So you want a new console. The government economic stimulus check sits forlornly in your checking account, waiting to be spent, and you’ve been eyeing that XBOX 360 at Best Buy for the past six weeks, feverishly anticipating it sitting next to your TV. Naturally, because you don’t want to fall prey to the inevitable XBOX crash that just about everyone you know has had, necessitating a lengthy servicing out of your hands, you want to pick up an XBOX Elite. Oh, and because you assume that you’re not just going to be playing by your lonesome (forever), you’d like to pick up another matching wireless controller and charging pack.

XBOX 360 Elite: $449.99
Play & Charge Kit: $19.99
Wireless Controller: $49.99
Sub Total: 519.97
6% Sales Tax (unless you live in my old home-state of NH):$31.20
Total: $551.17

Thus, if you plan on using the entirety of that $600 check, you’re all set—but you haven’t even bought a game yet. But maybe you’re like me and you’re splitting the cost with someone else. Maybe you took advantage of the Best Buy special last week where you could buy a new XBOX 360 console with GTA IV and get a $50 giftcard in return. Maybe you even happened to have $200 worth of gift certificates waiting to be spent that you could use for the aforementioned purposes as well. Yes—can you tell I bought one last week?

What about MMORPGs? If you factor into the equation that most folks already have a computer capable of playing games (although not everyone has the latest NVIDIA graphics card with eight million gigaboners of RAM), the equation goes a little something like this:

Initial cost of game: $50.00
Initial 6% Sales Tax: $3.00
Monthly cost of game: $14.99 (here, I’m using the most expensive “monthly plan” you can set up for payment on World of Warcraft)
Play for two years: $412.76

The fact of the matter, however, is that gaming is expensive. In a world where it costs $3.90 for a gallon of gas and American consumers are prepared to drill in the precious Arctic rather than invest in alternative energy sources, where I have a hard time finding a bag of rice in Meijer because of a perceived grain shortage, where you can’t live off of $11 an hour and many folks can’t even afford medical insurance—how do you justify spending that much money on something purely for entertainment value? It’s a one shot deal, you say. That high initial cost is spread out over many perceived years of enjoyment, and if you buy one new ($60) game every two months, it’s…not so bad.

The allure of the MMO is that there’s a constantly changing game environment that allows for hours of mindless grinding with, presumably, other folks you can hang out with. If you’re a raider, then you might be spending upwards of 15 hours a week (that’s a part-time job) playing said MMO. If you do the math for the month, you’re spending something like 24 cents an hour to play and that’s not an awful investment for weekly entertainment if you’re not already spending a few hundred bucks on clubs, alcohol, sweaty grinding, concerts, movies and the like. XBOX 360 has, similarly, created “XBOX Live” as a way to enjoy games with friends across the country.

Regardless, I’m not attempting to make a case for MMO gaming versus consoles: I enjoy both. But what I find interesting is how many people are turning away from conventional entertainment, despite the costs, and are switching on consoles instead. The old gamer stereotypes of ultra-nerds rolling d20’s in the basement have all but evaporated—plenty of stay-at-home moms turn on their computers and log onto WoW, just about any grade-school kid I know can handle a controller even better than I can and the old-folks convention has hopped on the video-game bandwagon to stay sharp and keep busy. The gaming “demographic”, as Monique calls it in her Saturday article, has all but exploded, and no one sees fit to acknowledge it. The very industry that both the right and left wing media seeks to demonize is the source of entertainment more and more turn to every day. Rather than spend $75+ to go out to bars every Saturday night or periodically drop $18+ for a pair of movie tickets, people are increasingly choosing to fork out that “high initial cost” and sequester themselves inside their homes.

That willingness to stay inside and stare at a screen for long periods of time makes me, a self-professed gamer, nervous. I look at elementary-school children and think—hey, shouldn’t those kids be running around outside? Isn’t there another alternative that involves getting out, moving around and engaging in important social activity? Are people that desperate to escape what’s outside their own four walls? Sure, maybe. But I’m willing to bet that there’s more than a few punk kids who’ve been kept out of trouble because of a video game they couldn’t detach from. At least they’re actively engaging their brains rather than disconnecting in front of poorly written television. Additionally, the advent of multiplayer gaming via an Internet connection has effectively bridged the gap between friends who otherwise might not be able to visit with one another. Sally moved halfway across the country for school? Fire up the computers and team up to destroy pirates in EVE Online. Long distance relationship keeping you down? Throw on your headsets and annihilate some aliens as Master Chief and the Avatar in Halo 3. Playing games are certainly a means to keep oneself occupied, but the “online” aspects of so many newer games are expressly geared toward bringing gamers together.

Gaming has not only changed the face of the entertainment industry, but also changed the way that we, as a society are able to socialize. Look at Blizzard—they’ve capitalized hugely on a cartoony fantasy world largely driven by group interaction. Guys and girls who couldn’t flirt their way out of a paper bag have created gaming alter-egos where they’re able to rock hard and still socialize at a distance. What I failed to realize when I was tallying up costs a few weeks ago when hoping to purchase my own console, was that I’d be saving money in the long run and giving myself the chance to have fun with the friends I’ve met here, my boyfriend and the folks I’ve left behind on the East Coast. While the idea of liquoring myself up to get drooled on by some cock-driven dudes at the local college bar sounds a little bit like the best idea ever on a Saturday night, I might just save myself the trouble and take a shot for every time my friends manage to get killed on the weekly alt Karazhan run. Video games aren’t going to disappear in the way that quality television programming has—they’re just going to evolve. I wouldn’t be surprised if their focus swings overwhelmingly toward bringing the interaction-starved pieces of us all together.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Gamer Culture, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.