Top 5 Reasons Youll Need to Sell a Kidney this Fall

SELL SELL SELL!

With the invention of MMOs in the late 1700s, videogame companies discovered that players were willing to trade in a hog's head every month to keep playing. In the centuries since then, they've discovered that people are much more likely to part with actual money, rather than pig parts, for their perpetual game subscriptions, and they've gotten it down to a science just in time for this fall.

Unless you're Bobby Kotick, you're probably on the losing end of this noble enterprise. Well, handsome reader, allow me to soften the huge, soul-crushing blow your wallet is assured to take in the upcoming weeks by warning you of your impending financial doom.

5. You get stuff in Modern Warfare 3 for buying junk food.

You can bet your ass that if Satan ever walks the Earth, he'll have some kind of marketing tie-in funding his dark endeavors. Since it's assured that Bobby Kotick will be blowing Satan's big red horn to trumpet The Master's return, Call of Duty has a marketing tie-in as well.

What's the tie-in, you ask? Well, as we all know from personal experience, we gamer kids love only a few things more than pwning noobs and being homophobic online. Sadly, Activision's favor with Satan wasn't strong enough to enslave Felicia Day or the cast of Firefly, so they've had to opt for our other weakness – Mountain Dew and Doritos. I have to give it to them - being a h4rdc0r3 gamer, I clearly cannot resist the siren call of over-caffeinated soft drinks and carbohydrates laced with MSG. That, alone, is enough to pull me in. But Bobby Kotick don't care, and he's gonna up the ante.

Now, when I gorge myself on shame and nacho cheese, I can sift through my solid waste to find the Doritos bags and Mountain Dew bottles my body has discarded like mouse-bones in an owl pellet (much like our avian friend, the owl, I must consume my sustenance whole – I don't have time to unwrap things), and redeem codes printed on them for double XP in Modern Warfare 3! Awesome!

Having a competitive advantage over my opponents in Modern Warfare 3 for doing something I already do is the best thing they could have ever added to the game! I mean, there's no point in improving the actual game, so why not improve upon the marketing surrounding the game!?

I just love paying $60 for a game, and then additionally pay a potentially unlimited sum of money just to not get the shit kicked out of me online. That sounds awesome! Oh man, I am definitely selling a kidney for that!

4. There will be premium services you won't need, but you'll buy them anyhow.

Modern Warfare 3 also launches alongside Call of Duty Elite, which is a subscription service that gives players access to any DLC pack, stat tracking, and the ability to become a Premium Member in Bobby Kotick's satanic death-coven. Premium Members have their choice of being the first to serve as mindslaves or play war drums on the skin of wailing children in The Dark Lord's Army, as well as access to higher quality virgin blood for use during rituals while in the Earth-realm.

You have to give it to Activision. They really know how to squeeze every bit of juice from a lemon, then use the left-over lemon husk as tennis shoes, then sell those tennis shoes back to the guys who originally bought the lemon juice as a vessel to keep their “Call of Duty Assault Juice” fresh. They're like those old stories your elementary school teacher would tell you about Native Americans, except with video games - and their nourishment isn't buffalo meat, their nourishment is your money.

After all, it's clear that Activision is doing this because they love their fans more than any other group of people who infuse the company with money. I can't imagine any other group of people who would be concerned about Activision's long-term financial health, whom Activision would completely cater to, at the exclusion of practically everything else.

3. Every game will offer more in-game crap for you to waste money on.

DLC has been a long practiced dark art in the world of videogames. Let's be honest, good reader, we really have no one else to blame here but ourselves. The first time DLC happened was when some guy at Bethesda got way too drunk at the company Christmas party, and thought it'd be a gas to sell purely cosmetic armor for a horse. He knew it wouldn't sell. It couldn't possibly sell! Because who the hell would spend actual money on that? Hahaha! Get Jim from Accounting over here, he'll want to see this!

