Monday, September 29, 2008

Video Games are Expensive

Raise your hand if you don't like video games. Raise your hand if you have too much money. Raise your hand if you don't have any hands.

Now, did anyone raise their hand? Wait, really? Please tell me it was for the third one! Oh... okay, well go away. Now for the rest of you. Would you like to save money AND still play new video games?



Cheap Ass Gamer Deals
Cheap Ass Gamer is a list of gaming deals. You get to buy games, and save money. This great website aggregates a bunch of ways you can buy video games cheap. Is Amazon selling Mass Effect for $35? Buy.com has 12 months of Xbox Live for $30? It's the SlickDeals of video games.

If you want to go a little deeper, you can browse through their gaming deals forum, lots of good stuff there as well. It's the FatWallet of video games.

Cheap Ass Gamer Game Trading
More Cheap Ass Gamer? Well, let's start calling it CAG for short. Another forum they have is a game trading forum. Don't trust mailing video games to random strangers on the internet in exchange for their promise that they'll mail you a game?

It's a good thing they have what's called an iTrader rating system. If you trade a game with someone, they give you feedback. It is essentially the eBay system, with no buying or selling. Wait, but people do buy and sell there too. There's no official safeguards in place, but gennerally whoever has less feedback ships first.

I have done a bunch of trades through this, and highly recommend it. Paying $4 shipping everytime you want to trade a game that you're done playing is so much better than paying $50 to buy that new game.



GameFly
If you don't know what Netflix is, you probably haven't heard of the internet. I never knew there was a print version of Table Salt Games... Anyhow, if you don't know, the way it works is this:

The entire catalog is online, and you add to a digital queue, or list of games you want, and they mail them to you. You have one or two out at a time, and as you return them, they mail you new ones. It's amazing.

Now, when I saw it's amazing, I mean Netflix is amazing, and I assume Gamefly works the same way, in all of its awesomeness.



Your Public Library
Did you know that you can check out video games from the public library. This one only works if you live in East Brunswick, NJ. At least, so Dr. Celestino tells me.

Old Video Games
Buying games that are one generation old is really cheap. If you go farther back, they're collector's items, but just one generation back, and they're old news, and people will get rid of them cheap. Graphics aren't good enough for you? They were for everybody else a few years ago.

If you're low on cash, but an Xbox, or a Playstation, hell, even a PS2, or a Gamecube. Play all the games you want, and pay roughly 10% of what all of your classier friends are paying. They'll make fun of you, but you'll have the last laugh, when you can afford non-ramen dinner. (Btw, if you're making fun of ramen, we're not friends)

Stealing
Stealing is wrong. And free.

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.

11 comments:

ultima301 said...

Yeah I've been using CAG / slickdeals for a while, good way to get cheap stuff. What I like about Gamefly is they eventually sell their games (used previously as rentals) for dirt cheap - I got Devil May Cry 4 for $20 only a couple months after its release. Comes good as new in case and with a manual. And yeah, if you haven't completely explored the PS2's amazing games library, it's not too late, and everything for it is $10-20 if not cheaper. A masterpiece like Shadow of the Colossus selling for $20 just seems like a sin to me.

Richard R. said...

@ultima301:

Wait what? Shadow of the Colossus for $20? SHOW ME! I wantz it. ICO as well.

Anonymous said...

video games are really expensive... But GameFly is best place for online rental video games. They provides fresh stuff...

Anonymous said...

Why not you try this type of video games .I found it cheap.

TheNightgaunt said...

What I'm interested in and looking into is what this current change in the economy's going to do to the gaming industry. Video games are a luxury and a pricy one as you've pointed out. Trends in investing will change and so will many companies' policies.
What will a trend towards "low risk" investments do to the video game industry?

The flashier games these days are multimillion dollar projects. So might we see a reduction in the number of games going into production? And what'll that do to the independent developer's? Will it kill their chances or give new programmers a opening to get their stuff out there?

Anonymous said...

@ultima301:
Ah yes, buying from Gamefly, forgot to mention that aspect of it. Sadly, I've never played Shadow of the Colossus. Watched a bunch of it though, looks amazing.

@TheNightGaunt:
I hadn't thought of that; interesting. I can't imagine that the resulting change would be good in any situation, but I suppose we'll have to see which end of the video game spectrum gets hurt more.

Richard R. said...

@thenightgaunt:

Surprisingly, the gaming industy is booming right now despite the economy. One possible reason for this is that people are looking for an outlet to deal with the troubles of the economy, and they are looking at video games. During the Great Depression, the movie industry also did pretty well. There might be a trend with bad economic times and entertainment.

Why does this mean for the industry? IMO, the big guys (EA, Activision, etc) will be fine and still make big games. However, the small and upstart developers may only take the "low risk" casual game route since they don't have the resources to fall back on during an economic crisis.

So yeah, video game production might suffer. Though that won't stop GTA8000 and Guitar Rock Band Hero X37 from coming out at their schedule times.

Anonymous said...

@Richard:

Hey, I already said it's going to be called Guitar Band Revolution 36: World Tour of Rock

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