Game Value

Today, I wanted to talk about a subject that I have been thinking about for a while now. What is interesting is that there are many factors that can contribute to this subject and how people feel about this. Just this past week, Tom Vasel touched on the subject and I thought brought up some valid points.

Today, I want to give my opinion on the value of a game. How do you take into account what that game is worth to you? Here are some questions that I might ask myself. How much did that game cost? Was it a smaller game that cost about $15? Was a mid-weight game that cost about $40? Was it a heavier game that cost $100 or even more? How many times have you played that game? How many hours did it take you to play that game? How many people were playing that game? When you were setting up the game and playing it, did you feel that it was time well spent? Were you having fun playing that game? Did you think about that game after you played it? Were you creating strategies before or after you actually played the game? Was it worth it to get to the location you are at to play the game? Did someone else buy the game? Are you just borrowing the game? How many times can you play the game?

There are so many factors that go into if that game was worth it. I think one thing that is currently trending now is the board gaming cafe environment. If you live near a friendly local gaming store you might have to option to borrow a game and play it while possibly eating some food or not. In this scene, you are able to play a game to see if you like it enough to spend you hard earned money on it. Still, in this case you are  still spending time to play the game but not money.

I feel that board gaming has take off in the past few years and there are so many more games coming out now then there were ten years ago. Even maybe five years ago. Some might be similar to past games or other games on the market but perhaps the component quality is better. Perhaps there is a different theme.

After all this I really want to get to the real question on my mind and perhaps bothers me the most. I think that top lists are great. If you find you like a reviewers type of games you might look that their top 100 favorite games list and use this as a guide to what game you might buy next. What bothers me is that when I look at video’s such as this or threads on board game geek about peoples favorite games, they might have a top game that they have played less then five times.

As one example of many lets look at a game that is from a popular company, highly rated on board game geek, I’ve heard many people like this game and it is getting a lot of buzz now as a new edition is coming out and it is called Twilight Imperium three with a fourth edition coming out soon. I’m just going to put it out there now that I have not played this game and most likely never will. Maybe but probably not. The third edition cost about $100, plays three to six players and takes anywhere from eight to twelve or more hours to play.

To me, many people rate this game in their top five favorite games and have played it less then five times is not getting your value worth. How can you spend $100 on a game that you have played less then five times and call it one of your top favorite games of all time? There has got to be something wrong with that. Tom actually made a valid argument on this subject for me. If there were five people playing and it took you eight hours to play that would amount to about $13 for one player and come out to about three dollars a player per hour. When you look at it this way, that to me is pretty good value.

If you were to go see a movie that cost eight dollars for two hours, you are getting more money’s worth then seeing the movie.

Ok, for me, this still isn’t worth it. Maybe you had fun and there were some epic moments in the game but if a game hits the table for me only once a year and you paid for it, you are not getting your money’s worth. It would also be far away from being in my top five or so games I’ve every played. Sure, I could say top 100 maybe but I would say I haven’t even played 100 games.

My favorite game is Dominion. I own the base and four of the expansions. Perhaps I am contradicting myself here. I’ve played my copy of Dominion very few times. But, I go to my FLGS and play on a regular basis. I started playing Dominion now about four years ago. I would be safe to say that I have sat in on about 20 sessions a year of Dominion and played three to five games per session. That would be about 80 games of Dominion a year and would also mean that I have played over 300 games of Dominion. If each game lasted about an hour that would be about 300 hours of Dominion. Multiply that by an average number of three player games and that is 900 hours. With a base game of Dominion costing about $35. Sure, we have other expansions so perhaps about $300 with expansions and that would be pennies per hour.

My next favorite game is X-Wing. Ok, I probably have about $500 worth of X-Wing stuff. I’ve been playing X-Wing for about 3 years. I’m just going to average that I have about 15 sessions a year of X-Wing with 2 games per session lasting about one hour. That would be 90 games of X-Wing lasting about 90 hours. This is not as good of a per play per dollar value. But, I have spent at least another 30 hours thinking about the game and building lists. That would be 120 hours of X-Wing making the ratio a bit better. I also come away with excellent Star Wars models to display.

Most of the games that I own, I have at least five plays of, or thought about building decks, creating strategy or painting. What I really want to do is look at another angle of this. A deck of playing cards cost $3. I really enjoy trick taking games such as Hearts and Trumps and other games such as Poker, Cribbage, and played a lot of Solitaire as well. 

This is the final part of this piece that perhaps only I think about but it is starting to affect my decision on the value of a game. We are so caught up sometimes in the cult of the new, and shinny and flashy. But, what about game packaging. We are literary littering the Planet Earth with something we may just get a few hours of enjoyment out of. I played Magic for years but we spend $4 on a few pieces of cardboard which is fine because it has great art and mechanics that people like packaged in a piece of plastic that can’t be recycled. People purchase boxes of this stuff. Magic and other custimizable card games  are at fault for this but so are board games. Each is wrapped in shrink or a piece of non-recyclable plastic to open more plastic that has to go into our landfills. Why can we not get the same entertainment from a $3 deck o f 52 playing cards and create less waste. Yes, I am at fault for this as well as all the X-Wing I get has more plastic but it makes me make a choice. Perhaps, rather then purchasing loads and loads of games just because they are on sale and have them sit on your shelf still unplayed in shrink, you could make a choice to purchase more wisely and get more plays per game.