Video Game Stores (EB, Gamestop, Play N Trade, etc) - Games

We all know the big gaming specialty stores names. EB Games, Gamestop (same store pretty much), Play N Trade (anybody know any others?). To the point, what do you think could those stores improve on in terms of customer service? Do you find the stores helpful in terms of information regarding games? Pricing, trade-in values, what do you think could be accomplished in improving those stores better? Which one do you like better? And why? Just wanted to know your guys opinion. But shit, I don't know if this is in the right section or not. :(

Information about games is usually slim to nonexistent. If it's not in their computer or if the clerk doesn't know about it, it doesn't exist. Pricing they probably don't have too much control over, but their trade-in values suck ass when you see them turn your $10 trade-in around for $35. And they (EB/Gamestop) put their own goddamn stickers on the cases, and sometimes even on the inserts themselves, which are a pain to get off and always leave fucking residue. :argh: To be honest, I only enter "game only" stores if they're the only ones that have a game and I can't be assed to wait for it to ship. Otherwise I go to Best Buy or Amazon.

[QUOTE=Watevaman;21085521] And they (EB/Gamestop) put their own goddamn stickers on the cases, and sometimes even on the inserts themselves, which are a pain to get off and always leave fucking residue. :argh:[/QUOTE] Goo-gone doesn't even work on those fucking stickers. :(

They should be dim enough to let you trade in Steam-only games. :colbert:

Wow game stores in the US sound shite, we have two major game shops here in the UK, GameStation and Game, Gamestation being the better one, the staff there know everything about games, cracking deals, good trade in prices and friendly staff.

Gamestop sucks. And they own: EB Games, Funcoland, Babbage's, Electronics Boutique, EBX, PlanetX, and Sotfware Etc. I'm willing to bet those all suck too, I've only been to Gamestops, EB Games' and one Funcoland, and yes they did all suck But thanks to digital distribution I've stopped going to those store all together :D

yeah game station is so much cheaper than game and if neither shop has what im looking for i just go to HMV.

Gamestop smells of BO.

I couldn't care less as long as I have a retailer to look at a bunch of games.

How popular do you guys think Play N Trade is?

I've got one in my town but all they sell is console games. If you ask for a PC game, they'll tell you all they have is World of Warcraft.

If I am going to pre-order a console game, I go to Game Crazy. Most of the people working there know at least a bit about games, and they sell at alright prices. I do agree that GameStop and EB Games suck.

I'm pretty surprised that Gamestop along with the other video game stores are still in business.

There's a Game Crazy about half an hour from here, and its got pretty good deals. I found Modern Warfare for $20 there once, and Dark Sector for $5. Their staff knows a lot, but they could make their initial appeal better.

[QUOTE=Saikotic;21086752]How popular do you guys think Play N Trade is?[/QUOTE] It's the only competitor to GameStop where I live. I personally like it more because the employees are laid back and actually enjoy talking to you. The employees at GameStop just think work is their first priority. Plus they have alot of the older games (which I like) and they always have deals going on.

[QUOTE=Watevaman;21085521]Information about games is usually slim to nonexistent. If it's not in their computer or if the clerk doesn't know about it, it doesn't exist. Pricing they probably don't have too much control over, but their trade-in values suck ass when you see them turn your $10 trade-in around for $35. And they (EB/Gamestop) put their own goddamn stickers on the cases, and sometimes even on the inserts themselves, which are a pain to get off and always leave fucking residue. :argh: To be honest, I only enter "game only" stores if they're the only ones that have a game and I can't be assed to wait for it to ship. Otherwise I go to Best Buy or Amazon.[/QUOTE] Being an employee at GS I have to admit I do work with one or too fuckbags who know nothing, but it all depends on where you live, we have some fairly good people here. And with trade in value, Well you don't have to trade it in, and it is a business, Thus the great chain of life. And the stickers, we aren't "spining" as its called the cases anymore, at least on higher priced stuff so that's one less sticker. And to the guy who said our store smells like BO, that's the fucknut customers that come in, not the employees.

