Not Available for Rent

I don't know if you know it, but I'm not much of a movie guy. I just don't like the prospect of sitting in front of a screen for an hour and a half to two hours at a time. I just don't have that sort of attention span. But everyone knows someone who's a huge movie buff.

So anyway, those people that are big DVD collectors, they don't make much sense to me. I like to watch a movie one time, and if I want to see it again, I'll seek it out. But owning a copy of a movie just seems like a huge waste of time for me.

This is where rentals come in. Most regular, sane people get their movies, at least sometimes, via some sort of rental service. Some people use "on demand" services that are provided via cable or satellite providers. Others, like me, use Netflix, weather it's "instant Netflix" or the regular old discs in the mail deal (of which I do both). The real old fashioned way is to go to your local video store and rent a movie. This third option has seriously declined in recent years, mainly because of the services I mentioned above. That's all fine and dandy, but it got me thinking, what about video games? Sure, there's a service out there, called Gamefly, that rents video games through the mail, like Netflix, but I think it's pretty expensive and not really worth it, if I remember correctly.

I was thinking about this because we had tried to go to our nearest Hollywood Video to rent a game or two, and the place was closed down. There is just not a whole lot of places in town to rent a movie, or more importantly, video games, anymore. There was a Blockbuster on West End Ave. that closed down and is a Pinkberry now. I know of one Blockbuster, and I don't really want to go there, because I hate Blockbuster. But at this point, if I want to rent a video game, what choice do I have?

Another thing, movies on DVD or Blu-Ray are relatively cheap still, where as video games are at least $50, but usually $60. I can't afford that shit, man. I refuse to pay that. I want to rent, but with the decline in video stores, it dragged the options for renting games down with it. And that sucks.