The Rise and Fall of Hobby Shops

Recently one of my favorite game shops (and by favorite i mean the only privately owned one that was even remotely close to me) closed. It's kind of a sad occasion because in this specific instance it wasn't even a case of they couldn't make the bills due to lack of sales like most other hobby shops. In this case it was a conflict with the property manager which caused the owner of said shop to decide it was no longer worth it to keep the store up and running and thus decided to close up shop of all their locations indefinitely.

So why exactly do local, privately owned game shops close so frequently? we see it so often and it's kind of disappointing to the participants of the hobbies. I am a firm believer that for whatever reason there is generally not enough activity. Unfortunately for it to be financially feasible to run a hobby shop you need to consider the market you're going to be tailoring to and then consider the largest trends in that market. You  can't afford everything under the sun so at this point you need to pick and choose what product you will stock and what product you won't. Card shops that focus on the holy trinity of card games: Yu-gi-oh, Magic and Vanguard tend to be very successful with a stable income but that income is not to the point where the company could safely make an expansion into any other market for fear of losing a large chunk of change on product that wouldn't sell. Other hobby shops tend to do alright, but most other hobbies are so incredibly expensive that the purchase rate at which these items are moved is almost detrimental.

Also, with other hobbies there are no randomized packages of items that can all be used in unison to create something successful. Generally things like Miniature War Gaming have boxes that contain only one or a small quantity of like models and they generally tend to be extremely expensive. Which leads to a lower purchase rate. Because, where you could go to walmart and drop 20 bucks to buy a deck-builder's box full of 285 magic cards and have all the essentials you need to get started in the hobby, you would need to go to an actual hobby store or a games workshop and buy a boxed army which costs 120-200, then any additional "units" you wish to purchase would range from 20-120 bucks by themselves. The investment is colossal and just that starter army is enough for a 500 point army when most regulation tournaments are run at 1500 points or 2000 points so even if you bought all starter armies and played with all the mediocre units that provides you, you'd be looking at a minimum of a $360 investment to get started.

So where does that put hobby shops? it puts them in the grave, that's where. Nobody can thrive because hobby companies hijack the prices on their product to the point where it is the epitome of a luxury item and then people shop for items from third parties with discounted prices or ebay for pre-purchased items and the same hundred thousand models get cycled except for the elite who have too much discretionary cash and too much free time. This in turn puts companies to their death.

Now granted my hobby shop closed it's doors after a long run because the dispute they were having made it no longer a feasible business model in any respect to remain open, and that's a disappointment and also an outlier in the graph of why hobby stores close. Generally they close because the primary companies price their products so that nobody can survive except for the mother shop and it's little spawn.

Why do video games cost $60?

This has been a huge question in the video game industry since the dawn of the "Next-gen consoles" which included the 360, the PS3 and the Wii. Trying to figure out why exactly the cost has gone up because i mean what is really so special about video games now that weren't so special back in 2006/2007 when the gaming industry took that big step forward? well a lot of the information i've found is pretty universal and here it is in a nutshell:

With the increasing graphical quality that newer video games required and the more intricate coding and higher licensing costs the need to raise the cost of video games grows and is justified by giving us this demographic of where every dollar in the 60-dollar schema goes to:

1. Developer Costs - $20
2. Retailer Cut - $12
3. Console Licensing - $12
4. Publisher Overhead - $9
5. Marketing - $7

So we can take a quick look at this and go okay, that makes sense. Especially of you're a console gamer. It costs a lot because there's a lot of leg work involved in the transaction of video games and everyone needs their pound of flesh. But what about PC gamers? Why are we stuck paying the exact same cost as console gamers? Let me illustrate why we shouldn't have to. There is no console licensing cost. Most AAA companies make their own engines in the first place whether it's console based or not so that SHOULD be bundled into developer costs. With the dawn of Digital Distrbution platforms like steam and Origin, the retailer cut has significantly decreased since there are no CD's to make, no CD's to ship, no storefront employees to pay on an hourly basis, etc. AAA companies generally have their own in-house publishing service so that could also now be bundled into developer costs and decreased significantly. Marketing stays the same. So where does that put us? probably somewhere in the ballpark of the following:

1. Developer Costs - $23-25
2. Marketing - $7
3. Retailer Cut - $3 - $4

so reasonably, computer games should ONLY cost about $33-36 now for PC games instead of the exact same 60 that everyone else pays. Keep in mind for companies like EA who develop, publish, and sell their own products and have their own digital distribution platform, and don't have to pay any royalties to put their ads up. all of that 36 dollars a game would translate raw profit no distributing money to other people it all just goes straight to their pockets.

