So, those of you who follow the video game industry even casually have undoubtedly heard that yesterday, the highly anticipated Mass Effect 3 was released. The most awaited game since... I don't know,
Arkham City,
Uncharted 3,
Battlefield 3, or
Modern Warfare 3 last fall?
Black Ops and
Halo: Reach the year before that?
Starcraft 2 before them? Wait,
Skyrim was also last fall? Was 2011 the best year for video games ever or something? Okay, so the most anticipated game since three or four months ago. So, yeah. That's actually an entirely other topic. As is when the hell is
Half-Life 2 Episode 3 coming out?!?!!?! At this point, we're going to wait as long as the
Duke Nukem Forever crowd and be severely disappointed like they were. Then again, it is Valve, so maybe it'll be more like Blizzard and we'll wait forever but be impressed with the final product, even if by the time it comes out, it'll be hopelessly outdated. Again, I'm going off on a tangent that's taking me off of the original purpose of this post.
I'm going to be honest,
Mass Effect is one of my favorite video games I've ever played. Well, the series is, I should say. I'm not as much as a gamer as I'd like to be, so compared to some of my contemporaries my video game playing experience is woefully lacking. For example, here's the list of games sitting on my shelf and that will soon be sitting on my shelf with my intention to play:
Dead Rising, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham City, the entire
Assassins Creed series
, Bioshock 2 (maybe, maybe not)
, Saboteur, Halo: Anniversary, Beyond Good and Evil (for original XBox). Also considering eventually trying out
L.A. Noire,
Fallout 3 onward, and
Portal 2. And someday I'm going to buy a new computer and sink half of my life into
Star Wars: The Old Republic. So, it's a bit of a problem to me that I keep pulling out Mass Effect to play it for the eighth or ninth time with a different character and choices all so I can see slightly different stories over three massive games.
That did get me wondering, though, about the money we put into various entertainment mediums and the value we get back. You see, I am a very cheap person. I check out nearly ever book I read from the library rather than buying them from a store, I only buy the movies I LOVED and NEED to have at home (and at the moment, the only Blu-Rays I'm planning on ever buying are SFX fests and animation) and I hardly ever buy new music, content with radio and Pandora. So, it makes me think about prices of these things and how they differ and how their experience differs as well. On the cheapest end, you tend to have movies, where a single showing on the big screen these days seems to fluctuate from a few bucks (if you wait a few months) to ~$10 to see it new during prime time. And to keep it forever on a smaller scale (though given the size of quality of TVs these days, the experience may be nearly equivalent in a decade or so) you fork over $15-$20 for an experience that lasts a couple of hours and is always the same.
Then you have books, specifically in this case text novels. In this case you're spending something like $8 for the paperback or $20+ for the giant hardcover, for an experience, depending on reading speed and story length, that can last from a handful of hours to nearly a full day. Most novels of any worth these days seem to be in the 300-500 page range which at my personal reading speed equates to 10-12 hours. Again, the story is fixed, but it depends on our own visions and imaginations.
Then there's TV. Here in the States, this tends to be one of the more versatile entertainment media where one can experience it through monthly cable, stream it later on the internet, or wait until the DVDs/Blu-Rays and simply get those. In the last case, we're looking at $30-$40 for a story that lasts from about 10 or 12 hours (in the case of cable shows) to nearly 20 hours (in the case of network dramas) each year. For the long, sustained stories, TV seems to be the way and like movies, TV stories are fixed. The length of the story by itself makes them proportionally a better deal than films, but the chances of varying quality in a TV show, even a good one, are more likely to occur. That's simply the way it is with that much material.
Which brings me to video games. By themselves, new video games tend to be the most expensive form of entertainment in these examples coming in at $50-$60. To an extent, most single player games have a story that is fixed. Here though, the player is part of that story, allowing an individual to become immersed and experience that story through the eyes of the player character. And as my earlier
Mass Effect example showed, the ones we really enjoy have a replay value that can vary the experience each time. While no playthrough will be
exactly the same each time, in some cases it will be nearly identical, such in the case of FPS that are practically rail shooters or platform games that follow a linear story. They tend to take more time, though, and if there is a strong reason to replay, such as
ME in my case, we're looking at
a lot of time being entertained by a story we're enjoying that's not necessarily repeating. Take, for example, my Mass Effect characters. I have four:
My "main" game, a Male Shep soldier Paragon Sole Survivor where I basically make him a shining beacon of light and goodness, everything that the best of humanity can be in accomplishment and altruism.
My secondary "main" game, basically the same guy except what I think has more realistic decisions (for example, this guy (SPOILER ALERT) sacrifices the Council at the end of game 1 to focus on Sovereign because the safety of the galaxy is more important than the lives of three people). There are a few superficial changes, such as this guy is an Infiltrator War Hero who romances his other option, but he's basically very similar to character one with a more practical militaristic mindset.
My Fem Shep Infiltrator (I think) Sole Survivor who I've also played very much like the first character.
And finally my Male Shep Renegade who one might think of the second guy taken to the extreme, where in his mind everything he does is for the "good" of the galaxy, so that justifies his decisions to be a ruthless bastard, though not necessarily his sadism. Maybe he thinks the little people ought not to get in his way of saving the galaxy or something.
The point is, that's four games and since I tend to be something of a completionist, we're talking about 24 hours of gameplay each time. That's a lot of return for $50. Yet, I tend to wait until I can get it used at GameStop (the video game industry must hate people like me) and I'm beginning to wonder if that's worth it. Maybe I'll have an answer in September when I finally buy the game.
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