In spite of the terror reality relentlessly rains down upon me, my flirtations with gaming persists unabated. Well…slightly abated, as I have recently detailed, though I remain an admirably audacious individual non the less.

Audaciously admonishable to others, mind you….quality is always perspective, though I do prefer the moments when I’m the biggest terror relentlessly raining down relative to gaming, by any measurable standard

Based on an unfortunately lackluster output as of late, I’ve taken some steps to placate an out of the ordinary schedule the past couple of days, as my motivation to game and write has been at an all time low, truth be told, which is about as untenable a position as is fathomable in my world. There remain plenty of games to play, certainly several I currently have on the back burner, and a similar actuality in relation to gaming news available to report on, which is why my continued struggle to summon the energy to give a proper shit leaves me with little more than a savage case of the fuck-its, with which to bandy about with all willy-nilly like.


Maybe not quite to the level of “Brave Little Toaster as a bath bomb” kinds of fucking alarming, but you know, the vibe is felt, real, and something fiercely relatable in my world of woe

Luckily, tis’ only the vibe that emanates so strongly, and not the reality, so stand down my worried little button mashers, as I have plenty of days within me left to fight. I find blood-thirst and vengeance to be prime motivators, and I come equipped with healthy doses of both, armed to the teeth with rambunctious amounts of radical fervor left at my disposal, and an ample amount of gusto coursing rampantly through my metaphysical veins, so allay your worries for another day.

Refocusing on the matter at hand; I’ve written about how impudent I feel the Switch 2 launch was, even though Nintendo’s delivery of a top notch title with DK: Bananza falling soon after was a pleasant surprise to see overall, not yet quite to the level of forcing my hand to quell the notion of deep down FOMO bubbling over, with me staying my hand hovering over my wallet for awhile longer, while Nintendo continues to sweeten the Switch 2 deal. On a somewhat related note, I do not seem to be the only one spending conservatively, if this headline and the numbers to back it up are any consideration, as the average North American gamer reportedly only spends about $325 annually. A shockingly low number, by my estimates, though, perhaps warped by my own sense of intimacy with the medium at large, and not the least of which is in relation to any platform acquisitions or major PC upgrades, both of which clear that number by any reasonable estimation in my world.


One of the least funny pictures I’ve ever posted

The numbers spring from a reputable source, upon more serious curiosity prompted from casual perusal, and most certainly after doing a damning double take, as I’m dumbfounded that a financial behemoth of an industry that easily clears 100 billion these days has an average consumer base spending, by my reckoning, what seems like so little, and yet remaining such a massive cash cow of an industry all the same. When one then also combines this with the notion that so many within the industry, in terms of publishers saying they’re missing bottom line standards, and developers going bust left and right, one does then get the notion the number is indeed not high enough, though one has to keep in mind the difference between the terms average and median, and also all of the ridiculous exceptions of people who far exceed the low ball numbers through insane investment.


Jerky fans know

One more intense point of interest are the numbers related to microtransactions, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, with reports that they apparently drive 49% of revenue in the PC market, and 52% on consoles, with shooters being the most popular genre, another non-surprise. I always laugh when I have to remind people that, however lamentable microtransactions are regularly portrayed as, they represent a hefty portion of the perverbial pie that not only fuels the gaming economy, but a popular mode of financial choice gamers tend to get down on behind closed doors.

I’ve said it in the past and I’ll say it again, citing one of the original men involved with a famously early example of microtransactions (horse armor), or at the very least, an extra piece of content that could have been defined once upon a time as merely “cheap DLC”, that eventually spawned a multi-billion dollar industry is darkly humorous to me. Horse armor, for all of gamers whinging on the matter, would essentially lead the industry to start a standard that would become a cosmetic based downloadable clusterfuck, a standard of which would eventually become microtransactionary in nature, and one that would be both embraced by gamers, and ridiculed with ridiculous simultaneity, but meaningfully contribute to the bottom line standard of so many involved.

Let it not be said that the greatest monsters of our time always end up being one’s of our own making, and we have no one to blame but ourselves for the distorted, monstrous machinations of the market that we helped to create.

-Pashford