I'm a casual player that has played since beta. I can get to rank 12-15 without much difficulty and usually stop playing ranked games as soon as I have to spend any amount of time. I have spent about $8.98 on this game so far, but have enough cards to have fun. I am missing about 106 cards of all types.
I am finding that other games are becoming more fun for me and that got me to thinking about the economics of this game.
When I got tired of magic, played since release, I sold most of my cards and made back all of the money I ended up spending on the game because the cards I purchased I owned and they had value. In contrast the cards you buy for hearthstone are NOT your property because you are restricted in selling them, essentially the money you spend on this game is not to own, but to lease from blizzard cards t play the game. I think it is this principle that has stopped me from investing more in the game because the cards have 0 value outside the joy they bring you to look at at.
Your thoughts? Can someone explain to me why they spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no value? I mean if I buy a video game, and no longer enjoy the game, I can sell the game to a friend, but here..you get bored and don't want to play then you are out hundreds of dollar that you could have used on helping people less fortunate.....
Can someone explain to me why they spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no value? I mean if I buy a video game, and no longer enjoy the game, I can sell the game to a friend, but here..you get bored and don't want to play then you are out hundreds of dollar
Ever been to a cinema?
I could survive on tofu, but sometimes I like to spend money on a succulent steak. I can't sell the steak after I've enjoyed it, so by your definition it has no value.
Those are both solid references, but they are both consumables.
Hearthstone does not feel like a consumable. I mean even with the movie reference that ticket is our property that you can resell if you would like. When I buy cards it feels like a digital thing, a something, that I should own.
Those are both solid references, but they are both consumables.
Hearthstone does not feel like a consumable. I mean even with the movie reference that ticket is our property that you can resell if you would like. When I buy cards it feels like a digital thing, a something, that I should own.
Well if that's how you feel about it, then maybe you don't need to spend any money of the game.
I agree with the original poster intellectually, but that's not how I'm acting - and I used to hate the whole idea of freemium games. But a lot of what games do for us is to provide the illusion of progress, in contrast to the decline and death that too much of life brings. Hearthstone does a pretty good job of providing that illusion for me. So I'll keep spending, since buying real property isn't providing that illusion of progress for me, anymore - or not so vividly.
Think how many people buy larger houses that don't make them happy - and then, too often, have to sell them at a loss. It's cheaper, or at least less risky, to buy cards to obtain that illusion, even if the cards aren't liquid.
I wouldn't be surprised if the law eventually rescues us here, though, and insists that virtual property (including ebooks, etc, etc) over $100 in value must be transferable. The law just hasn't caught up to virtual property yet, but I absolutely believe it will.
I kinda agree with the OP. Spending money on Hearthstone, I feel I need to compare it to e.g. spending money on a subscription to a game. You certainly can't compare it to spending money on cards in a Trading Card Game. Which means I'm not willing to spend more than say $10/month (Hearthstone is a fine game and a lot of fun but obviously there's a lot less to it than an MMORPG).
And the thing about the business model is that at $10/month, you might as well just not bother. That buys, what, seven packs? You'll get a lot more than that in a month just playing.
So ultimately, I ended up buying the two adventures for cash, and that's it. Never bought a pack. Don't know that I'm ever particularly likely to.
There are plenty of things in life you pay for that have no tangible value. Movie tickets, roller coaster rides, nice dinners (at least for the service and the atmosphere and prestige in some cases, food has nutritional value), even a vacation.
Money is only worth what it's "worth" so if someone would rather see their bank account go down a few digits over taking out a piece of paper from an atm machine to exchange for a piece of furniture, then they simply feel like the fun of hearthstone is "worth" more than that pillow, even though they can sell, hold, and give away the pillow.
Those are both solid references, but they are both consumables.
Hearthstone does not feel like a consumable. I mean even with the movie reference that ticket is our property that you can resell if you would like. When I buy cards it feels like a digital thing, a something, that I should own.
It's a consumable. Even if you own it, it's a consumable. And you don't even own it. It's always something to be aware of in a digital online system. Same goes for MMO characters, Online accounts, or anything else of that nature. That also includes most games as most do not keep their value over time. I still have some old SNES carts. No one is going to pay 60+ dollars for them.
