A GameFly In The Ointment

Enter the wide and glorious Imaginarium with me, if you will. Here we are, dear and gentle traveler, our feet alight upon the tiled and sticky floor of your favorite local fast food eatery. Upon the greasy counter you put five dollars, which the glassy eyed host processes away, never to return. Then, having already paid your greenbacks, you order a bacon cheeseburger with fries. The server stands there for a pregnant moment, a stony faced Adonis as sculpted by Toby Keith, and your persistently empty tray convinces you that the order is not forthcoming. You change tactics and order some chicken lumps with a side of thick and pungent sauces intended to make the meaty amalgams palatable. Again nothing.

“Why haven’t I gotten any food for the five dollars I spent?” you finally ask.

“You are ordering the wrong stuff,” is the terse response.

“Well, what should I be ordering?”

“We have some stale hamburger buns from last Thursday you can have.”

This, my pupils, is as succinct a comparison as I can swiftly draw to the experience of “upgrading” my GameFly account from 2 games a month to 3.

Another way to think about it is as being thrust suddenly into the Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch . And after a brief palaver with customer support -- the final humorless insult -- the judgment at the end of the ordeal was that I was doing it wrong.

Let me repeat that: They told me that I was renting their video games the wrong way.

Before I elaborate on that point, let me give you my perspective on what I expected from GameFly. I expected that I would give them a monthly fee, and in return they would send me 3 video games as determined by a queue I created of, and this is important, games I wanted to play. Now, here’s where I think there is some disconnect. I expected, as they implied on paid advertising across multiple media, that those games I rented would be current and popular titles.

I don’t really think my expectations were that unreasonable. If you go to GameFly’s homepage as a non-account-holder you’ll see at the bottom a smorgasbord of current hits designed to tempt the meaty pleasure centers of your gamer-brain, many of which languished in my queue for more than a month. Even the company's television advertising suggests that no more will I have to suffer through bad games, though their slogan "Never Buy a Bad Game Again" would be far more accurate if "Rent Them Instead" were ammended to the end. What I find particularly interesting about this ad is that the behavior of the actors is a good representation of how I felt during my time as a their customer.

To be fair, I’m pretty used to getting crappy customer service as a video gamer. I’ve been to enough Gamestops to know that on the bad service scale we rank right above late night convenience store customer and right below airline passenger. I expect some time in the next century it will be accepted practice to throw rotten fruit at gamers as they process their transaction and then run them out of the store with rabid attack dogs. It is a well documented fact that all people who buy video games are internet thieves and should be treated with the same sensitivity and respect you would expect from a coked up strip-club bouncer with Tourettes.

But, at least Gamestop is upfront about their total lack of customer service. They practically have a sign on the door proclaiming their intent to hound you about pre-ordering every upcoming major release followed by intense and sustained mockery should you have the temerity to try and buy that game without said pre-order. And, for all of Gamestop’s pantheon of flaws, at the end when you pay money, you at least walk out with a bag containing something you presumably want. If I walked into their establishment wanting to buy Prototype, but was instead handed a copy of Ratchet and Clank Go To Federal Prison for my trouble, that would be more like renting from GameFly.

I realize many of you have GameFly accounts and have managed to game the system in such a way to reach some modicum of satisfaction. Let me stress that I hold neither ill-will toward you nor any expectation that you should change your renting habits. You have applied a mystical calculus to the problem and explore infinite limits of list manipulation to great effect, and while I choose not to audit your graduate level courses I don’t fault you for your effort. In fact, you are better served by my departure. That’s one less person trying to nab those precious game gems.

I heartily endorse, in fact, turning the entire operation over to you. I think everyone would be a whole lot happier if the GameFly subscribers who have received nothing save an endless array of last year’s mid-range titles up and quit the service. GameFly would no longer have its distribution and stocking problems. The executive users wouldn’t have to invest so heavily into statistical software and distributed computational structures to decipher the GameFly Queue, and those of us harangued by a persistent string of crappy games we didn’t actually want to play could take up fly fishing or leaf peeping.

