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Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

Video games are cheap compared to other entertainment. I can buy a good enough PC for $400 and I can clock almost an infinite amount of game-time on it with friends all over the world. Most other activities - playing pool, eating out, bars, most sports, vacationing - cost a lot more per hour of possible entertainment.

So if you don't have the money and you have the time you should choose activities that provide the most entertainment for the least $

Previously unemployed people would watch a lot of TV for affordable entertainment, an they probably still do it a lot. However video games can be more cognitively engaging and more social, so they might be actually an improvement.

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Not only are they cheap, but the nominal price of video games hasn't budged much in something like 30 years. AAA titles have always hit the market in the $50-$60 dollar range since the days of the NES (and maybe earlier, but that is before my time). It isn't surprising that video game companies have introduced additional revenue streams with DLC or microtransactions in order to counter inflation in both real dollars and in production budgets.

I am not sure I agree with this statement. I remember new PS1 games retailing for $39.99, I remember PS2 games retailing for $49.99. It wasn't until the ps3 generation were games $59.99.

My friends and I always joked about how each generation games went up $10.

You can do a Google image search for old video game ads to prove my point.

Here are new NES games retailing at $55-$70 - http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4240/90scommercials1324wwwk...

Here are new SNES games retailing at $60-$70 - https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b9/57/24/b957...

Here are new Genesis games retailing at $45-$65 - http://farm1.static.flickr.com/215/523645427_a566d2d110_b.jp...

Here are new PS1 games retailing at $50-$55 - https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/08/89/34/0889...

What might be clouding your memory is that as a console generation ages the games might drop in price until a new generation comes in to reestablish the price at approximately $60. It is certainly possible at the introduction of the PS2 that most PS1 games were retailing for less than $50 and then it was repeated when PS2 aged and the PS3 was released, but it certainly wasn't the PS3 that introduces the $60 price point.

Playstation started with a SRP of $49 when it launched in the US in 1995. Sony dropped the SRP of first party titles to $39 in 1997, several years before PS2 launched. PS2 launched with games back up at $49, and then Sony followed Microsoft's lead and upped it to $59 for the PS3. So if you look at a narrow window of time, you see games going $39 -> $49 -> $59, but that doesn't give the full picture. Throw in inflation, and the increased costs, and games are shockingly inexpensive.

Sone SNES cartridges were even more expensive: Chrono Trigger was $79.99

This is what I remember, thanks for clarifying.

$40 in 1995 is about $64 now.

The prices have probably changed a little, sure, but a lot of that is just inflation.

This. I specifically used MMOs during periods of my life when money was short. You'd be surprised how expensive food is in comparison to a 25$ monthly subscription fee, and how fulfilling having actions cause their intended results is.

I think it's hard to beat books for economical. But certainly games are in reach.

I really wish books could hold my attention like video games. I would read a lot more.

You might not be reading the right books? But also -- getting into a reading habit takes a small amount of patience if you are used to the intense stimulation of game.

If your goal is to start reading more often, stop reading so many books you think you ought to read and read more books you want to read. Variety and challenging yourself are good but sometimes you can get carried away and just make yourself not want to read anything.

This is very true. I am usually not the best reader but I recently picked up an excellent fantasy novel and couldn't put it down and ended up reading like 4 or 5 hours straight. On the flip side when I read nonfiction or textbooks it's hard to push myself to keep learning.

Read better non-fiction, then?

In particular, read something that has nothing to do with your job once in a while.

There is apparently a link between our current internet culture and not being able to focus for longer periods: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-goog...

In short: you should start reading more books if you want books to hold your attention for longer.

If you expect books to grab your attention away from games--not happening. Instead, make a resolution to stop gaming and stick to it. You'll have plenty of time for reading and other activities.

Well, sure or writing music or poetry or drawing or playing soccer with friends or....

It's an incomplete picture if you ignore the fact that videogames are infinitely more mentally accessible. There's plenty of very cheap, very fulfilling things to do with your time but they don't provide the instant, accessible dopamine hit that movies or videogames do, which put them out of reach for a lot of people.

