The Nickel & Dime Generation

Phaethon360 sends in a piece that looks at how quickly game costs can add up these days, now that DLC, microtransactions and standalone expansions are commonplace, writing, "If you were trying to the think of the most expensive games to play, Rock Band or a monthly-fee MMORPG would come to mind. But Halo 3 is right up there, too." It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars.

Comments

DLC

[sopssa]

That's a total of 4 years and 8 months as of right now. That means that I've paid $14.95 a month for 56 months. That's $837.20.

Considering that's almost 5 years of entertainment and actually a good game, is that really so much. Like he notes, it comes down to $14.95 a month - pretty much every other hobby costs a lot more per month, while still providing less in back in terms of time spent.

Microtransactions and DLC's is a good way. If you like the game, you get more of what you like. It's not like you *have to* buy them. Patches in my opinion should be for game balancing or bug fixes - DLC's and expansions for things that add content to the game. However some companies, like Valve, release DLC's (TF2, Left4dead) for free on PC too.

Re:DLC

[selven]

I think wife + kids addon and games are incompatible. You could try installing a different distribution of gf but I haven't had any successes yet.

Re:DLC

[Shadow of Eternity]

There's no way to get it to work in the long run, trust me. Reformatting's just plain prohibitively expensive and time consuming which only leaves dual-bootying which is almost impossible to start up properly and usually ends in a complete system failure if they ever interact in the slightest way.

It is immoral and unethical...

[AliasMarlowe]

...to leave a fool with any money.

This is taught in business ethics 101, and reiterated in all subsequent business ethics classes.

Why single out games?

[plasmacutter]

It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars

TV services will add up to thousands of dollars in ONE year, not several.

If your hobby is auto tuning or off-roading that souped up sports car or SUV will gobble through even more money a year in parts and gas than the afore mentioned TV bills.

Is your hobby reading? Only a fraction of titles are available in the libraries of most municipalities, this means at least as much as WoW a month if not more.

The point is this is nothing new. Every generation has had its "nickel and dime", it's the nature of all hobbies.

Three Words

[BigMeanBear]

Magic The Gathering