In the ongoing quest to get more things for less money, the Internet has proven itself time and time again as a bridge between those who have and those who have not. Remember the guy who started with a paper clip and worked his way up to a whole house? In terms of gaming, it comes down to games I want to trade for the games I want to play. In my own search, I’ve come across two sites that promise to help facilitate that.

The first site I came across is GameSwap.com. I’ve been using them since February, 2007. The idea is simple; I list games I do not want, trade them with other people for a set amount of credits, and then use that credit to buy games I do want. It works brilliantly, until it doesn’t.

My first strike against GameSwap is that the site is built completely in Flash. I loathe Flash sites. Unwilling to hold that against them, I signed up anyway because it worked, most of the time. Occasionally, I’ll log in and there will be no interface. Once I was asked to log in and confirm a trade only to find that there were no buttons to click to actually confirm it. Thankfully, I came back later and there it was, just as it should be. Another problem is that the “Back” button in your browser doesn’t work… You can’t bookmark pages, you can’t easily go back, and sometimes it takes a while for a page to load properly. Haven’t they heard of AJAX or even JavaScript? C’mon… I should point out that I did complain about this once, after the problem with the “confirm” button, and was told that they are working on a strict HTML version which made me happy.

Almost immediately after signing up and listing my games, I was being asked to send out old PC games, some PlayStation games I had lying around, an XBox game, and a copy of FarCry for Wii which I couldn’t sell on eBay for even half the retail price. In no time at all, I’d built up a sizable amount of credit and started requesting games. Old games, new games, PC games, console games… the system was working flawlessly! Lately, though, not so much.

Like any social system, GameSwap relies heavily on its users to make the system work. If no one is trading any games, no one will be getting any games. You have to give before you can take but when there’s nothing to take, you start feeling a bit cheated. Now, I admit, I did deny a couple requests a month or so ago when I was strapped for cash and didn’t feel like getting up early to go to the post office. It’s not so bad when you have to send out one or two games, but when you start getting requests for four or five games at once, especially after you just sent a bunch out, the amount spent on shipping starts to add up. Even so, that’s nothing compared to the fact that I’m not getting ANY return on my investment! I’ve requested several older games for various systems as well as several newer games and have yet to get any more than one request filled for a game I didn’t even really want. The only reason I requested it was because I had about 23 credits saved up and was getting pretty antsy about letting them go to waste. One credit on GameSwap is worth $5, so you can see where I’m starting to get annoyed.

The bad thing about credit on GameSwap is that you can’t cash it in. I’m pretty much married to the site until I can exchange that credit for an actual game. The good thing about credit, however, is that since it’s an arbitrary number that doesn’t represent actual money but rather an assumed market value on physical goods, you can get close to actual retail price when swapping a game for it. In other words, because they aren’t giving you actual money for your games, they can afford to give you as much credit as a game is actually worth. Gears of War, for example, is worth 12 credits, which is like having $60. Try taking that to your local GameStop and seeing how much they give you for it. Then, try not to cry too much when you come back the next day and there’s your old game, sitting on the shelf for $54.99 (current price for a used copy at EBGames.com). Don’t forget, you paid full retail price for that game and it’s not even a year old.

As you can see, there’s a lot of good and a lot of bad that goes with using a site like GameSwap, but what about other sites? There’s a number of them out there; one in particular, Goozex.com.

Goozex.com uses strict HTML for the layout and design. It looks alright, except that the site can be complicated to navigate in some areas. The search function doesn’t seem to work too well, unless you enter the ISBN code found on the back of the game box. For example, I have a copy of Aliens vs. Predator 2 for the PC which could not be found, no matter how I spelled it. Finally, I cut the title down to just the word Aliens and then hand-picked the correct title and version that came up among the results.

The credit system on Goozex is the same as GameSwap except in that credits are marked in the hundreds. For example, 100 credits are worth $5. I presume this is so that they can mark games in halves, such as 150, making it just that much more confusing. Also, like GameSwap, you can buy more credit if you need it. Therefore, the only real difference between Goozex and GameSwap is all in how you request games.

On GameSwap, once you have accumulated enough credit, you simply pick the game you want and request it. Your credit goes into escrow while you wait for the swapper to confirm and send the game. If the swapper confirms the request the credit in escrow goes to him. Otherwise, if the swapper denies the request, the credit goes back to you and you start over, choosing another swapper from a list of swappers who have the game you want.
On Goozex, you merely request the game you want and enter a queue where you wait your turn to receive confirmation. You still have to wait for the swapper to confirm your request but once you’re next in line, you stay there.

One other difference is that you can set the credit value of a game on GameSwap, whereas on Goozex, the credit value is set according to demand and the overall rating a game receives from users. The higher a rating, the more it’s worth. As an aside to this, on GameSwap, you can choose a game based on it’s individual quality and price by picking it from the available copies. On Goozex, you’re dealt whatever hand fate has in store for you once your number is up, although you can specify whether you want the disc with the case and manual, just the disc and case, or just the disc.

FINAL NOTES

Goozex and GameSwap are two very good sites for swapping games. Either way you go, you’ll get a decent experience, as long as the other users are doing their part to keep trades going. GameSwap seems a little easier and more streamlined but Goozex seems to be far more efficient at getting you the games you actually want without a lot of extra effort. For the time being, it seems that Goozex is more popular whereas GameSwap seems to be in a perpetual state of “free trades”. What I mean by that is, Goozex requires a “transfer credit” to complete the trade when someone fills your game request. It’s free to fill requests, but to get a request filled, you have to have transfer credits which cost $1 each but can only be purchased in a pack of 5… which doesn’t sound so bad if you plan on using the site a lot. It ends up being cheaper than GameSwap, which charges you $1.99 at the time you request a game, except that when I started using GameSwap in February, they were allowing free trades until April 1st. On April 1st, they pushed it to sometime in June. Now, it’s up to August 31, 2007 so, you might want to take advantage of that.

I can’t really decide on which site I would recommend over the other. In the end, it really just comes down to which service is cheaper and/or more active than the other. In that case, Goozex sounds like the winner, but keep in mind, my experiences with both sites are isolated and your mileage may vary.