Buy games, play games, trade-in games, buy games, play games, trade-in games...

The existence of GameStop and my lack of self-control creates an endless cycle in my life wherein I buy a game, finish it, trade it in, and then buy it again a year or five later. It's just so convenient to drive over to GameStop, have them give me money for my games, and then buy used games from them. That way I don't have to have real money. But this way, I also end up spending more money in the long run.

I sell a game to them and then a year or so later, I really want to play it again. So I take games that I think I won't miss, sell them, and get games I traded in a year or so earlier. Then I miss the games I traded in to buy the games that I missed that I traded in. I always tell myself that I won't trade in anymore games, but then there's a game I really want and I'm broke, so I think, "Oh, I won't miss these games anyway."

The thing is, GameStop gives you significantly less for trade-ins than what you originally payed for it, so you are losing money each time. A PS2 or original Xbox game will get you about 25 cents in trade-in value currently, and if you opt for real money instead of in-store credit, you get even less.

The good thing about GameStop is that you can actually find all those old games you traded in (or lost or broke) and not have to wait to get something from Amazon or eBay that may not even work (though they definitely cost less online). If it hadn't been for GameStop (EBGames at the time), I would never have found the cheap copy of Resident Evil 2 that I was looking for when my original copy stopped working. I could have found it online, probably, but that was before I was really an online person (GameStop was still EBGames and they still sold PS1 games, so it was a good seven or eight years ago).

I also love the atmosphere. The store is full of people who share my interests. It's a wonderland of video games.

I hate GameStop.