Now the reviewer was obviously quite angry about that time vs. money exchange rate. But having made the comparison for other games, actually an hourly "salary" of 50 cents is extremely generous. Take for example MMORPGs: The time vs. money exchange rate is designed for high-level players. Low-level players earn considerably less in-game currency per hour, and thus end up with ridiculously low hourly rates in real money. If you were to start a new account in EVE Online today without outside help, how many hours would it take you to make 1 billion ISK? Seeing how at a recent sale 1 billion ISK was sold for $20, you'd be lucky to earn a few cents per hour as a new player. Of course Gevlon is making 1 billion ISK before breakfast, and one scammer made over 1 trillion ISK from his activities, which probably worked out to be quite a nice hourly salary. But that is a bit like comparing Bernie Madoff with somebody working for minimum wages.

In most games the time vs. money exchange rate is considerably less complicated: There is less of a difference between how much virtual currency a new player makes compared to a veteran. And there usually is no way to trade virtual currency between players, so you don't need to worry about "Chinese gold farmers" ruining your game. At this point the question becomes simply: How much would a typical player pay to save himself 1 hour of grinding? And the answer is unlikely to be several dollars. Thus if in Ryse 1 hour of your time is "worth" less than 50 cents, it isn't because the developers are not generous, it is because the players aren't. You never get the actual option to "work" 1 hour and receive 50 cents, the trade only works in the other direction: You pay 50 cents and save yourself 1 hour. This isn't a salary, it is a price tag.

At this point of course you need to ask yourself why you would pay anything to avoid having to play a game for 1 hour. Ryse already costs $60, and then you get a game of which reviewers bemoan the "shallow and repetitive combat", with an option to rather pay some more money and get the same virtual rewards without having to play that combat. If I compare that to my most recent virtual currency purchase, which was in Marvel Puzzle Quest, the difference is not in the time vs. money exchange rate, but rather in the fact that I paid to have more options and ultimately do *more* combat, not less. Although I do have to admit that Marvel Puzzle Quest also has the option to buy the Iso-8 points you need to gain levels, basically the equivalent of buying experience points. But that appears to be rather a vanity option, because in PvP you'll just get matched against other higher level players, and thus a higher level isn't actually of any advantage.

In the end the flaw in reasoning is that we think that if for spending time in a game we receive a "reward", it means that we "earned" that reward for doing something productive. In reality all we ever do in a game is waste time, relax, be entertained. And the "rewards" we receive are just fake, a bunch of pixels with no lasting value. That we can buy those same rewards for pocket change should only serve as a reminder that they are just glitter and not gold.