Have you seen the Best Buy across the street?
Dear GameStop,
Your stores are poorly organized.
They offer a cheap-looking mish-mash of games strewn about the store on racks—never shelves—and in glass cases. The glass cases are reserved for used GBA and DS games that didn’t come with cases or, in most instances, instruction manuals. Half your stock of used…I’m sorry…”pre-owned” games are in generic DVD boxes with really awful GameStop art on the sleeve. It is not reversible. The game’s title is often written in marker. There is no manual. You are selling it for well over the $10 it’s probably worth. Your back room must be such a travesty that employees simply can’t find what they’re looking for, as trips to this mythical storage facility almost always end in disappointment and tears. It would be nice if you alphabetized your PSP games, too.
You are a criminal.
You take games—sometimes new—for store credit, and you give people pennies on the dollar. Then you turn right around and charge, say, $55 for that same game, despite acknowledging that it’s “pre-owned.” You offer some kind of points-based benefit card for a fee, of course, and you tell customers that they can use the points to buy games, accessories, even game systems. The trick is that like Club Nintendo, you have to spend infinitely more than whatever eventual purchase you make based on those points is actually worth. You still sell PS2 games, and I’m talking ancient PS2 games, for up to and including $20. You sell caseless, manual-less GBA and DS games for sometimes the same price. This is highway robbery and you know it. Additionally, all the money one spends on used games at GameStop goes directly to GameStop; not a single penny goes to the developer or publisher. That copy of Uncharted 2 you bought used for $55? Naughty Dog doesn’t see a dime of that. Shouldn’t they see a dime? They did a really good job with that game. GameStop is basically taking that hard-earned dime.
You are unreliable.
“Want to pre-order a game?” Sure, I’ll pre-order Super Mario Galaxy 2 just to shut you up so I can leave. I’ve accrued $50 in store credit over three years of selling you my old games, so why not? I’ve always been told that pre-ordering the game I want is the only way I’m guaranteed to get it. So when the day of happiness comes, that joyful Sunday when Super Mario Galaxy 2 launches, I march right into GameStop and am told that, unfortunately, they didn’t get as many pre-orders as they thought they would, and my name is too far down the list, so I won’t be getting one. Thanks, guys. There’ve also been times—more than once—where I called ahead, asked if they have a game in stock, and was told yes. Can you put it behind the counter for me? I’m only ten minutes away. “Sure, we can do that!” Well, guess what happens when I get to the store. They forgot about it, and now it’s gone, or they actually didn’t have it in the first place, the computer just said they did, oops! “I can’t be bothered to go see if it’s actually here or not.” Thanks again, guys.
You are incredibly annoying.
What an Edge card? Oh, you have one? This is the free card. Do you want the points-based card? It only costs $10 a year! You get points, which you can use to buy games and accessories in like six years if you buy from us exclusively! No? Alright, then. Do you want to pre-order a game? I’ve heard that L.A. Noire is going to be amazing. Oh, not a big Rockstar fan, huh? Well, Portal 2 is on the horizon too, and it’s going to be super-popular. If you want to make sure you get a copy, you’d better pre-order. Alright, let me just ring you up, here. Hey, do you want to grab the strategy guide for this game? No? Okay, that will be $25 for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. No, sorry, we don’t have a case or manual.
Best Buy is right around the corner.
People don’t seem to realize this. In most large cities, and even here in Anchorage, there is a magical place called Best Buy. In this blue-tinted fairyland, you can walk through video game aisles unhindered by obnoxious, nagging posters reminding you to “PRE-ORDER TODAY!” or giant 3DS boxes with completely conceptual art on the cover. You can select a game from their many gaming-related aisles and—I know you won’t believe this—take it to the front counter and just buy it without being interrogated. Then you can leave. There have been a few times where a cashier has asked if I wanted scratch protection, and of course I told them to suck it, but other than that, my game-shopping experience at Best Buy has always been quick and to the point. Other retailers sell games as well: Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer, and even Target stock and actively advertise games in their Sunday newspaper ads. Toys R Us often has insane deals on games. It’s a brave new world, one in which nobody ever has to go into a GameStop ever again.
This is a strategy I would advise all of you readers to take up. If you have credit at GameStop—more than you care to lose—just go use it up. If you like the idea of selling your old games for some kind of monetary exchange, there ARE other options. Sell them to your friends or on Craigslist. Sell them on eBay or Goozex. Hell, you can trade stuff in at some comic shops and even Best Buy. The problem with GameStop, Play ‘n’ Trade, and even Best Buy is that by exchanging your stuff with them, you are tying yourself to their store. That means that if Play ‘n’ Trade isn’t getting Ocarina of Time 3D in until two days after launch, too effing bad (they even suggested that, if I want it on launch day, I should go to a different store). This poses no advantage to me.
I’d have to buy new if I wanted it on launch day, but this wasn’t something I was itching to do. Like many of us, money is consistently tight from month to month, and dropping a cool $40 (much less $60) on a game isn’t something I can just go out and do. This is where the principle of buying new starts to lose some ground. Games, and the consoles they run on, and the accessories you play with, are a whopping financial investment. My entertainment center has several hundred dollars sitting on it, TV included (contrary to popular belief, you will need a TV to play console games…or a nice monitor). Because of this, companies like GameStop prey on your desire to pay less than full price for video games. This would be a noble endeavor were it not so blatantly clear that GameStop is dollar-driven, not customer-driven. “Power to the Players?” Please. More like “Power to Our Bottom Line.” However, buying games new at somewhere other than GameStop does two things: It rewards the developers, and it screws GameStop out of a potential transaction.
I’ve started selling my old games at a local comic shop where I get store credit (of course) but I use that credit to buy expensive figures. Real money I used to blow on Kotobukiya’s Bishoujo Wonder Woman is now spent buying new games. They also give me more credit than GameStop does, although how could they not? They tell me exactly how much each thing will be worth in store credit so I can decide whether it’s worth giving to them or not. They know me there; they know I read Power Girl. The revolving door of GameStop employees don’t know me from the pale, obese, T-shirt wearing, acne-laden gamer stereotype in line behind me, and that’s a little disappointing.
“But I can get StreetPasses there!” I can hear you decree. I’ve gotten StreetPasses in comic shops, in outdoor markets, in Best Buy, in the mall generally, at Barnes & Nobel, and even in PetCo. Don’t worry too much about it—you have other options. Besides, if you don’t live in Japan and don’t go to E3 or PAX, those StreetPass games are barely worth trying for anyway. So the lesson to take away from this article? GameStop is not worth giving your time or money to when there are plenty of stores that will happily take your money and not waterboard you while doing so. There is just no good reason to go to GameStop in today’s day and age.
