User Friendly had a recent strip where a caller calls Greg the Tech Support Guy about a financial problem: either pay the mortgage or buy a new video game system. I can relate to that problem since this month has an extra paycheck. That's an extra thousand smackaroos outside of my usual budget. What to do with it?
Since I'm writing my first novel based on my six years as a video game tester at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, two different owners), I been browsing the video game magazines for what's coming out in the next few months. Most of the new games I got my eyes on are for the Microsoft Xbox 360. I wanted to get a Nintendo Wii but they're hard to find on the store shelves. (No, I will not ask a sale clerk get me one from the backroom like a bottle of hooch in a brown paper bag when they should be out on the floor like everything else I can get my hands on.) The Sony PS3 — with Blu-Ray player! — is still pricey. The Xbox 360 Pro Holiday Bundle that includes the 60GB console and two video games, "Lego Indiana Jones" and "Kung Fu Panda," just came out for $299 USD. I just might have enough smackaroos to get that. Heck, I might be able to write it off as a business expense (e.g., "research") on my tax return next year.
Except the responsible adult throttled the irresponsible slacker before this scheme got too far.
When I became a lead game tester in 2003, I decided to specialize on the Nintendo GameBoy Advance/GameCube titles since all the other lead testers wanted to work on the Microsoft Xbox and/or Sony Playstation 2 titles. The Xbox and PS2 were cool. The GameBoy Advance and GameCube was not. One of the things that I learned in my working life is the need to specialize and excel in the areas that no one else wanted to become the hero in the department. I became one of several Nintendo gurus who handled most of the Nintendo-related titles. Since I got free copies of the games I worked on, my console of choice at home was the Nintendo GameCube.
How much had I played the GameCube since I got it? Not much.
My friend and I recently started playing "Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy" on the GameCube again. The last time we played was nearly two years ago. The reason we stopped playing the game back then was some of the puzzles are downright confusing for two players to figure out even with a cheat sheet in hand. Co-op play is supposed to be fun. We have completed only Level 11 out of 99 levels (each level takes an hour). If the remaining 88 levels are more of the same, I'm not sure if we will continue playing. We both want to play "Lego Batman" on a new console one of these days, and hope that the co-op puzzles will be much better (the reviews suggest otherwise).
I also stopped playing "Resident Evil 4" about the same time. After completing the first major area, you have to avoid a boulder rolling downhill by smashing the buttons. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get through that one area and gave up. Button smashing is where you have to press multiple buttons at the same time as fast as possible, which isn't allowed under Nintendo standards since it wears out the controllers. I hate button smashing since I grew up on the Atari 2600 joystick that had only one big red button. (I once explained to a very young game tester that video games existed before the Sony Playstation, and then freaked him out by introducing him to a coworker who tested boardgames before home video games existed.) Giving RE4 a fresh look after two years, I realized what my mistake was: I wasn't paying attention to the onscreen prompts that appeared briefly. (I would tag this as a bug but the prompt probably satisfied the Nintendo standards and young developers are often quick to dismiss the concerns of an old fart who played video games before they were born.) You press the A Button very fast as your character "sprint" downhill, and then you press both the L Button and R Button at the same time when prompted to have your character dodge out of the way. Bingo! I got pass that area. Then I figured out how to spot the save points on the map when entering a new area. I was able to enjoy the next several areas being confident that I could finish each one to move to the next area. You would think as a retired professional video game tester, I would've figured this out sooner.
Beyond that, I don't have the time. Being a writer has become a second full time job for me these days. Which is ironic considering that I'm writing a novel about video game testers. When I do play a video game, it's often for 15 minutes at a time. When a video game does capture my attention, I'll spend a month on it until something else comes along. If I did get a brand video game console like an Xbox 360, I'll probably won't play it that much unless a friend comes over.
If it's not time, then it's money.
Have you seen the prices for video games on the new consoles? Sixty smackaroos! That's twice as expensive as most Blu-Ray movies. Even if there was a dozen hot new games I wanted to play, I wouldn't have that much money to spend after getting the console (which is why the Xbox 360 holiday bundle is a great deal). There's the $7,000 USD I spent on dental work over the last six months, including $3,600 USD on my last visit two weeks ago. A model railroad I'm building as my newest expensive hobby. (Okay, I did splurge a hundred smackaroos on that but that was budgeted.) Now is real good time to be buying more stocks — actually, an index ETF — in my retirement accounts, which even Warren Buffett says so. Plus I got three or four unfinished video games on my tricked out Windows Vista machine. Since I stopped using my credit cards and my savings is at near empty, spending smackaroos on a video game console can't be justified. All that extra smackaroos got spread around to various credit cards, savings and retirement accounts
If the U.S. economy goes down the crapper because I stopped being an irresponsible consumer, so be it. Maybe someone will get me a new video game console for Christmas (hint, hint) and save the economy.
