When I hear the word “investment” I don’t immediately think of video games. Most of the time I’m thinking of investing one of three things into something else. Those three things are my time, my treasures or my talents. Generally my time goes into work, relationships or a hobby. My treasures (money) go into my home, my family, hobbies again or my future (savings). My talents are used in work, hobbies, or for me my church. But Tyson Green’s talks about “investment” have me thinking about my three T’s in the gaming space and what Bungie will do to draw me into Destiny. But before I tackle what I want (or think I want) in Destiny, I am going to explore some of the ways that I have invested in games in the past. Let’s talk about the three T’s again and see if that’s it for gaming. Starting with the treasures, I have purchased both a console and a game to play. I vote with my dollars as I do not support piracy of intellectual properties. Many times I have bought Collector’s Editions and other bling (shirts, art books, etc.) in a show of solidarity to an IP. This is the easiest way for me to describe my monetary investment in a game. With talents, that seems like it revolves around skill, be it problem solving, communicating, practicing and developing different styles of play for games. Time can be related to this as skills develop with practice and said practice takes time, but it’s more than simply time. I may spend as much time practicing a game as an MLG player, but I most likely don’t have the talent associated with that level of play thus I won’t be as good. But I feel like the most important one here is time. With so many things competing for my time, I have come up with a simple estimation to see if I’m making a good investment. Specifically when it comes to entertainment decisions I use a dollars per hour ratio. My goal is $1/hour. For example, I go to see a movie in a theater rarely because at $10 a ticket (forget sodas), I get about $5/hour invested. I’m much more likely to purchase a Blu-ray because with my wife, three minions and multiple viewings I’m much more likely to get under my $1/hour goal. Video games can be a great investment ratio-wise. Dragon Age was easily less than $.33/hour. Halo 2 with over 4k mp games played was pennies on the hour. Both of these games offered something different but I kept coming back for more. I want to look at a few examples of games that I invested in and why. First I’ll take something simple like Geometry Wars. I played that for hours trying to master it. This is certainly a skill-based game with a simple premise. I was able to also compete with friends on a leaderboard and that was extremely compelling. Having a competitive challenge that was asymmetric was one of the first forms of video game investment. These asymmetric features include but aren’t limited to leaderboards, achievements, speed runs, and easter eggs to name a few. Next is Street Fighter II or more specifically Super Street Fighter II Turbo. This game wore me out. Not only did I have 16 (17) characters to master, but I had the different matchups that I had to learn too. 289 different fights make for quite a number of possibilities (assuming I’m focusing on what I’m going to do in a matchup thus retaining the duplicates). Then you add in the human element of the game, actually knowing that your best friend can’t Dragon Punch T-Hawk’s dive thus leading to an easy super – this is another feature; direct competition. More importantly direct, distinctly different but balanced competition. T-Hawk was MY fighter. This is the first of my relational investments. X-Com: Enemy Unknown had another form of relational investment – customization. I had the ability to create my squad members down to the name, gender, and physical qualities. I could completely digitize my family and send them off to save the world. The story could be considered cliché as the aliens invade, I send my family, err squad, to destroy them, wash, rinse, repeat. The fear here is that if a minion slaughters my eldest daughter I might not get her back. Soooo, I save often and tread carefully. But it’s MY squad. Finally is the Mass Effect Trilogy. EA did a phenomenal job with the series as each decision I made could have repercussions two games from now. The story was engaging as my actions had weight and consequence. Bioware put out companion books and the lore was deep. Not only that, I could make Flint Shepherd me. He said the things I would say, looked like I wanted him to look. It was MY story. So, game investment is more than the three T’s. It’s the relationship that you develop with a game. So with Destiny coming around the corner, what investment do you think we’ll have? Something that hasn’t been mentioned is the community investment. Bungie.net is a huge form of investment. The companion app has a ton of potential as well. But what else? Do you want to name your guardian or are you ok with your gamertag as the ID? How deep do you want the character creation to be? Are you excited about your weapons growing alongside you? I certainly am. I love the idea of building my own sniper rifle (like a lightsaber) in the sense that it becomes more powerful with me. It’s like owning your first car, then adding rims, a sound system, a new paintjob and a supercharger. Now that Honda Civic might compete with a new Camaro, but it’s MY Civic and I wouldn’t trade it for the world (well, maybe for the Millennium Falcon but who’d blame me?) Thoughts? JTS