SE4's Value

Suicide Junkie · #1 September 14th, 2005, 07:50 PM

How much have you paid for SE products, and how long have you been playing?

1) Tally up the purchase price of your SE stuff.
2) Tally up the approximate number of hours you've been playing. (x hours a week, y weeks a year, z years)
Note: Only include hours actually spent on SE4, not time spent sleeping, working or eating. (Unless you were actually playing SE4 in your cubicle or while you ate)
3) Divide (1) by (2), and vote for the matching price range.

Captain Kwok · #2 September 14th, 2005, 08:00 PM

I came in at just over 0.04$ per hour. I estimated approximately 2850 hours over nearly 5 years, with $125 invested.

narf poit chez BOOM · #3 September 14th, 2005, 08:00 PM

Um...A little to lots?

Puke · #4 September 14th, 2005, 08:55 PM

about 250 in, roughly 2400 hours. right in the 0.10 range. which suggests that its time for a donation to PBW.

Suicide Junkie · #5 September 14th, 2005, 09:11 PM

Beta testing copies, combined with playing during class at University really drove my total down to the penny-an-hour mark.

I didn't count the copies I bought for other people, though.

El_Phil · #6 September 14th, 2005, 09:17 PM

OK so I accidently hit the wrong entry and put in >$1 and not <$0.01. What can I say, the use of a strange green coloured currency put me off.

That and I've just stumbled back from the pub and have started drunken interneteeteting.

Will · #7 September 14th, 2005, 09:48 PM

Well, IIRC it was $25 for SEIII, and $40 each for SEIV Gold and SE:SF (had beta copy of SEIV Classic). So that's $105...

Hours played, I couldn't really even begin to estimate. I've been playing for around 9 years now, but a lot of the time played is weighted to the earlier years. I guessed about 4000 hours total, so that puts me at about $0.026/hour. But if I broke it up into the games, then it would be:
SEII: 0/hour (never bought, only played shareware)
SEIII: $0.005/hour (played this a LOT)
SEIV Classic: 0/hour (see beta comment above)
SEIV Gold: $0.10/hour (only got it this past summer)
SE:SF: $0.75/hour (haven't really played it much...)

Renegade 13 · #8 September 14th, 2005, 10:33 PM

I said somewhere aroud 5 cents, but it could very easily be lower than that. I can't even guess how many hours I've spent playing.

Atrocities · #9 September 15th, 2005, 01:09 AM

The value of the game far exceeds the purchase price. In fact I feel like I have robbed Shrapnel and Malfador.... man I only paid $40.00 bucks for this game and have gotten five years of play out of it...... Laughing all the way to the key board.

Atrocities · #10 September 15th, 2005, 01:17 AM

As a follow up. I know that I have played the game well over 3000 hours, probably closer to 4,000 hours, but I have also donated at least five times that amount of time in modding, promoting, supporting, posting, ship set design, and running web sites.

If I added up all my time just working on and promoting SE4 and not playing it, I could honestly say that it was a 40 hour a week job for me for a couple of years. Factor in play time and well that shoots to 50 to 60 hours a week. *I am so pathetic.*

Invested so far:

SEIV - $40.00
SEIV Gold - $40.00
NASY Web Site - $200.00
AST Mod Web Site - $230.00
AE.net Web Site - $130.00
So between $600.00 and $800.00 over the last five years combined. This includes donations to PBW and other sites as well as having bought several copies of the game for people.

I think it has been money well spent though.