During the holiday season, we're republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!
Soapbox features allow our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random things they've been chewing on. Today, Ollie looks back at just a few of the eventful episodes from his days working in video game retail…
When the news came that GAME, the UK's last remaining video game retailer (not counting the many wonderful independent stores that remain), will be ending trade-ins and second-hand products from 16th February 2024, I felt a powerful mix of thoughts and emotions.
On the one hand, I couldn't quite understand why the company would come to such a decision; I worked there for the better part of a decade and three key initiatives were consistently promoted to both staff and customers: rewards cards, pre-orders and exchanges. For the latter, 100% of the money earned from selling used games went directly into GAME's pockets, while new games would bring relatively less profit. You could see why the company wanted to push replacements.
But on the other hand, when you consider the rapidly growing popularity of digital gaming combined with GAME's decision to convert the vast majority of its stand-alone retail spaces into Sports Direct concession stores, it makes sense that the company would want to put an end to the switch. According to GAME's submissions to 12 months until April 29, 2023gross transaction value (GTV – full retail value without VAT, savings program and publisher's deductions) for used products totaled 16,478. That's down from 25,894 in the same period last year, so there's no denying that demand for trade-ins and second-hand products is dwindling quickly.
With all that said, I will miss replacements when the practice eventually goes the way of the dodo in the coming months. As a user, it's a great way to make some cash on new releases by getting rid of a few older titles and buying used games at bargain prices.
However, as a former employee, dealing with replacements for ten years (more or less) has resulted in a bunch of good and bad memories, and I'd like to share just a few of them with you, dear reader.
So sit back as we take a trip back in time and see what GAME employees had to deal with…
We had *all* the Skylanders that time
Remember Skylanders? Oh man, I sure do. I practically had nightmares about them. As someone who's never been particularly into the toy genre for a living (I rarely even buy amiibo unless it's for a series I'm very fond of), I had no idea about the characters outside of that. a corrupted version of Spyro.
Disney Infinity wasn't too bad because I recognized a lot of characters right away. But with Skylanders, I'm really sorry, but I couldn't tell you the difference between Boomer, Chill, Countdown, Cynder or any from them, and I honestly wasn't paid enough to take it. For the most part, this wasn't a problem: people would pick what they wanted from the shelves, make the transaction, and go. Problems arose when people wanted to replace them.
It didn't matter what it was — whether it was a bunch of handheld consoles, accessories, games, or figurines — when a customer walked into the store carrying a huge cardboard box with an expectant smile on his face, my heart sank. 99% of the time that meant they had a bunch of trinkets to trade and I'd have to drop whatever I was doing and spend the next hour sorting through it all.
At the height of her life's toy craze, a woman walked into a store with her two sons, all three carrying huge boxes. I thought they would be full of games, which would be fine, but when they got to the counter and opened them up, Skylanders. Three boxes full of Skylanders.
Our inventory process for this was to consult a binder that contained a complete list of every Skylander, including their names, case code, and a small, slightly blurry picture of the figure. I spent the better part of three hours grabbing one figure at a time, carefully going through the binder to match the figure to its blurry image, entering the code, and moving on to the next one. And the worst part? The poor woman and her sons stayed in the shop the whole time and when the total came I don't think we even broke £50. I felt terrible knowing we were offering a fraction of what she would get on eBay, but she didn't care. Fair enough then.
By the end of the day I was ready to throw the figures into the ocean. There aren't many cases where I'm glad to see a game series end, but if Skylanders ever comes back, I'm going to Mars.
I was attacked that one time
In the decade I have met many, many interesting characters who work at GAME. Fortunately, the vast majority of them were kind, pleasant people whom I had the honor of serving. The rest were either rude, belittling, angry, deceitful or violent. Well… There was only one truly violent customer.
During my time at GAME, we didn't just deal in video games, hardware and accessories, we also dealt in used mobile devices. We were trying to break into CEX territory and, to be fair, we didn't do a bad job of it. We had a good range of mobile phones and were meticulous about ensuring they were of good, marketable quality.
