Novem­ber is a hard month if you’re into videogames. All of the big new releases are com­ing out within three weeks of each other, and for an impov­er­ished col­lege stu­dent, it’s impos­si­ble to pay for all of them. Between Mod­ern War­fare 3, Bat­tle­field 3, and Skyrim, this year’s no dif­fer­ent. I’ve been a gamer for a long time though, and I’ve learned a few tricks for get­ting new games on the cheap, or sim­ply find­ing older good games to bide my time until I make a lit­tle scratch. Here are some easy ways to get videogames on the cheap for the baller on a budget:

Amazon.com (and other online retail­ers)
Man, I love Ama­zon. Using Ama­zon, I’ve been able to get unopened games for a lower price than buy­ing them used at Gamestop. Games that are a few months old will get marked down 10 or 20 bucks some­times, and even brand new games often get a five-dollar dis­count. And if you pre­order a game, and then the game’s price gets knocked down, you get the low­est price even if you pre­ordered before the price drop. Also, pre­order­ing from Ama­zon will get the game shipped to your house on the release date.
Here’s a really good tip that will net you a lower price: if you’re a stu­dent, you can get a stu­dent ver­sion of Ama­zon Prime for free. This will give you free two-day ship­ping for a year on any prod­uct (not lim­ited to videogames, of course).
You can prob­a­bly tell that I’m a hard­core fan of Ama­zon, but that’s no rea­son to shy away from other big online retail­ers. Newegg.com is also a great source, and retailer web­sites, such as Wal­mart and Tar­get, can also have good deals.

Craigslist and Glyde
Yes, Craigslist can be a wee bit shady. But lemme get anec­do­tal for a moment: I got a brand new PS3 slim, with Call of Duty: Black Ops thrown in, for 220 dol­lars. I saved more than 100 bucks. It was awe­some. There’s really no limit to what games you can get, and chances are you’ll be get­ting what you want sig­nif­i­cantly marked down. Sure, this might take more work than sim­ply stop­ping at a store. But if you’re will­ing to go the extra mile in your penny pinch­ing, I can guar­an­tee it’s worth it.
Glyde’s a dif­fer­ent story. Glyde’s a rel­a­tively new web­site that allows an easy way to buy and sell used games (in addi­tion to DVDs and CDs). Basi­cally, you look up a game and select a con­di­tion (new, good, okay, etc.). Older games give you a lower price. Glyde’s inter­est­ing because you can also sell games as well. Basi­cally, you cre­ate an account, list the game you want to sell and name your price. You want the game to sell faster, set a price lower than mar­ket value. Then Glyde sends you a mailer and you put the game in and send it out. Glyde lets you cast a wider net than you might be able to sell­ing on Craigslist, and you’re likely to save more buy­ing from Glyde and make more sell­ing on Glyde then you would at Gamestop or any other retailer that sells used games.

Games for PC
Was your com­puter man­u­fac­tured some­time after 2007? Then you should prob­a­bly down­load Steam. Steam does crazy sales pretty much weekly, and you can get some awe­some games for ten bucks or less. For a while on Steam, they were giv­ing away Por­tal for free (Portal’s awe­some, you should play it). To get anec­do­tal again, I got Civ­i­liza­tion V for around ten bucks. Ten bucks for a Civ V! Did you know that a sin­gle round of Civ V can last longer than a Call of Duty cam­paign? That’s value right there.
If you want to go even cheaper, you can check out the Hum­ble Indie Bun­dle. Every cou­ple of months, a new bun­dle will come out where you can pay what­ever price you want for a few indie games. Yes, that includes pay­ing one cent. Usu­ally, there’s a reward for pay­ing above the aver­age, but the aver­age usu­ally hov­ers around five bucks, so don’t let that hold you back. Sure, these indie games can be uncon­ven­tional, but they’re never bad games. They’re always a good value.
Hope­fully, these point­ers will be enough to steer you away from starv­ing your­self for the next big game.