Now i know what you're thinking? is it really fair that PC gamers should get to pay less than console gamers for their games? Well i think so. The initial investment of a decent gaming machine (not even a ship of the line) is much larger than the initial investment of a console. If even if you build it yourself. And by doing this you have an individual platform with which you can do with whatever you please. Is it the fault of PC gamers that they have chosen a system that does not have licensing fees and has improved access to video games? Not in the slightest. So why exactly should they be slighted for exactly that?

Console gamers walk into console systems knowing that they are purchasing the video game equivalent of an MRE and with that comes more loyalties because companies need to do more on the back end to make your experience as close to a PC's experience as possible. Convenience pays, so i think it's entirely justified. However with the introduction of the XBM and the playstation store could the prices go down a little on microsoft games and sony games? absolutely because it goes back to the most basic argument that i was making that companies like that, who own all the pieces to make games from start to finish independently really don't have the $40 dollars of third party expenses that a third party developer of lesser wealth and status would have.

Take it as you will this is just my belief that game companies are getting away with a lot of things they probably shouldn't be getting away with these days in terms of their pricing structure. in 2006 and 2007 a pricing structure like this was necessary but it has no longer become necessary in a lot of situations in the last 2 years. And the reason they cling to it is we're used to it. 7-8 years used to it and it works for them.

Finally Graduating

It's been a long and arduous road for me to go from graduating high school to graduating college but as of this semester i'm finally going to be able to do just that. Not only will i be able to graduate with my Associates of Applied Science majoring in Computer Programming/ Systems Analysis, but i also found out at the start of this semester that i was exactly 1 class away from graduating with an Associates of General Studies majoring in General Studies. It just so happened to be the worlds most basic computer class as well, CIS-100, Intro to Computers. So i figured what the hell. Put in an extra $213 for the class and finished it within 5 hours. It has taken me almost exactly 4 years to get my first Associates degree and if it wasn't for my discovering how dangerously close i was to my AGS, i'd only be walking away from 4 years of school work for a 2 year degree which seems rather un-fulfilling. And i think here-in lies the major problem with higher education. In higher education establishments they always advertise to you the wonderful dream of "oh finish your Associates in 2 years, bachelors in 4, masters in 6 or Doctorate in 8!" but it's never that easy. For all the new students walking into college for their first semester next semester (Fall of 2014) i want you to understand something. Those numbers when referring to the years it will take you to get your degree are after you've completed all of the pre-requisite general education credits. Depending on where you land in your placement tests, if your school even has placement tests to void your some of your core classes, your general education credits could take anywhere from a year to three years to complete just by themselves. And if you're not going full time (for my college that was 12 credits or more a semester for most others it's 15 or bust) then it will take you even longer. Then, once all that is said and done, you finally get to move along to what are called your degree classes, These are the classes that are always listed as the only classes needed for the degree on any college or university website. This list will take you x years depending on the type of degree so long as you fill a couple of requirements: 1) you take a minimum of 15 credit hours every semester or at least average it out to 15 a semester until you graduate. 2) you can manage to navigate which semesters the classes are offered and create a master key of sorts determining which semester exactly you're going to take what. In order to do this you need to consider things such as semesters offered, number of credit hours the class is, the actual time scheduling of the class so you have no overlap, where is it offered, and what pre-requisites you are required to have taken in order to even have access to the classes. 3) you also need to manage to keep a flexible schedule because the parameters you need to factor for in number 2 can and (chances are) probably will change from semester to semester. 4) you always acknowledge that the advisory team in your college/university are a bunch of turkeys in a thunderstorm. if you leave them alone for too long they'll drown themselves from stupidity. So always have a game plan going in, And be sure to only ask them yes or no answers. They're going to dodge the answer with a bunch of mouse clicking, tabbing through screens, printing papers and saying very sophisticated jargon. but generally if you press hard enough they'll either say something along the lines to "yes, it seems like you know what you're doing" or "No, this is how it really works *insert a bunch of convoluted bullshit here*". at which point it doesn't matter if your question has been answered you've reached the end of your conversation tree. it's time to move along to the next checkpoint. Seems easy enough right? well i promise you there will be at least one required class, gen ed or degree that you will unexpectedly fail. At this point you have one of three options: 1) tack that class onto the end of your degree plan, which will add another semester to your plan 2) Try to find a low credit hour semester that you can cram it into, and then desperately try to cope with the now heavier workload when that semester comes around. 3) take it over summer if it's even offered over summer. none of those options are that glamorous but unfortunately it's what you have to do to graduate. There is a a silver lining to all of this. Every stormy cloud and all that bullshit. That siler lining is that if you do decide to go with an associates first like i did, then you have the unique opportunity of getting all of those general education credits done before you step into your bachelors program. This saves a colossal amount of money and once you do get into a real college you can avoid all of the gen ed classes at the uni which is where professors go to die. and you can just focus on degree courses which is where professors go out of passion. Granted, you'll still just be a number and most of what you do still won't matter but at least you'll matter a little more walking through the door. To those who have not experienced College yet, i hope this helps you on your journey. To those who have gone already and have survived, i hope this has provided you a laugh or at the very least a subtle head nod in acknowledgement that you experienced some of the same problems i did.

