Why the Argument Against Used Games is Stupid

So, apparently video game publishers are pissing and moaning about GameStop and other entities who have created a massive secondary market for used games. Makes sense, video games hold our attention for only so long, and eventually our attention gets shifted elsewhere. They complain that GameStop makes an obscene amount of money doing this (true) and that the developers should be entitled to a cut of this money. This is where the publishers and I part company. Video games are art, this is indisputable. Being an artist myself (albeit a Sandwich Artist), I am all for someone being paid for their creation... the first time it sells. What other art form demands that the artist be paid each time his or her creation changes hands? Does Frank Sinatra get a cut every time someone buys a used copy of Songs for Young Lovers? No, and if he did it would be really creepy because he's dead as hell, but then again he was mobbed up, so who's to say? Ol' Blue Eyes probably isn't the best example. Does eBay send George Lucas a few bucks whenever a used copy of Empire is sold? Nope. I've sold plenty of books online, but never once did I send a dime Hunter S. Thompson's way. Does someone scratch off a check to the estate of Vincent Van Gogh whenever one of his paintings that isn't owned by him is sold? Negative. You see, in all of these instances the artist was ALREADY paid when the item originally sold. They are not entitled to shakedown the customer again and again. Yet that is exactly what companies like EA have done, requiring people who buy previously used games to purchase additional online "passes" in order to enjoy all aspects of the game, such as online play. This is utter nonsense. Ford doesn't get money when you sell your car to some dude on Craigslist. The person who originally owned your house (lol, like any of YOU are home owners) doesn't get paid when you decide to sell. There is literally nothing else on Earth that legally requires you payoff the creator when you sell it. You see, when you buy something you become the OWNER OF IT. You may not own the intellectual property, but you most certainly own the psychical item in hand. I like buying video games, both new and used. Buying used games is a great way to go back and play games that might not have been on your radar when they originally came out. The steps that publishers are taking is nothing more than a thinly veiled cash grab. They see how much money places like GameStop are making, and they want a piece of the action. Never mind the fact that they aren't entitled to any of this money. Luckily, Best Buy is jumping into the used game market, providing another choice for frugal gamers while also putting the pressure back on the publishers. The used game market isn't going anywhere, no matter how many times greedy corporate entities try to extort more money out of us.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

How long is a game fun for? It depends on the game, I guess. Some games, like Super Mario World or Grand Theft Auto 3 are pretty much fun forever. Other games aren't fun at all. And some games are super fun for like a week and then goddamn you never wanna play em again.
Such is Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
This game, as with almost all games, pits you as some superpowered fascists leading a crusade against other superpowered fascists. It's a battle of ideologies, sort of, but I'm never quite sure what side is quite the right one to root for. Both sides are unwaveringly committed to their ideas of justice but why should we find the US government backed protagonists more sympathetic than Dr. Doom's ragtag group of freedom fighters? We are forced into the role of accepting the heroes qua heroes and there's no time to waste: an explosion is happening aboard the SHIELD helicarrier, triggering easy parallels to 9/11 and the thoughtless but fierce determinism that followed.
The gameplay is engaging enough, at least at first. It takes a 3/4 view of the action as you control a squadron of four swappable characters. Each character has unique powers and periodically charming battlecries ("I feel as mighty as Odin!" "I'm the best there is at what I do!"). There is also no shortage of playable characters. My current team consists of such D-listers as Miss Marvel and Luke Cage, chosen out of a persistent white liberal guilt that haunted me with a more conventional team. You run around smacking around foot soldiers and breaking barrels until you reach the end villain who taunts you before you destroy him, usually so quickly you have no idea what happened. The combat is fun for a while, with a varied array of special attacks, grapples, and weapons to utilize. There are upgrades and costume changes, all the usual trappings of the RPG genre.
Ultimately (haha), the game is too easy and too lacking in personality. Despite the wide array of characters you will encounter (most recently, I had a runin with Corsair of all people), it eventually blurs together into a forgettable, interminable grind. But when the novelty is fresh, it's exhilarating.
The game can be obtained cheaply, as it is several years old, and is worth it for the week or so of fun it will provide. I guess.

The FPS Lifestyle

The First Person Shooter, or "FPS" as cool people like myself call it, is the only real online multiplayer alternative for those of us who haven't waved the white flag on Operation: Life and refuse to waddle into the soul sucking quicksand known as MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). We like to interact with other people online and play games with them, we just have no desire to invest 4 hours a day in the fruitless quest to level up our characters only to later have the game developers take a collective piss on us by capping/crippling players by issuing patches to correct the things they screwed up on and decided to ship the game anyway. So instead of playing games with elves and paladins and Eskimos, we instead party up and shoot each other and blow each other up with grenades and such. That is how we roll. But what really sets the typical FPS'er apart from the rest of the gaming community is the fact that we have little to no desire to participate the real-life version of our game. You see, the guy who plays Madden has in all likelihood thrown a football at some point in his life. The Real Time Strategy aficionado yearns for the day when THEY get to call the shots and control the world around them. The typical RPG nerd would love nothing more than to leave Earth and live in a cell shaded anime world with dragons and other such nonsense. And if you pressed them hard enough, I'm willing to bet money that the average Mariophile would love to become a chubby Italian plumber who rescues the same princess over and over.

You see, 99% of people who play FPS games have never touched a real fire arm. We view ourselves as being "above the fray", and would never sully ourselves by discharging an actual gun. You see, in real life (or IRL, as it is more commonly referred to) there are no respawn points. IRL, when you shoot someone there are real consequences. More importantly, to shoot someone IRL would require us to interact with other human beings, which is an idea so preposterous that I feel dirty even mentioning it. Sunlight? No thanks. Exercise? Bah! Human contact? I get all the verbal interaction I need through my trusty headset, which allows me to talk to my teammates and also to taunt my victims. The FPS'er has transcended the life of a typical human and has become something else. Something better. We no longer conform to traditional laws of online video game playing. We have created our own language, rife with terms like "n00b" and "pwned". We upload videos of our finest kills to YouTube and boast about our skills at virtual-murder. The FPS'er has changed online gaming in ways no other genre could have ever dreamed of. And for this valiant service, we receive no thanks from the rest of the gaming universe. Instead, we are mocked and scorned. Little do those who look down on us know, FPS'ers hold all the cards in the gaming industry. You want that shitty indy game that you love so much to see the light of day? You better hope the annual release of Call of Duty sells a billion copies to fill the coffers of the developers to the point where they can feel safe throwing away money on whatever pseudo-intellectual pile of pixels with an unlikely hero and OUTSIDE THE BOX gameplay mechanic that is all the rage these days. You want to see more downloadable content for whatever obscure MMORPG you play? You better hope us FPS'ers keep supporting the entire DLC market by buying map packs. Checkmate, losers.

The FPS Lifestyle is here to stay. Get used to it.