Gamestop the sequel

Well, I got skyward sword. The big problem was that it didn't come with the original game manual, if it ever had one, but on the bright side it came with the original sound track. Now to see if the game itself plays.

 

Not everything can be perfect, it's better to take the enemy you know here.

GameStop isn't bad, you just need to be a smart buyer.

 

This goes on in all of retail. Gamestop may have notorious stories about it, but I worked at Best Buy for a few months and my god how they would make you push the credit cards and protection plans. As a cashier 90% of my training had to do with the protection plans. My sister works at Old Navy and they too have to push the store credit cards. At least what Gamestop is pushing is relatively inexpensive/harmless--the paid rewards card is actually a decent value (I like getting Game Informer and you get a buck or two off of games, plus coupons) and preorders, well, I don't mind getting them from Gamestop rather than Amazon.

 

Apologies for the late reply, I've been going through a terrible breakup between my kidney and some solidified clacium.

I've have had a couple retail jobs, I'm aware they always want you to push stuff (including food service, up-selling were a big deal at Sonic), however there's a reason you don't see pages of google results filled with people complaining about their experience with the best buy cashier who tried to sell them a protection plan. And that's due to a few key factors, like that's the only thing you're pushing, and you only asked once, and you took no for an answer, and you didn't give off an attitude after people rejected the offer as though they had just spit on your birthday cake.

Everything in moderation.

Like I said before, it's not about the things that you're not obligated to buy, it's the people you're obligated to deal with in the store, and the way that, not even by their own direct fault, feels like harassment.

 

I think it's also relevant that Gamestop tends to hire people in their late teens/early 20s, as well, though. They are not notorious for their people skills, and a lot of them are still really bummed about the whole "man I thought I'd get to be playing and talking about video games 24/7!" thing. I have an acquaintance who is a keyholder at a Gamestop, I once asked her about jobs there when I was thinking about switching and the three things she was most clear about were:

• The customers are ****ing terrible
• You will have to sell stuff
• This isn't just one big video game party, don't apply for a job here if you think it is

I'm not totally defending Gamestop of course, I know there are some really shady stories about them as a company and the whole used game = more money for Gamestop, none for devs thing is really messed up, but I think these kinds of things vary store to store & employee to employee.

 

That's not a company thing, that's a store thing. You've gone into subjective territory and can no longer say they're a bad corporation, but one that needs to restaff some stores.

Sorry about the kidney stone there buddy. Hope it came out.

 

THIS

NEEDS

TO

BE

EMPHASIZED

Seriously, too many younger people think Gamestop is just an amazing place to work at since you're around video games and get to sell them. They don't understand what it's like to work for retail, many of them simply haven't had jobs before.

Though that's not to say there aren't older employees too that mess up. It's just...odd though, how different customer service can be though, especially for Gamestop. I have no bad stories to tell of the place because of anything the employees did, only because of the trade-in values and opening games...thingy.

 

The only problem with Gamestop is that sometimes they will offer you a "new used game", when the game has few months and give you 5 dollars discount on it.. the developers only make money with the game for the first months, they probably got that used copy for nothing and are trying to sell for a minimal discount, so the one who sold the game lost money, the one who bought saved nearly nothing, and the developers received none cutting their sales by half..
I don't like the idea of buying "new used games" when they are already old and the discount is really good (like 20$) yes, but to save me 1-5$ and the people that made the game receive zero is bad..
Them again that is all the places, but even when re-sell a car or any other thing you are not so ripped off like in game stop!

 

Oh, no doubt that the base employee is just that, a kid who once had a glorious dream but is now nothing more than a shattered paradigm with a dead-end job, and let's not go into how mature the average gamestop customer must be ( all things considered, the majority of people shopping at gamestop are probably going to be little punks who don't know how badly they're being treated and parents who don't know the first thing about games, since anyone outside of those two main groups likely just uses Steam ).

But the store policies, that seem almost designed to trap people who don't know any better, read: their main clientèle , don't really do anything to help rectify the problems, and only really create more of a rift between customer and employee. All it really comes down to is the higher ups don't care about the customers, they only care about the profits.

That's not to say that pretty much EVERY company is like that, the difference being that GameStop has damn near close to a Monopoly, so they're not worried about keeping their customers happy.

As for the whole used game thing...I'm actually not as miffed about that, if a game got traded in it WAS bought new at one point (or stolen, but let's be optimistic), and if someone doesn't want their copy of Xenosaga anymore, and that store is the only place you can buy it to experience the game, then GameStop's doing us a favor. Now it's a bit of a different story when someone trades in a game that was released last week and gamestop under-cuts the price by $5, which really DOES take a great deal of money from the devs. But GameStop is entitled to give as much credit as they want and turn around and charge as much as they want for that game, but they're just as welcome to lose people's business through that process, no one's forcing me to trade in my games, and I could get a better deal putting it up on e-bay. I'd like to think the general population knows this...I'd like to....