Global Warming and Other, related horse shit

If you've lived on this planet for the last three years i guarantee you've heard about the heated debates. People making claims that the human race is destroying the world and, causing the polar ice caps to melt because my 2003 Ford Taurus doesn't run as clean as the next guy's SMART car or the other guy's Prius. Well all i have to say to that is at least i can keep some sliver of my dignity driving my granny car as opposed to driving one of those overpriced scams, but that's a discussion for another time.

Today i wanted to brush over some of my personal opinions regarding this situation and others related to it in keeping the tradition of my blog's name. The first thing i'd like to go over is that science has already proven in multiple studies that the temperature and the polarities of the planet shift in cycles. the temperature regions of the earth go in a somewhat sinusoidal wave with just about everything. we go into a great freeze, then we go into a great heat, and flip it back around, these changes take place over a very long period of time and the last time we hit a great freeze it pre-dated modern meteorology so there was no science dictating that there was something genuinely wrong with the climates until one year everything started to freeze worse than anything the human race had ever seen before.

This same concept applies for the temperature variations that we experience in the world. For instance, anyone with a basic understanding of Cosmology of Astrology would know that there are two things known as a solar maximum and a solar minimum. The times when the sun is furthest and closest to the earth thus causing it to become warmer or colder those years depending on which one it is. 2012 happens to mark a solar maximum, so expect your summers to be exceedingly hot and then expect a 7 year cool-down period until the solar minimum at which point we will start to climb (over 11 years) back to the next solar maximum. Why is it 7 years from a max to a min and 11 the other way around? don't ask me but i'm guessing it has something to do with gravitational pulls and the cycle of the planets in our system.

Knowing this small tidbit of information sheds light to some of the interesting occurrances that we've been seeing on this planet.

1. It may just be natural that the planet is finally peaking out out the wave from it's last great freeze.
2. Point 1 combined with the fact that we're hitting a solar maximum could easily account for the record high heats we've experienced in 2011 and the even higher ones that are sure to come in 2012

The next interesting topic i'd like to discuss would be the common misconception that if every country on the planet were to fire every nuke they had at the same time and they all went off at the same time, that we could essentially destroy the planet three times over or some shit. Well, i hate to say it but as the late great George Carlin would have put it: "It's all bullshit people, and it's bad for you."

