An amazing number of people look at me and correctly guess that I, “do something with computers.” That seems like a broad concept—most people “do something” with computers—but I know that they mean. It’s that I either work in IT or that I’m a programmer. So, I can’t really pretend I don’t seem nerdy but I really don’t think of myself that way…usually.
Then I remember that I think of video games as a denomination of money.
For most of my purchase-making life, I remember video games costing around $50 dollars.* Now they are generally closer to $60 but my memories are too ingrained to change now. So when the price of $50 comes up in my life, I think of that as the cost of one video game. Any multiples of $50, I think of the number of video games that could buy me. When any thing is about the Benjamins, it’s about how many pairs of video games that could buy me.
I think this is because for most of my purchase-making youth, video games were consistently the most expensive things I would buy. Or maybe it’s because they would manufacture gold cartridges (the basis for that image above) for games in the Legend of Zelda series and it confused my childhood sense of what money is. Either way, I’m not about to let go of this.
*With the noteworthy exception being Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for Nintendo 64. I remember seeing it on sale for $95. Ninety-five dollars—in 1996—a price that is still insane by today’s standards.
