Pricing vs. Costing

[JiffyPopTart]

Over the last 5 or so years I have noticed a trend in gaming discussion (often miniatures games but today I saw it on an EnWorld tread) to substitute the word cost when I would consider price to be the "normal" word to use in that situation. I know that in finance the definition of cost and price are very different and have very specific meanings. In the case of gaming it is a little more nebulous since there is not a clear business/customer divide in pricing/costing things.

A typical discussion might be something along these lines...

P1: I think that in 2.0 the Tie Fighters are costed too high. They aren't worth the points in today's meta.
P2: I agree. I think if the Sweet Paintjob upgrade weren't also overcosted then it might be OK.
P1: You might be right. Sweet Paintjob should probably only cost 3, not 4. Then the Tie Fighter would be better balance.

This sounds wrong to my ears. It makes more sense to me to go this way.

P1: I think that in 2.0 the Tie Fighters are priced too high. They aren't worth the points in today's meta.
P2: I agree. I think if the Sweet Paintjob upgrade wasn't also too expensive [pricey also works here] then it might be OK.
P1: You might be right. Sweet Paintjob should probably only cost 3, not 4. Then the Tie Fighter would be a better balance.

I'm not saying that either version is right or wrong...i'm just curious as to why the language is shifting for this particular use (and perhaps only in certain areas of discussion) and why it sounds so foreign to my ears. Probably because i'm old and crusty??? I just wondered if anyone else has noticed this.

Things that also haven't made the switch in my brain....
1. CV replacing resume
2. BCE/ME replacing BC/AD
3. Oxford commas.
4. Two spaces after end-of-sentence punctuation.

 

[Umbran]

I have never heard "costed" used in that manner.

"Cost" is the amount paid to produce the thing. "Price" is what the customer pays for the thing. The difference between price and cost is the profit. The amount the seller expects the thing will sell for is the "worth". The amount the buyer gets out of it is the "value".

Now, when we are talking about RPGs and videogames, a great deal of the economy... doesn't exist. The GM gets nothing out of you spending build points on your character. So, I suppose a player can think of it instead as they being someone trying to produce a build, and they think in terms of the cost of that build.

But in normal English, you'd still say the parts of the build were "priced" to high, not "costed" too high.

It may just be them young 'uns, bendin' up hte lingo, just for giggles.

 

[aramis erak]

I have never heard "costed" used in that manner.

I have. Mostly amongst ignorant teenaged players who have yet to take personal finance or economics.... (in Alaska, that's a grade 12 course - all students in grade 12 must take one of the two in order to graduate.)

 

[JiffyPopTart]

WOIN - Need help - re-costing OLD spells

The final verison of OLD 1.2 is ready to go. The only final thing is the costing of the example spells. If anybody has time to help me with this and cost them all out, I'll send them a free hardcover of v1.2. First come first served! So -- every example spell, using the current version of the...

www.enworld.org

Morrus the Younger

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, I think I know the source of your lingo.

In Magic the Gathering, a card's 'cost' typically refers to the amount you have to pay in game to play the card. But the cards 'price' typically refers to the amount of real world money you would have to pay on the secondary market to buy a copy of that card.

A card that is 'undercosted' is a card which costs fewer in game mana to play than you'd normally expect for the effect.

While if a person says that a card is 'overpriced', they could mean depending on the context that a card costs too much mana to play, or else they could mean that the card is fetching a price on the secondary market (in real world currency) in excess of its actual value as a playing piece.

In any event, the use of the word 'cost' typically is preferred when speaking of a magic card's balance, since using 'price' can be confusing.

Since MtG asserts such a huge influence over the technical language of play balance, what you are probably are hearing is the effects of MtG lingo pervading other nerdy game hobbies, including RPGs.

 

[GMMichael]

I'm not saying that either version is right or wrong...i'm just curious as to why the language is shifting for this particular use (and perhaps only in certain areas of discussion) and why it sounds so foreign to my ears. Probably because i'm old and crusty???

There is a right and a wrong. It's not that you're old, but that schools taught English back when you were in them.

The reason is the same one that leads people to think apostrophe-s means plural. Or worse, that you always use an apostrophe before an s at the end of a word.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I like the thought here I could get behind the idea that MTG is shaping the tabletop industry as a whole. If that was the driving factor I wonder why the delay? It has been around since the early 90s but "costing" seems to have taken 25ish years to rest it's head in other parts of the hobby.

I was VERY into magic in it's early days. I stopped collecting at Homelands. I never heard the phrase costed, but then again I didn't play in store and the internet wasn't a big influence on the hobby.

From there I transitioned to 2nd edition 40k. Stuck with that through 3rd edition and once again never heard the term costed. Internet boards became a bigger thing at this time, but still nowhere near what we have today.

From there 3e popped on the scene and I moved to mostly playing that for it's entire run. Joined ENworld to get the scoop on changes coming with 3rd so forums were big by then. Never saw costed.

Around the time of late 3rd I picked back up collecting boardgames. First started to notice the term costed when listening to Xwing miniatures podcasts. 2013ish.

Since then it's become pervasive in miniatures gaming sources I dip my toes into, but I've not seen it very frequently in RPG circles.

Then today I accidentally clicked the wrong thing and threads I'd normally never read showed on my feed, as linked above. Costed has entered RPG lingo it seems.

I don't believe the podcasts or forum users I see using costed are unintelligent, uneducated, or needlessly spouting netspeak gibberish. Costed is just a term that has entered our vernacular and perhaps it's a fair add to distinguish real world price versus in game price.

I find language change interesting and don't mind a reasonable amount of it in my lifetime. Time moves on and words people use do as well. It reminds me of the team behind Deadwood explaining their choice of using modern cursing (AND LOTS OF IT) because period accurate cursing would make the otherwise we'll written characters sound like Yosemite Sam to our ears.

 

[Celebrim]

I was VERY into magic in it's early days. I stopped collecting at Homelands. I never heard the phrase costed, but then again I didn't play in store and the internet wasn't a big influence on the hobby.

If you stopped playing at Homelands, then you probably missed the introduction of technical language to describe the game. For example, important concepts like 'tempo' weren't understood until the Visions era about a year after you stopped playing (via the infamous 'Sligh' deck and it's Orcish Artillery).

I can't remember when I first heard and started using terms like 'undercosted' and 'overcosted', but I believe that they became widespread by say Stronghold, which is about two years after you quit and right at the end of my first phase of magic - right before Urza's block naturally as I seem to have a knack of missing the under costed blocks and thus the cards that hold real long term value. Certainly by about 2003 when I got back into the game the language was widespread and pervasive at least within the MtG community, but by then we were also talking about 'pushed' cards, that is cards that were clearly deliberately undercosted by the developers in order to keep the Skinner box going.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I agree with Celebrim - I have only heard "costed" in reference to in game resouce cost, and price when referring to money, and I figured it had also migrated from the M:tG community.