A friend pointed out this site to me this morning (thx jjz!). I didn’t read more than the front page, all with stories from June 5th. Now to be fair, some of those stories are about older instances, but that might actually be a worse thing. Let me give you an example:
I foolishly asked if any of their Logitech 5.1 speaker sets had optical input, because I was looking at something for surround sound gaming and the XBox supports dolby digital via optical… I got a lecture on how I didn’t need optical for 5.1.
“That’s just it you see, they have lots of RCA ports in the back… you don’t need 5.1, just go down to Dick Smith and get these things called “splitters.” Plug the cables from the PS2 into those and you turn your two RCA leads into four! And plug in another set, and you get 6, and that’s enough for 5.1 sound. I have this setup at home and it sounds awesome! It makes such a difference!”
Or maybe this one:
My old boss would say anything to get a reserve. I once listened to him tell a customer the following lies about Spider-Man 2(Before it Came out): “I went to a special retail conference and got a chance to play Spider-Man 2, (He didn’t) it’s just like GTA and KOTOR combined, you can walk all around the city and if you beat up the pedestrians, your evil meter goes up. If you get enough evil points, you TURN INTO VENOM! You can even infect people with your symbiote to make them fight for you!”
Both of these are a load shit, one of them purposely so, the other purely from ignorance. But the point is this, if you’re a gamer, you’ve had something along the same lines happen to you. You’ve had the EB/Gamestop/BB/etc guys tell you bullshit. You’ve had to deal with crappy policies (pre-order only!). You’ve probably seen/heard crappy shit happening to those around you and since they weren’t gamers, they didn’t know they were being screwed over.
So I think we can all agree this is a pervasive problem in the industry. Be it because EB type shops pay so little and go through so little training that retards are the norm or because customer service in all industries is where cuts go in, it happens.
This is nothing new, I just started thinking about this morning because of reading that site and being disgusted. Why? Because it’s fucking up the game industry. People are being sold shit they have no idea about. They are being burned and it’ll make them less likely to come back in the future. So no matter how good a game the publisher and developers put together, it can still be completely screwed at the store front by people not being well trained enough or just being plain assholes. This isn’t the same as movies or say furniture. Movies are advertised, they are reviewed on TV and people often see previews when watching other movies. Furniture is even easier…people just sit on that shit and see if they like it or not.
Games though, console and PC games, they don’t have shit. Lots of people walking to EB/BB/etc haven’t heard anything about the game they will purchase by the time they walk out. And who’s filling them with this information? Asshats who aren’t well trained, aren’t required to be educated in what they are selling and have numbers they have to push, not knowledge of the industry. And it’s hurting the industry. I guarantee it. People are missing out on the gems in the rough because the employees have no idea, games that are the biggest budget are being pushed the most and overall, it’s becoming more and more about how much money EB is paid to push a game, not the quality of the game.
As I said before, this is nothing new. It’s been happening for years and years. I’m saying it’s time for it to stop. Here’s what needs to happen.
1) EB/BB/etc need to educate their employees in what they are selling. This is where the rubber meets the road. If the employee has no fucking idea what they are selling, they will continue to schlock shit out.
2) Developers/Publishers need to get involved. Because if they don’t push EB types to do it, they won’t. They will continue to tell shit to prospective customers, treating those that aren’t hardcore as less and overall making the game buying experience very intimidating for most people out there.
I realize I’m asking for the moon here, but damn me if it’s not a good dream.
What Would Matt Do: You know what I do now? I visit whichever store where the employees leave me alone the most. They are completely and totally useless. I can get away with that because I’m an educated gamer. I fear for the n00bs out there.