system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: if the “value” of entertainment is the ratio of hours entertained over price, video games are the best value of all entertainment mediums.

Let’s start with the oldest entertainment medium: books. Books can be very cheap but let’s go with a standard NY Times bestseller. $20 for a hardcover, maybe $10 for a paperback. Let’s say the average NY Times bestseller can be read cover to cover in 5-10 hours. Pretty good value. 




Next we have the theater. Broadway! I love a good stage play but it’s not the cheapest night you’ll have. Tickets, transportation, food and drink if it is an evening show. All for maybe 4 total hours of entertainment. 





On to the movies. These days a cinema ticket is $15 (sometimes more!) for 2 measly hours. 3 hours is considered a ridiculously long movie. Rewatch value is honestly low - some people like to rewatch their favorite movies but it is not like the outcome will change. 




The golden age of TV is breathing new life into the screen. Now, a series like GoT can entertain you for 80 hours! But nowadays just to have access to the best shows, you need subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, and whoever else decides to get into streaming. Easily over $100 monthly to have it all. But let’s break it down for a single unit: for GoT you spend $10 monthly or $120 yearly for 10 episodes per year. So each GoT episode costs you $12 for an hour of entertainment. 




Finally we have games. A brand new AAA title will cost $60. Let’s use Red Dead 2 as an example. $60 gets you over 100 hours of content and a gripping story. Let’s use a multiplayer game like Fortnite. Literally free to play - maybe $20 bucks for those who enjoy the game. 



Before anyone brings up the cost of a console, TV sets are more expensive as are e-readers (e.g. iPad). Owning the latest console represents buying the latest tech so to be fair, you have to compare that cost to the latest reading and film/TV tech. 




By pure dollars for hours of fun, video games are your best value.
gpt
I think your logic on streaming is pretty flawed.

> But let’s break it down for a single unit: for GoT you spend $10 monthly or $120 yearly for 10 episodes per year. So each GoT episode costs you $12 for an hour of entertainment.

The thing is, though, you don't just get 10 hours of entertainment. You're not *just* buying a GoT subscription. You're getting every single other show/movie HBO Max streams. There are literally thousands of hours of entertainment. Even if you only watch the one show, you're still getting thousands of hours of entertainment. You're just not using all of it.

Comparably, if you pay $20 for book and only spend 1 hour reading the first couple chapters and never pick it up again, is that $20/hour, or is that still the $2-$4/hour you calculated? If you buy a $60 game and only play for 30 minutes and never touch it again, is it still the $0.60/hour you calculated, or is it now $120/hour?

If you are considering the amount of entertainment provided for the cost, not the entertainment used, then any streaming subscription is going to beat any video game by an enormous margin.