Unfortunately the discussion is never cut-and-dry, it really comes down to the general idea that gamestop just goes a little too far with things for me to have any respect for them.

 

It's really not messed up because the devs were already paid to make the game and don't make money off sales. It's the publisher who "loses money" because they don't get to sell more shipments.

But that could be alleviated if everyone didn't try to dump more money than four small countries' combined amount of cash into Lara Croft's hair.

I hate that everyone is blaming the seller for needing to make more than $2-$6 a sale and doing things that allows more value to the consumer. GameStop is for the consumer, that's why I can buy Rage for $5 there instead of $60. If publishers want to make money, then they should learn to manage their expenses like responsible adults and not just think that if they dump money into something, it'll always have triple the output.

Why do you think Nintendo literally came out pretty much saying they don't give sh*ts about used games?

Certainly there are different ways for publishers to make money.

Sorry for so much Jimquisition, here's a ridiculous video featuring Dominoes Pizza, Hatsune Miku, and The Lion King

 

Sorry, I missed your post a bit ago.

It's the corporate policies that promote the problematic employee attitudes.

And it's not come out yet, but I can feel it getting close. I wouldn't wish this on my worst..okay I would wish this on my worst enemy and laugh about it, but even with narcotics it's a betch and a half.

Never apologize for Jim Sterling, that man is a shining beacon among game journalism.

 

He is, which is why now I find your publisher apologist mentality so odd.

It is corporate policies like needing to sell warranties and get preorders and blah blah, but good salesmen know how to make it not come off as badgering. Ask once, explain on the no, apologize or make a joke about the subject, move on with the sale.

Good luck sir. Never had one so I wouldn't know. You'd think I would with my soda addiction.

 

It's my soda addiction that did me in, probably.

Not sure what makes me a publisher apologist, and that's not really being coy for the sake of argument, I actually want to know to what you're referring.

I also thought, while in the 7th shower of today, that, while we do vote with our wallets, we also can't let those publishers bully us into thinking we have to buy their games for them to make money. No, we simply have to preorder them. Once a game is on GameStop's shelf, the publisher has already made their profit off of that copy. So buying a game day 1 is less effective for getting a game you want to support its money as preordering is. More preorders = more copies ordered by retailers.

Though I should also mention that even though the developers have already gotten paid for their work once a game hits the shelf, if it doesn't meet the ridiculously extravagant standards of what is "successful", the chances of that studio having their funding cut off is pretty high. So it's nice they've gotten paid, but they might be out of a job this year.

It's a jumbled mess and there's a lot of greedy little fingers causing problems for anyone not developing Call of Duty.

 

Honestly, I fear the day I get my comeuppance. Oh well, at least I'll be able to find you and share the horrors with a pal.

Every point was a great one except... well.... I'll just respond with this, you'll figure it out.

WELL I don't know you well enough to say if you are or not, but it's just coming off as it due to the GameStop hate. Every time people just attack GameStop and leave out the publisher, it just makes them come off as a neon sign that says I SUPPORT MY PUBLISHERS WHO LIKE BENDING ME OVER A TABLE! Maybe it was assumptive of me, if so, my fault.

Now, your point is spot on. Pre-ordering helps a ton- in fact, it's all publishers care about. Well, AAA. Nintendo and small publishers tend to care more so about the long run. Come to think of it, I keep thinking of Japanese, not-Capcom, publishers. Hm... Maybe it's a Western thing? Anywho, my point here is none of that would matter at all if publishers didn't spend a bunch at all and just, ya know, made a game good. You don't need to develop Call of Duty to have job security, you need to be like Platinum or Nintendo and develop well with very low costs so most everything is profit. Capcom's spending too much, while their former employees are kicking butt and have been become a well known name in the industry, and they did it after three games. Literally, P* could be kicked to the curb by SEGA and then, bam!, Nintendo wants more W101 stuff. They made a name for themselves and didn't let anyone else take a stake in their claim to fame. They'll forever have work. And as far as cheaper games go, 30,000 people are enough to already fund all of MN9 (click and donate below) so that now every thing is profit to those developers. And just so it's not coming off like I'm saying Kickstarter is the magic answer to everything (it's actually the exact opposite more often than not), QUBE sold 4,000 copies on Steam and it was enough for the dev to call it a major success and get published for a Wii U downloadable. He'll be a hit dev now. I'm going to stop here before I go full ramble and get into how if indie developers would stop being ponces then they could use their profits to hire some kids out of college and start small studios that could end up growing into the next Platinum Games and we'd just have more good game studios to the point we could overshadow AAA releases through sheer quantity of quality.

tl;dr: CLIFFY B WAS WRONG. VERY WRONG.

 

QFT. Can't believe its idiotic thoughts like that which are behind some of the most successful game franchises these days.

Spend only what you actually need to in order to make the actual gameplay good and fun, and don't waste so much on fancy commercials (which half the time don't even REFLECT THE GAMEPLAY COUGH GEARS OF FUCKING WAR)

And since you mentioned it, Nintendo firing shots at anti-used games. Always a good read.