It could have ended right there over that glass off warm eggnog, but some poor fella out in vidyagame land just had to buy it. Thus began the videogames industry's years long DLC orgy that we're currently blindfolded and handcuffed to.

Since then, developers have probably spent more time on developing hats, deathmatch maps, and tacked-on singleplayer maps that really should have been included in the $60 price tag for a new game, than they've spent, you know, developing games.

In the case of my beloved Diablo 3, Blizzard might be testing our love just a bit too much. Several weeks ago, they made public their plans to offer an auction house where any player can buy and sell in-game items from any other player. While this is awesome because it circumnavigates the black market for paid item trades in Diablo 2, it still sucks shit because you and I both know I am going to take out a second mortgage on my house when the opening bell rings in Sanctuary. That, or I'll become an item baron, richer than the seven richest Kings in Asia!

But, seriously though – I'll be in the poor house. Please take care of my family.

2. If you're reading this, I hope you've already pre-ordered...

...Because if you haven't, sorry bud – you're missing out on content forever. Just so I'm being clear, this should also read “I hope you've already pre-ordered the same game from five different retailers”. But I'm sure it's no big deal. Videogames are the exclusive pastime of the world's 12 richest families, so you can keep your kidneys, m'lord.

Oh, wait. It's not? You mean, the commoners can play videogames too!? My word! How can they afford all this juicy, pre-order exclusive content!? There goes Xbox Live!

Yes, in what is, according to this list, the second-shittiest retail practice in the videogames industry, you have to pay full price for a game before you even know if it's worth a warmed over piece of shit. If you don't, you're locked out of in-game content that will forever take up space on the disc, taunting you, laughing at your shortcomings, teasing you about peeing yourself that one time.

We've all tasted the bitterness of a game that is awesome in previews, but is apparently held together by little pieces of string, duct tape, and questionable intentions when it finally hits your hot little hands. I fully admit that I was duped by Hellgate: London. My willful ignorance continued all the way through the beta, when half the game's environments were textured by pictures of Bill Roper shrugging at me, confused as to what I saw in his game. I knew you'd get an innumerable quantity of bugs fixed within two weeks, Mr. Roper. Well, that is, if numbers went high enough to count them all.

But my point is, I had to get in that goddamn beta. I had to see what the game was like, because I knew, based on absolutely nothing, that it was going to be worth it! So, I slapped down $50 on a pre-order for the game to insert myself in the pre-release testing.

And it worked out awesome! LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

1. You ain't ever buying this game used.

You say you can't afford $60 for a new game months before you know if it's shit or not? Well, allow we, the videogames industry, to give you the biggest middle-finger we possibly can. Then, let us hold you down and slowly hang our spit over your face, then suck it back up right before it lands on your nose, because you're never buying this game used, either! That is, unless you pay $10 for exactly no reason.

Sony, the company that had the balls to charge $600 for a game console in 2006, and had no idea why people weren't using Playstation 3s to line their gardens, is now charging $10 extra on all first-party titles bought used. Well, it's technically optional. That is, if you don't mind not having access to things like multiplayer. No one plays multiplayer anymore, right? Right. No problem here whatsoever.

Except that other companies are following suit with their own ridiculous schemes, which probably came straight from the machinations of a rejected villain during the latter days of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond era. Much like a really terrible line from those movies, when you're a business charging and re-charging for the exact same thing, Christmas also comes more than once a year.

For instance, EA, of all companies, had one of the milder schemes in that you would get bonus maps and content for buying the latest Medal of Honor game new, which technically wasn't outright contempt for the unwashed used game buyer, but then they heard that Sony was one-upping them in the race to the bottom, and are now locking used game buyers out of multiplayer as well.

I get that companies need to feed their families too, but do they really need to gold-plate their slip'n slides in front of their platinum mansions? I mean, I settled for silver, fertile reader, and I've got all this internet money flying my way so fast, it's practically busting my beautiful face open.