Gaming Like A Sir: Preparing For The Summer Rush

Brace yourselves, we are about to change from beggars to kings. Financially we do the opposite, but who cares? I’ll be playing Dishonored.

Recently I saw a story that shook my confidence in gamers. A story published right here on eGamer. The article is short but it has been haunting me. The TL;DR version is that there is this glorious thing called the Humble Indie Bundle. It is a collection of generally excellent indie games all bundled together for a one time fee of anything you care to donate. Pay what you want, to whoever you want. The games are DRM free, redeemable on Steam and a portion of the money goes to charity. You want all the money to go to charity? Cool. Just slide the little slider and it is so. The Humble Bundle is a shining example of a new way of treating consumers. The very best of new age thinking.

And it is still being pirated.

I live my life with one simple idea: that people are fundamentally good and honest. Opportunistic and greedy? Definitely, but that doesn’t in itself discount inherent goodness. A person will take as much as they can, whenever they can. Some are better at controlling their hedonism than others but I believe that every person has a line in the sand. A limit. A moral core.

Imagine some jackass steals a parking from you, flips you off and then continues a loud cellphone conversation that starts with, “Bro I boned her so hard she had to limp home. No, ‘course not. I called her a taxi”. If twenty bucks fell out of his jacket as he walked away in a cloud of cigarette stink and cheap cologne, what would you do?

If you answer that you’d pick up the money and chase after him to give it back, then we need to have a talk about self-esteem. You should also break up with your significant other since they’re probably abusing you. Unless you like that sort of thing. No judgement, to each their filthy, depraved own.

If, on the other hand, you picked it up and returned it to the man by shoving the cash shoulder deep into his rectum, please contact me for some free money wrapped in a list of people I don’t like.

If you’re a little more normal, I would personally forgive you if you picked it up, looked around and then gave it to the blind beggar sitting nearby playing on a broken ukulele singing cheerful songs despite a largely toothless mouth.

Maybe you just decide to keep it and justify it as a douche bag tax. Less okay but I wouldn’t call off the wedding just yet. Calling someone an opportunist used to be an insult, now that the world is so saturated it’s become something to be proud of. I don’t condone stealing, but in this case I’d be hard pressed to run off and defend that loud, smelly, arrogant ape-monster.

In case you’re wondering where this is going, that man is every evil game publisher. He is any company that has ever treated its consumers like trash. The beggar is the indie world, full of hopes and dreams but sadly lacking in resources and front teeth.

I stuck my neck out for gamers, I think that the piracy situation is quite simple. Give paying customers the best version of a product. Make it easier and more rewarding than piracy and treat us with love. Do that, and we’ll show you the money.

So what does this have to do with the end of year rush? Well this is more of a pep talk, a little inspiration. The temptation is high, very high, to buy the couple of great games that come out and to pirate the rest.

We’ve just been through the drought months, a time of lean. Now that a buffet is being wheeled before us laden with the richest and most awesome delicacies the industry has to offer. It is a harem of virgin beauties, each one beckoning with coy smiles and subtle pelvic thrusts.

It is glorious and we feel like kings. We go from being beggars with no choice to kings with the world’s most succulent entertainment vying for our money. We want it all.

All of life is only important because it is finite. When there is a limit to what you can have, each thing becomes more important if only because it carries the full weight of what you could have bought instead. Water is the sweetest nectar to a dehydrated man, and likewise a game is more special precisely because it is a purchase made carefully.

So this holiday, when there is a hail of games, buy one or two and ignore the rest. Appreciate fully the years of time and effort put into them. Play the rest next year during the drought.

Joseph convinced the Pharaoh to save a little for lean time based on a drug addled series of crazy dreams.

I am Jacob, behold my wisdom.