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Life Behind The Counter
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.
How does the customer know whether the salesman is giving him good advice or just trying to push some POS game for other reasons, like higher profit margins or pressure from management?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The dude at the counter told me I didn't really want to buy Dirge of Cerberus when I slapped it down. I knew if he was willing to do that (after seeing the shit his boss makes him pull to bring in sales before), he had to really beleive it.
That sort of situation is not unique to the gaming market.
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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Another advantage of Steam: Many games have playable demos you can try before you buy. Many other good games do too. This used to be much more common, such as Duke Nukem 1,2 3. And yes, they promise that there will be a demo version of Duke Nukem Forever as soon as it comes out... (swear to you)
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.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The point that hits hardest is the one thing a lot of the Gamestop/EB managers seem to get wrong. If people wanted cheap, they'd go to Walmart. But they come into the GAMES store for the large selection of games, and the assumption that people behind the counter know what's good and what's not. If someone asks for a recommendation and you go for the easy sale, and recommend a piece of crap game, you'll come off looking like a tool and people won't come back to your store anymore. "The guy at the store told me my son would like this game, but it sucked. That guy didn't know what he was talking about. Screw that, I'll just go to Best Buy next time." But if you recommend a great game, people might come back next week or next month and buy another, and another. Or maybe if you're really lucky they'll recommend your store to their friends.
I am a semi-regular at an EB Games in Portland, Oregon. I reluctantly use them to purchase new PC games on release day mainly out of convinience- it is on my drive home from work. My wife and I refer to the store as 'Rust Proofing' due to their excessive hard-sell of the extended warranty on every object in the store. There have been many times where I have had to repeatedly insist that no, I don't want to insure my DVD/CDs as I am very careful with them and have never once had a scratched disc.
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.
I worked in a gamestop for a year and a half (granted a few years back but still) and I don't feel like these guys at all. Sure it might be a lot different if you actually own the store but...
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.
I worked for Game Crazy (the Hollywood video owned game store) for 2 years, and though it was one of the better ones, it was, at times, a nightmare.
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.
How hard is it really?
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 of the type of games that you like, does not have to put up with a bad purchase and is primarily a salesman.
Now, what do you do if you want to choose a good game to play? Why this incessant need to listen to salespeople in order to determine what to buy? Customers have NEVER had so much information (and summarised information, and rating systems, and word-of-mouth and...) available to them for, in some cases, absolutely no money whatsoever. Why listen to anyone behind a counter whose wages ultimately depend, at the end of the day, on people like you buying games from them? They may be "nice" to you and try to help you, but it's YOUR decision first because it's YOUR money.
If you are really in doubt between two games, ask for a demo of each. If they can't provide, locate a demo of each next time you see a magazine on the shelf, or download one, or play a friends copy. Why take some clerks word for what YOU would like, or even a magazine for that matter?
If you approach me while I'm browsing video games and you ask if I need help then you will get told that I'm fine. If you start trying to question my purchase or even question what game I've picked up to read the back of (which is far and away a different thing altogether) then you will get a "No, I'm alright, thanks". If I go to the counter and you offer me ANYTHING other than the game I want to buy or to point out that they are 3-for-the-price-of-2 then I guarantee you will get answered before you can finish your sentence. "Can I interest you..." "No." "Would you like to read abo..." "No." "Would you like to become a member.." "No."
I just want the damn game. It's not being unsociable, I've had many a good chat in the local video games store, it's not wanting to be pestered. You don't get people come up to you in a library saying "Oh, no. I read a review of that book that said it was awful, it only got 5 out of 10" or "Really, sir, this book is so much better even though it's not even on the same subject".
Become educated buyers. That means NOT listening to salesmen (this is a general rule that will keep you in good stead in lots of other situations too), who always have other ulterior motives.
My dad probably buys one DVD a year, plus possibly a video game when it comes to birthday time. He knows absolutely NOTHING about the games at all. Does he get the salesman to choose? Never. He's smarter than that. Does he spend money on magazines full of other people's (usually very biased) opinion? No. He looks at the back of the box of several games that catch his eye, studies them carefully, maybe he's heard of one or maybe he saw someone play a demo or maybe he can even get to play one of them in the store. Then he chooses and buys, using all the information that ONLY he has about the potential reciever of the game. Does he ever make bad decisions? Very, very rarely. This is a man that can't figure out how to run AND jump in Super Mario.
If you really, really make a bad mistake, that's what receipts are for - take it back and change it. If you're prone to making mistakes, rent the games instead.
I apply this to EVERY purchase. Electronics? Don't breathe down my neck, little salesman oik - I can probably take any of those DVD players apart and explain how every single component works whereas you've never SEEN a real Video-CD. If I wasn't that knowledgeable, guess what? I'd go look it up beforehand, or at least know the difference between a DVD player and a DVD recorder an
I was at the counter and this woman that I presume was the mother of two small children, a boy and a girl, came into the store to look around.
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I too, like many Slashdot readers probably, have spent some time working at a games shop. I worked for a year at a local shop in a relatively small city in Iowa (150k pop. or so). http://www.videogamedepot.com/
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.
I was an employee at GameCrazy (Subsidiary of Hollywood Video), and I was always told to push, push, push. I actually was reprimanded more than once for reccomending someone NOT buy stinky games. I remember one instance in particular where a mother came in and had two games up: Spiderman 2 and Fantastic Four. Since FF came out that week, it had a $50 pricetag where Spiderman was only $20. I told her without a doubt, buy Spiderman 2 because FF is just terrible. My boss was very pissed at me for selling the cheaper game. I eventually was fired for low sales, but if you have a conscience about gaming, you simply can't work in that industry. The worst part was pushing the stupid "Club Membership", which was not worth the $20 they charged for it. 5% off used games and a magazine subscription isn't really worth $20, and the managers would get really upset that they weren't selling. Not only that, but we'd OFTEN take the discs out of "New" games to play in the store, then shrinkwrap them back up and put them on the shelf when we were done. The game was clearly used at this point, but if someone brought a game back that they hadn't even taken the adhesive seal off of, but the plastic was off, we couldn't give refunds, only trade-in value. To this day, I will NOT buy new games at a game store, because I know how we used to treat those discs. Games would be in demo units for days, weeks on end, and we'd just toss them back in, shrinkwrap it, and charge full price. This wasn't even an isolated thing, this was their policy to do this.