This is a text-based game. Though there are some graphics to improve on concepts, the meat of the game really is meant to be text. Videos not only don't fit that, but would be insanely expensive to get.
The price is so high because it's a luxury. A way to skip the time in raising the child normally. From a challenge point of view, lowering the cost would effectively remove the wait with raising the child, instead everyone would just buy the instantly adult method. The idea of further upgrades to the nursery in order to lower the price makes sense, but I feel it shouldn't reach 50, but might be lowered by 100 for each upgrade (which would be very expensive) making two new upgrades each at -100 so that the final price after all nursery upgrades is 300.
The NPC tournament is interesting. I've been toying with the idea of a gladiator job idea to suggest, but being able to fight in a proper quest would be interesting, too.
Personally, I'd rather die and restart the game than die and lose things and have to go through extra steps just to get back to what I was doing.