Let's start off by saying that there have been some half-dozen notable extinction events in the history of the planet so far as we know. One of them, which is credited with wiping out the dinosaurs released a whopping 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, which comes out to to roughly 81,340 nuclear missiles (that's rounding up from just under 81,339 & 3/4). Giving the human species the benefit of the doubt, there are only an estimated 22,000 nuclear missiles (strategic and non-strategic combined) spread across all of the countries that currently have them. If that's not realistic and factual enough for your tastes, the Chicxulub Crater at the Yucatan Peninsula in Southeastern Mexico was caused by an asteroid impact that had a yield of roughly 119,617 nuclear warheads and yet all we have to speak for it is a crater that is 110 miles in diameter and probably no more than 2 or 3 miles deep (there is no official depth so far as i can tell).

How people gathered the idea that we could destroy the entire planet three times over with 1/6th the number of nukes required to make a 110 mile in diameter hole in the ground is beyond me. Never the less, people eat up this information like it's candy and then spread it around till all we have is a misinformed public.

Finally i want to touch on the organic foods movement. In my humble opinion, if you're buying into the organic foods movement, you're not only a sap, but you're letting them rob you blind. Organic foods by definition are foods that are grown with less pesticides and less synthetic growth hormones or any of that dandy stuff. Yet they decide to charge you more for the food that was grown without the pesticides that keep bugs from shitting on it. buying into that money making machine is like walking up to someone and handing them your wallet, watch and phone and turning the other way. I mean really, it's just like fast food joints that charge extra for REMOVING toppings from the burger. You're going to charge me more for less? I'm sure we'd all shout that they're out of their freakin minds and never go back, which is exactly why fast food joints stopped doing that with the turn of the century.

What's your take on all of this? i want to hear some feedback from you guys, i welcome all the hostility you've got, because frankly i don't care if you don't agree with me, we're all entitled to our own, individual opinions. It's what makes us unique, because god knows our fashion choices aren't.

The Social Networking Disease

It happened to MySpace and it's happening again to Facebook now. People flock to a new social network because it is the popular fad at the time. The original intention of every social networking website is to connect friends, whether it be over long distances or short. For any specific number of reasons. For instance, take the fact that Facebook started off as a small netowking app for the university Zuckerberg went to so that he could network with his lap partners and friends easier and pass information that way.

After a while though, when the crazy mobs catch wind of these applications they occupy it and they start using it, and it explodes. Look at MySpace, when it first started it was bulky, clunky, had an ugly UI, and you could hardly do anything. However with the pallets of cash they were hauling in from the masses using their website and hitting their ads, the were able to massively improve upon it until there were a wide variety of features, the UI was streamlined and the website ran like a ferrari. But people got bored with it. We are in the era of instant gratification. If we can't get what we want right now, and it doesn't keep us entertained for a long time, we'll move on to the next big thing.

Thus, facebook was just at the right place at the right time. People moved from MySpace to facebook almost overnight. Which skyrocketed facebook into fame and gave them huge amounts of cash, It was the first to introduce developer tools so that not just big named companies who had the capital and importance to take to other corp execs, could purchase adspace about whatever they want. It was a double win for facebook. The advertisers paid for the adspace and then facebook got paid extra per hit to their website. Not unlike the way youtube runs. Facebook has had a couple good running years but i'm afraid it's time is coming very quickly. Here's why:

1) The first telltale sign was the over-monetization of facebook. The desperate attempts by Facebook Inc, to make money on every possible facet of facebook was the first sign. The first plague of facebook if you will. This included the facebook currency that was required for almost any of the facebook games if you wanted to have a fair and enjoyable playing experience. What's that? you want fluid mouse control like any normal video game? that'll cost you 25 facebook points. What's that? you want tomorrow's horoscope before tomorrow? That will be 15 Facebook points.

2) The second telltale sign which has only emerged in recent weeks is the desperation by a large group of the community to get as much attention placed on them as possible. Usually this is taken in the form of those "Like if you..." status's where they have a picture of something they want you to remember, notice or agree with. This, in specific will end up pushing the majority of the facebook community away. The people who don't care for that and don't like to see nothing but a wall plastered with it, will end up leaving Facebook for a new service in a few months.