After all, the choices are relatively few. My preferred option, putting only the 5 or 6 games I was actually interested in playing into my queue has been described officially as flawed. GameFly’s solution was to put games into my queue that I didn’t really want to play and then pay them for the pleasure of doing so. I found that option equally flawed, particularly when you consider that GameFly agents seem to scan your brain as you sleep and then use that data to make sure they send along the game you want the very least from your queue.

I’m not calling for nonsense like a boycott or a universal demand for consumer rights. I frankly don’t have the time to be the video game equivalent to a Sally Field movie. I simply will do what I hope more consumers of all kinds will do, stop paying for terrible service. Just as I now shop at the smaller Gamestop competitor, Play N Trade, I have abandoned GameFly even though I very much want to use their service as it is ideally described.

If you aren’t getting your money’s worth either, maybe you should consider doing the same.

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A GameFly In The Ointment

I hope you're proud of yourself.

I think you know that I am.

I hate it when Mommy and Daddy fight.

Well. I am glad I never joined "the gamefly."

I thought about it. Once. Figured it worked like Netflix. I was wrong.

I've given up hope that I'll receive new releases from GameFly in a timely manner. I still subscribe, but fill my queue with games I'm interested in but not in any hurry to play. And games for my daughter, who like most kids doesn't care when they were released. Once in a while GameFly does surprise me--last month they had Ghostbusters, Infamous, and Prototype to me in record time. But that's definitely the exception.

I quit Gamefly probably a year ago or more. I was tempted into coming back once, then almost immediately canceled again. I'm with you. I don't have the time or inclination to play the queue management game. I'm not that vigilant.

Personally, I can understand the supply and demand aspects of Gamefly and why I might not get the newest release when it comes out. But if a game is even moderately popular or well rated, it won't be available.

Anyway, good write up. Sums up my feelings and why I won't go back.

I guess I've just been lucky so far, although your article gives voice to one of the major concerns I had before signing up for a Gamefly account around a month ago. Perhaps they were just trying to kiss-up to a new user, fearful I would cancel my account before my reduced-cost trial period was over, but I received inFamous right away after signing up, even though its availability was flagged as "low". So far, I've managed to always receive the top game in my queue, moving from inFamous to MadWorld (3 days and returned, not a fan), to Red Faction: Guerrilla.
Time will tell if my luck or Gamefly's usefulness will wear out.

Isn't this an issue with any game rental service, though? If I don't get to my local Blockbuster within seconds of them unpacking whatever new game I'd like to rent then it'll be a month before I can get it.

Because I live in a semi-rural northwest backwater, and the nearest Blockbuster is a 45 minute trek through waist deep snow, uphill both ways, my only option for renting games is/WAS GameFly. Since I have had generally stellar service from Netflix (hell, they even send me a 4th movie now and then just for giggles), I had high hopes for GameFly. Alas and alack, both times (when they launched and a couple of months ago) I have tried the service my experience has mirrored that of Elysium, with the added irritation of a minimum of 7 or 8 days between the return of one game and the receipt of another, usually something along the lines of Leisure Suit Larry: When All Else Fails Pick Me. Hence, I have a towering stack of purchased console games, which at least will bring in top dollar (haha) at the "local" EB (a 90 minute slog away, through shark-infested waters, uphill both ways) due to their pristine condition, only being half-played and all.

Isn't this an issue with any game rental service, though? If I don't get to my local Blockbuster within seconds of them unpacking whatever new game I'd like to rent then it'll be a month before I can get it.

The key difference is I only pay Blockbuster when the game is there.

For my $5.00 upgrade I received, and I stress this, nothing. I had 2 games out for an entire month out of a 3 game subscription.

HedgeWizard wrote:

Well. I am glad I never joined "the gamefly."

I thought about it. Once. Figured it worked like Netflix. I was wrong.

I found out the hard way.

