I preordered Left 4 Dead 2 the other day.  Just throwing that out there.

Also, Tim Buckley (author of the popular Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic) has articulated quite perfectly my own opinion on the L4D2 boycott.  Two posts of interest, both found here.

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.

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).

So I just realized something sad.  A few weeks ago, I downloaded and played the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum.  It was released on one console or other a few days ago, and it comes out for Windows in a few weeks, so I was all excited for its release, and I planned to buy it on Steam.  Nothing sad so far, right?

Turns out Batman: Arkham Asylum is published by Eidos.  That’s the same Eidos that I’m strongly in favor of boycotting.  That’s the sad part.

I titled this post “Conflict of interest” because I want to support this kind of game; but I can’t support that kind of publisher.  Thus it is with a heavy heart that I must pass on this otherwise wonderful game.