I love my GameStop. They're not a bunch of fucking mouth-breathing retards. The manager doesn't know a whole lot about video games, but in turn he has surrounded himself with people who do. They know me too. They know I never want to reserve anything unless I say so, I never want an Edge card, I never want used games and I always want a new game that is sealed. They're cool to talk to and I sometimes hang out at the store and shoot the shit when I'm really bored. I'm just lucky.

Well that's how I got hired. I talked with my old the manager at one of the stores in town every weekend, and eventually during the holidays he's like "You want to work here?" I'd be a moron to say no, been working since then.

i dunno the guys at the gamestop near my house seem to know a lot about games. like when i ask a question they respond in a way that actually answers my question. but most Gamestop/EB Games do suck.

-snip-

Here's a story for the ages. Copy pasta from a thread I made about 2 years ago regarding customer service I head to the mall today to pre-order MGS4 for a bud at GameStop (I said he should reserve it elsewhere because of my bad experiences at the place, but he insisted). So I go to the counter and ask the guy "May I reserve Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3 please?". He looks at me, smirks and then lets out a weird snort/chuckle He then steps forward, pushes his thick glasses up his greasy nose and proceeds to respond "You know the 360 version is going to be leagues better, don't you?". I look at him in disbelief. I respond "Excuse me?". He replies "Yeah, haven't you heard? All the big name PS3 games are going to the 360 now because game makers have realised it's just plain better and MGS4 was just announced exclusive for the 360". I felt myself cringe. "Exclusive". Now I've heard the argument it's going multiplatform to the 360, but exclusive? Does his boss know how malinformed he is and is possibly driving away customers? Do we now understand where the core of gaming rumors seem to start? Holding myself together in disbelief, I say to him "Look, I don't know who told you that but I'm interested in getting the PlayStation version, alright?". His eyebrows proceed in a downward fashion and he begins shouting to me about "THE PLAYSTATION IS SUCH A FAILURE BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH KOJIMA SAID THE GAME CAN'T RUN ON THE PS3 AND ONLY THE 360" and garbage along those lines, to the point where the entire store turned their heads to see what the yelling was all about (all coming from him I might add). I can't even remember the jist of what he was shouting due to the fact he sounded like a screechy pre-teen girl when he yelled. Oh and then he brought up "all the footage shown up to now is all from the 360 but they say it's all running on the PlayStation so that when they really announce it's going to the 360 they can dissapoint PS3 owners" or some bullshit along those lines. I ask this guy for his manager, and he almost immediately responds "I am the manager", with which I reply "Yeah, sure you are, I know this trick. Give me your manager.". He said "I will ask you to promptly leave the premises of this store immediately or I may cause bodily harm to you" (yeah, another weird thing about this guy was the way he formed sentences). I ask him "What did I even do?! I asked if I could reserve a game and because you decide to yell at a potential customer, I'm the bad guy here?! How DARE you threaten me". He yells "Now or I will make sure you will regret it!". I leave, and go to mall security, to whom I explain everything that happened in the store, and explain how I was shouted at in front of a whole store for asking to reserve a game, and how he then threatens me. They ask me where the store is and I point it out to them, and they make their way inside. I watch from outside, while 2 security guards go up to the counter, one that begins to talk to the guy at the counter while the other with a note pad begins writing. This jackass behind the counter begins yelling loudly and wailing his arms about before grabbing the notepad out of the guard's hands (and causing him to fall over) and swings it at the other guard. One of them runs around the counter and jumps the lunatic, and the other pulls out his handcuffs. He is then escorted out of the store, while the people in the store seem to be shaken up, and he yells at me "YOU FUCKING PUNK" over and over while the people walking around the mall begin to turn their heads to see what all the commotion is about. And worst of all I was asked to be a witness to this (as well as some others but they apparently turned down), and it's a case of whether or not this guy deserves jail time for threatening me and assault on one of the guards. Though the guard is going to testify and probably give this guy jailtime, I turned it down due to the fact I don't want to be involved in this any further. K back to the present here. So yeah, if there was any experience that truly solidified my hatred toward gaming stores, this one might just top them all.

