I do this for a lot of things I do, but it’s not always apples to apples as far as comparison goes. I spent maybe $150 during the last Steam sale. I’m already at 90 hours in for just one game purchased. So at present, that’s not a bad cost per hour. I calculated my cost of satellite radio at about 60 cents per my hour of use. Conversely, I’ve calculated my cost of boating to be about $25 per hour of use. These are based on the hours I do those things. So if I increase the amount I use them, the cost per hour goes down, meaning I get more enjoyment for a cheaper cost.
There is a lot of give and take related to doing what you enjoy, what you can escape with, what you can do to appease you and others at the same time, etc. But the pragmatic side of me really likes to know how much it costs me to do it.
It’d look roughly like this (rounding to neat numbers, since there’s already going to be a bunch of inaccuracies from currency conversions):
Steam: $100
Selling all the PUBG loot drops on Steam: -$50
Humble Store: $150
Physical PC games: $100
PSN: $250
Switch (console + games): $600
Phone games: $40
Escape rooms: $250 $300
Board games: ~$500
So about $160 a month.
Obviously something like PUBG is infinitely good value, since I’ve been effectively paid to play a game I loved. But I’m happy with what I got from PC games as a whole, too.
Escape rooms are stupidly expensive per hour, but they’re just so much fun, no regrets there.
A huge chunk of the PSN spending was on is Destiny 2 (with the season pass, since I’m a moron) and having to get PS plus which I’d never needed before. Not feeling good about that, given how Destiny 2 ended up.
The Switch was pretty much a waste of money, and I kept sending good money after bad on the games. The first party Nintendo titles ranged from garbage to mediocre despite everyone raving about them. Should have realized sooner that this was seemingly a universal, not just isolated to the first couple that I got. Oh, well. At least there will be indie games and hopefully some 360 remasters.
A buddy of mine runs Escape Room Adventurer and gets in discounted or free sometimes, moreso now that he’s getting a bit of readership going. Clearly this is the tactic to use!
Not sure how much, but way more than I should considering how little time is spent playing. I think I did good money wise with Factorio and Rim World though.
I kept it down to $150 this year. EA has convinced me to never buy AAA games anymore, so that’s helped. I’m no longer interested in the rat race of buying new hardware every couple of years when I’m just going to spend most of my time playing Rimworld and Rocket League anyway.
$450 or so, excluding hardware (Switch, Pro Controller, case, screen protector). That’s substantially more than most recent years - I don’t think I had averaged more than one $50+ game a year for quite a while until this year, which had 6.
I also really enjoyed the edit process of Scott’s post!
I felt like a damned fool, though to be fair to myself, I had some extra money from cashing in Paid Time Off and it also spans two Christmas events, because I went back one year and I have all my goodies for this year purchased and wrapped (so to speak - we still haven’t wrapped anything). I don’t have any hardware nor any board games to buy this next year, so it should end up being QUITE a bit less (a much more normal amount, which is still in all honestly about $500 on Steam and $200 on console titles).
I’ve spent about $600 on concert tickets this year, and that’s just the tickets–nevermind food beforehand (and often after) or the gas to get out to distant shows (about a third of 'em). Made me happy as fuck, though, so. . . worth it!
Yeah, I spend a lot of time playing games I’ve owned for years. EU IV remains a big time sink, and even Thief and HoMM III still consistently get my attention.
Looking at the steam app on my phone it looks like I I’ve done amazingly well this year. Basically Factorio, Rim World, Dominions 5, Stellaris dlc, and the tempest dlc For endless legend.
That’s the way it should be, and so I don’t have any regrets, but putting it together like that was quite a slap in the face. Sure, some of it was like “I’m spending $1600 on a video card and a new monitor!” and of course, none of those numbers in my post reflected when I sold a game for credit, or sold my old video card for a decent chunk of cash as well, either, so it isn’t raw output neither.