We all (should) know of this nature before stepping one foot into a system like this, just like how, chances are, you weren't 100% sure you would get ALL of your money back from your MTG packs (which is an impressive feat, when you consider all of the packs you would open that didn't give anything useful). But most items you buy are consumables or, at least, will lose value over time. They are NOT investments. They are purchased for their value as a product in itself. You buy a game to have fun. You purchase packs to have fun. That is all. If you are expecting anything else, you should NOT be opening your wallet until you can get a better handle on things.
This is ESPECIALLY true of content like this. you don't OWN the cards. They have no resale value. I will be blunt as I'm trying to make money matters my 'thing'. If this is a problem for you, DO NOT SPEND A DIME MORE ON THIS GAME OR ANY GAME LIKE IT!
Another matter. You spent that $8.98 in order to have fun. From the point of purchase, until now, that money was for your enjoyment, nothing more. Don't get caught in the 'sunk cost fallacy'. If the game isn't fun for you anymore, the value is gone and adding more 'time' won't change that. You can stay if you feel you can get more fun by spending more, but do NOT stay to avoid losing the 'value' of your purchase. The purchase is consumed.. the day is done.
@OP as a fellow MTG player I feel the same frustration that you do not being able to re-sell card collections. The last time I played MTG (which was a few years ago now) I probably dropped $400 or so into 1 deck to be able to play competitively. Towards the end of Summer I needed some cash again and so I sold all my cards on e-bay making almost $400 back (was like $385 or something) and felt really good about how that went down.
With Hearthstone I absolutely feel like I'm "wasting" my money when buying packs/expansions. However I also greatly value my time, enjoy the game and wanted to have free range of deck building - and so I purchased my collection. As an adult I can easily justify spending a few hundred dollars to "get ahead" verses having to spend what would probably hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of my time to get to the same spot.
You asked "why would someone spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no value?". Well the value is entertainment. I probably spent $10k on golf over the last 5 years and have absolutely nothing to show for it - other than some good memories. Same would be said with Hearthstone.
p.s. to say you can't sell your cards isn't exactly true. There are plenty of websites out there where people can connect to buy/sell hearthstone accounts. Granted your selling your entire Blizzard account any other other accounts tied to the e-mail (wow, D3, SC, etc.) you can still recoup some of your money if that's important to you.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Friend me @Anasko#1102 | ================================================
I'm sixty years old now, and one of the most remarkable things about being this age - that rather startles me in fact - is how little I want. How little I desire. (Granted I've meditated for decades, and I'm, like, sixty, so that's not too shocking.) I don't want a mansion, or a yacht. I don't want a degree in economics for that matter (although I once did - until I met some economists in the academy and found out how corrupt they were even back then.)
Yet I want more cards! I desire them! (My desire for them makes a good "tantric pet", which is nice, too.) So buying some cards is one of the few ways I can treat myself (my diet is rather restrictive and I don't drink, which could be a factor here.) I have many other pleasures, believe me - but they're all within easy reach and part of my daily routine.
Turns out that HS cards are what you buy the man who has everything, including contentment.
This is because it is digital content. I know we all buy our media, but you can't sell it into a second hand store if we no longer want the 3rd season of Scrubs that we wanted on iTunes . It is the nature of digital content.
It's the nature of the terms and conditions for digital content, RegalSmealgol, that's certainly true. But is it the nature of the law? That simply hasn't been decided in the courts, as yet, for the most part. Tons of fine print in legal contracts is invalid or strictly illegal. Legislation as well as contracts have to pass muster in the courts. In some jurisdictions already, copying to view on another device you own is legal regardless of what the terms and conditions say, according to case law (re ripping DVDs to put them on your tablet.) (Britain as I remember.) Similarly, tape recording songs from the radio looked very illegal long ago (shortly after cassette recorders arrived) but the courts in the U.S. decided that such copying was legal no matter what any contracts or fine print said. To my father's everlasting astonishment - but they did.
We don't know what the (legal) nature of digital content is, yet, I don't believe.
I'm sixty years old now, and one of the most remarkable things about being this age - that rather startles me in fact - is how little I want. How little I desire. (Granted I've meditated for decades, and I'm, like, sixty, so that's not too shocking.) I don't want a mansion, or a yacht. I don't want a degree in economics for that matter (although I once did - until I met some economists in the academy and found out how corrupt they were even back then.)
