Cheapest Entertainment Possible?

I was reading Tobold's Blog this morning, and he had up a post discussing the possible price per month to play Warhammer when it comes out later this year, and how it will likely be more than a monthly WoW subscription (which is $14.99). This post isn't about the differences between MMO pricing, but about something he wrote later in that same post.

"If you buy a MMORPG and play it for a year, you still pay less money than if you buy a regular video game every 2 months. Counting on a dollar per hour of entertainment basis MMORPGs are extremely cheap. Even watching paint dry is more expensive, if you have to pay for the paint. Movies, books, magazines, everything costs more per hour of entertainment than World of Warcraft does. Total profits of the video game industry are declining, because too many people spend too many cheap hours in WoW instead of buying new expensive video games that can be played through in 10 hours."

I completely agree. WoW (or, really, any MMORPG with a price point around that of WoW), is probably one one of the cheapest forms of entertainment in the world. While I personally still spend money on other forms of entertainment, even outside of gaming, if all you did was play WoW for your entertainment purposes, you'd probably save a ton of cash.

Let's break this down. A monthly subscription to WoW is $14.99. Let's say a month has 30 days. That is a tiny bit less than 50 cents per day or about two (2) cents per hour. (No, no one plays 24/7/365, but that's what it breaks down to.)

Let's compare a bargain matinee movie. I just went to see Cloverfield last weekend and it was $6.50 for the ticket. The average movie is probably about two hours long, or less. That's $3.25 per hour of entertainment.

The average PS3 game is $60 these days. The time it takes to play through console games are variable, so we'll give everything the benefit of the doubt and look at a typical RPG, which is about 50 hours long (going off the average FFXII play through time, even though I played longer). That's $1.20 per hour. Keep in mind 90% of games are shorter (Heavenly Sword takes roughly six hours to complete, making it $10 per hour).

I won't even get into books, cable TV, rented movies, concerts and the like because they all come nowhere close to costing only two cents per hour of entertainment. This all boils down to the fact that if you want cheap entertainment and a cheap hobby, play MMOs. ;)