As if irlGirls can get even shorter and lighter.

Since I probably won't have time to give you a full irlGirl again this week (hey, irlGirl also has an irlJob... duh!), I'm once again going "lite."

Next week: irlGirl Ultra-Lites, 100s and special Turkish blend.

But seriously, this came up between my husband and me last week over breakfast at our favorite Sunday morning diner. He cruises the newspaper ads while I read the rest of the paper.

He looked up from his beloved Best Buy circular and noted that next-gen games cost around $60.

"Yeah?" I said, "and the internet is a series of tubes..."

"No, seriously," he replied. "Think about it. When the PS2 came out, games were $30 to $40... maybe $45. Now they're $60, and when the PS3 debuts figure those will be around $75 to $85 each. Games are actually getting MORE expensive."

"Depressing, m'love, but it makes sense," I said. "They take more money to make now. Just a depressing fact of life."

And then he made a very interesting observation. One I cannot argue with, and one that makes me want game prices to go sky-high. I'm talking $100 to $200 each. I want them to be so expensive they hurt your teeth. I want them so expensive your grandkids won't be able to afford college.

Why?

I'll tell you after the jump....

So, you ask, why do I want games to be mind-numbingly, eye-poppingly, jaw-droppingly expensive?

Why do I want you, gentle gamer, to have to decide between buying food, paying your phone bill, and buying the lastest title?

Because I'm selfish, that's why. And the cost of games skyrocketing out of control can only help me. Oh, it sucks for you. But it's very, very good for me.

Here's the hubby's observation that made me realize this fact:

Back in the PS2 days, I could go to Gamestop or any retail game outlet and find any number of new releases for about the price of a large pizza, a salad and a pitcher of beer. Because they were relatively inexpensive, it was easy to randomly pick up a case, read the back, see the pretty graphics and story, and buy it on a whim.

For many of us, games at that price were impulse buys. Most of us didn't thoroughly research each and every title we bought. We knew some were good, and we bought those. Others stunk, and we avoided those. But the vast majority were somewhere in the middle, and those were wobblers. We might just pick one up and play it, if only to see if it just might be fun.

If we chose wrong, we were disappointed, but we didn't feel completely ripped off. We played a bad game for a while then turned around and sold it back to the store, and we recovered, maybe, 10 percent of our purchase price, if we were lucky. We weren't happy, but it wasn't financially devastating.

Now that games are $60, we are a lot more choosey. Most new titles are researched by consumers a whole lot more, and I don't know about you, but I'm much less likely to take a chance on a game I've heard nothing about when the price of a mistake is less like the cost of a pizza night and more like a night on the town.

Even so, we may occasionally take a chance if the price is closer to $40 or if it's a sequel to a game we've liked before.

Oh, we still occasionally take a spin at the dice table of gaming and indulge in an impulse buy without research. Sometimes we make our number, and sometimes we crap out. When we lose, we just chastize ourselves a little more than we would had the game been cheaper. Still, we're out money -- we're mad at ourselves for being a jackass for making the mistake, but we're not talking about a budget-busting loss.

As games have gotten more expensive, something else directly related has happened: The emergence of the gaming blog. Especially independent gaming blogs -- like, oh, I don't know... Gamer Andy, perhaps -- who aren't part of a corporate conglomerate and, therefore, aren't serviced sexually by publishers in order to sway opinions.

The increased research of new games has resulted in more of you going to sites like ours to check out whether you're making a mistake with your $60. And that means we get "paid" more.

And by "paid," I mean the special currency that keeps us writing and researching and podcasting. Nobody pays us for our opinions but you, the reader. And our payment is your attention.

We work cheap.

Now consider: Games go to $70, $80, $90 or -- my knees buckle a bit at even considering this -- $100 per title. Nobody but those of us with stupid amounts of disposable income is going to even think about buying any game on impulse.

Only the legendary "buttdart" can afford to make that kind of mistake.

As with any big-ticket buys, we will not take chances. This won't be a candy-while-standing-in-the-checkout-line kind of purchase. When you're talking a significant portion of your disposable recreation income, you'll research each title the way you research buying a new car.

And thus -- for purely selfish reasons -- I secretly hope games get more expensive, because sites like GamerAndy are going to explode with new viewers. More of you will wait until you download our and others' podcasts and read our and others' reviews before purchasing a new game.

You will not run out and buy a game on a whim. More of you will read the Widget, and AllGames and, yes, GamerAndy.

And -- per our established payment terms of wanting only your attention -- we will be, as it were, "paid more." Gamer sites will wield unfathomable power to make or break titles. And the "bad" sites -- the ones that are too attached to the gaming industry -- will soon make asses of themselves. You, as a consumer, will learn very quickly whose opinions you can trust and whose you can't.

And, let's face it, you can trust the independent guy.

So I'm offically offering up my deep, heartfelt appreciation to Sony, Sega, Nitendo, Take Two, EA, Microsoft, Bethesda and every other link in the gaming industry chain. They keep pumping up prices, and we indy gaming writers keep getting more power, more eyes, and more of a chance to actually make some real money -- all because of their greed.

Keep it up guys! You're doing a fine job.