There’s a lot to like with modern-day Euro-style boardgames.  However, some folks may be turned off by the fact that most of these games are far more expensive than the $8 that you paid for Monopoly or Uno.  How can you justify paying $40 for a board game?  Well, step on in and experience MetalJim’s Theory of Player-Hour Value.

My theory of player-hour value states I am probably getting my money’s worth from a source of entertainment if, over the long run, I am playing less that $1 per hour of enjoyment and entertainment that I receive.  Now, we can certainly classify certain forms of entertainment as “premium” and worth more per hour.  Let’s look at some examples and do some math…

Last summer’s Ozzfest concert cost me $75 (plus parking), but I got close to ten hours of entertainment value.  That’s about $8 per hour — certainly premium cost — but not bad as rock concerts go.  I did get pelted by mud clods thrown by drunken bums, but then that, too, was part of the whole Ozzfest experience.  Personally, I would pay $75 just to see Iron Maiden play a full set, so there’s no question that I got good value here.

Going to see a two hour movie and paying a $10 ticket (the going rate in Connecticut) means that you are paying $5 per hour of entertainment.  Stadium seating and surround sound count for something, but at that rate it had better be a good movie.

If you catch Peter Jackson’s King Kong at the matinee (three hours plus), you are paying less than $2 per hour.  If you like to see that sort of thing on the big screen, it’s probably a good deal.

If I rent a two hour movie for $4 and watch it by myself, I get value at a rate of $2 per hour.  If 3 of my friends chip in (or we take turns getting the rental), I am now in the $.50 range per viewer hour – an excellent value..

Single player computer games are very easy to rate on this scale.  If I pay $20 for a computer game, I need to play for 20 hours to hit the sweet spot.  A $50 video game means that I have to play for 50 hours.  A shooter game that you can finish in ten hours is a bad value at $50, but might count as premium entertainment if you scoop it out of the bargain bin.  Most video game rentals pay for themselves if you play the game for 8 hours or more.  Of course, somewhere in all of this you also have to weigh the money that you paid to buy the console/ computer system in the first place, but that counts towards every single game that you ever play on the system, and your home PC does other things like surfing the web or writing blog posts.

So now we get to Euro-style boardgames.  When is a $40 board game really a good value?  Let’s consider the math…

Let’s say I buy a $40 game that takes two hours to play.  If 4 players play the game 5 times, that’s 4×5x2 = 40 player hours, which is right at the $1 per player hour sweet spot!  Any more plays are simply a bonus.  If we imagine 5 people playing a filler game that takes 30 minutes to play, then four games gives us something like ten player hours.  If we paid $20 for such a filler game, it would take 8 plays to make the math work out and reach the sweet spot.

Still, it turns out that quite a few board games start to look good after about 5 plays.  For example, last December I picked up a “behemoth” board game, the massive $80 World of Warcraft board game put out by Fantasy Flight Games.  If a four player game here takes 4 hours to play, I still need to play 5 games to get towards that $1 per hour sweet spot.  I think I’ve played the game 3 or 4 times so far. 

Of course, any economic theory comes with some caveats and stipulations.  For one thing, if I buy a $40 board game, there’s no guarantee that my gaming buddies are actually chipping in to help to purchase their own “share” of the entertainment value.  I could view it that I am helping to “buy” the good opinion of my friends.  In an optimal situation, my friends buy different board games than the ones that I buy, and we take turns “loafing” on each other’s entertainment nickel.  In this way, my math above comes out perfectly valid.  However, if you are the sole supplier of board games for your group’s gaming night, then you had better get working to convince your friends that your share of the pizza, coke, and chips is going to be free for you.

Board games also retain a certain “potential” value even if we don’t play them right away.  I may enjoy my leisure hours flipping through various rulebooks, for example, picking up an hour of value here or there.  The game also retains potential trade value or Ebay resale value.  However, these values mean nothing if I play a game once, decide that it doesn’t work (or my friends don’t like it) and then toss it into the attic to be forgotten forever.

Another interesting problem arises from my theory of player-hour value.  In theory, as the size of your boardgame collection rises, your ability to get return value from your investment is impaired.  After all, we can assume that you only have a finite number of hours in a given month to spend boardgaming with your friends.  There has to be a point of diminishing returns where you simply don’t have enough time to give an adequate number of plays to all of the games in your ever-expanding collection.  Thus, my value theory would suggest that unless you place a high premium on collector value, that you probably want to focus on having 20 or so “highly entertaining” games on your shelf.  This takes us back to my fellow writer Smite and his series on building up the ideal game collection.

For now, though, you should probably boil this down to a simple question whenever you think about buying a boardgame. “If I purchase this game, will it hit the table with my regular playing group at least 5 times?”  If the answer is “No, my friends don’t normally like this sort of game,” then you may want to wait and see if you can try someone else’s copy first.