'm sure. But personally there's not a single one that I would take over my favorite albums, movies, or books. So while there is a greater value per hour of use for games, that does not necessarily equate to a "better entertainment value" for all users.

dfxm12 8y ago

Why is dollar per hour a good metric of entertainment value? I don't think entertainment is a binary yes or no. Entertainment is a scale, and it's possible you get more total entertainment from something that you enjoy intensely for 30 min vs something you mildly enjoy for a hundred (or so) hours.

Asquil 8y ago
Dollar per hour is not necessarily a good metric, but it is a metric. And we need a metric like that to quantitatively compare different mediums. What you say about the complexity of entertainment is absolutely true, but we somehow need to model it in a relatively easy way, and that means throwing out some details. And from in naive guess, people don't enjoy themselves significantly more watching film than playing videogames. So dollar per hour is a good enough metric for our purposes.

asdjasldkjkljd 8y ago

I've listened to some albums for 20 years. I've inherited some vinyl from my mom that's 50 years old. There are some movies I've watched dozens of times. So I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so quickly.

Eleopteryx 8y ago

Sure, but 2 hours of playing a video game isn't necessarily as compelling as e.g. seeing a 2-hour film. One of the things I've been paying attention to as I get older is how many unique experiences a thing offers. Games that are hundreds of hours long, or otherwise provide hundreds of hours of entertainment, generally involve a lot of repetition. Repetition is intrinsically unmemorable. The games keep you busy, and you might not describe yourself as bored while playing them, but it's not like you can remember all of the riveting times you fought a Zubat. And in that sense, was it an optimal use of time? Sometime I find it disturbing to think about. There are games where my total playtime adds up to literal months, but the number of unique memories I have of actually playing are depressingly few.

gnopgnip 8y ago

On the opposite end is scratch off lottery tickets.