Australia has only 2 good major game retailers. JB HI FI Game

[QUOTE=ItchyBarracuda;21092112]*Holy crap fucking Xbox360 fanboys fucking story fuck*[/QUOTE] Holy shit. Was that guy high or something? Nobody, and I mean [b]NOBODY[/b] can release that much retard energy in one go.

[QUOTE=ItchyBarracuda;21092112] MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT [/QUOTE] Damn, I want to hunt this fucker down... But I have plenty of stories that face the other way too. Some woman and her son were looking at the PS3 section, they were talking about a Star Trek game released recently on it. The only one released truly recently was ST: Online, obviously not on the PS3. I look over while I was checking someone out and calmly say with NO undertone of any kind, Sorry Star Trek didn't come out on the PS3. She suddenly huffs to the front of the store says "Were leaving, he's ALWAYS rude" as in whenever I saw this fucking bitch I made it my personal mission to be an ass. I again calmly say "Ma'am I didn't mean to be rude in any way." To which SUPERBITCH replies, "Well we spend a lot of money in this store, and we expect to be treated better." Yea let me pull out my sheet of who spends a lot in my fucking store with hundreds of people coming in daily. She proceeds to then storm the fuck out. The last bit she was hurling at me, I literally (god I hate that word thanks to GS TV) had the most confused face I HAVE EVER fucking had, It was confusion and anger with a side dish of hurt.

I try to buy most things online. Goozex is great when I get free trade tokens, just swapped Borderlands for Forza 2 and Guitar Hero 3. If it doesn't work, I just have to dispute it and I get my points and trade token back almost instantly. I normally just send the game back to the person if I dispute, but I'm not sure if it's required because it only happened once and the guy was nice about it when I messaged him so I just put it up for trade and he claimed it. If anyone wants to use Goozex, you should put [l_n] in the referrer box, once you complete your first selling trade under a referrer you get a few free trade tokens (I think 3) and I get one. The pricing on there is pretty good, but sometimes you have to wait for the games you really want to become available.

Family run game stores are far superior, they can fix consoles cheap and fix games too. They also sell used games much cheaper, and more than likely have games for previous consoles like the N64 and Super Nintendo.

Most of them suck to be honest, HUR SEND IN THIS GAME FOR $5 BUT WE SELL IT FOR $20 I expect at least half of what you sell it for.

The guys at the gamestop in my town are really helpful and are willing to cut you deals on your trade ins and stuff like that. The play n trade staff were all these lazy fat guys who just sat behind the counter at the back of the store playing demos the whole time, and they only lasted about a month. Your personal experience can vary greatly from area to area, it's unfair to say that all the stores of one type suck or are better. [editline]02:33AM[/editline] [QUOTE=doommarine23;21092803]Most of them suck to be honest, HUR SEND IN THIS GAME FOR $5 BUT WE SELL IT FOR $20 I expect at least half of what you sell it for.[/QUOTE] Most of those games will never sell, and you're lucky to get that for it.

pfft who BUYS games at a store when you can get steam

Unfortunatley in South East Europe we still don't have all the American stores so we're limited to Algorithm, HG Spot, MDi and BUG. Algorithm is the most successful multimedia store, but it doesn't sell a load of PC games and mostly those older games and the ones for the Wii and X360. There is usually some PS3 games there, too. HG Spot is a mixture of hardware and game selling store, they tend to sell PC games, but most of the time the ones that are two years old. Oh yea, and the guys that work there, they're some of the slowest working people EVER. MDi is a software and a hardware seller, they sell games, but only a very small amount of them. They sell them at smaller prices, about 20$ for recently released games. Plus you can make deals with the workers in it, so you may get things even cheaper. BUG Is a software only store. Workers are true veterans of PC gaming and programming, and that's what I like the most about them. They usually have all the possible things that are available on the market, and they also give surveys to the customers to see what systems the customers usually have. Even through these stores fill my needs, I still wish that some of the Video Game stores metioned by other posters would spread internationally. [editline]9 AM[/editline] We also have a few gamer's paradise stores like PlayStation Store and Sophoslab, but I only saw two of each.