Life Behind The Counter 81
MTV Games has a run-down on a blog that relates what it is like behind a videogame store counter. The blog, DayintheLifeofVideogames relates the best and worst moments from their unique perspective on the games industry. From the article: "So pity the game store employee anxious to sell apples to people shopping for oranges. 'I die a little bit inside each time,' Post said. 'I think people are afraid to take a chance.' He gets just that close to getting people to buy the good stuff, but he said that if people haven't seen a TV commercial for a game, it's very hard to sell them on it. And cheer Post and Whitman for their acts of retail kindness, like warning customers buying EA's recent 'NFL Head Coach' that it doesn't actually let people play football. 'I warned two people, and both of them said, 'I'm glad you told me. I don't want it now,' ' Post said. 'You want to make the sale, but you don't want the guy to go home and say, 'That guy doesn't even know what he's talking about.'" It would be against the scriptures not to mention the most holy of holy books at this juncture. Yay, though I walk through the shadow of the non-believers, always do I keep the Acts of Gord in my mind.
Sales (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sales (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is pretty much true anywhere a salesperson is involved. At least with video games I never feel like when I am at the store I HAVE to buy a game right then. If I see a few that look good, but I am not familiar with them, I can come home and look for some reviews and screenshots and be able to make a more informed decision next time I am out shopping.
Worst frag ever.... (Score:1)
What've you got?
CBG: Behold, the ultimate Pog. (indicates the Steve Allen Pog)
Bart: I'll take it. (Bart hesitates as he sees Lisa walk by the shop)
Bart: Mmmm!
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Re:Sales (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they don't, it'd be a good business move to keep around back issues just so you can point people at a review and say "look, this is good, buy it"
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Good point, but I think you just got lucky. I mean, it's a smaller store, yes, but it's still a national franchise and it all comes down to the quality of workers. I'm sure if you try easy enough you can find thousands of com
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Well Denise went to the new store that opened up, that happened to be within miles of where I live. It is also a wonderful store
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And while you're at it, don't forget to have the Loose Change viewing guide [loosechangeguide.com] handy.
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Having worked in a couple of CompUSA's I can say that at the big box stores you are more likely to get an honest answer out of the software sales guys because they don't get commissions on sales, and no one is going to buy a service plan on a video game. If some
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I was gonna buy Prey, since it was from the local game studio. Then I asked what it was like and the guy basically said: The new things where cool, but it was too easy. You die and you spend 30 seconds shooting stuff and then you come back alive. Don't buy it.
And I followed his advice.
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Even gamestop guys can have a heart (Score:3, Funny)
Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty much any form of retail will suffer from this sort of thing, such as a person buying an electric saw only to find out it doesn't cut the material they want to use it on.
I guess the gaming market is just a good example for people on Slashdot to relate to...
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I'm sure it will cut salesperson quite effectively. You just need to be more forward in expressing your opinion of his job performance.
Again, Steam (Score:5, Interesting)
Shareware isn't dead, it has just evolved. Anything that you make worth selling should be worth letting someone try out for an hour or two (or a chapter or two) first.
Parent isn't a troll (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Again, Steam (Score:4, Informative)
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Shareware is evolved into what then? ... i want it to
Some stupid one hour boring demo of 700 mb
Shareware (apogee's) used to be 1/3 or 1/4 of the actual game back then
counting for hours and hours of fun gameplay!
if short demos is what shareware has evolved into
devolve as quickly as possible
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This is one of the best features of the Xbox 360, IMHO.
-Eric
Game Fly or Blockbuster (Score:2)
Renting is far cheaper.
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please don't go for the easy sale (Score:4, Insightful)
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what a bunch of crap (Score:2, Interesting)
For one thing you don't know what has not occurred yet. That is called a guess. For another women/girls like videogames too. Maybe not I New Jersey, but In Washington State they do.
The people are also no stranger than you would get in say a Jack in the Box, or a Mervyns. Which is not to say that those people aren't strange too.
An
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The guy is writing a blog, for God's sake. It's not like he's the Gamestop Messiah coming to speak for all gam
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The context of the article was the fact that this guy got an MTV news interview for his blog. That's really the only reason it's on Sla
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One experience does not equal another, so pay no heed to how this article submission title as an overgeneralization to a retail industry.
I can't believe this even made it into slashdot as it has almost no redeeming qualities of legitimacy.
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Pr0n (Score:2, Offtopic)
The first I remember was BOFH.
Acts of Gord was okay.
Then there was Tucker Max. God how funny.
From TM, I found the Tard Blog. It was the first blog that made me want to go to confession after.
