PC Value of digital content.

iSmiff

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After having a brief 'discussion' of this in the shoutbox earlier and being told my opinion is formed because I sniff too many hallucinogenics - I thought I would pose the question to the rest of you.

Last night I recieved the drop of the M4A1-S Icarus Fell (Factory New) - A skin on Counter strike CS:GO (see image below) - Now in my opinion the skin doesn't even look that good and just to clarify having the skin gives no in game advantage whatsoever - No play to win here, purely cosmetic! BUT - the skin is rare. In CS:GO you get skins buy opening cases with keys, or as random drops. This skin is DROP only and is very rare, which makes it almost DOUBLE rare as there is no opportunity to buy 50 cases and hope for the best.

maxresdefault.jpg

Okay so currently this skin is on the steam marketplace for around $150 - sometimes known to be sold for as up to $180 - So I , in my opinion anyway, was acceptably excited for getting this dropped (especially as I didn't even win the game, I lost). Due to the time, it was about 5 AM UK time, most of my CS:GO friends and comrades were asleep so I had no one to hype about it to. So I came to the trusty FFF shoutbox full of nice people and friends!

Oh boy..

Anyway, cutting out the dramatic nonsense I was trying to portray there; I was pretty much called out on the whole aspect of digital content and it's value. With @Six and @soulcorruptor finding it extremely difficult to fathom that an online skin which gave no advantage to the player other than to BEDAZZLE THE ENEMIES WITH ITS AWESOMENESS could fetch for up to $150 - until I told them that the top skin in the game fetches around $2500+

They said that paying $150 for a skin, or anything more than $10 is absurd. In my opinion this is because they are used to seeing these sorts of prices in a marketplace like PSN where it is not set by the users themselves - Set purely to make developers money so prices set competitively with most items being considered uncommon due to their availabiliy to purchase in infinite quantities.

I was saying that putting away 5 or 10 dollars over the space of 30 to 15 weeks really isn't that ridiculous and spending money on your primary hobby (if CS:GO is that..) shouldn't be an issue as people do that with their cars or other hobbys and arent looked down upon in the same way.

They also went on to say that the skins were overpriced - to which I argued they were not as they were regularly bought at the price of $150. I perhaps stated they may be OverVALUED.

Anyway guys, i'd like to hear your opinions on this. Is it really so ridiculous for someone to spend $150 on their hobby if it's a PC game compared to if it was a new cosmetic feature on a car? Are they overpriced? Over valued?

Do I sniff hallucinogenics?

PS: sorry to edit if anyones already started quoting or replying but how does this differ from say a Sims expansion pack which includes cosmetic furnitures only and no extra in game features? Sometimes costing expensive amounts too and released with the aim of making a profit - whereas the steam marketplace is non-withdrawable, only able to be spent in steam (to my knowledge) and often just used to buy another skin afterwards anyway.
 
Well I won't go into if you are still abusing drugs or not :Roland:.

But as far as the price of this particular item, I see no need to pay for, since I don't play the game :wacky:

Now I am going to take this in a more general area of buying in game stuff digitally if you don't mind.

Let say it is just something like a skin or a costume for a character in the and this thing doesn't give you any sort of boost or increase your abilities in any way shape or form. How much should it be worth? If a game company makes this particular skin or costume available for a short amount of time or makes it extremely hard to find in the game, does this suddenly make it worth more?

As someone studying accounting and economics right now, I can tell you the "mathematical" term for how much something is worth... but to not confuse people, I will put it simply. Basically the worth of something is how much you need to make versus how much the consumer that you are targeting is willing to pay for it.

In the end if something like this is worth $150 to most of the people you are targeting, then yes I say it is worth that. If the consumer they are targeting (which is the people that play counter strike) are willing to pay $150 for this skin, then it is worth it.

It is the same as buying DLC for let say Call of Duty, or buying a sword on Final Fantasy XIV in my mind. Even if it gives you a stat boost for your character, can you really physically own it? no, but it is an extra in the game that you are willing to pay for.

So there is the gist of my answer :elmo:
 
Worth = a matter of opinion, in my opinion. What you're willing to spend is a matter of opinion.

In MY opinion, 150 bucks for skin you could easily sort out yourself with some mods is absurd. You could give the argument about art, and I rather not defend art cause I'm not a big fan, however, those "paintings" are unique, unless they're printed copies, then again I don't think the should be worth as much as the original. Same goes for this skin, 150 bucks are you mental.

Not even a chance that I'm ever paying that for a skin. Not even a rare gun, cause I'm 90% sure it's just the same gun as you can get with a different skin. Shame on the graphic artists thinking it's worth that, and asking this for a price.

Edit: To clarify even if it was a rare gun. LOL no. 150 bucks for a petty gun in a game. The deluxe edition to XIV doesn't even cost that much (???) and you actually get something you can hold!!!
 
