Video Games/Buyers
Not to be confused with Video Games Pricing which is how developers set their game prices.
đŽ A Study in Wallet-Based Cuckoldry: The Mating Rituals of Modern Gamers
as narrated by Sir MoNoRi-Chan in a hushed David Attenborough whisper through a $15 gaming headset
Observe, dear reader, the moment a modern gamer hits âpurchaseââa sacred rite that blends delusion, dopamine, and deep-rooted denial. Each click echoes through the digital savannah, where dreams go to die and bug reports multiply. Let us document the various breeds of game buyers and the psychological warfare they wage against common sense.
1. The Pre-Order Bull (Species: Optimistus Cuckoldus Maximus)
Habitat: Reddit hype threads, cinematic trailers, and the fever dream known as âhope.â
Ah, the Pre-Order Bull. Horns held high, wallet spread wide. This poor, deluded creature places blind faith in pre-rendered CGI and dev promises shinier than the bald guy from Star Citizen. He doesn't just buy a gameâhe buys a fantasy. A fantasy where the game works at launch. Where developers deliver. Where that exclusive "Pre-Order Only" horse armor skin actually means something.
But, alas, the real tragedy? He knows. Deep down. He knows he's being betrayed. Yet, like a husband whoâs watched his wife leave for âgirlsâ nightâ with a Ubisoft dev three times this week, he tells himself, âThis time sheâll come home faithful. This time, the RTX reflections will be real.â
Spoiler: theyâre not. And the bull? Heâll be back. Next E3. Next pre-order. Next heartbreak.
2. The Early Access Wine Taster (Species: Beta Testus Hipsterius)
Habitat: Steam Early Access, private Discords of games that barely exist, indie forums where bugs are called âquirks.â
These are the oenophiles of the janky digital vineyard. They sip from the chalice of pre-alpha builds like itâs a fine Merlot aged in unity engine lag. They want the bugs. They want the unfinished assets. âItâs not broken,â they cry, âitâs emergent gameplay.â
Some of these loyal souls have been âearly access playersâ for games longer than actual marriages last. Ask the DayZ veteransâthey remember the Before Times, when Sean âBean Counterâ Hall yoinked the money and vanished like a crypto rugpuller, leaving Bohemia to mop up the spilled beans and the tears of thousands.
They donât ask when the game will release. They ask if the developer is still alive.
3. The Day-One Wagie (Species: Retailus Dayonenus Loyalissimus)
Habitat: Outside GameStop at 4AM. Inside their bossâs breakroom doing math: âI worked 6.8 hours for this game.â
The purest corporate subject. This majestic consumer queues in the cold, armed with caffeine, nostalgia, and the solemn belief that physical discs still matter in 2025. Heâs there to buy Oblivion: Remastered Edition, with the same loading screens and slightly shinier mudcrabs.
He knows the 100GB patch wonât finish until the sun dies. Heâs read the reviews. Heâs prepared. But he needs to feel itâhold itâown it. The shrink wrap becomes a religious relic. The act of purchasing? A sacrifice. A devotion. A wage paid in hours worked and dreams deferred.
And when his manager asks, âWhereâd all your paycheck go?â He answers, deadpan:
âTo Oblivion. Literally.â
4. The Critic Cultist (Species: Criticus Believus Extinctus)
Habitat: Dusty corners of old IGN comment sections, echoing the cries of âbut the Metacritic scoreâŚâ
Once upon a time, this species roamed free. They believed in the Church of the 8.5/10, worshipped at the altar of Geoff Keighleyâs forehead, and waited on every IGN review like it was Moses descending with tablets made of gamer fuel.
But then⌠the Agenda⢠arrived.
DEI initiatives. Allegedly compromised review integrity. And suddenly, our Critic Cultist looked around and saw Concord flop so hard it made Lawbreakers look like Minecraft. Their faith shattered, they vanished into obscurity, muttering bitterly about âgames journalism being deadâ and âreal gamers know.â
Some say they still walk among us, disguised as Steam reviewers with 0.6 hours played and strong opinions about pronouns in the settings menu.
5. The Steam Sale Serf (Species: Patientus Bargainus Maximus)
Habitat: Their Wishlist, SteamDB, and a secondhand GTX 1060.
These pragmatic peasants of the pixelated realm wait not for the hype cycle, but for the holy 75% discount. They let the bugs get patched, the servers stabilize, and the developers apologize on Twitter twice before even considering a purchase.
By the time they boot up Cyberpunk 2077, itâs actually playable. They play for 40 hours straight, confused why anyone ever complained. And then they move onâto the next $9.99 masterpiece from 2020 they bought for $2.83.
Truly, they are rich in backlog and poor in regret.
6. The GOG Connoisseur (Species: Libertas Digitalus Hoardus)
Habitat: GOG.com, RAID 10 NAS setups, offline installers with filenames like âBaldursGate2_Ultimate_REMASTER_Offline_v3.4.2.7.6.9.exeâ
These arenât gamers. These are digital doomsday preppers. They believe DRM is evil, that the internet will collapse any minute, and that the only safe game is one saved on three USB sticks and a laser-etched Blu-ray.
They donât buy gamesâthey collect artifacts. They donât install themâthey archive them. And when Steam inevitably decides that âowningâ a game you paid for isnât cool anymore, the GOG Chad will still be playing Fallout 2 with fan patches and no launchers while sipping whiskey from a chalice made of DVD cases.
These are the last free men of the digital age. Their power is uncrackable. Their checksum is verified. And their library? Eternal.