Yet I want more cards! I desire them! (My desire for them makes a good "tantric pet", which is nice, too.) So buying some cards is one of the few ways I can treat myself (my diet is rather restrictive and I don't drink, which could be a factor here.) I have many other pleasures, believe me - but they're all within easy reach and part of my daily routine.
Turns out that HS cards are what you buy the man who has everything, including contentment.
I love you. Whoever you are, however much of this post is legit vs. complete fantasy, I love you for what you have created with this post. My life is better for having read it. Thank you.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
Everything that can be transferred (by copying/cloning it or actual control transfer) has a resell value. There are a lot of places where you can sell you Battle.net account and it is a surprisingly fair and mature market.
Also consider that what you are actually getting from Blizzard is entertainment as a service (access to an online account). You play a game, you feel good. It is at the same level as other hobbies you have, like watching movies, playing soccer or collecting physical coins. Considering HS can be played for free and it's actually pretty fun in F2P mode, I would say Blizzard gave us a lot of entertainment, and certainly that can't have "no value" (well, unless you really dislike the game, in which case you should find some other hobby).
Now on to buying in-game items. They also provide some entertainment value. I buy cards because (after grinding through daily quests to get cards and dust and adventures) I figured out I will gain some time if I pay for the cards and playing with better decks will be even more entertaining. I am happy to report I was right, so paying 45$ gave me more "fun value" than what I could have done with the same money (let's say going 2 times at the cinema, or a night out with my friends). There are days when I decide to spend the same money for something else, like buying one new Lego set or going to that new movie that came out with my family, and so on.
Hell, I even bought the (some would say overpriced) hero skins because I actually like them. I still have fun when I see the animations and hear the dialogue. Still more value than drinking 5 beers (I live in Bucharest => cheap beer!) in my case.
So @OP, even though it is difficult to compare "fun things I can do" between them and also put a value on all of them, it is a useful exercise. And if in the end you do decide against buying HS items or even not playing the game at all, that's actually a big win - you now have time and money to do something else that will bring you more enjoyment!
I have a fixed budget for games per month. I have spent some of those money on HS. HS might be potentially more expensive than a single game title, but it is also a game I play more than single game titles... and your logic holds true for ordinary games as well (unless you don't play them and keep them in unopened shiny boxed special editions, they won't really have any value down the line).
I work and have a career, and I don't really have the time (nor would I had the desire) to grind HS in F2P. I prefer to play a daily or so per day and focus on enjoying matches more so than anything else.
People who pay make the game commercially viable and the people free-play make the game have a large user base. Both these things make the game what it is.
I'm a casual player that has played since beta. I can get to rank 12-15 without much difficulty and usually stop playing ranked games as soon as I have to spend any amount of time. I have spent about $8.98 on this game so far, but have enough cards to have fun. I am missing about 106 cards of all types.
I am finding that other games are becoming more fun for me and that got me to thinking about the economics of this game.
When I got tired of magic, played since release, I sold most of my cards and made back all of the money I ended up spending on the game because the cards I purchased I owned and they had value. In contrast the cards you buy for hearthstone are NOT your property because you are restricted in selling them, essentially the money you spend on this game is not to own, but to lease from blizzard cards t play the game. I think it is this principle that has stopped me from investing more in the game because the cards have 0 value outside the joy they bring you to look at at.
Your thoughts? Can someone explain to me why they spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no value? I mean if I buy a video game, and no longer enjoy the game, I can sell the game to a friend, but here..you get bored and don't want to play then you are out hundreds of dollar that you could have used on helping people less fortunate.....
Ever been to a cinema?
I could survive on tofu, but sometimes I like to spend money on a succulent steak. I can't sell the steak after I've enjoyed it, so by your definition it has no value.
Indeed.
Those are both solid references, but they are both consumables.
Hearthstone does not feel like a consumable. I mean even with the movie reference that ticket is our property that you can resell if you would like. When I buy cards it feels like a digital thing, a something, that I should own.
Well if that's how you feel about it, then maybe you don't need to spend any money of the game.
Make the Card: The biggest thread on the site!
My mandibles which are capable of pressing down and tearing, my talons which are known to intercept and hold.
Well it's not like someone has over sold their account....
(Probably the Input/Output wouldn't be that good ... but still...)
