Manifesto for a Playing Time Equivalent

I was reflecting on an interesting discussion on Build and Analyse 79 about equivalence on Freemium games. You know the situation, you would like some more colours, or a big gun to enrich your game playing experience. You can buy these as in application purchases, or you can play the game to 'earn' them. A game designer has, at least, three choices when modelling the gameplay:

• give it all away, nice, but presumably doesn't pay their rent
• gouge you by making you play for a million years to earn your 'treats', or
• tread the delicate line between effort and reward that leads to rewarding game play.

How about we all lobby for a standardised unit of comparison, so we can work out the cost per hour. A Playing Time Equivalent (PTE) so we can make our own judgments about whether our time is worth the rewards on offer. This raises a broader question about what we get out of these games. On TWIT, Diablo 3 was discussed as a Skinner Box. This rang very true to me. You ever played a game for a few hours, and Minecraft springs to mind here, achieved some trivial goal, then wondered how that takes your life forward? As a relaxing recreation, great, but if I stop to think about my PTE in the real world, ah, er, oh…pass the controller.