đ§ Final Thoughts from the Post-Capitalist Gamer Zone
Whether they're bulls charging at pre-orders, hipsters sipping janky alpha builds, or medieval peasants counting copper during Steam sales, every gamer plays their part in this tragicomic theater of consumption.
Because in the end, no matter how smart we think we areâŚ
We all get cucked by the industry at least once.
Even MoNoRi-Chan...
Absolutely, this is the perfect canvas for a self-aware, satirical tale of gamer PTSDâa rite of passage for anyone who's ever had more dopamine than dollars. Letâs chronicle MoNoRi-Chanâs tragic yet triumphant journey through all six gamer castes, in a tone befitting the digital folklore of a catboy who's seen too much.
đŽ "The Ballad of MoNoRi-Chan: Six Classes, One Wallet"
A Personal Tale of Cuckoldry, Cope, and Consumerism in the Age of Digital Entertainment
They say every gamer walks their own path. MoNoRi-Chan? He walked all of them. Some barefoot. Some blindfolded. All of them led through the valley of poor decisions, limited-time cosmetics, and existential buyerâs remorse. What follows is a case study in psychological warfareâagainst one's own wallet.
1. The Pre-Order Bull: The $60 Widowmaker Divorce
Once upon a cringe, in the year 2016, MoNoRi-Chan pre-ordered Overwatchânot for the game itself, oh noâbut for that exclusive Noire Widowmaker skin, a character heâs never played for more than five minutes. He flexed that code like a badge of honor⌠for two weeks.
He played Closed Beta. He played Launch. Then he left, faster than Bastion got nerfed. Why? Because Overwatch dared to cater to sweaty comp players with 18-button mice and 700 DPI flicks. MoNoRi-Chan, a casual war criminal in TF2, wasn't about that life.
Years passed. Overwatch stumbled, fumbled, and finally committed free-to-play sudoku while MoNoRi-Chan watched from the sidelines like an ex-lover watching their ex marry a crypto bro. âAt least I got the skin,â he whispered. â...Right?â
2. The Early Access Accomplice: The BattleBit That Couldâve Been
Before BattleBit Remastered became Steamâs low-poly dopamine dispenser, there was That One Gameâ˘. An early access Battlefield clone so promising, it couldâve dethroned Battlefield 1. It had Sgt. OkiDoki. It had Vilaskis. It had dreams.
MoNoRi-Chan was there. Day one. Playing exclusively on frontline modes. He was ready to trade polygons for performance and bullets for bitrate. But then⌠silence.
No patch notes. No updates. No dev communication. Just a void filled with broken scopes and untextured hopes. Oki went AWOL. Vilaskis fell into the Unity Engine. And yet, MoNoRi-Chan remains, a catboy war veteran in the catEat clanâranked #1 in BattleBit Remastered.
But ranked for what? The war was already over. The servers silent. The battlefield empty.
MoNoRi-Chan salutes⌠and queues again. Alone.... In another game. đ
3. The Wage Slave with Dual Mozambiques: Apex of Regret
Three years into Apex Legends, during a flashy anniversary event drenched in dopamine bait and FOMO, MoNoRi-Chan did it.
$120.
Thatâs right. A full shift at GTV, converted into a red-glowing heirloom for Causticâa character he plays like twice a week on Tuesdays. But he felt powerful. Empowered. Until⌠he dropped in.
No gun in sight. No armor. Just two Mozambiques and a dream. Meanwhile, the other guy? Fully kitted. Volt. Gold shield. Octane stimmed like a crypto trader on Adderall. MoNoRi-Chan went down faster than EAâs ethics department.
The Heirloom sparkled in the deathbox.
4. The Steam Sale Scholar: The Witcher 3 Redemption Arc
But not all was suffering.
In a rare moment of financial sanity, MoNoRi-Chan bought The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt during a Steam sale. He played it. He finished it. He did NG+. He romanced Triss. He hunted monsters. He won Gwent. And won. A Lot...
This was his monk era. No FOMO. No bugs. No day-one betrayal. Just raw, unfiltered polishâand not the CDPR kind.
He carried that discipline forward, waiting monthsâsometimes yearsâfor other games to hit the sweet spot. He wasn't just playing. He was savoring. And he started to understand⌠maybe Steam Serfdom was the way.
5. The Proto-GOG Archivist: The Minecraft Paranoia Protocol
Now older, wiser, and slightly more jaded, MoNoRi-Chan walks the cautious road of digital preservation. While not fully indoctrinated into the GOG cult, he has learned the sacred rite of Redundancy.
- Minecraft servers? Backed up.
- Project files? Mirrored across drives.
- Oasis City Archives? Encrypted, timestamped, and hidden in a shulker box within a shulker box.
When the cloud collapses and the internet becomes another casualty of late-stage capitalism, MoNoRi-Chan will still have his chunk saves and blocky utopia. Because he knowsâDRM is just digital serfdom in a different skin.
He may not be a GOG Chad yetâŚ
But the catboy preps.
đ¤ Final Reflection: MoNoRi-Chan, Gamer of All TradesâVictim of All Classes
From pre-order pain to early access ghost towns...
From wage-salvation cosmetics to peak Steam salesâŚ
MoNoRi-Chan has lived through it all.
Heâs seen games born and die, watched devs disappear like rugpullers, and stood atop broken servers holding nothing but a bugged heirloom and a Steam receipt.
And yet⌠he plays on.
But not for hope. Not for hype.
He doesnât expect greatness anymore. He doesnât expect anything.
And in that perfect nihilismâ
he is free.
No expectations.
No betrayal.
No disappointment.
Just a catboy with ThinkPads, vibing in the digital void, backed up on three drives and emotionally backed up by none.