I'd also like to throw out a shout to True Porn Clerk Stories. Now that's some sad shit.
Acts Of Gord Rox (Score:1)
I spent 3 ok, 4 hours of my life reading through it. I don't regret it.
http://www.actsofgord.com/ [actsofgord.com]
If you don't agree with me, the door's to the left.
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Rust Proofing (Score:4, Insightful)
I have long since abandoned trying to ask questions of the staff that stray from their script as they seem determined to veer me back into their needlesly complicated Wii pre-preorder down payment plan or DS cartridge insurance.
This blogger sounds more self-aware than the robo-teens at my local EB. I must imagine that the pressure from management to sell their high profit rust proofing is pretty intense. Couple that with the high ratio of mouth breathing junior high kids, and it has got to be a thoroughly maddening and soul crushing job.
DS games that are broken (Score:1)
I've read articles about salespeople pushing extended warranties on the Tetris DS game card [consumerist.com]. Could it be because Tetris DS actually is broken [the-inbetween.com], what with the infinite spin rule [ytmnd.com] that takes all the challenge out of single player and the counterintuitive T-spins [pineight.com] required for competitive play?
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broken by design (Score:2)
If this rulebook [tetrisconcept.com] prohibits adding an option, then all Tetris brand games from 2001 on are broken by design, and if you want a challenge in single player, play clones.
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Off-Topic but I liked this snippet from the interview:
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Actually putting effort into your job isn't rewarded and you'll probably get shitty shifts and eventually be forced to leave because the "$7.50/hr and doesn't get paid overtime manager" sees you as a threat.
The "how stupid is this person" and "how much bullshit can I spout until he stops nodding his head" games are also amusing if you're a b
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Hats off to good retail people (Score:2)
My hat's are off to good people who can treat me like a valued customer without the upsell shoved down my throat.
(cough... bestbuy do you want a subscription to this and that, what's your phone number, you should buy the warranty crap... cough cough)
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Yeah, probably not a good idea, especially if they sell the list, but I am sort of an asshole.
My experience.. (Score:4, Interesting)
For a context the year I worked included the GC/360 release year.
For a simple sales monkey the gig was pretty straight forward. For most of the year the load was pretty light and generally we had a lot of free time to just tidy up the store, chat, or just play the video game demos. Around Christmas (especially after) was busy and we always had a line an a sea of stuff to package for resale behind the counter but that was really the worst of it.
The only things that we had to do (at the time) was push the subscriptions to game informer, which in all actuality was/is a pretty good magizene (I still get an issue for free somehow as part of a subscription) and try to sell warrenties/strategy guides. Fortunetly our boss was pretty lax and we really only had to push the subscriptions.
Overall the crowd was also a good mix. Sure you got a lot of guys coming in and many buying Madden, GTA, etc but we also had a fair amount of females (mostly buying for someone else), parent/children, and the 'hardcore' crowd looking for the rare/older stuff or the cult hits.
People in generally were pretty receptive to our advice. We always made sure to warn parents about M rated games and many of them seemed pretty grateful to know about it (though their kids weren't) and often gave some recommendation. If you try to force a game on someone they're going to think you're full of it usually but being able to offer advice or recommend a game similiar to another game usually ended up with most people leaving with a decent game.
To me it kinda sounds like the people with the blog are more of the type of gamer who focuses on the genre pushing, artistic style , or in generally the type of games that usually don't make mainstream but are what makes gaming worth it for most of us. I enjoy the games as well but I feel like you have to understand they're not for everyone and games are about fun. Plenty and plenty of people buy and play Madden and have a blast why should you try to dissuade them from that*.
There's also a good chance that working there will be one of the best (not pay wise) job's I'll ever had. It was a blast.
*Other than the fact that EA is a terrible company.
It's true. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reliance on extended warranties and upselling is almost (but not quite) as bad as at big box places like Best Buy (whom I also worked for). They expect you to push 2 to 3 things per sale whether you know the customer will want it or not. Warranties, pre-orders, CD cleaning kits, it's all totally useless, but we had to push it anyway.
Thankfully, I had a very cool boss who was happy as long as we made him look good, and the staff was pretty good about actually selling stuff to people who could use it (CD resurfacers to parents with young kids, warranties to parents with young kids, discount cards to people who were there constantly... etc.) If we didn't think someone was going to go for something extra, we were usually right, and he let us get off without offering it (which is demeaning as all hell).
Of course, the employees were also forced to buy this stuff on anything we bought, but we could actually use it. PS2 got a nick on it when you moved? Maybe you should warranty it out for a new one!