One afternoon I was having lunch in the office upstairs when a colleague came up to me and informed me that a customer wanted to bring his mobile phone and was not handling the rejection well because of the poor quality of the device. I was a senior sales assistant so I was occasionally left to run the store. As such, whether to take this phone was ultimately up to me.
I followed my colleague downstairs and glanced at the customer and the phone in question. It was a Blackberry (for God's sake, remember they?) and was in a terrible state. The SIM card tray was worn beyond repair, the screen was badly scratched, and there was no charger or accompanying box. Of course, I said, 'No.'
After talking to the client for a bit, I put my foot down and said, “I'm sorry, but there's no way we're taking this phone.” He immediately became enraged, trying to grab me over the counter, missed, and proceeded to pick up anything he could find to throw at me, all the while yelling curses. Finally, he picked up a particularly heavy charity box and aimed it at my head. I raised my hand to shield my face and the box caught my elbow, resulting in a nasty cut. The customer staggered out of the store, running his hands over the shelves to take off as much as he could along the way.
We called the police, showed the CCTV footage and that was it. I didn't need any medical attention, but I was pretty shaken up. The guy had the nerve to come back a few days later to look at our stock of cell phones! He was soon arrested and went to prison.
That Once upon a time I've rejected scratched 360 discs countless times
Ah, the beloved Xbox 360. It was such a great console, but oh my, did it have some issues. The one that more or less everyone is aware of is the 'Red Ring of Death'; failure where the three red lights surrounding the power button would illuminate indicating a general hardware failure.
Less notorious, however, was the 360's other problem, which had to do with the console moving while it was on (and sometimes even when it was stationary); the device inside could cut a perfect circular scratch into the spinning disc, often rendering it completely unrepairable.
That hasn't stopped people from trying to replace them though. All the damn time. It was always the parents who would bring little Timmy's game collection and apparently they were not aware that they were mostly useless. So of course they would argue, even though the evidence was staring them in the face. “We're told they're all doing well.” So yeah, I'm sure he's an eight year old looking for a new game completely honestly, right?
We had a little machine that cleaned scratched game discs and it often worked wonders, but when you have one of those circular 360 scratches, almost nothing will fix it. Hmm… Maybe Microsoft you should become fully digitalafter all?
cry
I got that one GBA SP for free once
Along with regular customers looking to trade in their personal items, independent game store owners often come in to buy some of their stock through trade-ins. It was a perfectly legitimate way for them to get rid of games or add-ons that don't change and replace them with products that do could sell. So I was always happy to help.
One guy came quite often — so much so that his daughter ended up getting a job at the store and proved to be one of the most efficient members of the team — and we built quite a friendship over the years, until my GAME branch closed in 2017. He'd often come with boxes of exchange, but it was never a hassle; he was always on the cutting edge of what they should be worth, so I never felt like we were wasting our time.
One day, he came into the store before Christmas and simply gave me a Game Boy Advance SP in perfect condition with its charger.
“You know we don't take them for trade anymore, right?” I asked.
“I know. It's yours,” he said. He knew that after getting rid of my GBA years ago, I always wanted to get another one. As a thank you for working with him for so long, he took an almost finished SP from his stash and gave it to me, no questions asked. I wasn't quite sure what to say. I know consoles weren't worth a lot of money – at least they weren't at the time! – but for him to remember that I wanted him at all was enough to almost bring a tear to my eye. I will never forget him and I hope his trade continues to flourish.
So that's it! I hope you had as much fun reading these stories as I did writing them. It's been quite a few years since I worked at GAME and it's safe to say that the company has changed quite a bit since then. Despite the problems, I will always fondly remember my time there — the highs, the lows, the laughs, the frustrations.
Mostly I will still remember my colleagues; people who, despite what the internet would have you believe, really loved video games. Even if they couldn't name all the Skylanders.
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