For reasons unknown to me, the fact that Gamestop is awful has only become apparent to me recently. Shocking, I know. However, let’s review what led me to this surprisingly late conclusion.
I’ve been working in the city for about a year now and there’s always a great deal of hustle and bustle here. You can expect the same of any big city in the US. One of the many Gamestops downtown happened to be in the mall that also housed the train station I took home every day. I believed this to be terribly convenient (and also terrible for my wallet). I could pre-order games and pick them up on the way home from work if I wanted, or on lunch breaks, without much worry about making an extra stop. Why order online when I can get it the day of, guaranteed?
The first couple of months I did part time work so I would stop by when the store was fairly empty. However when I landed a full time job that changed everything.
I thought my trips would be quick. I could stroll in and make a pre-order then slip in and out on the day it was released. I could tell a dozen stories since I’ve purchased a number of games since December when I bought a PS3 but I’ll use my most recent visit since it details the problems quite well.
I want to believe my delays in store were caused by the fact that I was picking up the game during lunch or after work around rush hour, but I know that had nothing to do with it. When I went to pick up my fully paid off, pre-ordered copy of 3D Dot Game Heroes there was a handful of people in the store. I could grab my game and roll out and have plenty of time to enjoy lunch. I hopped in line immediately behind 3 people, 2 of which were being assisted by cashiers.
I hadn’t paid much attention at first because I got lost in a barrage of texts on my phone, but when I looked up the line had not moved at all. I glanced back down at my phone and slowly watched my lunch tick away. The first cashier was simply selling a DS to a customer, one that needed to be retrieved from the back while the second customer was selling a pile of used games back to the store, each of which were getting inspected. Both were offered all kinds of deals and informed about pre-orders, and surveys, and magazine subscriptions and other things that have been drilled into my brain. I don’t know if a slow pace is standard but even fast moving cashiers dragged out sales through these forced tactics.
In any event I finally picked up my copy in a matter of seconds after a bout of saying “No” to every question hurled at me. I honestly didn’t care if I got to play 3D Dot Game Heroes at that point, I wanted to eat, I wanted to get out of the store and away from the psychopath behind me in line who uttered in a pretty damn audible way that this was “fucking ridiculous”
This whole ordeal has happened a number of times whether there were a few people in the store or a lot. It was only after this particular incident I reached the boiling point. (To be fair, the employees at that particular gamestop have always been very nice albeit very slow but they’re told to repeat this garbage to us.)
That’s only one reason though. Since I had recently purchased a PS3, Brian alerted me constantly to the new games coming out that we should get. He was also overly excited about pre-order bonuses. You know, those minor items that probably should have been in the game anyway. It reminds me of Activision and their incredibly awful DLC releases (MW2 anyone?). Brian is of the opinion that these pre-orders are “fantastic” and it should be exclusive to those who buy early. But why? Most of the time they’re not even noteworthy. Sure, back in the day the occasional action figure or hat you got for pre-ordering weren’t terribly exciting but at least it warranted a pre-order.
I feel like it’s also appropriate to mention used games here. A lot of people are of the opinion that used games are a bad thing. There have been stories of used games hurting the publisher – which is debatable at this point according to some sources. Regardless of effect on the publisher the community doesn’t seem to be happy with getting such a small amount of credit for games that get marked up a great deal from their trade in value.
Gamestop really is the McDonald’s of the gaming world. They’re all over the place, people crowd them, they’re not good for your health, make you fat and angry, and show no signs of stopping. They’re also actually pretty slow despite advertising (okay, maybe gamestop never claimed to be fast…) For those who aren’t internet savvy or trusting with their credit card number it’s all there is. In typical corporate tradition they’ve also done what they can to keep themselves from looking like the bad guy by going as far as vandalizing wikipedia entries (and publishing game informer). This is more than enough for me to avoid gamestop like the plague.
So where does it all end? Well for me it ends at amazon.com where I purchased Super Mario Galaxy 2 for a decent price and got $20 back in game credit on the site. Maybe a cheap tactic to get me to come back and buy more on Amazon but hell, it’s better than what I’d get out of gamestop. I’m not doing this in protest – in the end it’s all around more convenient and cheaper for me. Even if I had, people won’t stop buying there, evident from the large lines of people like Brian who really want that bitchin’ hat for their guy in FPS #2345205.
Also their advertising sucks. I’m not even going to justify my argument.
If you’ve had a similar experience or differing opinions let us know – leave us a comment or shoot me an email at:
