It sucks, but we all have to do it. You get the opportunity to do two fun things but you can only afford one. How do you choose? In a perfect world I would see every new movie that interested me in the theatre, buy all the cool video games on multiple systems, have the full HD cable TV package and go for dinner with friends whenever I want, in between adventures around the world. Unfortunately I can only afford about 1/1000th of that. This results in a lot of time spent trying to gauge what will give me the best bang for my entertainment buck (yeah, yeah... prostitutes... giggle, giggle, haha). But seriously, this is something that we all probably do, although it is most likely unconscious and therefore likely inconsistent. I don’t like inconsistency. I like my world to be logical and rational, enabling me to justify my actions with ease. So I have decided to develop a system through which I can decide whether or not a given entertainment is worth my money.
First, you should decide what your favourite form of entertainment is; i.e. what do you have no problem spending money on. For me, this is movies. I love going out to the theatre to see a movie on the big screen. As long as I don’t get bored during a movie, I consider it a pretty good night out. So this will be my baseline for entertainment value. Over the course of 2010 I kept a list of every movie I watched, along with some stats for each, so I know that on average the movies I watch are ~1.7 hours long. Assuming a ticket price of $13, I am spending ~$7.65/hr of entertainment. Using this, I can create a graph that will allow me to judge the relative value of any planned entertainment.
Anything that falls below this line is good value and anything that falls above it needs some serious consideration before I spend my hard earned cash. The graph can also be used to determine how much time you would need to use something (e.g. a video game) before it became “worth it”. A brand new video game costs about $60 so as long as I get 9 hours of play out of it, it is probably a good use of my money. Let’s see how this graph holds up with some known quantities.
What we see here is no surprise, really: things like concerts are not really that good value, especially for more famous bands. At this point you really need to use kind of a mental fudge factor that takes in to account things like enjoyment level (Radiohead live is pretty mind-blowingly awesome) and rarity of event (I don’t go to many big concerts and Radiohead tours infrequently). So even though it does not appear to be a good value on my graph, I would fork over the cash for a Radiohead concert without hesitation. Unfortunately we don’t usually know how much we are going to enjoy something until after the fact, so that restricts our mental fudge factor.
I suppose if I wanted to get really fancy with this I could assign some sort of Predicted Enjoyment variable to each option, which could be combined with a calculation of the distance from the baseline on the above graph to create an ordination plot that would better represent the true value of the entertainment. Alas, I am not proficient enough in stats to do that, but it might look something like this:
You make a conclusion that anything below the line is not good value, and then immediately contradict it by stating that not all entertainment value is equal (something I agree with). I'd rather play a great short game (like Portal) than a decent long game (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).
ReplyDeleteYou sort of touch on this in your ordination plot. What you need to do is rename your value axis to be a Cost/Time axis. Since that is all it is. A "value" curve would then be a descending slope line that cuts somewhere across the top of the time axis and the right of the enjoyment axis.
Then you have the curve you're looking for. Anything above that line is a go, because even if it is short and expensive, you've still subjectively assessed it to be so mind blowingly awesome that it's virtually irrelevant.
I would also rather play Portal than many longer games, but that is not the question that is being posed. The question is how much money am I willing to spend on a game. Portal may be a great game, but I still would not pay $60 for it, whereas something like Rage is nowhere near as good a game but I have already had 12+ hours of fun with and I'm only halfway done. So in terms of money it is a better value. If I was to play a game like Portal for the same amount of time at $60 a pop it would cost me over $180 and I don't have anywhere near that kind of money.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, the graph deals with value relative to a baseline of going to the movies. So something above the line is not necessarily Bad, it is just not as good value as going to a movie. Somebody else's baseline would be different than mine as each person has to choose their own standard to compare against.
I think we should take this on as a real stats assignment and publish it. We'll have to have seperate graphs for men and women, and geeks and normal people.
ReplyDeleteI would pay $60 for Portal over a game like Rage because while Rage may be longer, the total sum of its total enjoyment to me is still less.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, it is still the question being posed.
Something is not better value simply because it lasts longer. You still have to enjoy it. All you've done is say that the total enjoyment you get out of Portal is not worth $60. And you've also indicated that you feel that the total amount of enjoyment that you get out of Rage is worth the $60.
The "value" of entertainment is completely intertwined with the subjective interpretation of what you consider fun. The mere fact that you would splurge on a Radiohead concert in spite of its larger cost per hour ratio demonstrates that you place more entertainment value in attending a Radiohead concert that lasts 2 hours over a movie that lasts 2 hours. You're getting more "bang for your buck" because your getting so much more "bang" in spite of spending more "bucks."
