Ever walk into Gamestop with the intent to trade in your special ultra pre-order copy of a game with a platinum-coated case and golden disk, only to get two dollars back? Did that make you really really angry? Well I wouldn’t know because I’ve been using Goozex for the past three years or so. A Goozex is an extinct dinosaur I worked some Jurassic Park mojo on in order to… Actually Goozex is an online community and interface for trading and buying games using a point system.
Wait, what? A point system? Goozex uses a point scale to judge the worth of games in fifty point increments and a one hundred points to five dollar conversion rate. This system actually correlates fairly well with real world prices and the value of games are determined as such, or in the case of older and rarer games, through community discussion. Now at one point some genius decided that users should be able to buy gamers for two thousand points. If your math skills are better than mine you should know without a calculator that is a hundred dollars! However, an equally intelligent man decided that was a bad idea and you can now buy new games for straight up cash at the usual release price. Due to the point system, you will often find games correlate well to their real world value. Older and rarer games will often be cheaper than you could find for used or new online.
A well devised point system is nice and all, but the act of the trade is what will make or break the Goozex system. To trade, you list a game of yours as an offer or request a game from someone with three wear and tear conditions. There’s an option for 1. full package for the case, disk, and manuals, 2. disk plus manual for the ten people in the world that still read the manuals, and 3. disk only if you really don’t care about frills or thrills and just want to play the game. The selection of the game condition does not affect the point cost of the game at all. The system will then make a match and you will either get the game in the mail or have the option of buying a shipping label and sending your game out. You can always take care of your own postage as well if you’re one of those E Bay masterminds with a miniature shipping facility in your closet. Upon shipping confirmation you will receive your points and then the recipient will give you positive or negative feedback. Maybe they will even give you a tip for excellent service (Girls seal your bubble mailers with a kiss!). Transaction complete!
Naturally this kind of system has some of the issues that any online trading system has. Thankfully, in the event of a trade gone south Goozex has enough in place to refund your points. Then you can slap that jerk with some almighty negative feedback! They will forever be game trader outcasts shunned by society. There is also a waiting time to get or send your game and this is just an inherit issue with the system. If a game is new or very popular, not many people will be sending it out so I hope you are a patient man. Likewise, if a game is very old or unpopular you will be waiting for the one guy to clean out his attic to send it off. Some games are just not desired anymore and you may be better off taking the game to Ebay or elsewhere. There are tradeoffs here. One day you’ll be waiting for Uranus (Not to be confused with your mother’s) to orbit the Sun for a game. The next day you’ll get a trade matched up instantly. Oh, and Goozex has to make their money somehow so they charge you a petty sum for tokens to use for game requests.
The site has clearly evolved over the last few years for the better. Well, minus the mascot. The mascot is still as ugly ever. Seriously that’s some weird character right there. If dinosaurs actually looked like that then it’s no surprise they went extinct! Now it’s immediately obvious on the site how to sign up, you even have your social networking features available to you. Accessing the list of games is as easy as search or drop down menu with icons in case you only remembered the box art for some reason. You can also sort by most available, requested, genre, even movies now. Everything feels very intuitive and simple to figure out at a glance. It’s user-friendly and certainly won’t scare off any newcomer. It takes hardly a few seconds to request a game or tell the site you have one to trade. The entire process is very simple and quick minus the wait times for games.
So there’s Goozex for you. I’m not going to turn a blind eye to any faults a system run by peers has and believe me in your stay you will find something that annoys you, be it the waiting times or that one user who screwed you out of five hundred points you’ll curse till the day you die. However, Goozex is one of the most reliable and cheapest places to find old hard copies of your favorite games. That fact alone, in my mind, makes up for any flaws the site may have.
7/7