Well I agree with Six in that whether or not it's worth it is entirely up to the person buying it. That said however... there's absolutely nothing special about that skin and it certainly shouldn't be valued that high, IMO. An artist could whip that up in minutes and anyone paying hundreds of dollars is well... insane.

I'm not against paying money for digital cosmetic items in games - because I do see the value - but there's a fine line before you're blatantly being exploited. When I buy a digital item I try and think about the time and effort that went into creating said item. So take the bomb dance emote in FFXIV... It's quite frankly, completely pointless. However, when you think about the effort of animating that dance and implementing it into the game, $1.50 doesn't seem that bad. In fact it's completely reasonable. Likewise, though I've never bought a Sims expansion, if they've modelled new in-game items and the package is priced appropriately, there's nothing wrong with that. But I couldn't ever see myself paying hundreds of dollars on a mediocre texture for the sole reason being that only a few people have it o.0

Physical items are a little different because they're not simply copy and pasted.
 
You aren't paying the designers though, although I believe they may get a small percentage of each sale. You're paying the user who has that skin at the time.

you can hold XIV sure but the actual content on the CD or whatever is still digital. What's the difference really?

Many point is what's the difference between this and getting a decal or something on your car? Spending money on making your car look different is seen as totally acceptable as its a physical object but I go back to my point of if you're spending over a thousand hours on a game then why is it such lunacy to get a skin you enjoy using on it?
 
It's not the object you enjoy getting, or the skin, or glamour, or whatever - it's the price.

I'm not saying oh it's a skin for a gun how absurd you'd even want that, what I'm saying (and I think a lot of people would say) is that the price is too high for the item. Way too high.
 
It's not the object you enjoy getting, or the skin, or glamour, or whatever - it's the price.

I'm not saying oh it's a skin for a gun how absurd you'd even want that, what I'm saying (and I think a lot of people would say) is that the price is too high for the item. Way too high.

i appreciate that, but the factor driving up the price is the limited quantity. If you could just buy them from the game then the prices would probably be £10 but it's the fact you're not buying from the game but you're buying from the community and if there are only 100 of these skins available and 100,000 people wanting them then of course the price is going to go up. Know what I mean?
 
Many point is what's the difference between this and getting a decal or something on your car? Spending money on making your car look different is seen as totally acceptable as its a physical object but I go back to my point of if you're spending over a thousand hours on a game then why is it such lunacy to get a skin you enjoy using on it?

Well, if you're asking an ordinary member of the public like me...an actual and tangible object like a car with decal work done to it does seem to make more sense for vanity reasons than doing the equivalent to your gun. Now, I don't really know how CS:GO works and how its community ticks, but if I am in a tense firefight where my main objectives are to stay alive and to perform decently with my team, I'm hardly going to inch up towards you and swoon at the beautiful butterfly design on your gun. Chances are, you may need to swap out your gun for another one right now and I don't even get to see the skin! :8F:

I'm not going to bother with the semantics of value vs price, so there isn't much I feel I can substantially say about this, except...well, a fool and their money. If they believe that the floating price corresponds reasonably with the perceived value, and that shelling out anywhere from $150 to $2,500+ is a good personal investment, it's entirely within their prerogative to shell out that much money on a vanity item. Good on the seller who was fortunate enough to inadvertently hit the small chunk of virtual gold there. I'll just be over here shaking my head for a good couple of minutes, because I naturally have a vastly different appraisal of worth.
 
Now, I don't really know how CS:GO works and how its community ticks, but if I am in a tense firefight where my main objectives are to stay alive and to perform decently with my team, I'm hardly going to inch up towards you and swoon at the beautiful butterfly design on your gun. Chances are, you may need to swap out your gun for another one right now and I don't even get to see the skin! :8F:

I'm not going to bother with the semantics of value vs price, so there isn't much I feel I can substantially say about this, except...well, a fool and their money. If they believe that the floating price corresponds reasonably with the perceived value, and that shelling out anywhere from $150 to $2,500+ is a good personal investment, it's entirely within their prerogative to shell out that much money on a vanity item. Good on the seller who was fortunate enough to inadvertently hit the small chunk of virtual gold there. I'll just be over here shaking my head for a good couple of minutes, because I naturally have a vastly different appraisal of worth.


Well firstly I was kidding about the whole awesomeness thing. I think a lot of it is like you said, in CSGO there's a lot of weapon drop/swapping so picking up someone else's gun and seeing a rare or a nice skin is always fun. You can barely even see the opponents gun; it's more so focused on the first person view when you are dead and spectating team mates or playing at the time. The question I was trying to raise is why is it so abhorrently stupid or ridiculous to invest in a cosmetic feature purely because it is online? Is it because there's still a stigma around that sort of thing? You may not feel or think that but it may still be somewhere in the subconscious in most people. Oh wow he spent $150 on a gun skin? That's lame. Whereas spending $200 on shoes isn't seen as nearly ridiculous when you could get a same pair of shoes without the designer logo on it for $20. Like I say, I've not spent anywhere near $150 on this game and to be fair I did used to hold the same views as yourselves that it's ridiculous to spend that on something not tangible so I do understand but my opinions have changed slightly. CS Seems to be a game where people rack up thousands of hours rather than the typical 50 or so. So having expensive skins over the length of 3 or 4 years really doesn't seem too ridiculous to me anymore.
 
