Christmas for the Budget Gamer
By Richard Leader

Well, it is that time of the year again and the holidays are fast approaching, and like many of you, I am using them as an excuse to pick up a little something extra for myself--and oh yeah, friends and family too. But if you are going to fall into crass consumerism, you might as well do it right. This is a brief guide to getting the most for your gaming dollars without leaving the comfort of your home.

Online shopping certainly has its pitfalls. Sometimes it seems like there are an infinite number of companies out there fighting for your dollar and just getting started is intimidating as there is always a better deal around the corner. And whom do you trust? These days, you cannot always judge a company by how slick its website is. Fortunately, you are not alone. There are whole online communities dedicated to sleuthing out the hottest deals around and as gaming and enthusiast hardware necessitates a strong web presence in the first place, many of these forums specifically cater to the kind of merchandise you are after. Who better to turn to for your hardware and gaming needs than others who have the same interests?

Forums such as the "Hot Deals" section at Anandtech and at Fatwallet.com are often the best place to start your expedition. There, people post the hottest bargains around, sometimes including complicated steps in outline form on how to arrive at the smallest price tag for a given item, so even novices can take advantage of them.

However, there are thousands of others reading the same forums who are ready to fight to get first in line on those deals. In order to reserve your spot in the rush, you have to read the forums daily, if not hourly (and it does become addictive) and be ready to spend your money on a moments notice. In fact, the rush of buyers even kills some of the best deals to be had, usually involving mistakes in pricing, as the deluge of orders alerts sales managers that something is amiss. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is, and chances are that the item will never get to you unless you were very first in line and if not, the results may vary considerably: at worst you might have to pay a "restocking fee" of 15% on something you never get, and at best, you might get a free "gift" (usually a broken, defaced, or useless item that the company would not otherwise sell) or a small to decent sized coupon for a future order in compensation for your trouble.

Many of the deals on these sites are contingent upon "price-matching" and "price-protection," features of some of the more advanced credit cards such as the American Express Blue card, the favorite of net shoppers who refer to it as Amex Blue. This often allows you to buy from some of trustworthy companies for the prices offered by some of the more sketchy outfits. Of course, in order to get these deals you have to qualify for the card in the first place--a distinct irony of capitalism. In addition to that, coupons or promotional codes are often included to sweeten the deal. While usually anyone can make use of these coupons or codes, they were usually designed for a limited audience and are not widely advertised. Throw in a manufactures rebate on top of that and the deal goes from "warm" to "hot."

Other deals allow you to simply get a jump on the competition. People who work at warehouse stores or who even deliver your newspaper (they get the Sunday paper ads a few days early) often scan the ads and post them in the forums, letting you know that you should be perched outside the store the minute it opens on Sunday morning to get a hot deal, or even buy the item beforehand and using your credit card's price protection guarantee to get in on the deal AND beat the crowds at the same time. Besides that, freebies such as company branded t-shirts, mugs, samples of food and beverages, magazine subscriptions, and anything you could think of abound, and are often listed in a row on "bargain" sites--you could actually get Christmas presents for your entire extended family by merely spending an hour or two filling out forms around Halloween.

But despite all of that help, a good measure of self sufficiency is still required; after all, forums cater to impulse buying and what you need might not be listed there on any given week. The first step is to know the ballpark features of the item you want. Be realistic in what you think your money will be able to provide you, though you might be pleasantly surprised later. Once you have a general plan, it is good to start looking at what there might be rebates on at any given time. Try searching sites such as Rebatecatcher.com to see what models or brands might have a competitive edge in a given week, and take note of them.

After that, the next step is to use search engines that specifically cater to finding the lowest price for a given item. Pricewatch.com, Pricegrabber.com, Pricescan.com, as well as several others, can be used to find the absolutely lowest advertised price on a particular item and display the various vendors who list their products with the search engine (many of whom require you to mention the search engine when you order to keep that price).

Have that information available by printing it or merely keeping that window of your browser open. The next step is to see which of those companies, if any, currently has coupons available. Your first stop should be Techbargains.com which keeps a column on the right of their page which lists nearly every available coupon and its expiration date for most of the major and dependable dealers. Compare the results there to the choices the various search engines returned and see if that puts any of the dealers with more trustworthy names ahead of some of the more fly by night jobs.

Lastly, you will want to check out various consumer and government reviews of the business themselves, if you are not completely sure whether they are a credible organization. Resellerratings.com, Gomez.com, or even the Better Business Bureau's web site can be invaluable for this. Take note, however, that dissatisfied people are far more likely to speak up than happy customers, so remember that every company is bound to have a few bad reviews or ratings under its belt--do not be put off by a particularly harsh, well written, or persuasive claim by itself; get a general sense of how people are reacting.

