I recently went to a scuba shop with a mate of mine who was buying a weight belt for an upcoming dive. After selecting the correct number of weights and ignoring my repeated suggestions to use bricks and some chicken wire, my friend walked over to the till where the smug salesman happily alleviated him of a cool R780.
“What, R780?” I spluttered. “Do you really need it that badly?”
“Well,” my friend answered, “not really for this dive, but it’s nice to have.”
“Okay then,” I replied, “but R780 could get a lot of chicken wire.”
Although it may appear somewhat tenuous at the moment, there’s a link between this apparent fleecing and the way that we gamers love to bitch about how expensive our habit is. “Mmmph hrmmmmph mmm mphmmm,” I hear some of our more spoilt comrades try to mumble past the silver spoon wedged firmly between their teeth. “Why do we have to pay so much for our games?”
I believe there are several inherent problems with this statement; and, just to keep you reading, the first one has absolutely nothing to do with the weight belt.
First off, the average cost of a PC game is around R350. Now a couple of DVDs or a decent dinner for two would set you back roughly the same amount, but surely there’s far more mileage to be had from a 10 – 20 hour game than the couple of hours the aforementioned alternatives offer? (Assuming you don’t watch the director’s commentary and skip the dessert.)
Second, we’ve all heard about Sony’s PS3 price cuts. A top notch gaming console and fully featured Blu-Ray player is going for $300, and people are still moaning? It may be sobering to realise that the PS was the same price in 1995. Hell, even the SNES was $200 back in the day.
“Ah, but the games are still expensive!” cry the masses. Really? Yes, R600 for a PS3 title ain’t cheap, but it’s spoilt gamers rather than shrewd ones who’re the first to tighten their purse strings who call daylight robbery.
This brings us to my third point: why must we fork out for new games? Are they like cars in that they emerge from the box with that ‘new game smell’? Are one’s framerates smoother, or one’s colours more vibrant? Are there extra levels that disintegrate after the first play-through?
No. But the game industry hype machine that turns docile gamers into rabid, slavering lunatics, and makes crap like Killzone 2 sell millions of copies, surreptitiously tells us otherwise.
Look at Metal Gear Solid 4 as a prime example: queues of brainwashed drones lined up to cough up almost R900 for Hideo Kojima’s (admitted) masterpiece on release day, but a few months later the exact same disc, in the exact same box, with the exact same gameplay, was on the shelves for a third of that exorbitant amount.
My fourth and final point takes us back to where we began: a trip to the local scuba shop and the perhaps-overpriced weight belt. It occurred to me as the hundred Rand notes rapidly vacated my friend’s wallet that buying games to feed our habit/hobby is not exactly a necessary thing. In fact, gaming itself is an elective practice.
The weight belt wasn’t crucial for my friend to enjoy a proper dive. It’s actually not far from saying, “I’d really like a Lamborghini, but it sucks that they’re so costly.” Sure, we’d all love a black Murciélago complete with optional GPS system and standard issue bimbo entourage, but it’s not exactly something we really need. Likewise, it’s not crucial to have to unwrap a release-day game on that magical day to be able to enjoy it.
So who’s putting the gun to our heads?
Well, no one, really. The bragging rights of having a game on release day is quite a temptation it seems, and waiting a couple of months for prices to drop or, dare I say it, buying a second-hand copy, seems to stagger most complainants. And heaven forbid we entice the gaming gods into smiting us by trading titles with our friends or… (gasp!)… glance at the bargain bin.
So, in conclusion: Yes, we’re probably paying more than what we should in some ways; we know for a fact that console game costs are used to offset low console prices. And yes, R600 for anything in these lean times is a lot of ammo to shell out. But, if we curb our enthusiasm for a minute, and realise it’s a ‘weight belt’ we want and not an ‘oxygen tank’ or ‘shark repellent’, then I really don’t see why we’re moaning in the first place.
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