Zamboni, that is an excellent post! I really enjoyed it.
I had no idea that people pay to play video games, aside from the purchase of a console, cartridge or some sort of software. So glad that this has never been a thing that DH or I were even remotely interested in.
The easy way around this is not to play online. The games on mobile devices led the charge on this predatory model, but some makers of console games decided to copy it. It makes money for shareholders, & it isn’t illegal yet….
OTOH consoles are basically small loss leaders & cartridge/ disc games (or games downloaded, but played offline) are often hundreds or thousands of hours of entertainment for $50-80 at full price (sales are common.) Even if you bought a top of the line new console & only played one game thoroughly on it before you stopped using it (nobody really does this) you could be looking at $1/ hour for entertainment.
I play very little compared to when I was in school or single with masses of free time but I’m fairly sure my personal cost per hour on my last console was under sixty cents across just a handful of games, discounting totally its value as a media center for movies & music, as well as the thousands (at least four) of additional hours of gaming put in by my partner (which would put the cost down around ten cents per hour.) I wasn’t even buying used because I wanted to support good art, but used games are cheap after a year or three.
Any artistic medium is going to be mostly crap, but if you only seek out the best of the best, the experiences - writing, acting, visual artwork, musical scores, mechanics of ludic structure - outdo their cinematic counterparts. It’s harder to make a coherent narrative & cohesive thematic statement out of something the audience can interact with, but the best of them really do.
Compare that to a 2-3 hour new release movie - to own a copy will cost a lot more than $0.20-3.00, & in truth the total hours of professional labor that go into making one are often less than big AAA games now.