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Between the Bits: Moore's Law of Gaming

Gift Basket Disclaimer: The proceeding article is editorial content. Macs rule. The views expressed are those of the author and do not neccessarily reflect the official position of the Advanced Media Network.

It Could have Been Mine!

Over the course of the Holiday season, I had amassed $125 in Amazon.com gift certificates. Which was, after all, exactly what I wanted. People would ask "What do you want for Christmas, John?"

Every time I'd tell them: "Amazon.com gift certificates."

"Don't you want a new CD?"

"No, Amazon.com gift certificates."

"New shoes?"

"Amazon.com gift certificates. You might pick the wrong kind."

"Your own Swedish massage given by a girl with really hairy eyebrows?"

This meant they knew of my secret fetishes. This one took more will power. "No - Amazon.com gift certificates."

My reasons were simple: if I had enough gift certificates all at one place, I could get something cool like a 60 GB iPod Photo (at the time $699 or something like that - now they're $449). Or I could save up for that Nintendo DS I've been lusting after.

Naturally, I had the one sister-in-law that screwed it up and sent me a Radio Shack gift certificate. Eh, I knew she didn't like me anyway. Mainly because I bought her son a Game Boy Advance with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past after she told me she'd never buy him video games.

Yeah, she's not on my favorite list either.

Something to note: What the hell is wrong with Amazon on the Nintendo DS? Every time I looked up the Nintendo DS on Amazon's search engine, it didn't return just the DS, but the "DS plus leather combo pack with [insert game here] and a diamond-studded watch for $5000!" The DS was always "no longer selling" or "out of stock" by itself. I didn't want the watch or the leather combo pack or the game - I just wanted the DS. But until 02/24/2005, they didn't have that in stock, just the $200 Nintendo DS's from guys named "RipYouOffSales" or the $149 used DS's that let me know "In PERFECT condition except for 15 dead pixels, one broken button, and I used the stylus to pick my nose, but that just adds character!".

How do I know that they didn't have just the DS until 02/24/2005? Because I checked every day. With $125, I was ready. But then, something else happened.

Apple dropped the price of the iPod Mini by $50, and bumped the battery lift up to 18 hours. I had been saving money to buy my lovely wife of almost 11 years an iPod Mini for our anniversary or her birthday (whichever came last), but now with the lower price, I could get her a Mini for $199 - or only $75 of my own money. And just in time for our March 19th year anniversary, which she will celebrate by driving to my parents house and leaving me all by myself.

Trivia question: who's the more romantic one in our relationship? If you answered "John Hummel", you get two points! If you answered "John's Hot Wife", I'll smack you on the head for looking at my wife that way. (The correct term for you is "She Who Must Not Be Named Upon Pain of Violating A Most Sacred Presence" - or "SWMNBNUPVAMSP", which is pronounced "Swamp Vamps".)

By the way, don't tell her what she's getting one. Luckily, she never reads this column, and I'm having fun tormenting her with the package arriving from Amazon and the fact she won't be allowed to open it until March 19th.

"See that package?" I'll tell her for weeks. "You can't open it. But I know what it is!"

By the 18th, she'll be ready to make it 10 years and 364 days of marriage, and just kill me to find out what's in the box.

So what's the problem? The problem is that the second I input my order, a little part of my brain popped in.

"John," it said. "Did you know you can find a web site dedicated to hairy-eyebrowed Swedish girls?"

That's when I realized that I had the speech option turned on for my email, and a spam message just came up. Once I turned it off, another thought entered my head.

"John, do you know what you could have bought with $125 in gift certificates?"

Oh, I knew. Resident Evil 4 was high on my list of "Must Haves", as well as Batan Kaitos, or a hit of Phantom Brave for the PlayStation 2. All sorts of games out there that I could have picked up. I've been jonesing for Fatal Frame II for the Xbox, since my rental of the PS2 version made me nearly pee my pants.

And then I looked up at my closet, where I have my collection of games. And I thought about what was sitting up there. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - a Christmas gift I hadn't even played yet. Or Shin Megami Tensei III, opened but never even booted in the PS2. Or my box with a full copy of Steel Battalion for the Xbox that I haven't been able to set up.

There have to be at least 50 games up there I want to play, but haven't gotten to yet. Why do I have so many games that I haven't even played, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to Trespasser and Daikatana (the latter two are for a book I want to write, The Five Best and Worst Games for Developers to Learn From. Yeah, the title's a work in progress.)

It took me a little bit of thought, but I finally figured it out. It boils down to a kind of Moore's Law of Gaming - and I've been caught in it.

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