When MySpace met it's demise, it was because of a lack of content or support and because it had so many security holes, it looked like a number 9 sponge. The same thing is happening to Facebook at an accelerated rate. Advertisements that are being posted put virus's and spyware on your computer, profile apps require access to everything to do something as simple as tell you what 1+1 is. Seriously, i'd be shocked and awed if someone could tell me one app on facebook that didn't require access to your friends list and/or your posting functions before you could use it. On top of that, whether the app is a virus lying in dormant or an actual legitimate app is a bit of a coin toss and there's no real way to discern the two.

I Feel that the under-aged public tends to destroy these social networking sights left and right, and Facebook's near future demise has been predicted by many before me and i certainly won't be the last. The only question is: What will the next big social network be? and Will it succumb to the corporate machine that has monetized and destroyed the last two generations?

The Monty Hall Effect

If you've played an Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) in the last two years, you've experienced it first hand.  MMO's have become almost a plague to the video game market in the past few years starting with the global sensation World of Warcraft.

When MMO's originally came out, it was all about the challenge. It created such a sensation of accomplishment attaining what is referred to within the communities as "end game". End game is simply the point at which you reach the end of the level cap for that MMO and the real fun begins within the MMO as you are forced to work with other people collectively to defeat the real challenges in the game. Games like World War 2 Online, Everquest, and Ultima Online all harnessed this, leveling to end game could be a long (in some cases, years of your life hard spent), and arduous (in some games [Everquest] if you died, you lost all of your gear and in worst case scenarios you even lost levels that took you days to earn) journey which only sweetened the taste of victory once you made it.

It also stepped up the feeling of mortality as when you died it was a seriously significant loss. In some cases, tens to hundreds of thousands of in-game dollars (back before there was such as thing as micro-transactions) and weeks of work in collecting items to craft your armor, earn that money lost, or gain the levels lost. I would like to refer to this group of MMO's as first generation. These were the games that explored the genre first (after MUD's of course) and they were the most difficult to play and the most rewarding. There was no easy way around playing these games and if you were getting to end game it took determination and dedication to keep playing for long periods of time with no breaks.

2nd generation would be your MMO's such as World of Warcraft Vanilla, Everquest 2, and others that came out around the same time. It was roungly from 2004-2007 if i had to make any estimated guesses. I would consider 2nd generation to be the golden era of MMO gaming. It is now long over, just like 1st generation and will never be found again, however it was an amazing time to be part of the MMO movement while it lasted. Originally these games combined the best difficult aspects of generation one while doing away or easing up the negative difficulty aspects of 1st generation. This included things such as the ability to keep all of your equipment and the removal or decreasing of experience lost when you pass away.

2nd generation was not all good though. A lot of the MMO's that came out during 2nd generation either entered the world as what are commonly referred to as Monty Hall games or became Monty Hall games. This all started with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese free-to-play MMO's and the introduction of something called Micro-transactions which we'll get more into later. Most of the blame however is to be placed on the insane popularity that the MMO world had gained due to World of Warcraft's massive success. When World of Warcraft was originally developed and released in 2004, it became an instant success. An extremely large world that buffered entire continents at once, no load screens unless changing from one continent in the world to the other, the world was massive, thousands of quests, deep storylines, plenty of challenge to boot, and awesome looking gear for your players. Not to mention that the difficulty curve grew exponentially as did the strength of your equipment.

As World of Warcraft prepared for it's first ever expansion Burning Crusades it had already reached a player base of well over 8 million unique accounts. We'll call this original 8 million the foundation. The foundation was comprised of old and new players alike. Old players from Everquest who were disgruntled that Sony had them purchase every expansion for EQ1 only to re-release ALL of the content, with an updated graphics engine in one bundle for the price of one game, as well as newcomers to the scene who had heard about the challenge that MMO's had to offer and wanted to try it for themselves. Those who enjoyed the difficulty and accomplishment of reaching end game stayed for it, those who didn't like the challenge left to play something else.

