The Digital Age

I did it. I crossed a line. A line that a long time ago I swore I would never cross. I mean to be fair it's not like I jumped in head first, and more made a logical decision after taking in my available options and the extenuating circumstances in my life. What am I talking about you ask? Why, I am talking about converting from paper magazines to digital.

Anyone who knows me, knows I am firmly against Amazon's push to remove real books from the word and replace them with digital ones. While I fully understand there is a place for eBooks in the world, it's the way the big A goes about marketing it. I won't get into my detailed opinion on it, but I will cut to the chase and say I think going all digital when it comes to all forms of media is a bad idea.

I'm a proponent for physical ownership and possession. I would rather buy an entire album in CD or even vinyl, than one through iTunes or another digital media service. I don't want to put the ownership of the content I have spent my hard earned money on, in the hands of the dreaded "cloud". I want to own it in my hands and it be MINE.

So when I decided I wanted to get a new membership to Game Informer, I found myself face to face with a huge dilemma. One I wasn’t expecting to find myself in. Like, EVER.

You see GI offers three membership options. Two physically copy subscriptions, one for 1 Year at $19.99, and one for 2 years at $24.99. They also had a third option for all digital content for 1 year, at the same price as the physical. My first reaction was to blast the magazine for trying to charge me the same damn price for a paperless copy, which obviously cost them less to produce.

The biggest selling point to going with digital (other than "going green") Is that you get the magazine sent to your email before the physical copies are released to the paper subscribers, which in return is sooner than the newsstands.

There was also a fourth option that was $5 cheaper than the standard 1 year, digital subscription, that came with GameStop's power up program. A program that I had always written off as worthless, seeing as the only reason I ever went to GameStop was for midnight releases.

So there I sat, ready to make my 2 year $25 purchase when something hit me square in the forehead.

I have a whole box of old Sports Illustrated and Playstation magazines sitting downstairs that I need to get rid of. I also started thinking about the fact my 5 year old son has a knack for destroying magazines when they were in the house. My wife also ends up shoving them into any drawer or shelf she can find and they end up getting full and cluttered. On top of all of that, I have my second child on the way. The thought of one more thing in the house to take up what will already be limited space, was kind of worrisome. Then all of the sudden it hit me. Maybe I need the digital version.

The first thing I said was, "Nope, ain't happening. I would rather not get the damn magazine at all than go digital. It's not that I NEED the magazine, I just want it."

I was going to stand my ground.

Then I had to update N00b Doodle's twitter feed with some gaming news that I had just re-tweeted from another gaming source.

I got aggravated. A lot of these sites update with "The newest issues of X announced today that Y game will come with Z content."

This was something I could use to help update this very site. A site I want to dramatically improve the content, and readership of. The thought of getting my new digital copy, and throwing up new gaming news ahead of a lot of other independent sites seemed awesome. Not to mention I wouldn’t have to worry about the physical form being just some other form of trash in my home at some point in the near future.

I then sat there and stared at the GameStop Rewards option. The $5 cheaper already made more sense. Plus you throw in the extra trade-in credit for used games (which I trade in games a lot, just normally at a different retailer), and I felt I would be saving even more than $5 in the long run.

So I did it. I jumped in and got the GameStop Pro Rewards membership, that comes with a year of Game Informer, for $15.

While I do not foresee myself trading all of my books in for eBooks, or ripping my 500+ CD collection to MP3's and throwing the actual copies away, I do feel that I have betrayed the universe in some unforeseen way.  To the universe, and my friend Shane Devon (whom I sometimes affectionately consider to be God), I apologize for this blasphemes way of living, and I ask you not judge me for the lone bad decision I have made, and consider all the good I may have (or not) have done in life, when placing me in my eternal home once I have left the great planet that is earth.