Return on Investment

[jdrakeh]

When you break it down per hour of enjoyment derived even a mediocre product is better value for money on a cost per hour basis than a DVD, video or movie.

This is only true if you get a chance to use the material that you pay for in an actual game. Frex, for health reasons, I played in one whole game last year that lasted an entire two weeks. I bought about $200 - $300 worth of RPG books last year. The return on my investment in terms of actual play was absolutely horrible.

 

[Umbran]

But you know poor people... always complaining. Why don't they just eat cake?

You know, the 10% to 20% of the people on these boards who are probably without jobs right now don't think this is funny at all - the smilie really does nothing to mitigate it.

Let's not have any more of this sort of "humor" in this thread please. Thanks.

 

[Derulbaskul]

You know, the 10% to 20% of the people on these boards who are probably without jobs right now don't think this is funny at all - the smilie really does nothing to mitigate it.

Let's not have any more of this sort of "humor" in this thread please. Thanks.

It's gone now.

 

[malraux]

Really only free internet porn offers a better fun per dollar spent return than table top gaming.

 

[Desdichado]

234 hours of enjoyment for $125. Now that's impressive to me, but I suspect other people here have even better ROIs.

Just imagine if you were still using your old 1e books all that time, 25+ years straight.

 

[Mallus]

The last evening I went out w/friends, I spent more on bourbon that I did on the 4e core books. Needless to say, I find gaming to be a good value (and blissfully hangover free).

 

[francisca]

Just imagine if you were still using your old 1e books all that time, 25+ years straight.

You rang?

 

[Tewligan]

You know, the 10% to 20% of the people on these boards who are probably without jobs right now don't think this is funny at all - the smilie really does nothing to mitigate it.

Let's not have any more of this sort of "humor" in this thread please. Thanks.

[Raises hand] I'm unemployed, and I thought it was funny. Marie Antoinette references for the win!

 

[delericho]

On the other hand...

I was in my FLGS today and bought two books ("Hunter: the Vigil" and "Star Wars: The Clone Wars Campaign Guide"), setting me back almost £50.

Now, it's obviously true that I could have picked them up for less from Amazon or the like. (Actually, a lot less - the Amazon discount is about a third.) I shop at my FLGS as a matter of principle, and that does mean paying a premium.

Still, it's a lot of money for not many books.

The thing is, if I run a campaign of Hunter, then it will absolutely be worth it. But, despite a couple of very solid recommendations, there's no guarantee that I will - I may not be able to get a group together, we may not be able to sustain a campaign, or we may decide we'd rather play D&D instead.

And while I'm very confident that I will run a Star Wars campaign, or more likely several, in the future, I am by no means convinced that supplements actually help that game - in fact, I often feel games run better without them.

I find myself somewhat uneasy about this. I now have enough gaming material on hand that I will have to live to be about 300 to use it all. And the books are now edging towards a price point where I have to be more selective in my purchases - I won't be buying many books unless I know I'm going to use them heavily. (Indeed, a major factor in me not trying WFRP 3e is the cost - my impression of the previews is that I probably wouldn't like it, and at £80 RRP, it's too expensive for me to give it the benefit of the doubt.)

I don't envy RPG publishers their position. I'm not really interested in learning Yet Another Game System, which limits their ability to sell me core rulebooks (and besides, I doubt they can live on core rulebooks alone). And yet, the return on supplements isn't terribly good, and diminishes with time. So I don't know what they can really do.

(Perhaps the wisest thing would simply be to write me off as a customer. )

 

[Morrus]

It's not even a debate; the fact that we've all bought it and are here is indicative of the fact that we rightly consider it a fantastic investment. If we consider what we'll pay for 5 minutes' pleasure (a coffee, a Big Mac) compared to what we pay for a PHB which provides 10 years' pleasure...*

Hell, I'll be the first to put my hand up. If the 5EPHB costs $100, I will still buy it. Of course, I still won't buy anything but the core rulebooks, but then I've never bought a setting in my life and never will, and my players provide themselves with the class books they need.

*It's a weird dichotomy of perceived value, though, and doesn't work as logicially as that. I posit EN World subscriptions as an example of that - if you view it on a strictly mathematical basis, 99% of people here value the benefit they get from this website each month as less than they value a cup of Starbuck's coffee once a month. So applying numbers to it doesn't really work; I strongly suspect that if an EN World subscription was $10 per month instead of $3, the number of subscribers wouldn't change substantially (although I'd be three times better off).

The point I'm trying to make is that people make emotional decisions, not logical mathematical decisions. That's not a bad thing, of course - the market sells to how people are, not to what it wishes people were or believes people should be (well, successful players in the market do; plenty of others fall into the latter category). And it's a fundamental truth that people make emotional decsions on their purchases, and that that is a good thing - because a world where everybody acted according to logic and mathematics is not one I'd care to live in.

So, one can point out the hours vs. cost of a PHB vs. a movie until one is hoarse in the throat, but really that equation does not matter to real people; people don't live their lives like that**, and no matter how many posts you make on the intrawebs about it, you won't change the nature of what is human. Thank goodness!

**Nor should they, because Vulcan doesn't sound like a planet I'd enjoy***.

***Besides, Nero blew it up.

Any company who views their sales in a pure hours-entertainment value ratio is going to fail. People will spend hundreds on a two-hour concert, and thousands on a wedding. These things are emotional choices, and applying logic just does not work. As evidence I posit the following statement (with the knowledge that saying anything of interest angers a certain percentage to the point of frothing mouths and rage) - "If you haven't subscribed to EN World for $3 per month, you consider the value you get from this site less than that you get from a cup of coffee."

We all know that's not true. We know that if given the choice, you'd forsake one cup of coffee per month for the ability to read and post on EN World. But that's not how a person's mind works.

And the same holds for a D&D book. Which is why I posit that it could cost $100 and we'd still all buy it. Or, if we didn't want it it could cost $5 and we'd still not buy it.

Entertainment hours vs. cost is an oft repeated, frequent cliche - but it has nothing to do with the reaility of how people in real life choose to spend their money, and as oft-repeated cliches go, it's pretty useless. People just aren't Vulcans. If they were, it'd be much easier to sell products or services in this world!