Here's the rundown for everytime anyone complains about the cost of a MMO game (like Everquest or World of Warcraft).

Do you go to the movies, ever? That's around $10 for two hours you felt was a justifiable entertainment consumption expense (the money is spent, and you have nothing to hold in your hands to show for it, as opposed to orange juice or a house).

Have you ever bought a video game and gone crazy, playing it an entire day, and within the month, adding it to the stack of never again touched things? $55 over 8 hours, you're just slightly north of a movie (and for a longer period).

Have you ever bought a MMO, gone crazy, playing it one entire day and any point ever again within the first month? Kudos. It's exactly the same cost/benefit to you (or better, if you get that hour) as ANY OTHER VIDEOGAME EVER.

Yes, you can say "Oh, well, I might dust it off three years from now." That's perfectly true. But don't lie. You have a copy of Daikatana sitting around that you're crying about. If you purchase enough videogames that you can even recognize an MMO on sight, you have just sucked up the fact that some of them will be duds. In the event that you should possibly get a hit with an MMO, you're very quickly going to hit the movie break-even line, and have a chance of beating it.

Then if you do something unprecedented and actually subscribe... well, hello, suddenly it became two $35 games. If you all day it twice within the span of two months - and this time you're betting on a known quality - you've gone and beaten the pants off of the cost/benefit ratio for moving going. And it only gets better if you prepay to get the better rates, and if you continue the rate out for awhile (probably life of interest).

If you only rent one DVD a month, and play less than 8 hours of videogames a month and are still playing TuxRacer exclusively, then, and only then sir, do I tip my hat to you. But no... the average gamer levying this argument who has purchased at least one lame game in the last few months... you are standing with no legs beneath you.

Almost all MMOs have a "free month" bundled in the purchase price. So stop yammering about "trying it for free for a month" before purchase. Noone lets you download DooM3 and after a month says, "Would you like to purchase this?".. you're done with it by then! (Although this isn't always the case with MMOs)

I enjoy watching video games. No, not just people playing them. Not just me playing them. I enjoy watching the business of video games. I like watching when games change price point. I like noticing price points. I like extrapolating what this means about the games, and the gaming business. I like watching the politiking that goes on around video games. Basically, I like every big concept that you can attach to the video game industry - because it is an industry, and it is composed of businesses - that most people don't think to look at, because they generally look at the end product of it.

Look at something like, say, duct tape. What does price say about duct tape? It's not even the same type of good as video games. But contrast - how many years ago was Starcraft released? I can STILL find it in stores. How many months ago was $game released? I once called around to 10 stores in my major metropolis to find THE LAST COPY for a game not a year old.

Price and durability of a good speak a bit to quality (or popularity over quality). What other products behave like this? Versus, say, duct tape. It's true that demand drive both to behave the way they do, it's just how interesting the demand curve modifies the business model of, say, 3M (I am presuming they make duct tape) versus, say, Blizzard Entertainment. Of course, what with MMOs... we'll see.

Just a brief word on my comments - I am either trying to be insightful (rare, because generally I notice someone else saying better/as well what I wanted to say before me), silly (common), one-up silly (occaisonal), or serious in a silly way. Nothing annoys me more than being mismoderated up funny for the last case.

Now a brief word about myself. I'm a semi-professional self-taught programmer in a number of languages, the vast majority of which are scripting languages, generally run in a highly interpreted environment. I don't consider myself an expert by any measure - it's easy to find plenty of points where I fall short - but I do take pride in my work, and doing it right. If the programming population were laid out on a bell curve of skill, I would place myself in the 55-60% bracket, just over the hump.

I, for one, welcome our new mod overlords.