HP Rating

[Enderel]

Not sure if anyone else does this but for each of the games I buy I allocate an hours used to price rating... I know this is slightly odd but I think it makes it a lot easier to justify spending money on games and other entertainment things.

I'll give a couple of examples -

Medieval - Hours on game (very rough estimate) 500 price £40 (with Viking invasion) giving a price of 8p per hour.

Rome - Hours on game (again very rough estimate) 150 price £25 (no expansion as yet) giving price of 17p per hour.

Fable (XBOX) hours on game 20 price for game £35 so £1.75 per hour.

Now other forms of entertainment are much higher (I know you don't need a pc for these but most people would have PC anyway even if they didn't play these games)

Cinema - 2 hours per film - £7 per ticket, so £3.50 per hour!
Football match - 2 hours per match - £30 per ticket so £15 per hour.
Music gig - 3 hours - £40 per ticket - £13 per hour

Ok other activities you can do for free but they muck up my results so I've not done them. (or they are immorale so I can't mention them )

Ok so my main point of this is even if you really dislike Rome and only play a couple campaigns then your entertainment per hour rating is still probably lower then most other forms of having fun

[Beirut]

Good stuff.

If I had to rate any of my flight sims, Combat Flight Simulator, Janes WWII Fighters or the IL2-Sturmovik series, I would be at less than a penny per hour.

M:TW would also be in the low cents an hour.

[Al Khalifah]

I guess you have to think about including the cost of a PC in there though. If you were just playing M:TW and R:TW on your PC that you bought for £800 then your figures would look different:

Total hours in Total War : 500 + 150 = 650
Total cost of Total War: £25 + £40 + £800 = £865

Cost per hour: £1.33 per hour.

Still very low I think compared to many things.

Have you really played 650 hours of Total War though? Thats nearly a solid month of Total War?
I am impressed and a little scared.

[The_Doctor]

What about electricity costs?

[Enderel]

I guess you have to think about including the cost of a PC in there though. If you were just playing M:TW and R:TW on your PC that you bought for £800 then your figures would look different:

Total hours in Total War : 500 + 150 = 650
Total cost of Total War: £25 + £40 + £800 = £865

Cost per hour: £1.33 per hour.

Still very low I think compared to many things.

Have you really played 650 hours of Total War though? Thats nearly a solid month of Total War?
I am impressed and a little scared.

I have got shogun as well with Mongol hordes so I'd have to include that time as well. That would lower my cost per hour even more!

When Medieval came out I was a student so had lots of free time to play! I try to play Rome for an hour a day as well when I get home.. So probably that's an under estimation

As for electricity yeah I should include that so about 5p per hour at most I think. PC don't really take up that much power at all.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Lets see MTW VI costs me 70 bucks. Id say I have about 3000 hrs playing so thats what .42 cents per hour? A bargain to be sure.

[Marcellus]

I guess you have to think about including the cost of a PC in there though. If you were just playing M:TW and R:TW on your PC that you bought for £800 then your figures would look different:

Total hours in Total War : 500 + 150 = 650
Total cost of Total War: £25 + £40 + £800 = £865

Cost per hour: £1.33 per hour.

Still very low I think compared to many things.

Have you really played 650 hours of Total War though? Thats nearly a solid month of Total War?
I am impressed and a little scared.

You can't really put the entire cost of a PC into the cost of playing a PC game: computers serve so many other uses, such as word processing, internet access, and playing all the other games that you might have. Therefore you shouldn't include the whole £800-odd into the cost of TW, just a small share of it.

Also, it's important to factor in the quality of the hours: which is better value, a game that has 40 excellent hours of play or a game that has 50 hours of reasonably good play (assuming they both cost the same)?

But overall, I would have to agree that PC games such as TW games do offer much better value for money than other forms of entertainment like films at a cinema.

Oh, and Gawain, please tell me that you are joking when you said that you have played MTW for 3000 hours. That's 125 days solid!

[Enderel]

Shogun came out in June 2000 I think so we've had plenty of time to get the hours in on that. Then we had the Mongol invasion add on to add the extra hours on.

We have had a potential 17520 hours (summarised just slightly ) to play this if you stopped when Medieval came out...


Medieval was in August 2002 this was followed by Viking invasion. This took up far to much of my time when I should have been studying.

Again give or take a few days / weeks you've had 17520 hours to play this.

Finally we reach Rome in Sept 2004 (?)

Ok so this is only 9.5 months so that's what 285 days or 6840 hours.

All figures are highly suspect and summarised cause it's Friday afternoon and I want to go home from work

[dessa14]

i think cricket test would be one of the cheapest forms of entertainment.
thanks,
dizzy

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Oh, and Gawain, please tell me that you are joking when you said that you have played MTW for 3000 hours. That's 125 days solid!

Well I may have underestimated my playing time in that case. Look Ive been playing this game for three years. I once went 19 months playing at least one game everyday. I believe Ive played over 15000 mp battles. No Im not joking. Again I doubt anyone in the world has played this game as much as I.

[ichi]

4000 MP battles for $50

80 games/dollar

plus the campaign who knows how much time I've spent playing

ichi

oh wait, then there's the $2000 laptop and $36/mo DSL

Gah!

[David]

But you use the laptop and DSL for other things as well. I hope.

[ichi]

But you use the laptop and DSL for other things as well. I hope.

oh yeah, sure.

*tries to think about what other uses there are*

does makin MTW maps, installing mods, posting here at the Org or at various other TW-related websites, or surfing for info about upcoming TW games count?

mmm . . .

I'll get back to you on this

ichi