How Expensive Is Online Gaming?
So I found the Google Notes app randomly one day on my phone a few months ago. I fell madly, deeply in love. I could make a spreadsheet about all the spreadsheets I have made, and/or want to make. Making spreadsheets makes me happy now, so I made one that’s actually kinda useful. I decided to track how much I have spent on gaming this year. I dug through all my old emails and bank statements to be as accurate as I could.
Buyin’ Gamez
If you check out the chart below, you can see all the money I have spent on games so far in 2015. I actually have way more games than it looks like. If you’ll notice the humble bundles, they each came with 6-10 games each. I probably won’t play them, so they really aren’t worth mentioning.
| 1/1/2015 | WoW | $14.99 | Warcraft sub |
| 2/1/2015 | WoW | $14.99 | Warcraft sub |
| 3/1/2015 | WoW | $14.99 | Warcraft sub |
| 3/25/2015 | HotS | $13.11 | Sylvanas & Ranger General skin |
| 4/1/2015 | WoW | $14.99 | Warcraft sub |
| 6/26/2015 | HotS | $4.99 | Prince Arthas skin |
| 7/20/2015 | Warmachine Tactics | $13.00 | Game (In Humble bundle) |
| 8/3/2015 | HotS | $2.94 | Diablo Godzilla skin |
| 9/1/2015 | WoWs | $6.69 | 1250 Gold |
| 9/1/2015 | Total War Bundle | $15.00 | Game bundle |
| 9/1/2015 | Game creator software | $12.00 | Game bundle |
| 9/17/2015 | HotS | $14.94 | Uther skin & Mount |
| 9/24/2015 | Wildstar | $15.98 | 3x box copies for f2p points |
| 10/25/2015 | Humble Bundle | $12.00 | Game bundle |
| 10/25/2015 | Doom 1,2,3 | $6.49 | Humble Store |
| 11/1/2015 | Aliens: Colonial Marines | $3.74 | Humble Store |
| 11/25/2015 | Monthly Humble* | $12.00 | Game bundle |
| 12/1/2015 | Humble Bundle Total War Encore | $7.00 | Game bundle |
I feel like game developers may know more about what they’re doing than I thought before. More specifically their marketing and research departments. It comes to $16.65 per month, which is pretty close to the $15 per month subscription most games want you to buy. I play more than one game though, so dropping $15 on just one game wouldn’t work for my wallet. Unless I played one game at a time. I did that for 7 years with WoW, and today it seems unappealing.
High Price Of Hardware
I upgraded my computer this year. It was about 3 years old, so I ended up with nearly a full upgrade. I didn’t buy anything fancy, but I thought it was worth sharing for completion’s sake. The monitor was even older, and had actually stopped working.
Assuming this lasts me another 3 years, that’s $28.75 per month. I’m hoping it will actually last me more like 4-5 years. That’s a hefty chunk of change each month when you break it down like that.
The Rest Of 2015
Of course the new Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion for SWTOR comes out this month. That’s $15, although with everything going on, I may hold off on that until 2016. Speaking of Star Wars, the new Star Wars: Battlefront is coming out in November. I haven’t played an FPS since Battlefield 3. I’m still terrible at them, but it is Star Wars, so I am considering it heavily. That’s another $60. Of course November also brings the Black Friday sales. There’s no telling what kind of deals may entice me to try something new, or in-game deals for the games I already play. My guess is I will end up around $20 per month when it’s all said and done on software. Everything looks good on the hardware end thankfully, so I have no plans to add anything in the near future. It was a surprise to learn I spend about $50 per month on online gaming. Maybe I should go back to playing one game after all.
How much do you spend on games?