Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Every time I think I'm out, they drag me back in

Well, it's been a busy and exciting month. Unfortunately, the busyness and excitement continue into this update so I'll have to be brief. As has been previously established by anyone who's spent 15 minutes with me, I am addicted to Rock Band. It provides people who failed 6th grade band (who may or may not be writing this) with the delusion that they actually have musical talent akin to the most successful bands (and Freezepop. Oooooo, I burned them good). And to capitalize on the fact, they've released 3 or more additional songs for the game every week since it came out. This is an ingenious system because, eventually, a song the player likes will come out.

However, there's a crippling problem when it comes to paying for the songs. It's not that the songs are expensive (unless you think $2 is espensive these days), but the fact that they only accept Bizarro Internet Currency or "Microsoft Points". Now, I like to believe I understand how pretend currency works. That's what all those hours bonking alligators on the head at Chuck E. Cheese's was about (convert Dollars into Quarters into Tokens into Tickets into Novelty Glasses with the Giant Nose and Mustache). But "Microsoft Points" is easily the most confusing. To begin with, rather than pick an easy number, the conversion rate of points to dollars 80 to 1. It's inconvenient to realize that 1600 points really costs $20, but you can handle it. But then there's the issue of how's its sold.

Most basic imaginary systems of currency lets you deal in units of 1 and 5, because you can easily reach most numbers that way. But not with Bizarro Internet Currency (BIC). It's sold both at stores and over the internet, for consumer convenience. Logically, one might expect that they'd be sold in similar quanities. After all, it's essentially a gift card. It shouldn't matter where you purchase it and you should be able to control how much you can purchase. But that's not the case. In stores, you can buy either $20 or $50 worth of BIC. It's a little extreme. But you figure there might be some logistics issues with gift cards being sold by a third party vendor that would limit the variety. So, certainly, buying BIC must be a much simpler process online.

Ironically enough, this is the most complex part. See, with $20 and $50 coming in at 1600 and 4000 BIC respectively, you instinctively can tell there's an unusual and inconvenient exchange rate. But online, they intentionally mislead you. They sell BIC in units of 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 points. But that totals to multiples of $6.25. And since the companies who sell their digital goods base their prices off of reality, instead of Microsoft's Insan-o-bux, you almost always have to pay more than what the product sells for. Using the Rock Band example, getting anywhere from one to three songs would require the exact initial cost. And even if you found three songs you wanted, you'd still have a meaningless quarter left on your account that was wasted.

Anyways, the point of those 500 or so words of introduction was I had finally broken free of the system of overpaying and repression. With the latest batch of songs, I had whittled my BIC account down to 10 points. Sure, it's not completely empty, but I'm willing to pay 16 cents extra for all the stuff I got. It finally seemed like I would be free. But then this happened. They actually listened to me! At the worst conceivable time ever, no less.

Oh, the gouging never ends! It goes on, and on, and on and on!

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