Some may disagree, but video games are beginning to become an upper class, luxury hobby rivaling even some of the most expensive of nerd hobbies like Warhammer or Magic: The Gathering, both of which that can eat through your wallet faster than the Flash runs. As it currently stands, the price of a current console game nets you $60 without tax for a game that can involve anywhere from ten to over one hundred hours of gameplay. The games that barely take more than a day to finish are hardly worth their price tag, but that’s a rant for another day. My biggest concern with the price of video games comes not from the game itself, but rather with the cost to continue to enjoy the game.

Lets look at a game that I think serves as the most extreme examples of how expensive video games are becoming, Dragon Age: Origins. The first Dragon Age game hit shelves in November of 2009 for the normal $60 price tag. New copies of the game included the Stone Prisoner DLC, a $15 value and not a bad bonus perk for purchasing a sixty dollar game; however, right at launch, there was a second content package available for purchase that would cost you $7 to play. I ended up purchasing this content partly because I had been enjoying the game, partly because I wanted to have more game to play, and partly because I felt that $7 wasn’t too much more to pay for the sixty dollar game I just bought. For used copies of the game, an extra $22 was needed to play through all of the content, but having bought the game new I was content with the amount of money I spent on the game.

It wasn’t long after I had finished playing that more content was announced. Over the next ten months, five more extra content packs and one full expansion were released totaling $76 for the available extra content and $136 to play through everything the game had to offer (plus around $15 if you didn’t buy the game new).

But while the ever climbing prices of video games continues to plague the industry, there is still hope. Those who are patient, unlike me, can wait for a “game of the year” or ultimate edition to be released which usually come prepackaged with most, if not all, of the (normally separately purchased) additional content. The game tends to keep its $60 price point, but does not bear the burden of an additional $20-30 to play through all of the game.

The folks who are like me and don’t want to wait an additional six to eight months for a more full release can try to wait for the extremely rare sales on the extra content that maybe happen once every year or two. It is not uncommon for a one to two year old game to keep the prices of its additional content at the same price point without any sort of special pricing or sale ever happening. Most games will put their content on sale maybe once (not once in a year, but once) with no future plans of lowering prices again.

My last point about this is probably one of the most OCD issues I can have with DLC but it must be mentioned otherwise my wife will have to listen to me rant about it again, achievements. I play my games on an Xbox which means I have access to all of the Xbox Live achievements for every available game. Those who know me and my gaming habit would call me an “achievement whore”, someone who pretty much does whatever is needed to accomplish every achievement in the game. When DLC is released, it is typically added to the list of needed achievements to obtain to 100% the game even if you do not own the DLC. Let me explain this using my favorite (note my sarcasm) example, Batman: Arkham City. While I loved the game, I quickly found that unless I had pre-ordered the game at Best Buy to receive the promotional code for the extra downloadable Robin content (which is still unavailable for a separate purchase), I could NOT accomplish all obtainable achievements. Imagine my OCD nerdrage.

I hope that the video game industry will soon stop catering to the wealthier people of the world but for now we broke, poor, and cheap gamers are stuck missing out on a large chunk of what we love to do. Until then, I’ll keep playing the same copy of Minecraft that hasn’t released any expensive additional content.