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Death of the Indie Game Store
tjmcgee writes "Independent game stores are usually hard to find, and when you do they are generally overpriced. An article on the Next-Gen site explains why the independent game store is all but gone. The article is very funny but kinda sad." From the article: "There's a lot of competition out there. There's no getting around it. Everyone is selling games now. Chances are your grandmother is hocking copies of Vice City every Monday between Bingo and Salisbury Steak night at the Shady Tree rest home."
Looks like it's a good opportunity for them to move all web. After all, it did work for Netflix - if somebody could come up with a similar system for games, we gamers/geeks are fairly notorious about going after new tech/stuff.
It may not have the appeal of a brick and mortar store, but you can offer so much more.
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Independent game stores are usually hard to find, and when you do they are generally overpriced.
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WAL-MART SELLS FOR CHEAPER
The days of mom and pop shops of almost any kind are gone. The Internet has killed profit margins. Forget service and anything else. The bottom line is who's got it the cheapest. Kind of sad, really.
Because of all the great stories you get to tell people!!11
Yeah, right.
Indie games are alive and well on the macintosh, I doubt that I have any mainstream games on my computer.
What I'd really like to see is a PC gaming specialty store. Not just with new games, but with classic games, and with hardware upgrades for your computer - video cards, memory, processors, etc. I grant that it probably wouldn't be profitable, but it sure as hell would be nice.
Second, you imply that these 'fundamentals' are inevitable. It is no surprise that large corporations can use their buying power to leverage prices and lower costs below that of independant sellers, but as stewards of our economic model is this what we really want? Do we want a handful of large retail stores with similar strategies to each other to be the gatekeepers of what stuff we see and what stuff we don't? Do we want retailers with huge purchasing power to force producers to adopt lowest cost production techniques? Or perhaps there are factors which are important to people that don't get expressed well in the marketplace. Perhaps different ways of conducting business need to be given advantages and disadvantages based on long term economic health and not just the aggregate narrow-focus decisions of many people.
It's not the price issue that finished off independent games stores; it's the fact that the owners generally just didn't understand their role in the market.
I used to know some pretty decent indie games shops here in the UK. All but one of them have now either closed, or have become so dire that in any just world they would be closed. Go back 4 years or so and maybe a third of my games purchases were from independent stores. I've only bought a single one in the last year (compared to about 20 purchases from major chains).
So why? I don't think it's at all fair to blame the big chains or the games industry for this; by and large, they have a role and they do it well. If you want to buy a major title, or indeed any release from the last 12 months or so, you go to a big chain store. You'll get the same game here for less money, as they can take advantage of economies of scale.
What indie stores used to do was offer a range of imported, obscure or simply older titles that wouldn't get shelf-space in the big chains. Sure, you'd pay a fair whack for picking up a US import, but it generally wasn't much more expensive than importing it yourself, plus you didn't have all the associated worries about imbecillic courier firms and zealous customs agents. Plus, it's just... nice... to be able to walk into a shop and buy what you want right there and then.
This all changed, of course. Most of the indie games stores seemed to start worrying that they were so much more expensive than the big chains. They started to try competing directly with them, buying large quantities of the latest AAA franchise titles at the exclusion of the lesser known stuff and lowering their prices. This was always bound to fail; no matter how low they went, the big chains were always going to be able to go lower. Hence, most of them went bust.
Capitalism is a great thing, contrary to what you often read on slashdot. However, it's also frequently misunderstood. To succeed in a modern capitalist economy, you do not always need to try to compete directly with the biggest fish around. You just have to be able to stake out a niche of your own and defend it. The major chains have never tried to offer the products that I used to be able to get in the indies. Hence, I can only conclude that most indie store owners either panicked unnecessarily or got too greedy.
I'm a steward of my bank account. A copy of WoW is no different from one retailer to another and I'll buy it where I can get it the cheapest and with the least hassle. If this means I order online from Amazon rather than travel halfway across town to stick some money in some over-grown kid's hand, that's fine with me.
There simply isn't a need for smaller videogame retail stores, except for used or vintage items.
Do you shop at the family-owned korean convenience store down the street for your groceries, even though a can of chili is $3.75? Or do you travel further to go to a Safeway or Cub Foods where you can buy it for 80 cents?