I could never get into Gamefly or Netflix because neither work well with my strategy of going out and binge-buying every game or movie that I could conceivably ever want and then spending months with those not buying anything else. To actually plan ahead and order games, rather than picking one out of a big huge pile I have sitting in my house is anathema to me.

To hear that their service doesn't even fulfill the needs of normal new-release game playing just makes me wonder why it exists at all.

I believe I quit GameFly after they accused me of scratching a game-disc that had only been in my console for 30 minutes. I've been a 360-user since just after launch, I know what does and doesn't cause scratched discs you condescending monkeyfighters.

Perhaps I am the only one who finds it amusing that you need to 'game' the Gamefly queue system to get the games you actually want. Very meta! However, Canadians are exempt from the false promises that Gamefly offers so I can approach the situation with some degree of detachment.

I find Goozex to be a pretty great service for cycling through mid-range titles, although once one of my games hits the bargain basement value of 100 points I have trouble working up the gumption / shipping costs to get rid of it.

Switchbreak wrote:

I could never get into Gamefly or Netflix because neither work well with my strategy of going out and binge-buying every game or movie that I could conceivably ever want and then spending months with those not buying anything else. To actually plan ahead and order games, rather than picking one out of a big huge pile I have sitting in my house is anathema to me.

This can work, just rip the DVD's as you get them to your media center PC and then watch them at your leisure. I'm sure NF knows that my Mon-Wed-Fri send back schedule is me not actually watching those movies I rented but rather making the option of watching them on my schedule a reality.

Oh wait, I mean open movie, watch movie, send it back and await new one.

I've tried GameFly twice now.

Once on the east coast, where the games took 6-7 postal days to come, which means 12-14 postal days from the time you drop the old game in the mail to the time you get a new one in your mailbox. In addition, a lot of games were lost in the mail. And, of course, I experienced the same phenomenon as Elysium has.

So when I moved to the west coast, I tried it again. Here, the delivery was more like 4-5 days, so 8-10 postal days turnaround. No lost games in the mail. But Elysium's problem was in full effect. I never got the games I wanted. I would get something from the last 4 games of my 25 game queue. So I trimmed my queue. I thought "if I don't want to play it now, then I won't have it on my queue." So I trimmed it to 10 games. Now nothing came and I would get emails about "add more to your queue!" At the same time, a buddy of mine in Vegas is receiving random games that aren't even in his queue!

So we both canceled GameFly, and I will never try it again. I'm still holding my breath for NetFlix to start doing games.

leaf peeping

Admittedly, I am intrigued.

I ran through the 14-day free trial at GameFly just to mess around and pick up a few "rental-worthy" games, and I definitely wasn't impressed. Kudos to you who've figured the system out, but like Switchbreak I'll stick to my purchasing binge/purge cycle.

In a truly twisted result from my Gamefly experience, I've actually found myself BUYING a game that I otherwise would not have bought simply because I was sick of waiting for Gamefly to send it to me as a rental. It's the reason I own The Conduit, which isn't a purchase I regret but I certainly wouldn't have made it if I hadn't sat there watching Gamefly not ship it to me for a week even though it was the ONLY THING in my queue.

On the other hand, if not for Gamefly I might have purchased Indiana Jones & the Staff of Kings, which truly would have been a mistake. So I'm torn on whether or not to cancel the service. Whether the occasions on which they save me $50 (and the discounts on games I choose to purchase from them used) keep enough money in my pocket to be worth the monthly hit of $20 is a difficult equation for me to balance.

The thing that might make me quit GameFly isn't their service, though everything the people above me have said is absolutely true. My problem is that, in order to get the maximum value out of my subscription, I have to finish the games I rent as quickly as possible, and since the games I rent are - by definition - the ones I didn't quite have enough interest in to justify buying, I don't always feel the compulsion to play them for hours at a time.

It feels like an obligation; like I'm a game reviewer, but I'm not getting paid for the stress.

