By The Numbers, 7/16/2008

Do you like numbers, but dislike all the tedious calculation required to produce them? Do you like things, especially running totals of things? Do you like minutiae, but never knew where you could find Puzzle Pirates related miscellany? Then you're in luck! It's time for By The Numbers.

PUZZLE PIRATES

• Average Pieces of Eight earned per hour of Puzzle Pirates voyaging: ~1,000*
• Average exchange rate** in Pieces of Eight for Doubloons on Viridian/Sage/Hunter as of 1 PM, July 16th: 1,222
• Average hourly ‘wage’ of a Puzzle Pirates player as of 1 PM, July 16th: USD$0.205
• Minimum hourly wage, San Francisco, CA: USD$9.36***
• Amount of time required to earn the equivalent of one hour of San Francisco minimum wage playing Puzzle Pirates: 45.7 hours
• California Lottery Mega Millions jackpot for 7/18/2008: USD$105,000,000
• Number of new Mounted Tigershark items winning the Mega Millions jackpot could get you: 6,433,823****

* - Let's say your average pillage can mow through 4 battles an hour, making 100-500 Pieces of Eight per pirate per win. Four battles at 300 PoE minus a 15% restocking cut is equal to 1,020 PoE, or ~1,000 PoE for an average hour of ‘work’. Yes, we could probably go back and forth over this number until we're all blue in the face, but for discussion purposes, I think it works fine.

** - At 1 PM when I grabbed these numbers, Viridian was at 1,192/coin, Sage was 1,238/coin and Hunter was 1,236/coin. Expensive, ain't it?

*** - No, that's not a typo.

**** - Best price I found at a random Furnisher Bazaar on the Viridian Ocean for a Mounted Tigershark at 1 PM, July 16th was 69,173. Combined with the Doubloon delivery fee of 25 and the average exchange rate of 1,222 Pieces of Eight per Doubloon, we get 81.61 Doubloons per shark. Why 81.61? So we can multiply it out by the bulk discount Doubloon cost: USD$0.20. This gets us our answer: $16.32 per shark!

TEAM FORTRESS 2

• Hours of Team Fortress 2 Hermes has played since its release in October 2007: 270
• Cost of pre-ordering The Orange Box via the Steam content delivery system in September 2007: USD$45
• Cost per hour to Hermes of playing Team Fortress 2: ~USD$0.17
• Approximate value of Doubloon earnings if Hermes had played Puzzle Pirates for an equivalent time: USD$55.35

All this in a season where movie ticket prices are typically pushing USD$10 and gas prices are hovering around USD$4/gallon. Stay home and play video games, kids! Your savings account will thank you.

ROCK BAND

• Total number of downloadable Rock Band songs available as of July 16th: 172
• Total cost to download all available Rock Band songs as of July 16th onto your Xbox 360: $299.50*
• Approximate number of 'taps' required for Hypnos to drum through all available Rock Band DLC songs: 103,200**

* - Complete breakdown is 2 free songs, 7 $1 songs, 59 $2 songs, 1 $3 pack, 15 $5.50 packs, 2 $10 long packs, 2 $15 albums, 1 $19 album and 1 $20 album. That's a lot of music. I'd probably enjoy it a lot more if my Xbox 360 hadn't red ringed. Alas.

** - Using ~600 taps per song as an estimate. Even then, this is probably on the low side. Check back next week for a scientific analysis of exactly how many 'taps' it takes for Cephalopod to go crazy and hunt down Hypnos with a gigantic Nerf gun!