I remember being disturbed from the talking mannequin while watching the rom-com 2009 Confessions of a shopaholic convinced Isla Fisher that a $120 Henri Bendel scarf is all she needs to win a job interview. It was disconcerting because I craved something casual and glamorous in the window of Macy’s West 34th Street like glossy magazines told me to, also would have ignored her flat eyes and bought the scarf (if I wasn’t 11 years old). “The point about This Scarf is that it would become part of one definition from you, from your psyche,” says the plastic woman beaming to Fisher. “Do you understand what I mean?”
Video games aren’t sold like department store scarves, but like all products, artistic or not, they are actually things to sell. I can imagine an animated Master Chief Standee rising a bulky $200 Collector’s Edition with me in my daydream biopic—Confessions of a recovering impulse buyer– or some $70 Harry Potter nonsensepulled me in for a look inside the box: “The point about This game is that it would become part of a definition of you.” But though shiny covers still call out to me, the fact that the world’s garbage heaps are turning into hills and then scab over the oceanand the recent inflation makes excessive shopping personally unacceptable. So I’ve learned to avoid unnecessary purchases, and this Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) I think you should too.
I know waiting for a discount can be a handy thing, especially with an expensive hobby like gaming. A survey from 2014 by the market research group NPD noticed that “Half of PC gamers play [PC games] expect there’s always a sale around the corner,” so they wait to strike. That’s still true and observable, with sites like IsThereAnyDeal.com Real-time and even digital game sales tracking the more common r/BlackFriday loaded with links to Microsoft and Steam. And since digital distribution I understand players want to use blowout sale days to take advantage of our narrowing odds physical property.
But my frustration with Black Friday isn’t the presentation of opportunity – I like to save money, you know – but the kind of opportunity it forces us to have. “Buy this game and you truly become a gamer,” the retail copy seems to scream in bright primary colors, “You can become who you see yourself as!” Be yourself who you want to be, but give that first money off.
In reality, it’s impossible to be a gamer – to breathe, learn and play a game – if you’re buying games as often as the industry wants you to. And while games seem to hover over us year-round, popping up en masse and out of nowhere, they are also become longer
More is not more. But some gamers are still willing to indulge in the silky manipulation of expensive trailers; Some report buying anywhere from 10 to over 100 games a year. “I buy waaay too many, but usually search for it a lot,” said one Reddit user a thread about annual game purchases. And how many do they finish? “I’m not sure how many I actually play though,” the same user continues.
“As far as we know, men don’t shop,” he begins Vogues 1924 “The Philosophy of Shopping”
But contrary to his 1924 assessment of the fictional male buyer, Fashion says the average woman shops “by the ear, casually, irresponsibly, ecstatically, continuously.” But interestingly, even the most avid shopper is “invariably badly dressed.”
“They have many clothes, like a dictionary has many words,” the article continues. “But words do not yet make literature.”
So let’s break down the lines between gender and time, and acknowledge that rampant shopping is anything but a woman’s blood sport — it’s a bad habit we’ve all since internalized the first wild 20s. It makes us uncomfortable with clutter and throwing ourselves away from the things we supposedly care about, the things we bought. But how can you be a “gamer” when you consume but never enjoy, missing out on the enjoyment of an art form you love?
No matter what it is, clothing or a console, I don’t want to glue something that took manpower, time and parts of the earth to a place that I’ll eventually forget. I don’t want these things, supposedly these outer parts of me, to sit on a shelf or in a Steam graveyard to collect real or digital dust. I want to respect these things and myself, my time and money by actually using them. I don’t want to get suffocated by more stuff like our poor blue planet is about to be. I withdrew from my childhood urge to buy by remembering it and replacing an urge with care.
If a slew of enticing, colorful gaming deals have passed this year, choose the overlooked convenience of playing what you already have instead.
