$60 a Month: Episode V
Christmas time can be curious for someone like me who is accustomed to buying his own toys. I figure that I work long hours to earn this money so while I certainly have financial obligations to meet, I also sort of owe it to myself to buy some fun stuff every once in a while. The purpose of $60 a Month is to maintain a steady stream of enjoyment without busting the bank but what do you do when you anticipate getting a pile of gifts in a few weeks?
In this case you’re about to see that without spending any more of my budget than is strictly necessary, I end up not really having much to report. A letdown from Gameznflix doesn’t help and ultimately the most exciting stuff happens outside the scope of $60 a Month with the gifts I received. Still, it’s not a big deal: It just means January will be epic.
Budget
This month I didn’t purchase any games for myself, due to Christmas. But that didn’t stop me from renting games or trading on Goozex. Let’s see how I did while not visiting the stores. Also keep in mind that gift games don’t go on the List, I put them below in Special Cases because they don’t count toward my budget experiment in any way.
The Game List
- Project Sylpheed
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
It’s a fun game and a worthwhile Goozex trade, although with so much other stuff available to play it’s true that this title falls under the “rainy day” category. I haven’t put that much time into it and it’s unlikely to see a lot of action until the well runs dry on new games, probably sometime around late summer. - NCAA Football 2008
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I’m certainly glad I picked this game up, but it’s by no means perfect. As a matter of fact, it’s good that I didn’t buy this game when it was released. By waiting less than six months I was able to get it in a very generous trade (I think it was around 500 Goozex points) and still got to play it while it remains relevant but didn’t have to worry about the cost busting my budget. I think future sports games will probably be handled in a similar fashion, especially since their trade-in value is so low at retail outlets. - Nanostray
Platform: Nintendo DS
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I don’t know that I’ve played enough to say if the handful of points I spent on it were worthwhile, but I’m pretty happy with it so far.
List Breakdown
Obviously the retail purchases are going to be light in a month where I didn’t do any spending, but the surprising part is the lack of Gameznflix rentals. I sent one game back early in the month and never got a replacement for it. See below for a more detailed examination of Gameznflix.
It’s kind of a sad list but it does exclude the gifts I received over the holidays and of course there was no real hit on the budget so next month should be a good one.
Sacrifices
I shipped out Dawn of War, Counter-Strike and MechAssault for the original Xbox and American McGee’s Alice, Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion and StarCraft for PC as Goozex trades. Since there wasn’t any other purchasing, I didn’t do any in-store trade-ins.
Special Cases
I got Assassin’s Creed and Contra 4 for Christmas, which don’t count toward the List but pushed me through since Gameznflix dropped the ball this month on the rentals. I also picked up the Chaos Space Marines Codex for 4th Edition and Rock Band as early birthday presents, so I’ll count them here.
Results
Despite my general understanding now about how Gameznflix operates and what I need to do in order to get games I actually want to play, it doesn’t help when none of the games in my queue get any cycles through the system. At this point I’ve had one open slot for three weeks and all three slots open for more than seven days. I feel this may be the final straw for GnF. Despite how good the deal seems on paper, of the 20 or so games I’ve rented from them, only three did I play from beginning to end (meaning those rentals saved me from the cost of purchase while the other rentals can be classified at best as “research”).
Number crunching seems to favor Gameznflix: The total subscription cost for half a year comes to just over $75, which is pretty good for the number of games I’ve been able to try. But unfortunately the service has degraded in the last few months and my requests for improvement have been either brushed aside or ignored. GnF has an attractive pricing model but until they iron out some of their kinks, I can’t really recommend them at this time and I have, in fact, canceled my account.
Of course, I had to pay for December’s subscription so I ended up using $12.75 of my $60.14 leaving me with $47.39 to carry over to next month.
It may also be interesting to note that there is a very high likelihood that I’ll be using some gift cards and funds from the holidays and my birthday to pick up a PSP which ought to increase the variety around here if nothing else. Despite not having the hardware just yet, I’ve already requested a couple of games from Goozex so hopefully by the time I get the system I’ll already have something to play.