Editor’s Choice: I Bought a Game
Holy mother of — a real game!? Not a stupid art game that you play for five minutes just to say you “appreciate” it? You actually went to an actual shop, and actually paid actual money for an actual game?
Yes, my startled reader, I actually did. It’s what I’m not playing right now whilst I write this column.
And it was quite the momentous occasion.
As regular listeners to the NZCast know, I’ve not bought many games in recent months. Partly caused by not being in the right country for a while, partly due to having any disposable income, partly due to my assumption all expensive games are shit. I got into what some would say is a bad habit of not buying games. But that changed this week when I bought myself Halo: Reach.
The Predisposition
I’ve been feeling a bit down in recent weeks for a variety of reasons. Not Radiohead levels of sad, don’t worry. It’s been more Gavin-ish levels of meh-ness that have been clouding over me.
To get myself out of this funk, I’ve been exercising and eating relatively more healthily. I vowed to make Wii Fit part of my regular routine – then used it once – and I even got myself a George Forman grill and a blender. Smoothies are lovely, and I would strongly recommend putting quarter of a lemon in each pint you make, just to give it that slight edge.
I’ve also been working on my stress levels (as low as they actually are) by trying to take anything I currently keep in my brain and externalising it. For example: my growing collection of whiteboards and To Do lists mean that even though I’m very organised, I don’t have to remember anything important.
The other day I bought a couple of clocks and proceeded to set them to the time-zones of my clients (I’m a freelance web developer; it’s like a pimp but cooler). Now, when I need to know when a deadline is I just check the clocks. No more mental time zone conversion for me!
But, sometimes a guy just wants to shoot shit and not think about the consequences. Much like when watching TV, games sometimes put my brain in a trance of thought-less concentration. It moves my focus from boring work and life, to exciting stuff that’s blowing up.
The Purchase
My God games cost a fortune! I’ve not actively gone to buy a new game in a while, and whilst I knew they cost too much the prospect of actually spending a week’s living costs on a throw-away game was genuinely a little daunting.
In the past few months I’ve moved from being a State-and-Parent funded student to being a self-funded adult. And that has most definitely changed how I see and treat money. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to pay more than £40 for anything. Not least a game like Reach where, to actually get the full game, you have to pay for Xbox Gold and the regular DLC they sell to lock out non-paying gamers.
I got it for £29.99, second hand. That’s what you get, Bungie! None of my money, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to get any DLC. Fuck you, greedy bastards!
That was hyperbole, I got it because £30 is about how much I think a game like this should be. If I had my way, I’d do what I did with ODST and just rent it for a week for £5. Sadly, Blockbuster are shit so don’t offer game rental in my local store any more.
The Play
It’s quite good. Just more Halo really. Exactly what I wanted.
The Postulation
Perhaps more interesting, and the point of this column, is that it’s made me notice how much my perspective of games has changed. Or more accurately the relationship between “a game” as a single entity and money in my bank account. It’s certainly shifted in either value, correlation or [insert word somebody smarter than me suggests].
It’s quite an odd feeling to remember when I just bought games whenever I wanted, played them until I moved on, and didn’t really value them in at all the same way, if at all.
I’ve never bought games whenever I wanted them :( Need to learn to be richer.
Lovely piece, John. Sorry to hear you’ve been in the dumps, but sometimes retail therapy (and fresh fruit smoothies, apparently) can do wonders. Let’s play some Reach multiplayer this week.
I have that same lamp.
I’ve only ever gone out and “just bought” a video game like that twice: this year when I was hell-bent on finally trying the Tomb Raider games and I found the 360 ones in GAME’s preowned section for £3 each and in 2005 when I bought Dead Or Alive Ultimate. Every other game or console I’ve gotten has had to be either thought about long and hard for several weeks, been a gift, been bought with money I recieved as a gift or been bought with trade-ins/credit or back in the day, saved up for for many months. My £1-per-week pocket money didn’t buy me too many games when I was 11, my £3.50-per-week pocket money didn’t buy me much when I was 14 and frankly my income at 23 isn’t much better. I definitely think that £40 is too much to pay for any video game; Black Ops being £45 genuinely disgusts me. I actually bought Black Ops using nothing but trade-in credit and I still felt cheap and slightly dirty (and like a complete moron when it turned out to be a bit dull and I traded it back in a week later).
I don’t know how anyone, of any age and with any income, can feel alright with handing over four tenners for any video game. £30, fair enough. I may even part with £35 if it’s a particularly great game and there’s an incentive to pick it up early (content locked on the disc to discourage second-hand sales not counting). £40 is too much for any game, period.
@Ace Flibble: You guys need to get a Black Friday.
Arr, avast me hearties! Join me upon the Jammy Dodger and ye shall have all the unpaid for games ye like! And if anyone says otherwise, i’ll make em walk the plank!
But on a totally unrelated topic, piracy is bad, mkay?
Call the number on the bottom of your screen now and for just a few dollars a month you can make a difference in the life of an impoverished gamer.
It’s good to have you back John.
@Naughton: it wouldn’t really be relevant to us. We have more Boxing Day/new year sales anyway.
@Adushan Govender: Pirating games isn’t terribly viable for 360/PS3/etc.
@Ace Flibble – I refer you to my thread that in my humble opinion, the PC is better! Go PC brethren! With a gamepad for fighter games, but PC>console!
I’m just amazed you picked Halo Reach of all games to spend £40 on.
@raghraghragh: That took longer than I thought it would.
@raghraghragh:
Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t spend it on Fallout: New Vegas.
While it’s a kick-ass game, he’d probably just end up getting stuck by some horrendous glitch like the rest of us…
@Jack Frost: Have you tried putting on the cowboy hat? =P
@Naughton: HA! Thanks, Naughton, that made me laugh out loud.
And I wish it were something as simple as donning a hat…
All my stuff got nicked and it’s only recently, through the kindness of my brother, that I’m able to play on a console again. I am working so many part time jobs I’ve lost track of days of the week and never have more than a fiver a week to spend on personal items after I’ve made the endless utility bills, council tax letters and phone tariffs happy.
Yet I find £40 a reasonable price for a piece of interactive entertainment. How often do I buy games full price? I remember buying Fable 2 with my last girlfriend for £35, and DJ Hero and deck a few months after release for £70. In recent memory that’s it, yet I believe wholeheartedly that, generally, triple-A software like Halo or COD is worth the price that publishers ask. Of course publishers like Activision are inching their way forward into dangerous territory with the steadily increasing RRP of it’s now dull war franchise, but £40, if it was a value I could afford, is fine by me.
One thing I noticed in the Republic of South Africa is that they fixed their prices at around R399 ($57) for a new PC game and R100($14) for a budget title with Xbox and Playstation games about R599($85). Been that way for about 15 years.
P.S. Chris, it sucks ur stuff was stolen. May bad things happen to the people who stole it.