The Economic Value of FFXIV: A study in utility

[Ehayte]

All those costs should be included in gaming then, along with internet connection.

That's why the cost of watching TV seems to have been dropped. You can get entertainment out of that with your internet connection without the sub fee... so I'm not sure why it wasn't included. You can download movies as well.

You are absolutely correct, but I excluded a number of costs from every activity and just expressed the explicit costs. I don't have 20 hours to spend on gathering pricing data averaged among countries and regions to make a silly post! This took me about 15 minutes and I thought it would be fun to share, and I DON'T think that the costs are relatively super out of whack.

I wouldn't dispute it's cheap entertainment... but the quality is fairly low comparatively. Vacations can be relatively expensive, but the quality of entertainment is so much higher that the incremental cost is outweighed by the superior quality and satisfaction received.

That's what the entertainment intensity figure is used for. Video games were assigned a 4, you would probably something much higher to a European vacation. This was accounted for.

There is also the issue of opportunity cost... the value of the savings is worth more or less depending on your income. I prefer to spend money going to Europe than on an MMO sub.... why? Because I have the money to spend, and spending it on mediocre entertainment seems like a waste. I would rather not spend 13 dollars on something mediocre, regardless of whether I have the money for it.

Opportunity cost is relative among activities, the most classic example is going to college after high school or starting to work. You can compare the cost of those because they are mutually exclusive, meaning you can only do one or the other. Its a little more muddle and difficult to quickly express with entertainment, as there are soooo many other things you could do with leisure time.

Also, things aren't worth more a less depending on your income, they are just a less meaningful portion of your budget. Again, this circles back to the entertainment intensity figure. You also have to factor in resource limitations (like time and money). If you had unlimited resources then you would just do your higher entertainment intensity activity all day every day. It just identifies price discrepancies for activities you tend to take part in. It kind of helps you identify where you are getting the best bargain on your entertainment.

Let's look at your European vacation:

Cost: $15,000
Hours: 238 (2 weeks, sleeping 7 hours a day, assuming no travel at all, or that you enjoy the travel as much as the sight-seeing)

You would need to assign an intensity factor of 571.6 to have your vacation cost $0.11 per unit. Which is entirely feasible! Especially if you have 142.9 times as much fun in Europe as you do playing FFXIV!

Remember its all subjective and just a fun way to look at things!

[Fyrebrand]

I think this topic would be better off just focusing on the "cost per hour" aspect, and leave the psychology and pseudo-science out of it.

$15/month may be a reasonable cost for a hobby you greatly enjoy and gives you many hours of entertainment -- but for someone who isn't as interested and would rather do other things, this is not going to be convincing.

[ApolloGenX]

You are absolutely correct, but I excluded a number of costs from every activity and just expressed the explicit costs. I don't have 20 hours to spend on gathering pricing data averaged among countries and regions to make a silly post! This took me about 15 minutes and I thought it would be fun to share, and I DON'T think that the costs are relatively super out of whack.

I get that, but watching TV as an example would be "free" under your model... since all of those costs might be included with the gaming figure but weren't considered. Same with downloading movies.

If you want to find the marginal increase of entertainment - then you should subtract the watching TV entertainment value from the gaming value. At least then you just get the marginal increase in entertainment for the marginal cost.

[Ehayte]

I get that, but watching TV as an example would be "free" under your model... since all of those costs might be included with the gaming figure but weren't considered. Same with downloading movies.

If you want to find the marginal increase of entertainment - then you should subtract the watching TV entertainment value from the gaming value. At least then you just get the marginal increase in entertainment for the marginal cost.

TV costs you about $50/mo in a subscription, so I would price it that way. If you want to throw internet on top of FFXIV if you would need to add the cost of your internet subscription, but it would need to be prorated by the amount of time you are using the internet NOT for FFXIV.

Total Internet Usage x (FFXIV Time / (All other internet usage time + FFXIV time))

Almost impossible to quantify without looking at a data usage layout, which I ain't got time for. Downloading movies would be "free" under my suppositions. If I had to assign a cost to it without the internet subscription I would probably do a "% chance that you would get caught x the fine for breaking that law / the number of days in your life"

[ApolloGenX]

Almost impossible to quantify without looking at a data usage layout, which I ain't got time for. Downloading movies would be "free" under my suppositions. If I had to assign a cost to it without the internet subscription I would probably do a "% chance that you would get caught x the fine for breaking that law / the number of days in your life"

That's not all necessary. That's my point. I have to get cable with my internet (and I have to have internet for working at home)... so the cable cost is negligible..... it's not optional. I could watch TV or Browse the net... or whatever.... add the sub on top of all that for the game. Now, the sub only gets me the marginal increase in entertainment over what I had before....

That's why I said, just subtract the entertainment from the TV/Movies/Facebook from the game, and you get your marginal increase and marginal cost (sub). It's not an exact science, but that makes more sense.

[whiskeybravo]

Soo basically.. I've been doing it right for the last year :P

Nice work!