Ravenlock wrote:

In a truly twisted result from my Gamefly experience, I've actually found myself BUYING a game that I otherwise would not have bought simply because I was sick of waiting for Gamefly to send it to me as a rental. It's the reason I own The Conduit, which isn't a purchase I regret but I certainly wouldn't have made it if I hadn't sat there watching Gamefly not ship it to me for a week even though it was the ONLY THING in my queue.

Hey, I bought Red Faction: Guerrilla for the same reason! Of course, I'm actually glad I did.

Great article. I loved the Fast food analogy. In on move, you have made me never want to sign up for Gamefly (again) or order chicken nuggets.

This sounds awful. Thanks for extinguishing my curiosity about GameFly.

Gamefly has worked well for me so far, but I'm a special case:

I never owned a game console before, so when I got my XBox360 I figured that I needed to just try a bunch of games to see what I liked. I only have the 1-at-a-time plan, because as a total noob, I figured it would take me a long time to finish games, so having out a bunch at a time wouldn't help anyway.

Here's my experiences:

  • Turnaround is nowhere near Netflix. My local Post Office is pretty slow, but my game turnaround time ranges 5-9 days compared to 2-4 days with Netflix.
  • Since all of the games were new to me, I got my first 4 games from the top of my queue, but all of them were older games like Gears of War, Civ Revolutions, Burnout Paradise, and Mirror's Edge.
  • Newer games at the top of my queue were not shipped to me promptly. I got Prince of Persia before both Grand Theft Auto IV and Resident Evil 5.
  • Because my games were rented, I tended to rush through them rather than playing them to death. This is a much different gaming experience than I've had with PC games, which I usually play for 2-6 months before I buy another one. It is not necessarily less fun to rush through a game though. I really don't need to double my playing time in order to get the extra 500 points of achievements anyway....
  • I've only had 1 game arrive that was unplayable, and Gamefly actually replaced that in a reasonable amount of time (3 days turnaround).
  • Sports games, even old ones like The Bigs, were much harder to get than other genres.
  • It sucks not having the game manual. I played through a few games missing crucial gameplay elements because of lack of a manual.
  • Gamefly's web site is not up to the standards of Netflix.

I've concluded that considering the cost of Gamefly, it is probably more worth it to get together with my Xbox360-owning friends and collaborate on buying games. It would actually cost about the same for us to chip in and buy all the games we wanted to play new, then swap when we are done with them. This wouldn't work with games that we wanted to play coop or vs., but that is only about 1/4 of the games I play anyway.

So, I'm going to keep my subscription active for a few more months, then I'll try other options.

Clemenstation wrote:

I find Goozex to be a pretty great service for cycling through mid-range titles, although once one of my games hits the bargain basement value of 100 points I have trouble working up the gumption / shipping costs to get rid of it.

Me too. I have settled into a cycle of buying the big-name AAA titles I want for $60 on release day, playing it right away, and then turning it around into several months-to-years-old games. Once a game falls below ~200 points (i.e. ~$10) I won't bother though. I'm trying to get into a groove where these are games I want to "keep for my collection" (usually RPGs, or something I expect to come back to) and get rid of the "flavor of the month" titles while they're worth something.

This is of course putting far more thought into a different sort of queue management than Elysium wants to do.

A big problem with our hobby is that we have a culture where everybody wants to play brand new games, but then those games rapidly devalue. This is encouraged by the journalism culture and the still-evolving technology. That's why nobody can get the good games; but GameFly doesn't want to spend a pile of money stocking new releases sufficiently. Netflix handles this better, but I think DVDs are cheaper and movies tend to age better. Maybe GameFly needs a better program to sell their used games to compare.

This was so the first topic I was going to write about for the call for writers. Doh!

I've only had Gamefly for 3 months now and I've had an almost identical experience to yours. I'm still on the fence as to whether to quit the service or not though. When they sent me an email trying to entice me into upgrading to the 3 game plan on my 10th day or waiting for a second game from my queue to ship that was almost it. However, it does scratch that "older game that I sort of wanted to try out don't need to own" itch and the "Wii game that my girlfriend and I will enjoy 3 times and then abandon forever" one as well. Plus I've got 5 whole GameFly dollars now, so I wouldn't want to loose out on all of that generous bounty they've bestowed on me to make up for such awful service.

