srsly

i subscribe to gamefly because i thought it would be better to pay $23 a month to play two games at a time for about 6 weeks at a time rather than pay $60 every time i want to play a game. it seemed like a good idea because some games just end up pissing me off and i can’t return them. so far it’s worked out pretty good. it works until new games start coming out and you want a lot of them at once. it works just like netflix so you make a queue, assign desired priority, and they ship them to you when they’re available. now the problem.
they only have one distribution center located in LA, so shipping can take a while sometimes. add to that they don’t seem to have very many copies of each game as anything worth playing has a “short wait.” this is where it gets messy. if something is in a “short wait” status gamefly will send you the next available game in your queue. if you happen to have a bunch of new-ish games queued up the first 5 or 6 games might be “short wait.” gamefly will then most likely send you the first “available now” game in your queue. this usually works out to be a game you just queued up thinking you might like it but put it way down in your queue because you kept upping games you’d rather play. so now gamefly is causing you to wait even longer for games you’d rather play. there are two solutions to this.

• give users the choice between waiting for a game that has a wait, or getting the next available
• only have games you REALLY want in your queue

the problem with the first solution is how to implement it. it could be an account level setting, but people that forgot about it or didn’t want it to work that way one time would complain. the issue with the second one is that it defeats the purpose of the queue. so i may cancel it because it doesn’t seem like i can get the games i want anyway. but i don’t like buying things unless i know i’m going to like it. so i probably won’t. i just wanted to whine about it.