WARNING: the following article is lathered in extreme
sarcasm and should be read with a continuous sly grin and sporadic maniacal
laugh. Enjoy.
When you come home from a long day, the first
thing you need to do is shake off all the stupid you've accumulated from other
human beings. And the only way to do
that is with pixelated adventuring. So
you grab two pounds of bacon, 360 ounces of soft drink (diet of course), a
barrel of cheese balls, and then bury your ass in your favorite chair…but not
before the arduous task of opening a video game case and slipping the disc
inside your console.
After decades of leveling up you've realized
something: the last thing you want to do is make life more complicated…and sitting
down and preparing a video game has just become a hassle. There must be some way to make the experience
better. Well, there is. It's called the digital video game
marketplace: where everything is made of pixelated lollipops and artificial
rainbows. Why should you have to waste
fifteen seconds slipping a disc in your machine, when those precious seconds
could be spent eating another cheese ball smothered in bacon? Why should anyone have to go through the
harrowing task of finding a spot for all those 1/2 inch wide disc cases? And why should any gamer have to go outside *gulp* and hand money to another human
being in exchange for goods? Why?
None of those terrible situations should have
to be completed by anyone, when all you have to do is push a button to purchase
and download the newest game. Now, let's
not mention the extremely long amount of time it could take to download these
games. Depending on your Internet speed,
you might be able to run to the store twice or even eat double the amount of
cheese balls. But that's just injecting
logic where is doesn't belong. The truth
is: purchasing a digital video game is the Lord's work. It is everything that is good in a world
where people need their pleasures yesterday.
But before you go organizing town wide disc-burnings and declaring
Blu-ray the devil, there are a few things about the inevitable All-Digital
future you should probably know.
OWNERSHIP:
If you don't know it by now, here's a reminder:
you don't own anything you purchase digitally.
You're only purchasing a license to use the product. But do you really need to own anything in
this world, anyway? No. Life and everything in it is a pixelated
illusion like the Matrix, a series of random zeroes and ones. And you're satisfied knowing that a few
colored pixels are yours to use right up until you're dead. So who cares about bequeathing anything to
your heirs? Screw the family. They've never really given you anything but
love and affection. And who needs that
when you're trying to beat Diablo 3 in the hardest mode?
TRADE INS:
Digital collections are so easy to manage: when
a hard drive is full all you have to do is delete a game and replace it with
the next best thing. A few years down
the line you could always go back and replay your game and it didn't even
collect any dust. And with all the new
games coming out every week, of course a few years from now you'll want to go
back and replay that game that already has ten sequels. Only silly people would take their old games
that they haven't played in months or years and trade them in to get money for
new ones. You'd have to be seen in
public anyway. And going outside could
be very detrimental to your health. Have
you ever tried crossing a street?
LENDING:
Nobody likes to share. Everyone knows that. "You
want me to allow my friend to try a game for a day or week while I'm playing
something new? No way!" Your games—er licenses—are yours and nobody will
lay a finger on them ever again. By
having a digital collection, you will never have to share. Of course the PS4 has that new share feature
coming up, where you'll be able to hand over the controller (via the internet) for an hour so your
friend can try out a game. Dang. And you'll have to be online and sit there
while your friend has all the fun. Dang,
dang. At least they won't have to be in
your house like the old days. Nobody
enjoys having people in their living room, playing their games and eating their
food.
PRICES:
So we've finally come to the real advantage to
a digital future. These old disc based
ways cause games to still be priced at sixty bucks a pop with only a few hours
of campaign. And all your hard-earned
money goes to the evil retail corporations instead of the developers. But with an All-Digital future you won't have
to worry about that anymore. With
digital pricing you can fully support your developers by giving more money
directly to them, especially if they don't have to compete with brick and
mortar store prices. And currently with
no overhead on digital games—no child labor plants making discs, no drivers
being paid to ship them, no money going towards keeping the lights on in a
store, and absolutely no money paying a cashier's salary—new AAA games are
already much, much cheaper in the digital marketplace than their retail
counterparts. It's amazing that discs
have lasted this long with their digital versions practically free compared to
the retail versions.
You must also understand that sneaky retail
stores have something called shelf space that only comes in a limited
amount. So at one point or another,
these devil-stores have to sell their video games cheaper to make room for new
games. It's a fairly new idea called
"the sale." But you won't have to worry about that
anymore with all games becoming digital in the future, and pixelated shelf
space becoming infinite. And since
developers and publishers won't be competing with retail, they can set their
game prices as low (Yay!) or as high (Boo!) as they see fit. As an example, just look at all the perfectly
priced mobile games in App stores.
There's not a single one more than 99 cents. So don't fret…a developer or publisher would never charge more than what their video game
is worth, especially with the cost of production going up every second. You'll just be swimming in all the extra cash
you'll be saving on brand-new digital video games. It'll be gaming nirvana. And you'll be a god.
CONCLUSION:
Thank goodness an
All-Digital future is inevitable, because the strenuous effort it takes to
insert a gaming disc is corrupting society.
A decade from now, gamers will be showered in pixelated candy canes and
animated fairy dust. And with all those
wonderful benefits listed above, only a fool would want an actual disc they can
own and hold in their hands.
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