It sounds like a more appropriate fast food analogy might work like this:

You go into a restaurant, pay for an order your Chicken Niblets, and then wait. After a while, you politely ask why you haven't received your Chicken Niblets yet and the clerk responds that because everyone else ordered Chicken Niblets, too, they're having a hard time keeping up with the demand. Dissatisfied with not receiving your Chicken Niblets in a timely fashion, you leave the restaurant tossing polite comments at the clerk over your shoulder.

Clearly, GameFly doesn't have enough copies of in-demand titles to meet the needs of all of its users. However, if your queue consists entirely of in-demand titles, you're not going to receive them in the most timely fashion. This is a completely fair reason to cancel your GameFly account, but I don't know that this is an example of crappy customer service. In your forum thread on this topic, you made no mention of their response to your questions being rude but rather that they were simply unsatisfactory. They're fairly up-front about the availability of the titles in your queue, and you make no mention of any of the six or seven titles in your queue as being listed as "Available." Their apparent suggestion that you queue titles that aren't in as high of demand in order to prevent an interruption in your service isn't an unreasonable one even if it isn't, for you, a satisfying one.

As I said, it's completely legitimate to cancel your subscription if their supply of must-have titles doesn't meet your demand for the same, but it isn't fair to accuse the company of having crappy customer service based on their having told you as much.

I've decided to cancel my subscription, it just doesn't end up being worth it for me. Besides that I never get the game I want, that it takes forever to get a game, is that I have to really play through these games fast in order to feel like I'm getting my money's worth. They also tend to be games that I'm not super excited about, so they sit around not getting played and it just feels like a money sink. Whenever I do put a game in my Queue that I really want to play, like Ghostbusters or Call of Juarez, it never shows up, so I've reached an impasse with GameFly.

One thing I do find funny is the advertisement for getting 3 games at time, when I've been waiting a week just for a second game to be sent:

IMAGE(http://img.skitch.com/20090709-bd2qngq4paw9i24gs4xqsmxwdn.png)

Also, I've had RE5 in my queue since before it came out and just got it last week, but at this point I don't think I care anymore, haven't even put it in the 360 yet.

Adam, I _might_ concede to your analogy if you put a big banner on the front of the store that says "Chicken Nibblets Here! Get Them Today!"

Seriously, I have no sympathy for the flawed business model, and their terse little retorts to my, to be fair brisk, inquiries ended with, "We're sorry you cancelled your account, if we don't get our games in 7 days we will charge your account." It would be the first time they processed a game so quickly.

Their apparent suggestion that you queue titles that aren't in as high of demand in order to prevent an interruption in your service isn't an unreasonable one even if it isn't, for you, a satisfying one.

I disagree, particularly considering how they market themselves. To be fair, a refund or even a sympathetic note recognizing that I paid an additional $5.00 for basically nothing would have kept a customer. I got nothing like that. I call it bad customer service. You are welcome to disagree.

I also would be willing to cede that I was in some kind of minority. I accept sometimes you get a bad streak. That doesn't seem to be the case.

Here's my bottom line, if you can't send me 1 out of 6 games over a 30-day period, your business is fundamentally flawed.

Has anyone tried any of the alternative online game rental services?

adam.greenbrier wrote:

As I said, it's completely legitimate to cancel your subscription if their supply of must-have titles doesn't meet your demand for the same, but it isn't fair to accuse the company of having crappy customer service based on their having told you as much.

Adam, you hit the nail on the head.

Elysium's criticisms are less to do with GameFly than with the entire "Netflix" model of distribution, a model that cannot possibly give everyone the brand-newest games/movies/etc. exactly when they want them. I certainly understand the frustration of not getting what you want, but that's just the way this system works.

Maybe that extra $5 a month being spent on the "3 game" plan should be used instead to go rent whatever hot new game you're looking for at a local B&M video rental store?

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