It's a BAD thing if the only metric you use for whether or not something is worth your money is the length of time you spend doing it. Would you really consider seeing Titanic in a theater for $10 to be of better "value" than seeing Super? After all, Titanic is going to keep you occupied for nearly twice as long for the same amount of money!
Would Dedfest be worth the money if every movie there was the equivalent of Monster Brawl? No, of course not. The quality of what you're experiencing is important.
Length of time is important (it has a multiplicative effect), but it's not the only metric. You've already demonstrated this when you have stated that you feel that a Radiohead concert would be worth the money, even though it contradicts your original premise.
If you wanted to get super nerdy, what "value" really is is the measure of personal satisfaction as a function of time. Whether or not something is "worth" the money you'd spend on it is dependent on the area under the curve. If the area is greater than your "worth it" metric, then it should be a go.
The point of all of this is to determine how to best spend a limited budget. If I only have $100/month and, let's say, 60 hours of free time per month to fill, spending $60 of that on a game that will only occupy 3 hours of that time it is not nearly as good a use of money as a game that will fill 20 hours of that time.
ReplyDeleteWhat you are not accounting for is the frequency of occurrence, which cannot really be put in the graph. Radiohead tickets are only worth that much money because I see expensive concerts so infrequently. I have been to maybe 5 concerts that cost more than $60 in the last 10 years. I have been to 5 movies in the last 10 days. If I went to concerts that often I would run out of money very quickly. Therefore, although I might enjoy a concert more than many movies I would not say that it is better value because I simply could not afford to do it.
And finally, these graphs only apply to me. Everyone weights their entertainment differently. The fact of the matter is that I cannot afford to give sheer enjoyment the same weight that others might. Clearly you think that $60 for Portal is an excellent use of money,thus your baseline value is much higher than mine, which means that the Predicted Enjoyment variable in the ordination will have more importance than in mine.
In addition, your method of determining value as personal satisfaction as a function of time can only be determined after the entertainment has been experienced. So while it may be effective in determining a rating for a given entertainment it is useless as a method of deciding how to spend one's money, which is the point of this blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that you should feel Portal is worth $60. I just used it as an example. In fact, I just said that I'd rather pay $60 for Portal than $60 for Rage. I think it's _perfectly valid_ that you don't feel it's worth $60. The principal reason why I brought up Portal was because it was THE game that showed me that I shouldn't consider the length of a game as much in determining the quality of a game (yes, this is personal and subjective).
ReplyDeleteIf it's purely about getting bang for your buck, then why would you go to see a movie in the theater instead of renting it (which gives significantly better bang for the buck). It's because you find the act of going to the movie in the theater more enjoyable than renting one at home.
And while these specific graphs (more specifically, the values contained within), these are the same decisions that everyone always has to make whenever justifying any purchase. That your graph doesn't match up with my graph is irrelevant. The process is still the same.
A better rebuttal would have been more along the lines of how Portal's 3 hours of enjoyment doesn't do enough to mitigate the lack of fun you'd be having in the other 17 hours (or any of the other opportunity costs that are present)
Everyone is going to want to maximize their enjoyment while minimizing their costs, and if Dedfest was merely "okay" you'd have a harder time justifying its cost, even though it satisfies a lot more of your entertainment hours for less money total.
As for frequency of occurrence, all that indicates is that the points on the graph aren't static (which makes sense if we're considering it from an economic perspective). I'd wager that watching the same movie in the theater again causes the level of enjoyment to plummet, even though the time spent per dollar is exactly the same.
"In addition, your method of determining value as personal satisfaction as a function of time can only be determined after the entertainment has been experienced. So while it may be effective in determining a rating for a given entertainment it is useless as a method of deciding how to spend one's money, which is the point of this blog. "
ReplyDeleteBoth methods take past experiences and make future predictions. My way is as "useless" as yours is for taking an unknown quantity and making a prediction based on previous experiences.
It's exactly why you wouldn't go to see Transformers 3 but had no issues coming out for Cowboys and Aliens.
If you actually held to your original premise, you wouldn't actually care what movie you saw because you'd be getting the same amount of movie time per dollar spent (actually less, as Transformers 3 is a longer movie).
But both ways are just predictions and we're going to get them wrong and watch a shit movie or play a shit game from time to time.
And this is why actuaries get paid the big dollars. Man, that would be a boring job.
ReplyDelete