Frugal Gamers Wedded to Mail Order Internet Options

As anybody who has purchased a video game or two in the last few years knows, gaming is quite the expensive hobby. With games starting at around $40, in order to maximize your budget you have to spend very wisely. When 800 games come out a week in the heavy holiday months of October, November, and December, only being able to buy one game a month can really cramp a gamer’s style. Today, Spectator continues its look at how you can be a fiscally responsible gamer by looking at a number of gaming rental services.

GameFly, $22.95 a month for two games out at a time, gamefly.com
All the services examined in this article are of the mailbox-rental type—basically, think Netflix but with games in the envelopes instead of movies. GameFly is the most popular and the largest of these services, offering over 6,000 games for systems from the Nintendo DS to the PlayStation 3. Just go to GameFly’s snappily designed Web site, add a list of titles you are interested in, and GameFly delivers those games to your Lerner mailbox within three or four days. With a recently opened shipping center in Pittsburgh, turnaround times have been steadily improving—a game shipped on Wednesday will be in your hands as early as Friday night. GameFly is fairly priced, but it also has no customer support hotline, meaning all interaction you have with the company (and you will have interactions, though rare—lost games, damaged games, and suspiciously missing games you mailed back to GameFly from that mailbox on 116th and Broadway all need to be addressed) will be via e-mail.

Gamerang, $24.95 a month for two games out at a time, gamerang.com
Gamerang is newer than GameFly and only has about 4,500 titles to show for itself, but they are known for their excellent customer service and lightning-fast shipping times—they have a warehouse in New Jersey that they use to ship to New York. They are more expensive than GameFly on their base plans, and if you want to upgrade to three or four games out at a time, the costs suddenly skyrocket—especially when you factor in Gamerang’s bizarre $75 security deposit. Still, if you stick to two games out at a time, Gamerang is a good service. Their Web site is not as nice as GameFly’s, so queue management is a little messier.

GameznFlix, $12.99 for two games out at a time, gameznflix.com
Consider this a last resort for broke gamers. Really, just look at the service name—they pluralize games with a Z, contract the word “and” to an N, and stunt flicks to “flix.” Though you can rent movies from these guys in addition to games, they never have anything in stock, their Web site is a complete mess, and the turnaround times are longer than an Orgo exam. Try them out if you’re really desperate.