Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Video Game Debacle

My son, just three-and-a-half years old, is apparently following daddy's footsteps when it comes to loving his superheroes. How the hell he ended up settling on Batman is still beyond me, because I've always been a Marvel comics kind of guy.
For at least a year now (following the short-lived but equally powerful "I'm BUZZ LIGHTYEAR" phase), my son has answered almost exclusively to "Batman." He has several costumes, even more masks, and a number of capes that would've made Liberace squeal with delight.
So, we had an all Batman Christmas. I even found him a 1:18 scale model, die-cast replica of the Batmobile that Adam West used to drive.
Then came the release of the new "DC Universe Online" for the PS3. My son had seen the ads in the video game shop where we were buying gifts for his older brother, and asked every day for two weeks "Daddy? Is the Batman game out yet?"
We reserved it, because Daddy likes his superhero games, and my wife and I both knew that it would make his little day. The day that it finally hit the stores, my wife went out, picked it up (and the strategy guide: spend a little more to make Junior happy), and dropped it off with him at the babysitter's to wait for me to get out of work.
He clutched those things to his chest for the three hours that he was there. So damned excited.
I picked him up, got home, and insisted that we get a little cleaning done, bath time and jammies for the both of us, and then we'd play. It was seven o'clock by the time that I hijacked my twelve-year-old's PS3 and popped the game in.
I had never used the PS3 before, and had no idea how long it took to upload a new game. Mattie waited patiently through the first half-hour, watching the little green "loading" bar as it crawled toward the finish line. When it finally did, it immediately started another one, and this one promised to take at least as long as the first.
Needless to say, he was pissed. But he sat, and I turned on an episode of Adam West and Burt Ward prancing around and he coped. While he coped, I read the instruction booklet so that we'd be all set to play.
And that's when I saw that I would need to enter my credit card number to cover the monthly fee for the game.
Hunh?
I'm eighty dollars vested in this bitch, and there's going to be a monthly fee to play it? Well... what's the fee? OH... it doesn't say. I actually had to go to the computer, type it all into google, and read that I was looking at $14.99 a month to get this thing going. $180.00 or so a year.
FUCK THAT. It said that we got thirty days free, so I figure I'll make his day tonight, but then we're done. I'm fuming at this point, he's badgering me to get it going, and he's almost ready to pass out because it's eight-thirty now.
We switched back and the game was finishing that session of loading. Fine. Let's get this over with.
Nope. It started another one. And by my math, it wasn't going to be done until after one in the morning.
I thought that he would start crying. You know... Just bawling in that way that only people under the age of five seem capable of, where their mouth opens to a completely inhuman degree... but he didn't.
Instead, when I told him that we would have to wait until tomorrow, he gritted his teeth together and said "Daddy... You're pissing me off."
I was immediately shocked into laughter. He didn't approve, but it had been a long aggravating night, and I needed it. I tricked him into thinking an old game that we had was the one he was looking for, and we returned that steaming hunk of crap the next day. We must not have been the first, because they didn't even ask any questions.
Just one of the many lunacies that a parent puts up with for the love of their kids...

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