I agree with the original poster intellectually, but that's not how I'm acting - and I used to hate the whole idea of freemium games. But a lot of what games do for us is to provide the illusion of progress, in contrast to the decline and death that too much of life brings. Hearthstone does a pretty good job of providing that illusion for me. So I'll keep spending, since buying real property isn't providing that illusion of progress for me, anymore - or not so vividly.
Think how many people buy larger houses that don't make them happy - and then, too often, have to sell them at a loss. It's cheaper, or at least less risky, to buy cards to obtain that illusion, even if the cards aren't liquid.
I wouldn't be surprised if the law eventually rescues us here, though, and insists that virtual property (including ebooks, etc, etc) over $100 in value must be transferable. The law just hasn't caught up to virtual property yet, but I absolutely believe it will.
I kinda agree with the OP. Spending money on Hearthstone, I feel I need to compare it to e.g. spending money on a subscription to a game. You certainly can't compare it to spending money on cards in a Trading Card Game. Which means I'm not willing to spend more than say $10/month (Hearthstone is a fine game and a lot of fun but obviously there's a lot less to it than an MMORPG).
And the thing about the business model is that at $10/month, you might as well just not bother. That buys, what, seven packs? You'll get a lot more than that in a month just playing.
So ultimately, I ended up buying the two adventures for cash, and that's it. Never bought a pack. Don't know that I'm ever particularly likely to.
There are plenty of things in life you pay for that have no tangible value. Movie tickets, roller coaster rides, nice dinners (at least for the service and the atmosphere and prestige in some cases, food has nutritional value), even a vacation.
Money is only worth what it's "worth" so if someone would rather see their bank account go down a few digits over taking out a piece of paper from an atm machine to exchange for a piece of furniture, then they simply feel like the fun of hearthstone is "worth" more than that pillow, even though they can sell, hold, and give away the pillow.
It's a consumable. Even if you own it, it's a consumable. And you don't even own it. It's always something to be aware of in a digital online system. Same goes for MMO characters, Online accounts, or anything else of that nature. That also includes most games as most do not keep their value over time. I still have some old SNES carts. No one is going to pay 60+ dollars for them.
We all (should) know of this nature before stepping one foot into a system like this, just like how, chances are, you weren't 100% sure you would get ALL of your money back from your MTG packs (which is an impressive feat, when you consider all of the packs you would open that didn't give anything useful). But most items you buy are consumables or, at least, will lose value over time. They are NOT investments. They are purchased for their value as a product in itself. You buy a game to have fun. You purchase packs to have fun. That is all. If you are expecting anything else, you should NOT be opening your wallet until you can get a better handle on things.
This is ESPECIALLY true of content like this. you don't OWN the cards. They have no resale value. I will be blunt as I'm trying to make money matters my 'thing'. If this is a problem for you, DO NOT SPEND A DIME MORE ON THIS GAME OR ANY GAME LIKE IT!
Another matter. You spent that $8.98 in order to have fun. From the point of purchase, until now, that money was for your enjoyment, nothing more. Don't get caught in the 'sunk cost fallacy'. If the game isn't fun for you anymore, the value is gone and adding more 'time' won't change that. You can stay if you feel you can get more fun by spending more, but do NOT stay to avoid losing the 'value' of your purchase. The purchase is consumed.. the day is done.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Wtf Hearthstone is for enjoyment. You trade your money and time for it. Of course, you're not going to get anything else out of it.
My legendary count excluding adventure legendaries, dupes and old murk eye: 40
$$$ spent on this game: 0
Check out my card collection: http://www.hearthpwn.com/members/MCFUser175154/collection
@OP as a fellow MTG player I feel the same frustration that you do not being able to re-sell card collections. The last time I played MTG (which was a few years ago now) I probably dropped $400 or so into 1 deck to be able to play competitively. Towards the end of Summer I needed some cash again and so I sold all my cards on e-bay making almost $400 back (was like $385 or something) and felt really good about how that went down.
With Hearthstone I absolutely feel like I'm "wasting" my money when buying packs/expansions. However I also greatly value my time, enjoy the game and wanted to have free range of deck building - and so I purchased my collection. As an adult I can easily justify spending a few hundred dollars to "get ahead" verses having to spend what would probably hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of my time to get to the same spot.
