On Being a Cheapskate, and Why the OUYA May Kill Me

In a certain previous podcast, I outed myself as a complete and total cheapskate. As a rule of thumb I've refused to purchase a video game more than forty dollars, with the rare exceptions rearing their glorious heads from time to time. I usually buy used instead of new. I pay nearly bottom-dollar for any Humble Bundle that rolls around. I ignore the other, lesser bundles that have mandatory minimum prices. Heck, I've resorted to the underworld of retro gaming by burning "backup" copies of Dreamcast titles and diving headlong into ROM sites for cartridge-based systems. If any game developer made a dollar off of me in recent memory, they should laminate it, frame it, and nail it to a wall in their lobby in veneration for all time because it's a rare thing to see from me.

By all respects, I'm a horrible gamer, and should be ashamed of myself for not giving into the worship of the white elephant that is video games.

This is why I have such high hopes for - and an utter fear of - the OUYA.



Look, I get that gaming is cheaper than it ever has been before. My "problem" is absolutely one of those bullshit psychological things that prevent me from buying new, pre-ordering, or washing my hands less than four times after going to the bathroom. But, even at the $20 price range - a bargain for some of the indie titles that are rolling out there, and utter robbery for your average Triple-A Steam sale - purchasing a game still feels like a slightly painful investment rather than a golden ticket into 10+ hours of entertainment. I'll look at a title, mull it over for an eternity, put the title down, play the demo, dwell some more, drive my wife nuts about it, then finally resign myself to coughing up the dough and hoping to hell and back that it was worth all this nausea and sleep deprivation.

Enter Google Play, the previously monikered "Android Market" that's flooding the Intertubes with sub-$5 games that make unwise snap decisions far too easy for a penny-pincher like me. With any game on any other gaming platforms, my comrades will endure the frustration and torment of waiting for my wishy-washy ass to fork over some hard-earned coin for multiplayer goodness. With Google Play... ugh...

RJ: Hey Ryan.
Ryan: Yo.
RJ: Great Big War Game. $3. Online multiplayer. Get it.
Ryan: Alright. Done.

That's it. Argument concluded. No griping, no price comparison shopping, no checking the freaking New York Stock Exchange for market fluctuations in relation to Antarctic tidal forces, nothing. Transaction complete. As I stared at my phone with mouth agape realizing just what it was I had done - this most unholy transgression I had committed, I realized one thing over anything else: I can't wait for the OUYA to launch.

This is what personal bankruptcy looks like.

For those of you who don't know what an OUYA is, I'll give a brief summary. The OUYA is a $99 little box of temptation that is clearly geared to taking all of my money and putting my family out on the street. A Kickstarter-funded project, the OUYA aims to be a console for the independent developer, utilizing Android 4.0 and the subsequent Google Play/Android Market as well as the OUYA Market to get low-cost games into the hands of gamers digitally. Indie Devs get to pay the traditional 25% royalty to OUYA, but the software tools are free, and every OUYA doubles as its own development console. These savings (in theory) should be passed down to the consumer, meaning more games and more variety for less money.

In short, this cube of financial debt is geared towards snap purchasing decisions. New game? $3 (or $5, or $10)? Done. Notch has a new project he wants to show off? Shut up and take my money. It's not a $60 investment, it's a $15 game.

A detracting argument points towards the futility of enabling phone games on a home console. Why should I get a game like Big War Game for the OUYA when I can just get it for my phone? The reason for me, and I hope you bear with me on this, it might blow you away or bring you to a new level of consciousness or some other Carl Sagan shit, is simple: Phones suck for gaming. Tablets are marginally better, but still only marginally better than suck.

My bank account is the guy in the middle.

I own a LG Optimus V. It hosts a whopping 3.2" of capacitive touch screen mediocrity that is wonderful for RSS feeds, light browsing, and GPS. It does not, however, bode well for playing games. Having to frantically zoom in and out in Great Big War Game is agonizing. Even then, there's a 50/50 chance that the screen knows what the hell it is I'm trying to poke. Emulators are a complete farce, with the only way to get my game on being shelling out another $100 for a bluetooth "Gaming Adapter". At that point I've paid $200 for an app that cost me $2.99. Sure, I could get a better/bigger phone, but at that point I'm migrating away from "Phone" and towards "Handheld Console", and I'd much rather keep the two separate. I'd like my phone to dabble in gaming, not have my handheld dabble in being a phone.

That leaves me staring at an island of casual gaming goodness across a chasm with no platform to get me from here to there. I can see the OUYA as being that platform. I'd get my emulators (I'd happily pay for them), plus my snap decision casual games. Heck, if these cross-platform titles like Great Big War Game get ported to OUYA (seriously just add gamepad/touchpad controls), then my friends who wish to stay in their iPhone/Android portable hidey-holes can still game with me. Meanwhile, I get to tap into an enormous vein of casual gaming, picking-up-and-playing like it was going out of style. Heck, throw in Netflix, Hulu, HBO-Go, and other "Home Theater"-esque features, and the OUYA could be the one-console-to-rule-them-all in my living room, and much cheaper than the alternative for an HTPC.

Yeah, I'm excited for the OUYA, and I'm sure that the OUYA is excited for my debit card.