How much would you pay for a game?

With the announcement of ‘LEGO Dimensions’ and the sheer cost of owning the entire experience (£299.99 just in case you’re wondering) it got me thinking about the cost of games and how much of my legal tender I would drop to own the latest title.

This week I am looking at the cost of our beloved hobby. In today’s post I’m exploring my own spending habits and coming up with a figure that I will not pass in order to own a game.

Back in my day, I got maybe two games a year. One for my birthday and one for Christmas. The games that I got may not have been brand new at the time I received them (Christmas always had new, new games) but this didn’t matter.

I remember being handed Tomb Raider for my birthday, although it was 7 months old it was a wondrous occasion!

Happy birthday to meeeee!

The reason for this system of gift buying?

Games were expensive and we were not rich, my parents lived within their means and it meant much more to me when I got a gift than it seems to now. I remember one birthday begging for ‘Street Fighter II’ on the mega drive, Mum got me ‘Mortal Kombat’ (d’oh)! A game that cost £65 new!

I told her of her error and she tried to exchange it, to no avail. She got us SFII for Christmas and it was wonderful.

I literally played that game for at least a year, every day.

My mum felt that £130 was a fair price to make her children happy, over the course of a year – she spent more money than she could afford on something incredibly trivial (to her anyway, games are life).

It got me thinking recently, how much am I willing to pay for a game?

What’s my maximum price?

If we disregard buying a console to play a game (for the record I bought a Dreamcast, Xbox, 360 and PS4 because of tech demos) and take into account the average cost of a PS4/Xbox One game (£50) and PC titles (£30). While I would be more likely to buy a console title at closer to the PC price, I have in the last six months paid full price for ‘Bloodborne’, ‘Alien: Isolation’ and paid for other, slightly cheaper titles. I would spend £50 on a game, no bother.

Through my gaming life and I have paid over the odds for games too; especially in the last gen with the advent of the action rhythm genre. Rock Band cost me an absolute fortune. I paid for every mainline title (1,2,3, Beatles & Lego) at £40 each; I also paid for the AC:DC standalone DLC pack (£20). Over the course of these years I also bought two. TWO band in a box bundles (Beatles and RB1) and bought 200 DLC songs.

I got the instruments but not the game on my birthday! WHAT A SHAM!

Over these 4 or 5 years Rock Band probably cost me about £500. Absolutely fucking crazy money! if we spread that over the years then it is about £100 a year.

Then there is Street Fighter 4 and the arcade stick I bought which cost me another £140 in a day – this is probably the most I have ever dropped on a title, and it is the most I would ever spend on a game (with a peripheral) in one go.

£100!

In the Dreamcast era I paid a crazy amount for internet charges as I played ‘Phantasy Star Online’ (at 1p a minute) as I put over 100 hours into it. Then I did the same with ‘Phantasy Star Online Vers. 2’ – keep in mind these were £40 games and then there was the keyboard cost on top of that.

These are just a few of the games I have paid for and although I have never bought a “Special Edition” with tat and an art book, there are people out there who love that sort of thing. There are people out there who have spent ten times what I have and who undoubtedly don’t regret it (I know I don’t).

Now that I am going to be a parent (in nine short weeks) I will have to cut back on this great, though expensive hobby of ours. No more will I be able to go into a store, buy a game and peripheral at the drop of a hat. I will have to pick my games up slightly later and at a reduced price, I will also have to decide how much I’m willing to spend on games (because he/she will be a gamer) to make my children happy.

I can only hope I’m as good as my parents were!

In the modern world with ‘Skylanders’, ‘Disney infinity’ and ‘Lego Dimensions’ it isn’t going to be cheap…

What’s the most you have ever spent on a game?

Have you ever bought a console specifically to play a game?

What’s your maximum you would spend on a game?

Tell me in the comments below!