So, after all of this, you might just have the lowest available price on an item coupled with a vendor's coupon and a manufacturer's rebate. The first thing you need to do is to place your order. Then tell your friends and family. And after that, make sure you post the deal (and the various steps required for it) on one of the several forums and give back to the community--it is only fair, after all.

But all of that is for large items that are expensive to begin with. What if you are happy with your gaming rig and just want some more games or small gifts for friends and family? Well, many of the same rules apply--except for one. A lot of you probably wondered why I have not mentioned auction or trading sites like Ebay. There are several reasons for that, first, that they are "sellers" markets that thrive on generating the highest price for an item (indeed, many people who use the preceding tactics to acquire "hot deals" often just turn around and pawn their finds on auction websites to less sophisticated consumers) but secondly, that computer hardware is a unique phenomenon in that the newer goods are usually not only much more desirable, they are often cheaper as well. People are not willing to accept how fast their items depreciate and tend to exaggerate their asking or "reserve" price on auction sites.

However, software is a different matter and you should not hesitate to explore these avenues. There is a hidden danger that many people are not aware of, though--be especially cautious of games that are multiplayer or have an online component, they often require a "CD-key" or a special individual code that is required to install the game. If your game comes to you without one, or with a key that has been publicized on the internet (in fact, CD-keys are bought and sold on auction sites without the associated game attached) it might not be any good to you at all, and the auction site might not understand exactly what sort of predicament you are in, as you did technically receive what you ordered.

So what exactly should the budget gamer be looking out for this holiday season if he or she is not necessarily interested in the latest and greatest? Well, the first order of business should be considering a new video card. Really. New cards have such features such as Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) and anisotropic filtering which respectively smooth the lines where objects in 3D games intersect and make textures clear and flicker free for much further distances. This will greatly extend the life of the games you already own, as they will have never looked better.

Here is a screenshot from System Shock 2 (a classic game that received near universal acclaim) scaled down from a native resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels.

This second shot focuses on just the area within the blue box in the previous one and is at the original size--depicting an area far in the background of the scene. It uses trilinear filtering and no form of anti aliasing. Now, move your mouse pointer over the image and it will change to another screenshot, this time with 4X FSAA and 64 tap Anisotropic filtering. Notice how the texture of the floor, while slightly blurred, extends correctly all the way to the end of the hallway, how the long diagonal lines seem smoother, how the pixels around the gun barrel seem to disappear, as do the black dots on the upper left region of the ceiling. The difference is even more impressive in motion. With the release of the Xbox, it has never been a better time to upgrade to a video card that is DirectX 8.1 compliant, as games will soon start taking advantage of those features--but in the mean time, your current games will receive an amazing facelift that will make you see them in a new light. For the budget gamer, the best bet right now is a Geforce 3 ti 200, the budget version of the new Titanium line. Many manufacturers produce them, which complicate the buying process, but you are able to choose among many for the price, warranty, software package, or additional features that are most important to you.

Next stop: miscellaneous hardware. Many companies such as Compgeeks.com feature yesterday's peripherals at bargain prices. If you are in the market for game pad type controllers, you can pick old "gameport" styled ones (that plug into your sound card or an independent game port card in your computer) for pocket change now that USB ones are all the rage. Even steering wheel controllers can be had for low prices, as new models are always coming out, and among the force feedback variety (that apply variable resistance depending on car and road condition in games), some of the older models are actually superior to the new as they used steel cables instead of a gear system to produce the effect far more realistically.

Finally, we have games--the bread and butter that makes all that other hard work worthwhile. While Ebay and other auction sites are often a good option, especially for the newer items only weeks old, the only real reason to turn to them is when you are looking for a best seller that has held the top of the charts for many months, as retailers are not likely to budge on the sticker price any time soon, especially for more mainstream titles such as The Sims. Otherwise, there are literally thousands of great titles that can be had for $10 or less. Many game vendors allow you to sort their websites by price. Take advantage of that and see what they are really trying to get rid of and look up reviews of titles that interest you on other websites to see that just maybe, it was one of the true gems produced last year. Check out sites such as Electronics Boutique, Compuexpert.com, and Dragon.ca and filter the different categories using the price option.

Amazon.com can be a great place to locate some of the harder to find oldies that you might have missed out on the first time around. And keep tabs on sites such as Pcliquidators.com that often get in stocks of games that were returned at retail stores and shopping malls that ended up never being repackaged or resold again. There is never a better deal than getting a game for $2.95 from them and seeing a $55.95 Best Buy or CompUSA sticker on the box. And that will most definitely make for a happy new year.

Good luck and best wishes!