There’s an article on IncGamers in which the author adds up all the money he and his wife have spent on World of Warcraft over the years, and then complains about how expensive it is.  Now, I’m not a fan of MMOs, but I happen to disagree with his conclusion, for one very important reason: cost per hour.

If we assume he and his wife each play World of Warcraft ten hours per week, then his $1700 over four years and eight months works out to $0.35 per hour of play time.

Let’s compare that to some other games.  You know those $50 games you play once and never look at again?  The ones where the whole game lasts 10 hours if you’re lucky?  Those cost upwards of $5 per hour.

So realizing this got me thinking.  How much have my favorite games really cost me?

Counter-Strike: Source cost me $19.99.  I’ve played countless hours, surely more than 200 hours.  Heck, just in the last two weeks I’ve played 14 hours.  If we pretend that’s accurate over three years, that’s just $0.02 per hour.  In reality, I used to play CS:S a lot more than I do now, so the cost is likely much lower.

I bought the Orange Box (with Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and TF2) for $49.99.  According to my Steam account stat tracking, I’ve played TF2 a total of 34.7 hours (half of that in the last two weeks).  I only played through Episode 2 once or twice; I’ll call it 10 hours (though it may have been more like 12).  Portal, while entertaining, probably only racked up 8 hours of gameplay.  So the Orange Box has cost me $0.91 per hour, but as I ramp up my TF2 gameplay that cost will slowly go down.

I preordered Left 4 Dead for $44.99 last year.  Steam tells me I have a total playtime of 96.25 hours, putting its cost at $0.47 per hour.

My dad bought StarCraft for me years ago.  I’d guess he paid $49.99, because the game was still fairly new.  That was over a decade ago.  I have played a lot of StarCraft.  During middle and high school, I’m sure I played something like 8 hours a week (more during the summer, less during school).  Looking at those six years, that’s just $0.02 per hour; I’ve played a fair amount since then, too, so the price is lower.  (Seems like more of a bargain now, doesn’t it Dad?)

Obviously, I can’t go over every single game I own; the list is too long.  I’ll also admit to buying some games and never playing them (or only playing through partway).  But overall, it looks like gaming costs between $0.01 and $1.00 per hour, depending on the game – and despite both up-front purchase costs and monthly fees, MMOs are nowhere near the worst offenders.

…Hey guys, look! I made the black hole generator we were theorizing yesterday! See? I just have to press this button and

This comes from a comment someone made on Slashdot earlier today.

The idea is that bad programmers sometimes come up with clever ideas, often without thinking through the consequences.  (Alternatively, good programmers sometimes come up with clever ideas but use them maliciously.)

For Reddit, the consequence was merely a slew of self-replicating comments on their articles.  For an engineer working on the Large Hadron Collider…

It looks like my daughter has developed a bit of an attitude problem:

A recent Bruce Schneier blog post got me thinking about boycotts.  Specifically, the user “AwesomeRobot” made the following comment in response to another user who said they plan to forever boycott Sony due to the rootkits they put on music CDs in 2005:

Boycotts don’t work unless you say you’ll buy from them again when they clean up their act. What’s their incentive to change if you just say you’ll “never” buy from them again?

I boycott Eidos because of their deliberately poor customer service.  The trouble is, how am I to know when they’ve cleaned up their act, if I never interact with them again?

I boycott 1&1 Internet (my former web host) because… well, because of lots of reasons.  But if I avoid them in perpetuity, how am I supposed to know whether my boycott has worked?

Another thought that occurred to me relates to the infamous Left 4 Dead 2 boycott.  Now, I disagree with them about almost everything, and I’ve always maintained that the only way Valve can meet all their demands is to give away Left 4 Dead 2 as free content.  So, AwesomeRobot’s comment applies here, too: if the only way to please the boycotters is to give them stuff for free, what incentive does Valve have to please them?

Boycotts only work when the target has a possibility of earning money from the boycotters by meeting the boycott’s demands.  In my case, I’ll be keeping tabs on Eidos; if they appear to have improved, I’ll end up buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, and everyone wins.

As for 1&1, personally I won’t be going back, because their service simply isn’t a good fit for me anymore; but if they fix the glaring problems that made me leave, I’ll start referring people to them again (and stop telling people to avoid them like the plague).

A group of enterprising TI calculator programmers have taken it upon themselves to factor the 512-bit RSA keys used by TI to allow applications (and OS updates) to run on TI calculators.  (For those of you who aren’t cryptographers: basically it lets TI decide what can run on the calculator and what can’t.)

In response, Texas Instruments issued a DMCA takedown notice saying that they can’t post those keys, because the keys constitute an unlawful circumvention device.  It’s nonsense for several reasons, including the fact that the keys don’t qualify for DMCA protection, but the biggest point to be made is that publicizing the keys in no way effects the profitability of TI’s calculators, except that it increases their value by allowing a greater selection of applications.  Remember, the keys don’t do anyone any good unless you already own a TI calculator, in which case they’ve already got your money!

In other words, trying to hide the keys is just a stupid waste of money.  They can’t hide the keys once they’re published, no matter how many takedown notices they issue, and bothering to issue them means they’re paying some lawyer (or team of lawyers) to draft letters, track down the proper people, and send them off.

For anyone interested, you can download my copy of the keys here.  (It’s a zip file containing the factors involved in the RSA signing key for each calculator.)

I doubt TI will ever contact me over this, but just in case, allow me to state for the record:  TI, if you send me a DMCA takedown notice, I’ll be filing a counter-notice stating that you’re willfully misrepresenting the facts in your DMCA claim.  There’s a hefty fine for that.