“Gamers Aren’t Overcharged; They’re Undercharged,” Says Wall Street Analyst

[lcpiper]

Everyone's situation is different.

My typical workday has me busting my ass all morning and day, and because I have a long commute, I'm usually not home before at least 7pm.

Once I get home, fiance has usually made dinner. We eat, and then spend the next hour or so debating and arguing with my stepson to finish his food.

After this there is an hour of twisting the stepsons arm to finish the homework he should have finished before I got home. Sometimes there is about 30minutes of time for some fun family time before his bedtime, sometimes not.

Next, I spend 30min to an hour cleaning up the kitchen, clearing the table and doing the dishes. Fiance cooked, I clean. Only fair.

So, now it's 10pm. I can choose to spend an hour or two unwinding watching something on TV with my Fiance or Gaming. Usually I spend time with th efiance, because I don't want to be anti-social and retreat to the office and game alone leaving her there alone.

Occasionally she will go to bed early, and I'll stay up a couple of hours and play a game, but it is becoming more and more rare.

I never sleep enough during the week, so on weekends I sleep in. I probably roll out of bed at about noon most days. Take my sweet ass time getting showered and dressed and walking to Dunkin for a coffee and a bagel. About now it's usually time for yard work. Lawn and hedge in the spring and summer, leaves in the fall, snow and ice removal in the winter.

There is also time spent tinkering on various other projects, (servers, VM's upgrades, repairs, etc.) On weekends when my stepson is with us, we try to fit in some family time. (I chased him 7 miles on his bike a couple of weeks ago while I was on foot. Just a little walk ) On weekends he isn't with us there are often social commitments or dinner out with the fiance, and maybe a movie. Again, I usually feel guilty retreating to games on the computer when she is around.

So, my gaming time is usually restricted to when she goes to bed before me, or when she gets a call to work on nights or weekends (which happens, as she is an on-call medical interpreter)

Based on this, I's say I average about 2-3 hours every other week or so in games, MUCH less than I once did when I was young and single. Sometimes I miss having more alone/game time and time with my old friends, but I'm fine with it. Family comes first!

I like you more and more all the time Z.

Kids are out of the house, wife at work or comes home tired and needs to decompress and doesn't want me hanging on her, you get this. If I didn't game, I could volunteer at the Y or something. Mostly I look forward to a future where the wife and I aren't working disjointed schedules and we have much more time together, maybe our kids want us around some too. A chance after retirement to build a different life then the one we live now. Hopes and dreams are great, but the life you live today is the best chance you have to make it happy and worth while.

 

[lcpiper]

Who doesn't and why? Every person I know, even those with kids, could easily get away with 2 hours or so of gaming a day.

Not having time and not wanting to do something aren't the same thing. So tired of everyone saying "I never have time!" when we ALL have time...some of us that don't "have time" for video games seem to have a lot of time for Netflix or surfing the web...

Z explains it pretty well here in a post (#116). He works hard, he has priorities, I think he has the right priorities.

You are correct, it's about choice and for him, gaming is fun, but it doesn't rate with some of his other options.

Read it, I think you'll agree.

 

[Mut1ny]

but it doesn't rate with some of his other options.

That's fine...does he tell people he doesn't "have time" to play games or that he choses to do something else in his free time? I guess I just don't like people using the time excuse when they actually DO have the time they just don't want to do what you're doing. If a friend wants to do something I don't want to do I tell them I don't want to do it...I don't lie and just say I don't have the time to hang out with them when I do, ya know? I guess it's more the phrasing that bothers me...not what people actually do with their time.

 

[lcpiper]

Excuse me for not reading all the comments if this has been repeated already, but back in the 80s all games were shipped and physical box. Expensive distribution and sales and marketing. Today? The vast majority of all the major PC games are digital distrubution. So before we talk about value then vs. value now and increase of game production costs, distribution costs have plummeted. Publisher costs in many cases are now either drastically reduced or in comparison nonexistent if the game is sold through the company's own platform software.

This man is also very correct. In fact, just the change from the old cardboard box format to CDs in a cheap jewel case was supposed to cut costs by 1/2, we never saw those savings in the retail price of new titles though did we. Digital distribution through services like Steam must have had another large impact on costs.

Advil, I applaud your contribution sir, you are right on point. We have a case here where in fact, the profit has been increased perhaps as much as any other entertainment venue despite this author's claims.

Well done sir.

 

[lcpiper]

Like I said, the games that will provide that kind of play time are rare. Out of the hundreds/thousands of games released every year there are only a very few. And lets be fair, most of those are mmo's and strategy/4x games.

Let's be more fair, just how many games does one need to find when they do provide this kind of play time?

Personally I find that one is enough, really, World of Tanks takes up most of my game time for the last 6 years. You can use the word rare but does that even apply? Are some people on a life mission to see how many different games they can experience in their life time? Guiness have a record that needs breaking?

Let's recap, I have been playing one game as my primary entertainment for the last 6 years. The same company makes World of Warships and World of Warplanes. I also have spent time playing one that is equally time consuming, Mechwarrior Online. Before these I played others though 6 years is the record for a single title ..... unless maybe we count Diablo2 which I played for many years.

Hmmm, and when I am not playing WoT, I play Fallout 4, (Released Nov 2015 Two Years ago and I still play it), and Skyrim, (2011, another 6 year gaming pleasure).

To me, the content argument is bullshit for most titles, it's not about content, it's about replayability. Those linear games that you play through and "beat" and then forget about, yea I don't play those too often, the last was Assassin's Creed (the first one). If this kind of game is your thing then perhaps I understand your feelings on it. But this title isn't one of those kind of games is it? It's one of my kind of games.

 

[Dillirium]

You do realize that's exactly what ISP's want to do, and what the FCC is about to allow them to do.

Good, I hope they do. From their ashes a new company will come out that doesn't do this. It's kind of like Verizon taking unlimited data away. T-Mobile and others walked in and took a lot of their market share. Now Verizon has that plan back.

This is why capitalism works.

 

[lcpiper]

You do realize that's exactly what ISP's want to do, and what the FCC is about to allow them to do.

The FCC was never ever supposed to try and regulate this to begin with. It was an aberration of over reach that they did. One that is currently being corrected.

This is the FTC's responsibility to regulate commerce, not the FCCs

I am sorry that the FCC got a wild hair and decided to do what they thought the FTC should have been doing, but it was wrong for them to do it no matter how "good" the intentions.

Now that this governmental fuck up is almost corrected, we can get down to doing it the right way and not bastardizing thirty year old regulatory power intended for completely other purposes.

I don't just want government to work, I want it to work right.

 

[ChedWick]

Good, I hope they do. From their ashes a new company will come out that doesn't do this. It's kind of like Verizon taking unlimited data away. T-Mobile and others walked in and took a lot of their market share. Now Verizon has that plan back.

This is why capitalism works.

Need to fix the monopolies the ISP's have on various regions before capitalism in that sense will work. The reason the mobile market is so competitive is because you can literally choose who to have service with. Much of the US is limited to 1 ISP that isn't DSL.

 

[Ranulfo]

This man is also very correct. In fact, just the change from the old cardboard box format to CDs in a cheap jewel case was supposed to cut costs by 1/2, we never saw those savings in the retail price of new titles though did we. Digital distribution through services like Steam must have had another large impact on costs.

Advil, I applaud your contribution sir, you are right on point. We have a case here where in fact, the profit has been increased perhaps as much as any other entertainment venue despite this author's claims.

Well done sir.

Where are all the big manuals with game info these days? Oh, yay... pdf format.