These players who opted out of the foundation didn't leave before sending several written complaints each to Blizzard HQ, mostly saying that it's too hard, unplayable, and unenjoyable. Unfortunately, Bizzard, being desperate for money (WoW was their last ditch effort to keep from closing their doors for good. It was their attempt to roll a hard six) listened to all of these complaints and leveled out the difficulty curve, unbalanced the game to favor popular classes, implemented welfare epics, and made dungeons mindlessly easy. This marked the turning point where Generation 3 begins. Generation 3 is still continuing today and appears to be going steady and becoming more and more popular.

3rd generation MMO's started off with their primary focus on micro-transactions and the true catalyst was World of Warcraft. Towards midlife of World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard incorporated what have been dubbed as Welfare epics. Essentially, it was originally intended to make it so that complete newcomers to the game would have to spend less time between when they hit end-game and when they could start participating in current raids. Essentially all the player would have to do is, play every non-endgame dungeon once every day for a week and he would be fully outfitted in last seasons hottest items.

Coupled with welfare epics, Blizzard also decreased the difficulty curve of getting from start game to end game so significantly that instead of taking several months to hit endgame, a player could do it in about two weeks of playing four hours a day. Other video games, desperately trying to knock world of warcraft off of it's high horse, began popping up, almost xeroxing World of Warcraft with different names, items and worlds all failed swiftly under the giant's feet. Blizzard seeing this and acknowledging that i now had a player base of over 20 million players continued to unbalance the the player classes to the point where certain classes became unplayable and rode the wave of success as far as they could.

Enter late generation 3 MMO's. After so many MMO's had tried and failed at stopping the behemoth that World of Warcraft became, A few 3rd generation MMO's popped up that went back to basics, did their best not to duplicate World of Warcraft and are relatively successful compared to the rest of the graveyard. These games include games like Rift and SWOTR. The rest of the MMO's that failed or were on the verge of failing started a new trend of going free to play and focusing on Microtransactions. This list is dramatically larger now and includes Champions Online, Fallen Earth, Star Trek Online, Aion, Age of Empires Online, All Points Bulletin, and a long slew of others. These have become the modern propagators of the Monty Hall Effect.

In most of the Free to play MMO's their primary mode of earning revenue is by micro-transactions. As such, for the small fee of all your lunch money for a month, you can gain double xp, double cash, double health, mana and all of your stats, and armor that is unbeatable by anything you would normally find in the free world. This encouragement to make microtransactions has tainted the world of MMO's forever. However, those same people who were not part of WoW's foundation buy into it. and people like the ones in WoW's foundation are being to get a bad taste in their mouth because of how bad the world is becoming. So much so that World of Warcraft's subscriptions are back down to below the 10 million mile stone. The first to go were the foundation members who got sick and tired of the game's constant unbalance and lack of difficulty. Then the players who flocked to those attributes are beginning to lose interest because they are just not dedicated players. Period. End of story.

The intervention of Free to play has made it possible for so many MMO's to lay everything out on the table for people to check out, however, the introduction of real money markets in these games have turned them into nothing but monty halls, and money vacuums. There is no such thing as a genuine experience with MMO's now. In Star Trek Online, a player can get from begin game to end game in a weekend. They can purchase ships that have extra, better features than the standard issue ships and Cryptic is just riding the wave. Making no attempts to add any content. All Points Bulletin started as a pay to play with one of the first real, total real money markets meaning that you could buy ingame money for real money. Eve online, which started as a free to play, now has a legal trade network which is like Ebay where players can pay other players for game time, characters and ships.

My astonishment when people are actually willing to pay real money for digital items that will be gone faster than you can buy lunch is impalpable and i am further and further dissuaded from playing MMO's every day when i see the focus change from making a genuinely fun game to making a game that will reach out and grab hold of the first credit card it can then hold on for dear life. What's your take? have you ever played an MMO? Have you ever experienced the Monty Hall effect first hand? And how do you feel about it?

Hollywood Abuse

I went to see John Carter a second time about a week ago, being one of the few people who didn't think it was a terrible movie i guess. I wasn't intending to see it again but I got the movie times mixed up with another local theater and ended up missing the movie I had originally intended to see. I hadn't originally seen the movie in 3D and quite frankly didn't intend on watching it in 3D because i find the whole concept a scam.

