At what price our dignity?

Pfft...not going to unlock any
achievements that way...

I realize that playing video games, especially as an adult, can be seen as something of a ridiculous waste of time and money and that's not unfair. I mean, game consoles can cost hundreds of dollars, the games themselves are like $40-$60 apiece and then what? You spend potentially tens of hours sitting in the dark, your eyes locked on a screen, whiling away what probably should be the prime of your life when you could be outside getting exercise and socializing with fellow humans.

On the other hand, have you ever played Assassin's Creed? Because it's goddamn amazing. You go around assassinating rival members of a secret society during the French Revolution. Also I think aliens are involved, so you know, it's educational.

You might even say it's educutional.

"Hey gaymo, how's bout a teabag!"

-Pretty much everyone

else on Xbox live

Anyway, on top of the initial outlay for consoles and software, manufacturers are always looking for other avenues to bleed you dry. Online subscriptions and DLC are nice, but for the highly dupable there's the peripherals. Like this. It's a fancy new Xbox controller that comes with swappable components so you can change out the control sticks depending on preferences or the requirements of a particular game. As an added bonus, it has a standard headphone jack allowing you to use your favorite headset to converse with the homophobic, misogynist, racist teens of Xbox live. All this for only $150.

Can someone explain to me why I have
a job like a chump when professional
Halo player was apparently an option?

Yeah, that's $150 of money for something you probably already have, except now it comes with a set of small, easily lost-down-the-couchable parts which offer what I suspect is a imaginary to marginal improvement in the level of game control. But what do I know? Here's what professional Halo player Mike Cavanaugh had to say:

"When I was competing, I would go though a controller every three months..." 

-Mike Cavanaugh,

professional Halo-wait, really?

"Fuck yeah I'm up for talking about
the Kingdom of Heaven, c'mon in."

Yeah, I've clearly been wasting my life by not pursuing this as a career, but still, $150? You know, recently a friend called me up and asked me if I'd help him pick the game console that was right for him. That's like, well I have no real basis for comparison, but I imagine it must be like being one of those people who hand out the Watchtower, and having someone come to your door and ask where they can sign up. Anyway, I steered him toward an Xbox One and when we went looking for a second controller we discovered that the basic ones cost $80. $80! When did this happen? Playing video games has always been pricier than say, a brisk walk or an afternoon with the Jehovah's witnesses, but between the console, two controllers and a game or two you can easily spend $600.

"These hadoukens just roll off the
thumb. Money well spent I say."

-Some idiot

Look, there've been a lot of ridiculous peripherals over the decades, and at least this one has the benefit of being an actual controller and not say a plastic drum set or cyborg glove from space but holy shit, $150? We have no one to blame but ourselves. Like, I know we're all grown-ups, so really this just comes down to how much you want to spend on throwing a hadouken in comfort, but every time one of us coughs up $150 for one of these things, we only encourage manufacturers to pull shit like this again in the future.

Where does it end I ask you? Where? Well, obviously when we either find a more mature hobby or when we stop shelling out for crazy gimmick peripherals. So, like, never.

We are, traditionally, a gullible people.