[Editor's note: Writing machine Altered Beets takes a critical look at the growing issue of videogame companies wanting to take away our ownership over videogames. -- CTZ]

The latest move by EA and Take-Two may or may not be what we have interpreted from it. Subscription fees may refer to time-limited ownership of DLC, or even just an industry pipe-dream that won't actually come to fruition.

But what if we are reading this correctly? It certainly wouldn't be the first property to shift us away from the actual ownership of what we buy. DRM in Spore reduces the number of times you can install it, and this means as you buy more computers over your life-time, you will slowly be stripped of your right of ownership until you have a useless disk. Games are becoming increasingly dependent on DLC to fill out the package, although some DLC bashing is a little unjustified (patching has always been a good thing).

There is also more of a move against the used-games market in attempt to squash a quite lucrative industry. A game you own is being seen as a time-limited contract, not a piece of material that is yours to do with as you like. This is especially hard on the poor, who most often can afford games only thanks to the used-game industry. It has always been huge and has never been a hot-button issue until recent times. Now, it's suddenly a crisis. 

[Editor's note: Altered Beets made this awesome blog showing how Final Fantasy X fits into Jungian philosophy. I never knew about the Jungian philosophy before so it was nice learning about this in relation to videogames. -- CTZ]

NOTHIN' BUT SPOILERS AHEAD!!

I was loathe to try out Final Fantasy X for a long time Everyone hated that game.
Of course, people tend to hate every Final Fantasy game for the first year or two of its existence, but the hate for Final Fantasy X seemed to linger. Too much had changed. The Battle System didn't feel deep enough, the world was small and linear, the characters largely goofy. I mean, they made a game for nerds star a jock! If that doesn't spell bad marketing decision then I guess I just did. Like a moment ago. Right above this sentence. Pay attention, geeze.

The time when I played it first though was a particular moment in my life. I was just finishing my undergrad, and had taken my first film studies class. We were looking at the great Jungian film-makers, Fellini, Hitchcock, Kubrick. I was in a film analysis kind of mood, drawing on the terrible ideas of Joseph Campbell.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think Joseph Campbell did a great job on the original Star Wars script (JOKE). My problem is that, for such a superstar, I find his system insultingly broad. It fails the Popper test, in that it is unfalsifiable.

What's that you say? Slow down your moon-man language? Okay. Hit the jump to see what I'm talking about.