I don't really watch TV or movies, and I play videogames pretty sparingly. I'm definitely glad I did it, and I find my hobbies now a lot more stimulating and rewarding, but I'd be lying if I pretended it wasn't a somewhat difficult habit to get into.

Are they really? I've never spent more than a few days on a book, but I've certainly spent well over 300 hours on some video games. I love reading, but to me books seem quite expensive as an entertainment medium in comparison with computer games.

There is tons of reading material available for free or for less than ten bucks and the setup costs are nothing (if you want to go e-books maybe fifty bucks). It is rare for me to play a single video game anywhere near 50 hours, let alone 300.

One way to look at it is if you're getting any wisdom from books or video games that you can apply to real life, potentially getting more value from the experience and offsetting cost of acquisition.

...until you realize that we still have this old-fashioned institutions called libraries.

Uber for books, except you don't have to pay.

Indeed! That said, library quality, much like school quality, can vary enormously by geography. Also like school quality, it's not entirely random, there's a pattern where wealthier communities often (though not always) tend to have better libraries.

(I'm defining better as wider and deeper selection of books and ignoring anything else, like other library services, library hours, whatever.)

Technically, it's not free, but you've already paid for it directly if you own property or indirectly through rent (as property tax factors into rental prices.) We pay $120 a year to our public library. We also pay another $100-200 a year in fines, program fees and special requests. This still comes out to well less than $5/book read.

I just finished a couple of books that take approximately 17 hours on average. They cost me $5 each on the Kindle store. Hard to beat $0.3/hr. I also spent a few hours at a LAN cafe yesterday, at $1/hr, which is a reasonable rate here in South Asia.

Of course I could have gone to the library, but I read a lot more if the book is a tap away on my tablet.

I mean if a book is less than 15 bucks it might as well be free, practically speaking, for most people who post here.

> Video games are cheap compared to other entertainment.

Maybe with the exception of the public library.

Most people do not find value or entertainment in knowledge or reading. So they don't want to go to the library because it's not really a source of entertainment for them. Gaming on the other hand, probably engages them a whole lot better.

While I agree that gaming is very engaging, if you visit a library you'll be caught off guard how many people are there every single day. Now I will acknowledge that many of the people at my local library are kids playing games on the library computers, however there are also lots of people that genuinely enjoy reading and the other activities hosted at the library.

You're being down voted for stating an unpopular truth.

As much as I might wish it wasn't the case, I still agree with what you said.

The public library where I live loans video games, so why not both? :-)

You must have more expensive habits then me. Most of sports people do does not cost much money except if you go fashionable with cloth. Basketball, soccer and such require basically ball and place (which is available for free here). Same with running. Hanging with friends is basically free, so is reading (library) and watching tv.

You can go fancy with entertainment, but people who don't have much money tend not to. In that context, $400 is not such a little investment. (Through phone games can be played for free.)

>Basketball, soccer and such require basically ball and place (which is available for free here).

They also require you to be good at it to enjoy it, have slow and painful learning (depending on shape), and require you to be in a group interested in it. Unless you got in to it early on in your life it's not easy to pick up - unlike video games

Your comment is definitely true. While the argument that sports are cheaper than video games does have some merit I contend that the barrier to entry for video games is much much lower than sports. With video games their learning curves are typically very gentle, you can play video games by yourself if others aren't available to join you, you can play from home, etc.

That's not to say that anything is wrong with sports, because I definitely feel sports are awesome, but rather that I genuinely feel it's easier to jump into gaming than to organize a team sport like a game of basketball at the local park.

Shoes? Basketball you want ankle support; football you want a stiff sole with good grip, usually studs ('cleats' I think in en-us).

Studded boots ain't cheap.

I've spent about £5 on a video game and played for a few hundred hours. Discounting the computer, the only other cost is probably mouse & keyboard wear and tear ... and life.

That's interesting... growing up, I always saw video games as expensive—both needing to buy the game and needing to update the system or computer every few years—but sports as the budget choice. There are so many sports you can play with just having access to a park and a $10 ball or frisbee.

Yes and I'd add the ones available on your phone: 99cents, or even free.

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