Tuesday, August 12, 2014

How Do You Gauge Value in Gaming?


In a recent discussion of the Mantic Dungeon Saga Kickstarter with the game designer, I commented that the box seemed a little light still.  It was comparable to other games off the type but the cost is currently higher.  He noted that while judging games by their contents is useful, the real value of the game is how often you can use it and how much fun you have.  This is of course true and if my wife used that gauge on my gaming stuff none of it would have much value in her opinion.  This is what makes assigning value to things so subjective and leads to lots of arguments in comments sections anytime people look at prices.  For example the Reaper Bones Kaladrax above was very cheap during the kickstarter but the quality is sort of low and how often do you really have a use for a giant skeleton dragon.

If you look at GW and talk about the value of their products, everyone's views are very colored by their current attachment level to the games.  This is probably stronger on the 40K side due to the higher "original" IP content.  If you want to play or model in that world, GW has done a fairly good job of holding that as its own.  While there are some casters out their making resin parts in the same design schemes, they are not a significant threat to GW other than perhaps a slightly positive corrective force on pricing.  In Fantasy, this attachment level is probably weaker and hence I think we have seen GW very focused on 40K for example by skipping the expected update of WHFB this year to update 40K.  I have a feeling if you took a large collection of assembled GW models(not painted) and asked general people how much they cost you would get values significantly lower than the prices and costs much more in line with sizes and number of models as opposed to the current pricing very much influenced by how new the kit is as GW saw all the flak they got for the cross the board price increases so they just put significant up jumps in newly released kits.

In terms of a kickstarter with relatively generic fantasy setting, the fun level of the game is going to hard to determine a value for since if it is a real kickstarter the game part is probably very much in a prototype stage.  Now I could put trust in the producer to do a great job, but you might have no real experience with the producer.  I have definitely seen mixed reviews of mantic stuff in the past.  Since you cannot play the real game with friends before buying it or really even look at the components that will actually be produced other than prototype mock ups that might or might be actually representative of what is delivered. it is hard to gauge the value of these.  I am sort of left with the mass of stuff combined with a little hopeful enthusiasm to decide at what point some offer seems to good to pass up.

8 comments:

  1. " This is of course true and if my wife used that gauge on my gaming stuff none of it would have much value in her opinion."

    This is truth here, made me smile.

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  2. To answer the question in the title direct, I measure it less in utility than originality. I know I can always find something to pass the time with friends in a fun and ideally stimulating way, but what I'd say really needs rewarding is the fresh thinking, the projects blazing trails that might open the door to whole new experiences or even paradigm shifts, but not necessarily immediately, and maybe not till they've been through another cycle or producer.

    If we keep supporting the next generic science fantasy skirmish game, or the next not-remake of a classic board-based dungeoncrawl, when do we get the next big breakthrough - the next OD&D, or even a Rogue Trader?

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    1. That is a very interesting take. There are so many games out now that I am sure some wonderfully fun and inventive ones just slip by unnoticed all the time.

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  3. KS is cool on one hand but really just an insidious way of prompting people to spend money on things they really don't need (or even want). On the mantic project ... it looks cool enough but to me it looks like an excuse for them to make some cheap components and pair them with some of their minis ... toss it in a box and charge people $100.00. For a game that looks to be just a re-hash of the dozens of dungeon crawlers that are already on the market. I went in on Deadzone and am really not all that impressed (still waiting for half my stuff as well). I'm very glad I didn't go in on the Dreadball stuff as I was tempted to but took a pass.

    I think you make very good points here. The past few years I have tried to evaluate new gaming purchases as well as continued ownership of other gaming items entirely on the basis of utility. I now always ask ... "am I actually going to play that" ... Kickstarter has burned me pretty bad as I've gone in on many cool looking KS projects that sounded awesome ... then the six months to two years later when you finally get the stuff ... for whatever reason it just isn't as cool.

    I have 3 copies of Ogre (which is still in the shrink wrap), I have probably 1200.00 in bones stuff (between the two KS projects) ... loads of boardgames, etc. and it all just ends up gathering dust. The past six months or so I've just begun to ebay off most of my GW stuff as I haven't played a GW game in about six years now. Anyway these days I am really trying to just not even contemplate a new gaming purchase unless it really and truly is going to see the light of day. When I'm honest with myself about that, I take a pass on probably 9.75 out of 10 of the "cool" new games.

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    1. You can make all these plans on what you are going to do with the kickstarter stuff when it arrives but it is pretty easy to have totally moved on by the time it actually shows up.

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  4. I have purchased one kickstarter, getting one more soon and waiting a bit longer for one coming. However I only get models in a kickstarter, never games. So far, I am impressed.

    I only buy minis that I know I will use now. If I want it because it looks pretty, I wont buy it. Took years of training to kick the habit of buying pretty models. After clearing all the pretty junk I have finally got the few models I actually use. And intend to keep it that way.

    This means they dont gather dust, dont remain unpainted, and more importantly I can appreciate them all properly.

    Thats how I do it. I look at those who have untold amounts of models and I wonder if they simply enjoy buying models as I once did, or actually buy them with a purpose?

    All in moderation.

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    1. That takes will power and self control. I was always amazed that Ron of FTW would essentially have his game list and only those models. He would do hobby stuff on commission to fill the hobby out. He enjoyed the process more than having the results at the end.

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