Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Currency of the Future! Playstation 3s!

I have a strange way of going about rationalizing purchases, and I figure I can't be alone in the way I do this. Whenever anything costs 'a lot' of money, I break it down (justify?), and say to myself "well, I bought a PS3 for 300 dollars, and look at how worthless that ended up being".

My new camera that I bought came to a grand total of 64,500 yen, which is roughly 'two playstation 3s', and I've probably already gotten twice as much entertainment out of its ownership. For the price of one PS3, I could buy an MMO, and subscribe to it for over a year! Smaller items (pants, a nice shirt) are judged in the cost of console games: "These pants are pretty comfortable, I could get away with wearing them at work, and they cost less than Little Big Planet did!"

The biggest mystery is that I don't really even play console games much anymore. All these games are such slop that I can only thank god I didn't bother spending money to realize I have no interest in playing them. I own all the major consoles, and it's seriously enough entertainment for me to just play the one level demos, and never go back and play them again. While there are a few standouts (yes I bought Mario Galaxy and Little Big Planet), there are so many that just... don't... do it for me.

Why I gauge non-gaming purchases in this way has always seemed a little strange, but I can't be the only one that does this... I mean, right?


In a totally unrelated note, while looking around on google for a PS3 image for the header, I came across > this <.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Something a bit more stable than "a PS3"! Consider things in terms of time invested versus time gained. Take hourly wage, cut approximate expenses to make a "net" hourly wage, and measure time against that. So a console game is worthwhile if I play it more than 3 hours, expensive shoes need to see a dozen hours of use, etc.

:3

Anonymous said...

Okay, this is weird. I was just doing the same thing when I bought myself a couple of shirts last week.

"Aww, I could've bought myself a World of Warcraft Battlechest with these. You shirts better give me 2 years worth of fun*."

*Fun is subject to change.

Hatch said...

I was doing something similar to Jan, translating my gaming dollars into hours worked.

I recently did a series on my blog about how ludicrous Blizzard's Rcruit-a-Friend leveling scheme is. Originally, I had balked at paying them more money to let them power level me. Then I realized that I'd be paying about $85 in total, which I can make in 3-4 hours at my job, so I went ahead and did it, thinking that it would save me more hours than that of grinding.

In response to your console comment: canceled my gamefly because I found I was never playing the console games I ordered. Instead I'd be on WoW or Orange Box or the Wii games I own (Galaxy, Smash, Kart). 99% of console games just aren't doing it for me anymore.

Coincidentally, canceling gamefly and netflix for just 2 months effectively paid for my second account and 3 months on it to get the zebra mount. I haven't noticed the difference in my use of my game time. I just no longer feel guilty about not even taking my rental out of the envelope for weeks.

Anonymous said...

I have the ultimate "object = x amount so thats how I value other object's" story.

So I have a friend who is a pretty big time online poker player. He travels the world playing cards for a living and does quite well for himself. He also enjoys the bake session along some of these trips (especially in Amsterdam).

So one day he and some chums had just visited a local smoking cafe and had returned to their hotel. As is common with using such substances many of the young men in the group became quite thirsty. Suddenly someone reaches into a backpack pulls out a small cooler and pulls from it one Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple. Let the bidding war begin. $5 someone says, $15 it escalates, until my friend sitting quietly in the room reaches into his wallet and pulls one little ben and declares $100 for a Snapple abruptly ending the bidding.

So to this day everything within our circle of friends that is valued is broken down via "Snapple".

Your Ps3 is worth 3 Snapples. A game 1/2 a Snapple, etc.

Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rich said...

i will do just that!