Mathematical Musings …
Mathematical Musings on the Price:Entertainment Ratio of Adventure Games
I have seen many a complaint on newsgroups and elsewhere on the Internet regarding the lack of replayability of adventure games as compared to strategy, sims, RPGs, and shooters. Frankly, I’m getting a little sick of hearing it (whining never sits well with me–just ask my kids!), and so I thought I’d bring to light some more relevant comparisons, that is, by comparing the cost of some other cheap forms of entertainment with the cost of an adventure game.
The following examples assume an average adventure game full price of $50 and an average time to complete an adventure game of 20 hours.
An average movie lasts about two hours and costs $7, and that’s not including the cost of the junk food. For your $50, you can see about 7 movies, or gain 14 hours worth of entertainment. That would equal the entertainment value of only the shortest of adventure games, plus you’d have to waste all the gasoline and time to get to the theater, but keeping it simple, you would get three extra movies’ worth of entertainment time by buying an adventure game. On the other hand, you could rent Schindler’s List at your video store 14 times at $3.50 per and be entertained until the end of time, or at least until you have to go potty, instead of paying the cost of one adventure game. That, however, would also assume that Schindler’s List is inherently more replayable than an adventure game.
An average hardcover book costs about $25 and takes about five hours to read, so you could get two books for the price of one game and be amused for 10 hours. (However, to be fair, an average paperback is about $7, or about 35 hours for your $50, so unless you’ve got a nice long adventure game, you’re better off with the paperbacks. Also, if you’re a slow reader, you might be better off even with the hardcovers.)
Say you are a more active sort and choose to play some type of sport instead of gluing your mug to your computer screen for the 20 hours of adventure game playing. If you already have whatever equipment you need and pick something that’s free to play, like driveway basketball, you can be endlessly entertained for nothing, right? Wrong! One trip to a massage parlor or chiropractor after playing for 20 hours straight equals or exceeds the cost of one adventure game, plus it’s a lot less fun (that’s assuming the masseur is not some totally buffed out Fabio-looking dude whose hands you might want roaming all over your body … “I can’t believe it’s not butt-aaahh” … er, I digress into my fantasy life yet again–excuse me for a moment).
… All right, then, I’m back. Work–assume you are a top executive at a Fortune 500 company. You’d probably only have to work a half hour, or better yet, delegate for 30 seconds, to earn enough for one adventure game. The return in terms of time spent would be forty-fold (how do you like that turn of phrase? pretty swell, huh?). Then again, assume you make minimum wage, which is, what? around $5 in the U.S.? You’d have to work 10 hours for your 20 hours of entertainment. That might sound like a pretty raw deal, but if that’s really the case, you’re probably reading this on your parents’ computer, and maybe if you tell them it’s “educational,” they will buy the adventure game for you, so you can’t lose.
The only form of entertainment I can think of that would entertain longer for less money than a nice adventure game would be hanging at the mall with your girlfriends and dissin’ all the geeky guys you see, and that’s assuming you don’t buy that $350 Coach leather handbag you’ve had your eye on for a while. Oops, I think I just confused the age groups, but you get my drift.
In conclusion, next time you start complaining that adventure games are too expensive or not replayable enough, just shut your pie hole! (Feel free, however, to complain loudly and at length when a game is released with a lot of bugs.)