Like most-everything in life, it depends on the context on whether digital content is valuable or not.

I've never been the type to buy extra digital content(outside of DLC). I just don't care for it. At times, I can see it being a waste of money. I love to game- yes- but I mainly do it to enjoy storylines that I myself have a hand in. I have no interest in costumes for €10 that could've easily been implemented as a reward in the game.

Which leads me on:

Point 1: Rewards.

To take pride and value in digital content that's awarded or earned based on certain circumstances in your game; they're valuable in my eyes. It's like bling, a medal of pride you can show your fellow gamers in your game that you're good. That you have "Dem Mad Skillz".

Games like CS;GO, DOTA, SMITE, LoL, they're big. They're competitive and they also require hardcore dedication and skill to truly "get good" at them. I can understand and recognise why certain skins would be prized more than others and why they could reach intense prices like so.

Now, of course... Buying these skins rather than earning them, that's slightly different... but it also gathers respect from other gamers. Everybody wants to be successful in their passions; these skins can represent that. Of course, you'll be found out as being one of the people who bought the rank/skin(Like Manchester City bought the Premiership...), but they're- in their own context- valuable to some, and anything that's valuable will attract a high price.

Point 2: Customisation and originality.

Gamers are a different breed of enthusiasts, in my opinion. The dedication to their favourite games is not only incredibly fierce(and-at times- toxic), it's also very personal. You're immersed in the experience. Every gamer has had that awful experience of losing their prized save, or accidentally trading away your favourite pokémon(Fuck you, friends from primary school who traded my level 90 Charizard for a level 15 dratini...). There's personal attachment there.

When you care deeply about something, you want it to be perfect just for you. These skins may go for high prices regularly, but each person has their own preference to design and colour. More popular designs are going to go for higher prices(and sometimes, people correlate most popular with "the best"). I can completely understand as to why you might spend that amount of money to get your favourite skin when you spend so many hours of your life in that particular game.

Look, I could get into how this relates to Maslow's "self actualisation"(aka success, in your own eyes, in your own passion. Being the God of your own little temple, as it were) need on his hierarchy, but that could be such a TL;DR I'd give .Fleur a run for her money.

The point I'm trying to make is that these skins actually matter to certain people's happiness. Different skins can reflect you(and your success) in your favourite passtime, and I can't falter anyone who wants to be happy with what they love-even if it means they spend €20, €200 or €2000!
 
Huh? That's quite a ridiculous amount of money!

I do wonder where people get the sort of money to spend on something like this.

It does seem silly to me, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I can see, however, that it has meaning to somebody else. I can't personally fathom why somebody would want to spend money that could almost buy a console. Or in the case of the $2,500 skin, you would have enough for a several of current gen consoles, and be left with enough to have a holiday.

However, some people get happiness out of it. The value is determined by the people that covet it, I guess. I'll leave them to it in this case.

It's a pity that you can't sell it if it was a random drop. We could make an earning playing video games if that were the case. :argor:
 
If it's something a person really wants, and it means a lot to them and it gives them satisfaction then the price of it is down to the individual's budget and therefore a moot point. If anything, for collectors or enthusiasts of rare items, high cost is to be expected and in today's world, it matters little to nothing if the item is physical or digital.

iSmiff
Congrats on getting the drop, you're quite the lucky duck by the looks of it!
 
Haha much appreciated Galadín ! I was very happy to receive such a drop after a match; especially after the loss. It's funny because the skin is ranked as purple, which is generally considered tier 2; red being tier 1 and usually the better, more expensive skins - however a purple is a rare drop first of all, you usually get any of the 4-5 ranks below tier 2. However this skin is even more ridiculous because it's 'drop only' - meaning it's only obtained by drops and dropping purples is incredibly rare. I wouldn't even like to guess. 1 in every 50,000 games. Maybe more, yeah probably more. But anyway; ridiculously rare. So to get the gun on a loss was one thing- the other team were going crazy!! But the name of the gun is one you only really see pro players use (probably because of the price) so when I actually saw the name after the initial surprise of getting a purple I realised why they were going so crazy! Checked it's worth on the market and it came in at about £110!
@Dionysos - yeah it's a shame you can't withdraw the funds from steam! Even so - £110 from 850 hours of gameplay.. £0.12p an hour. That's slave labour if ever I've seen it!! :cry:
@Enraged Emu - some great points there buddy. I think you hit the nail on the head and explained it way more eloquently than I could. :sir: Kudos
 
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