Like many gamers, I had my first experience with credit at the local arcade. You remember arcades, I hope, they were places where our kind got together in person to share the gaming experience. We were young and our only steady income was from lawn mowing or being a paperboy (coincidentally vocational training was available) and when we dropped a quarter into the slot, the machine let us know that we were issued One Credit and encouraged to press Start.

Now, twenty years later credit has come full circle, and is now going to be issued to gamers in advance in the form of the World of Warcraft Visa card. Issued from the First National Bank of Omaha, gamers (well, WoWers anyway) who lay down they names on the signature strip will get 1% back on their purchases in the form of gametime.

I, as my most loyal of Riders know, am not a WoW citizen. While I am a fan of the colorful Warcraft universe dating back to time I spent with Tides of Darkness getting hammered over Battle.Net, I have philosophical objections to the MMO genre, of which I will bore you for just a few moments.

It’s not a new argument, it’s the one that looks at endless grinding and unsatisfactory conclusions and says ‘I don’t play games that feel more like work, and I certainly won’t pay for the privilege.’ Just let me note for disclosure’s sake that I do have a level 20 Guild Wars character, although I haven’t seen it in about a year so who knows if it is still out there.

But back to the point.

What does it mean for a person to carry the World of Warcraft Visa? I suppose the most prevalent (and most ridiculous) concern would be the ‘outing’ of the card holder as a gamer. (Note that this person would also now be recognized as the kind of gamer for who time and money is no serious object, but I choose not to make distinctions between people within the gamer community (at least not this way.)) The cardholder would announce to the Best Buy blueshirt, or the flaired Chotchkie’s waitress with the leatherette receipt folder, their allegiance to the Horde.

What would be their reaction, would they recognize it? Would they laugh out of their own ignorance? Would they complement, perhaps acknowledging a shared experience? Would they even notice? Does it even matter what they think? Of course not. You, the WoW card holder, recognize that you are getting something of value to you for doing something (buying stuff) that you’re going to do anyway. You can call the card a badge of honor if you want, but it’s not the holding of it that’s important, it’s the existence of it.

Reward cards are not new concept, airline miles, gallons of gas and cold hard cash have been earned that way by debtors for years, but now the massive, faceless monolithic credit bureaus have looked down from their Delaware towers and discovered the two million Americans, more people that attended all eighty one Cleveland Indians home games last year, who have strode the plains of Azeroth for fifteen bucks a month.

These gamers are now a market force strong enough for the banks and credit bureaus it invest their own time and money in an attempt to reach them. Gamer’s are getting credit where it is due.

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Back of the Bus is © 2007 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.