I keep seeing everyone say they are overpriced. Maybe my area is different, but the indie stores around here aren't bad at all. They sell new games for the same as the major retailers, but they don't focus on that much at all. Several of the best don't even sell new games.
Where indie stores really shine is in the used games. I've found them to be MUCH cheaper than Gamestop, EBGames, etc. For example I recently picked up a complete boxed copy of Final Fantasy 1 in decent condition for the same price Game Crazy wanted for just the cartridge. I also picked up Dragon Warrior 3 for half of what the bigger stores wanted. I could go on and on with examples, but I've found them to always be much cheaper on the classic games. Also, you can actually haggle with them and get a better price for a larger purchase or a purchase with trade-in. Good luck with that at a major game shop.
The other place where they shine is the fact that they actually have knowledgable staff. I can go into one of those and find out the going rate for Waterworld for VirtualBoy and background on Neo Geo AES systems or anything else I ask about. The workers at the big stores don't have the faintest clue what I am talking about. I'm also lucky enough to have a major indie store that imports thousands of Japanese games, which I am a big fan of. Without them I would be stuck paying Lik-sangs massive markups.
I'm not saying indie stores aren't going to go away some day, but they definately have a place and if you are interested in classic or foreign games you don't have much of an alternative. If the ones around here ever closed I guess I'd be stuck with Ebay and importers.
Just a couple of nits. I don't mean to beat on the guy since I'm in the same boat. I've managed independent stores for about 5 years now, and 6 months ago bought my own.
The key is that if you love games more than you love money, you should NOT be in this business. If your focus is on renting a 1400sqft strip mall gamer room where you can hold court and gab about games and do special orders, you have doomed yourself to failure. If you find your store slouching toward that ideal, turn that sucker around NOW.
If you're an independent and don't rent out games, you're committing slow suicide. Not only is it a nice side income that you can count on every week, but it also means that you DON'T have to stock every single $50 game that comes out.
"Hey, do you have that new Fleshreaper game?"
"Sure. But have you played it yet? I've heard mixed reviews on it. It's just $7 for a week, and wouldn't you hate to blow $50 on a game you'll hate? Lemme sign you up."
Bingo. Instead of having to spend $160 to get 4 copies to sit on your shelf and silently stare at you, while you pray for them to sell, you can spend $80 for two rental copies, maintain the appearance of a well stocked store and give the customer the impression that you care more about making him happy than making $50. If it's not Christmas, I only order new releases to get rentals and preorders. I do stock surefire stuff (GTA, Madden and other AAA titles), but everything else I do NOT stock deep.
Systems: Why should I bother losing money on these when I can send people to the Walmart across the street? "And please check out the fine selection of used PS2 titles before you go!"
Giving store credit for used stuff: This is where we see, again, that gamers shouldn't own game stores. If you don't have your banter down, you're in the wrong line of work. "Sure you paid $50 for that when it came out. But it sells new for $20 now. I can give you $8 for it, and that's about $5 more than what EB will give you for it!"
Anyway, while I don't think my business model will last forever, I also don't think properly run independent stores are going to burst into flames. I will continue to exploit the holes that EB, Best Buy and Blockbuster leave gaping open.
I bought my store 6 months ago from a guy who was augering it in because he wasn't willing to spend the time and money to turn it around. Income is up 20% this month from this time last year. So far, so good.
http://pdb.blog-city.com/
In general I get this "death of the small retailer" thing, its an argument thats been around across all retailing as long as I can remember. Probably before I was born given the long standing existence of super markets.
But for video games, I don't see what an independent retailer offers. Its different for say, butchers vs. supermarket slop (its about sourcing) or bookshops and recordshops (indie retailers buy from indie niche publishers). But for video games, the indie studios hardly exist any more much less indie game publishers. Its not even like a hardware store/butcher/fish munger etc. where the product is generic but one is happy to pay a modest premium for expertise and advice of the owner. In the early days (early to mid 1980s) this was probably the case with computer software but not anymore.
Video games are the same wherever you get them and the inventory just isn't that diverse and the bigger names probably stock more because they can afford the shelf space. Its sad for people directly involved but as a consumer it leaves me a little cold to be honest.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I've been in a lot of towns and smaller citys, both before and after they get a Wal-Mart Superstore. The empty store fronts are painfully obvious after the W-M SS has been in town for about 2 years.