It didn't come as a shock to me when i realized that the movie, with the exception of one scene, wasn't filmed for 3D. However it did get me thinking on the concept of the different constructs that Hollywood uses like they're going out of style. 3D being the shining piece of fecal matter atop the pile.

It's a well known and well satired fact that Hollywood loves to make cliches. They catch a line in a certain movie that works really well, or a certain story point and it becomes an industry standard for the ages. One of the most recent one's i've seen was the cliche of a man who shows a picture of his sweetheart back home to anyone during war will most certainly die before the end of the film. I'm almost positive that this Cliche originated in the long stream of World War 2 movies that came out during and after the fact. It added drama back in, but now it almost becomes comical.

My friends and I went to see Red Tails a month ago and not only did it scream cliches from the start, it delivered on them. By the time we were 10 minutes into the movie we were placing bets on which cliches were going to happen and when. There is a man in the movie who falls in love with an Italian girl who is apparently oblivious to the war going on around them, and he begins bragging about her to all of his squad mates. Sure enough *spoiler alert* he dies by the end of the movie. He's one of the half dozen or so people to die from the allied fighter squadron.

Another clearly abused item is a writing style. The world famous author Homer, who wrote the Illiad, The Odyssey, and Perseus: The Hero of Ithaca, created a story structure called the hero's call. It begins as the hero minding his own business, going about his daily life, then he gets a call to action of some form, the story builds up to the climax, then settles back down into the ending. Recognizing this story arc is crucial for my next point: IT IS THE STORY ARC STRUCTURE FOR EVERY MOVIE EVER PRODUCED BY HOLLYWOOD. with the exception of a handful of films who dared to be different and failed, that's how movies play out. If you don't believe me, watch your top 5 favorite movies, then your top 10 if you need more convincing. You'll be enamored by how consistent it is.

Let's take some random movies i can think of off the top of my head for example.

1. Dumb and Dumber: two friends who are rooming together can't hold a job to save their lives. Call to action is to leave the state and go somewhere else for a job. Climax: They end up thwarting a drug syndicate.
2. Lord of the Rings: Hobbit child is born to the bearer of the 1 ring to rule them all. Call to action: the ring must be destroyed and task is placed upon Hobbit, his fat hobbit friend, his two idiot hobbit friends, and an entourage of professional killers. Climax: book 1: Frodo gets stabbed by the nazghoul. Book 2: helms deep. Book 3: the return of Aragorn.
3. Unbreakable: average joe goes to work day in day out has a family to go home to every day. For some reason he can lift super-human amounts of weight and never gets sick. Call to action: get's harassed and eventually forced into his call to action by his arch nemesis. Climax: average joe finally buckles when his son tries to shoot him (vat a twist!)

Without beating the horse to death, i think i've made my point clear. Hollywood hashes, bashes and rehashes the same story arc dozens of times every year and it never phases anyone.

Finally there's the topic of 3D movies. Does anyone else remember when the only good quality 3d was IMAX? or when the only thing IMAX showed were educational videos about sperm whales that costed hundreds of thousands of dollars? I sure do. I also remember when Real3D was first released and the movies for it were actually recorded in 3D. But now companies record movies traditionally because it's cheaper, then adapt them to 3D to milk more money out of the gravy train.

I know the most immediate opposition would be that it's not true, the extra money that goes into every ticket is to counter the cost of the glasses. I'll play the devils advocate for a minute and give you that point. Even so, with the mass production of those standardized, ABS Plastic, polarized 3D glasses, each pair probably only costs companies about buck in total. They tack on 2-3 bucks to RENT the glasses which you're expected to return after the movie so they can sterilize them, and repackage them for a quarter then hand them out again. Tell me those figures add up and i'll show you to someone with a 4th grade math education.

No matter how you slice the pie, there's still a wad of cash that doesn't go towards recycling these glasses. With the pathetic wages movie theater employees get paid, it certainly isn't going towards them. Besides, their wages are covered in standard ticket fees. It's not like they get bonuses for selling 3D tickets, or i promise you they'd be strong arming you into the 3d showings as much as possible. So where does the extra $1.80 per recycled pair of glasses go? You tell me because i've already got my ideas of where but i'm always open to suggestions.