You asked "why would someone spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no value?". Well the value is entertainment. I probably spent $10k on golf over the last 5 years and have absolutely nothing to show for it - other than some good memories. Same would be said with Hearthstone.
p.s. to say you can't sell your cards isn't exactly true. There are plenty of websites out there where people can connect to buy/sell hearthstone accounts. Granted your selling your entire Blizzard account any other other accounts tied to the e-mail (wow, D3, SC, etc.) you can still recoup some of your money if that's important to you.
Friend me @Anasko#1102 |
================================================
I'm sixty years old now, and one of the most remarkable things about being this age - that rather startles me in fact - is how little I want. How little I desire. (Granted I've meditated for decades, and I'm, like, sixty, so that's not too shocking.) I don't want a mansion, or a yacht. I don't want a degree in economics for that matter (although I once did - until I met some economists in the academy and found out how corrupt they were even back then.)
Yet I want more cards! I desire them! (My desire for them makes a good "tantric pet", which is nice, too.) So buying some cards is one of the few ways I can treat myself (my diet is rather restrictive and I don't drink, which could be a factor here.) I have many other pleasures, believe me - but they're all within easy reach and part of my daily routine.
Turns out that HS cards are what you buy the man who has everything, including contentment.
This is because it is digital content. I know we all buy our media, but you can't sell it into a second hand store if we no longer want the 3rd season of Scrubs that we wanted on iTunes . It is the nature of digital content.
Iron Juggernaut
It's the nature of the terms and conditions for digital content, RegalSmealgol, that's certainly true. But is it the nature of the law? That simply hasn't been decided in the courts, as yet, for the most part. Tons of fine print in legal contracts is invalid or strictly illegal. Legislation as well as contracts have to pass muster in the courts. In some jurisdictions already, copying to view on another device you own is legal regardless of what the terms and conditions say, according to case law (re ripping DVDs to put them on your tablet.) (Britain as I remember.) Similarly, tape recording songs from the radio looked very illegal long ago (shortly after cassette recorders arrived) but the courts in the U.S. decided that such copying was legal no matter what any contracts or fine print said. To my father's everlasting astonishment - but they did.
We don't know what the (legal) nature of digital content is, yet, I don't believe.
true.
I love you. Whoever you are, however much of this post is legit vs. complete fantasy, I love you for what you have created with this post. My life is better for having read it. Thank you.
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
Hi @OP,
Everything that can be transferred (by copying/cloning it or actual control transfer) has a resell value. There are a lot of places where you can sell you Battle.net account and it is a surprisingly fair and mature market.
Also consider that what you are actually getting from Blizzard is entertainment as a service (access to an online account). You play a game, you feel good. It is at the same level as other hobbies you have, like watching movies, playing soccer or collecting physical coins. Considering HS can be played for free and it's actually pretty fun in F2P mode, I would say Blizzard gave us a lot of entertainment, and certainly that can't have "no value" (well, unless you really dislike the game, in which case you should find some other hobby).
Now on to buying in-game items. They also provide some entertainment value. I buy cards because (after grinding through daily quests to get cards and dust and adventures) I figured out I will gain some time if I pay for the cards and playing with better decks will be even more entertaining. I am happy to report I was right, so paying 45$ gave me more "fun value" than what I could have done with the same money (let's say going 2 times at the cinema, or a night out with my friends). There are days when I decide to spend the same money for something else, like buying one new Lego set or going to that new movie that came out with my family, and so on.
Hell, I even bought the (some would say overpriced) hero skins because I actually like them. I still have fun when I see the animations and hear the dialogue. Still more value than drinking 5 beers (I live in Bucharest => cheap beer!) in my case.
So @OP, even though it is difficult to compare "fun things I can do" between them and also put a value on all of them, it is a useful exercise. And if in the end you do decide against buying HS items or even not playing the game at all, that's actually a big win - you now have time and money to do something else that will bring you more enjoyment!
Well met!
I have a fixed budget for games per month. I have spent some of those money on HS. HS might be potentially more expensive than a single game title, but it is also a game I play more than single game titles... and your logic holds true for ordinary games as well (unless you don't play them and keep them in unopened shiny boxed special editions, they won't really have any value down the line).
I work and have a career, and I don't really have the time (nor would I had the desire) to grind HS in F2P. I prefer to play a daily or so per day and focus on enjoying matches more so than anything else.
People who pay make the game commercially viable and the people free-play make the game have a large user base. Both these things make the game what it is.