One last note, we also told people they could destroy their own systems to get the warranty to give them a new one. Most people never did, but they enjoyed the idea that they could, and it sold a lot more warranties than the standard pitch. Of course, such talk would get you fired if the higher-ups ever heard about it, but they left us alone since we kept selling warranties for them.
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How hard is it really? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're interested in games. You can read. There are magazines in every store, there are millions of websites, your friends have their own "reviews" and you have a brain.
The man behind the counter is interested (directly or indirectly) in making money. Even if he's a nice bloke, he still likely has a stupid manager behind him making him recommend games that make them more money. The man behind the counter HAS NOT necessarily even played the game (no matter what he says), has no idea
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For every one good employee, (Score:2)
One time I was sarcastically joking with a salesman at my local store about how "great" JAWS Unleashed looked. His clueless partner, sensing a sale like blood in the water sidles up next to me and pours it on thick. He even mentioned the glowing review Gamespot gave it, [gamespot.com] with an unabashed lack of irony.
Some of the pure bullshit I hear them tell uniformed customers amazes me. For instance, salesmen who tell customers that all their old XBox ga
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Some of the pure bullshit I hear them tell uniformed customers amazes me
lol, if only I wasn't too tired to make a witty comment, because whatever joke I can think of involving the cops or such would undoubtfully get me modded down for flamebait..
Two words... (Score:1)
I did a very brief stint at Egghead Software in the early 90's. The return policy was my ace in the hole: "Hey try this game; if you don't like it, bring it back for a full, no-questions-asked refund." Customers are very willing to try new stuff when the risk is minimized.
(Yes, folks were copying software and then returning it- but not as many as you'd think; apparently, the hassle of going to and from the store was a deterrent.)
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My favorite video game store experience (Score:3, Funny)
The boy wanted a specific game and the mother was asking me about it. Her daughter was running around being a little shit, intentionally knocking things off of the shelves and talking far too loudly. The mother was in mid sentence, she reached out and caught the little girl by her pony tail spanked her twice on the bottom and sat her down on the floor without breaking the cadence in her speaking or breaking eye-contact with me.
It kind of went something like this...
"So, is this a an action game, a puzzle game or a " --Catch, WHACK WHACK, plop-- " strategy game?"
I wanted to thank her, because it was going to be me that had to pick up all of the things that the little girl had knocked onto the floor.
LK
Depends on how you see the glass. (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked this year during about the exact midpoint of the current gen's lifetime, when the PS2 was pulling away, though you had some great releases on GC like Viewtiful Joe, and Soul Calibur II (the GC version sold WAY more than the other 2) and the Xbox was actually starting to sell. We had a large collection of used "classic" games as well as quite a large selection of imports. We had movies, anime, all the usual game store stuff. Unfortunately, most of our import sales were online sales, and since then the online business of the store has declined dramatically.
Being a gamer, and quite a geek, I was of course excited to sell the people the games I liked, and got rather dissapointed on the days when all we would see were a few people looking for the new Madden, etc. But I did make a point of knowing about even these games, even though I hadn't really played much of them. I learned a lot from my co-workers' experiences as well, and became quite a bit more knowledgable about video games than I was before.
The best part about it was the fact that we had a policy to tell it like it is. We never lied, but we never said "buy that" or "don't buy that" without a reason either. It's just a matter of understanding what your customer is looking for, and making your best effort to sell them exactly what they want to play, even if you don't like it. In other words, don't try to dissuade people on entire genres, but rather on the worst games of each genre.
Did I like working there? Heck yes! Was it rediculously annoying at times? Oh yeah. Would I do it again? Maybe, but not long term.
One other thing I found to be very different in my experience was the last section about playing less since working there. My game playing habits increased tenfold while working at VGD, largely due to the discount I received.
To think it was a job I wanted once... (Score:1)
When you find an industry... (Score:2)
Serioiusly, though. Don't let other people determine your career path. If that's what you want to do, then do it.
It's a shady industry. (Score:2, Informative)
Report them (Score:2)
Here's how to get free work from gaming employees! (Score:2)
Games are still sold at brick-and-mortar stores? (Score:2)
Re:Games are still sold at brick-and-mortar stores (Score:2)
Go to any Gamestop or EB Games (same company now) and you'll find the store is 80-90% consoles (whatever they're selling/not selling in this realm I wouldn't know). What few PC games they have are only the top name/commercialized hits (i.e. crap).
Frye's and Best Buy carry a very wide variety, but I have yet to speak to an informed salesperson in either of those stores.
I tend to look for betas and free trials of games. If I like it, I'll order it online comparing shipping costs vs. tax if I get it
Acts of Gord (Score:1)