At the request of a fellow blogger, Gabe Taviano, via twitter, I’ve decided to go into detail about my rather unusual video game addiction.

Gabe (aka GodsMac) has done several articles on his testimony as a retired gamer.

I too have retired from video games, but I never played them much. Still, I used to spend over $10,000 a year at Gamestop, EB Games, and other video game retail outlets, and resell them on Amazon marketplace and occasionally eBay. (Amazon marketplace paid better with fewer hassles.)

Once per quarter Gamestop & EB Games had a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale. I believe they hold these less frequently, except when trying to impress investors. In addition, buy buying into their membership program one could get an extra 10% off.

(At one point I had 2 concurrent memberships because a store manager, ecstatic with the size of my purchase, gave me an additional 10% off for signing up at his store again. Since my total was over $300 the $15 membership paid off instantly.)

Now a big reason that I was able to do so much of this video game flipping was the fact that I had 60 Gamestop and EB Games stores within 20 miles of my house. If you don’t believe me, enter zip code 08054 in the store locator at Gamestop.com. Every other South Jersey town has a shopping mall, and every town has at least one strip mall. Almost every mall had 2 Gamestops and a strip mall with another one. In Moorestown, 5 miles from my house, there were 4 Gamestops within walking distance of each other between the mall and 2 nearby strip malls!

Now, not just any video game will do. As hardcore games know, some sought after titles like Marvel vs Capcom 2 are hard to find and are quite expensive on the secondary market, as is Final Fantasy VII and many games by Atlus (at least until they get reprinted). These I would find at local stores, buy 2, get 1 free (if I matched the prices, 33% off) then another 10% off for being an EDGE member… and then sell the games, usually within a week, for almost twice what Gamestop had stickered them originally. If there was any doubt, I could check prices on Amazon on my cell phone.

Gamestop even made it easy to locate these games, although the method of checking inventory was (at least when I did it) even unknown to most store employees. The trick is to search Gamestop.com for a common keyword, like “Mario.” Then, in the first page of results, scroll all the way down and click the link that promises to show all results, even backordered and out of stock items. Then, search for what you’re looking for, like “Electroplankton” Even though the game might be out of stock, you can search local store inventory by entering a zip code. In my experience, it was accurate about 95% of the time.

Not all of my finds were from Gamestop, though. During my heyday Kmart was undergoing a lot of clearance, as was Sears. Who really buys games from Kmart, after all? Thanks to deal hunting forums, I filled shopping carts with games that were stickered 5 times higher than they rang up.

I did often know more than the employees about such things. At one Gamestop I ended up informing the manager that the latest B2G1 started the coming weekend, before corporate had told her. And many times at retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Kmart the cashiers eyes popped when a game stickered $50 rang up for $3.

Over 2 days on a typical B2G1 weekend I would go as far south as Ocean City, and as far west as the suburbs outside Philly. I once made a special trip to Ocean City when I realized that the Kmart there had a shelf full of Castlevania games for the Gameboy advance that were selling for ~$50 each used on sale for $5. That was an hour drive each way, but I still made a tidy profit.

Other amazing finds included 20 Metroid Prime/Wavebird controller bundles for $10 eachmfrom a single Kmart (the controllers sold for about $60 each, and the games were going for $20-30). An employee even went into the back to fill a shopping cart of the ones in storage. As I left, a softlines manager yelled at me for somehow ripping the store off, even though each bundle was clearly stickered and rang up $10. At another Kmart, I had found a brand new sealed copy of Final Fantasy VII for $5, which sold within 24 hours for around $70. To save time, I even sold games I found to other resellers at flea markets.

However, if there was one item that could be considered my “bread and butter” it was the PS2 Network adapter. These attached to the “fat” PS2s and allowed them to connect to the internet and/or add a hard drive. Due to only a few games for the PS2 being online, and the false information that a driver disc was needed to use them (most online games included the drivers anyway) these were often traded in to Gamestop where they were sold for $15. I would buy tons of them at B2G1 +10% off, and then sell them on amazon for $60 each. One store in West Philly had 20 in stock when I went there, and the staff were very puzzled as to why I bought all of them.

Mind you, I almost never played these games. A few I saved, but in the end almost all of it was passed on. As of now, we only have a computer (with a GameTap subscription) and a gamecube, plus a couple of gameboy advance systems. I seldom if ever play them, and if I do it’s with my kids. But we have become “Board Game Geeks” and play a great deal more of Heroscape, Race for the Galaxy and Settlers of Catan which satisfy my tactical and resource gathering gaming appetite while spending time with my family.

I must admit a big factor is moving to Western Michigan. It’s now almost 20 miles to get to one Gamestop. Another factor is the content of the games I was selling was sometimes questionable (such as the Shin Megami Tensei games, which while very rare and profitable were obviously demonic). However the biggest reason was that at best I was treading water. I was peddling useless distractions from one customer to another. My net profit, in terms of benefiting my fellow man, was zilch. It was an empty trade.

At worst, I was enabling those who preyed on the ignorant and addicts by being a go-between. Gamestop might pay a young gamer or harried mother $10 for a game (I’ve seen it happen in person many a time, a business model loathed by gamers) then put a $40 sticker on it… then I would buy it and sell it to a gaming addict for as much as $80-$100. Besides, if my fellow deal hunters got wind of how I was using the community knowledge, I would have been despised even by them. “Fleabayers” and “hoarders” were not very welcome.

Even the games themselves started feeling resoundingly hollow. So what if I recovered the triforce, saved the world from the Heartless, or unraveled the secret of the Patriots? In the end it meant nothing but bragging rights. If I wanted a story, I could watch a movie and cover it in 2 hours, instead of the 20-40 hours (an entire work week!) many of the strategy and RPG games required. Better yet, I could write a book. In addition, between flash games, Gametap, Open Source and Abandonware games there is more than a lifetime of very good video games to be played for free.

It’s not that I found religion (I already had that) or faith, it was that I found a more defined sense of purpose. As Yahtzee Croshaw has said, “Maybe all of gaming is pointless, just toying with the gravel on the side of the big road of life.” I just realized I’d rather be on the main road instead of spending numerous hours of my life in the gravel. I realized that I was aiming my life at earthly, transient, material things (and purely entertaining things at that). Instead, I started acting more on the wisdom of C.S. Lewis: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Today, my heart still skips a beat when I see a copy of Fire Emblem or other rarity on a shelf, and if I wander into a Gamestop I find myself unconsciously checking for PS2 network adapters. But that fruitless pursuit is in the past, and as G.K. Chesterton said, “None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.”