Grand theft: The hidden cost of gaming drives up inflation

stuff.co.nz:

Amid all the talk of soaring rents and petrol prices, there's an unexpected and significant new contributor to NZ's high inflation: The cost of computer games.

Stats NZ consumer prices manager Aaron Beck plays FIFA '22 with his 11-year-old son, Oscar.

It's one of 10 games that the agency has been measuring in the basket of goods for its consumer prices index, published last week. And buried in the data is the discovery that the cost of gaming has soared in the past 12 months.

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"He used a big dollop of his pocket money to help pay," Beck says. "I think he felt the pain more than I did. But then, he keeps crushing me, so I think he might consider it a bargain."

For Beck and his son, the price increase is something to laugh at. But that doesn't mean it's laughable – in fact, it's a statistically significant contributor to New Zealand's inflation. That's bad news for those more economically vulnerable players for whom gaming provides a community and physical and intellectual stimulation, according to the eSports Federation.

But it's also bad news for the rest of us.

The sharp (though unpublished) rise in game prices has dragged up average price of all games, toys and hobbies by 40.3 per cent. That, in turn, contributed 0.27 percentage points to the overall CPI. "That means the 5.9 per cent annual increase for the CPI would have been 5.6 had we observed no