Its not that I’m scoffing that its so expensive per se, its that it simply doesn’t seem like a good deal. It looks overpriced for what you get. Like others have said, they could’ve gone many other ways with this- Have a huge LED flatscreen underneath an acrylic cover and programs to make your own ‘digital’ terrain with hexboards on the screen that scale with hex-based miniatures, and I could see 10,000 bucks being reasonable. Or some cool quasai-hologram effects to simulate Line-of-sight being blocked by hills/ruins.
Obviously everyone has their own sense of value to things, and I dunno about other people, but ten grand is a lot of money. If he was spending it on a pre-owned car, an entire home theater system, a furniture set, a really nice sectional couch, the down payment on a home, or the start of his future kids’ college funds, I could see those as reasonable expendatures because you are going to get a lot of use out of them for the cost.
But for the table, he’s only going to get the full value of it if he uses all the doodads pretty regularly. If he hosted stuff at his house a lot…maaaaaybe it would be worth it. But he doesn’t, its just the three of us. Hell, he doesn’t even cook or eat dinner at home, they go out all the time! so even the ‘high quality, nice dinner table’ argument is moot because he’d hardly ever use it for that!
I’m not a gamer, but are there digital versions of most of these games, or fan-made tools to simulate them? If so, I’d mount a projector on the ceiling, aiming down onto a white table. You can get a 5000 lumen projector for a couple of grand, build a computer to drive it and monitors for every position and have many thousands left over for the table.
I know very little about furniture, but it’s possible that $10,000 is a fair price for the materials and skilled labor involved. On the Geek Chic website they say that their tables are made from “solid hardwoods”, “constructed with extensive dovetail joinery”, and “will outlast you”. If all that’s true then this is going to be a better quality table than something you’d get at Wal-Mart and will accordingly have a higher price.
The real question is whether the OP’s friend will be getting $10,000 worth of practical use or enjoyment out of this purchase, and it sounds like the answer is no.
I’d probably be less :dubious: if he decided to get the most affordable in the series; its less of a money sink and a better indicator of whether or not it was a good decision.
I’ve been to many a sci-fi convention, and in my opinion, much of what gets sold in the dealer’s room is very overpriced. Its like one giant impulse-shopping aisle. I usually give myself a (very reasonable) budget of swag to buy, so I can still get some hokey junk but throwing down 10 grand is a little nuts.
Case in point my television: I wanted a big flatscreen TV of reasonable quality, without paying an arm and a leg. But I was also paying off debts and my car was getting long in the tooth. As badly as I wanted a nice TV, there were other priorities, and I found that I kept pushing back the time that I would finally get around to buying the new tv.
Eventually I got the TV I wanted for Christmas (a very generous gift) and I’m glad I didn’t get it when it cost $3,000. Not because I was expecting someone to buy it for me; that was a total surprise…but because I made other things a priority. Make no mistake, I wanted it very badly, but could hold off. I guess my friend doesn’t have the same kind of impulse control- if he sees something he likes and has money burning a hole in his pocket, he gets it.
If he hosted parties, had the space, owned his home, won the lottery, etc I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But it seems a little over the top!
Man. I can understand plunking down for hobby accessories and nice furniture, and I’ll admit that’s a clever design, but it just doesn’t look $10k nice.
Shoulda bought a Microsoft Surface – much cooler gaming table.
In my humble opinion anybody living with their parents-in-law doesn’t have an extra $10,000 to spend on a table. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, I just can’t fathom how someone could have $10,000 and not say “you know, honey, let’s get an apartment and stop living with your parents”.
I agree with some other posters that it’s probably not an outrageous amount for a well-crafted table made of quality wood. Well-made furniture is really much more expensive than you’d think. But it’s still a foolish extravagance – you can get awfully good tables for a fraction of the cost and, sure, they’re MDF, but they’re plenty strong enough to hold your milk crate of D&D manuals. Which is why well-crafted furniture is becoming almost extinct at the middle-class level, and even somewhat above. There’s little need to spend the cost for something that will stand the test of time when you can get something that’ll last two decades for a quarter the price.
As my mother says when she sees a Ferrari, “it’s nice to know there’s people out there with that kind of money!” That particular table doesn’t look very well-finished to me, though; I have some furniture that’s oak, teak or ebony and it looks much better. It’s not knotty pine tree buttttt… not particularly good-looking either.
I think I’ve seen Velleda whiteboards and “sticker” rolls with the squares, wonder if they make a hex version… probably not.
The carpenter who’s doing my kitchen cabinets is a childhood friend, a gamer and a puzzle-maker. He’d be a perfect candidate to build the geek table of my dreams.
This is not very far off. Microsoft already sells its Surface product, mostly for business use. And the iPad is a small version of this. So at some point, I expect to be able to buy a multi-touch tabletop computer for the home, and for a reasonable amount (certainly under $5,000 but eventually much less). Perhaps you could combine game elements that exist only on the screen and real three-dimensional ones. The real ones (say the Monopoly game pieces or the armies from Risk) could have some electronics so that the computer can tell their position and orientation at any time.
Subjective value differs from person to person. I personally wouldn’t pay 10 grand for this table, as I wouldn’t get the same value from it as their target customers.
