Editorial - The Four Circles of Retail Hell

"Are you interested in getting the Guide book for that? It's only £10.99." Why on earth would I want to do that when three thousand lonely teens have already uploaded more detailed guides for free online? The cashier looks at me expectedly, like a malnourished Meerkat. I feign interest in her suggestion but say no. "We have one copy of the collector's edition left. It comes with...". I stop paying attention as she rattled on. If I must slowly trod through life, tumbling towards the grave like a banned Xbox advert, then at least allow me to waste my precious existence how I see fit. Two minutes later however I owned a collectors edition of Dragon Age and a new sense of self-loathing.

As with any technophobe, I'm loath to purchase things over the internet. Then however we come to the actual alternative, Games shops, the very term raising my blood pressure in the bad way. Sure I could hope to find something in a supermarket, quickly zap it over the cylonic self-service tills like a fourteen year old (twenty three year old) too embarrassed to buy Front from the kind old lady at the till, but that's just not going to happen.

Just as I do with people who have actual conversations about shoes and those charity gits on the street, I hate games shops, all of them. For me they fall into the following categories, (without naming names) each designed to make me replace games with something more socially acceptable like knitting or crystal meth use.

The Trendy One: You know, the one with the advert where the staff member is a hat wearing, sandal riding twit of the highest order who looks like he should be skipping Sociology lectures. They try to make gaming ‘cool' and ‘energetic'. Signs in an attention deficit font bombard you from all angles. Every single cut steel corner begs me to trade in my beloved games for a paltry two pounds so they can sell them back to me for eight times the buying price, making more money than they ever would with new games. Why not sit down and test the latest Fifa on our imprisoned system, you can even sit on the sticky couch... dude... ungh. Oh, and don't forget to get a loyalty card, they're super awesome. Damn Hippies.

The Commercial One: This is the shop where there are actually more female staff then male ones. I see what your doing there games shop, but no. It's embarrassing enough that I spend actual time pretending to be a ‘Paladin' who ‘slays Orcs' and has in depth conversations about why Killer 7 is better than No More Heroes. The fact that I have to do this in front of real women is too much. Three miles of shelf space is given to the latest Call of Duty and the Wii is talked about in a positive manner. There are bright neon lights everywhere like some 80's dystopia, and gods help you should you not want to buy the guide, pre-order the sequel, sell your mum, eat a shoe flavoured kernel, and upgrade to the signed collectors edition with free poster, real doll and two hour making-of documentary narrated by the colonel from Rambo. And don't forget to lick the floor while you're down there, peasant! They still try to make me join a bloody card scheme.

The Multimedia Store: There it is, downstairs, at the bottom of that inescapable escalator, dragging you down from the latest DVD boxed sets, the games section, hidden, kept locked away. I daren't go down there. From the viewing box I can see it already, a few embarrassed shelves with all the latest games at the latest inflation adjusted prices, and oh so many plastic guitars. God knows they probably have loyalty cards, that's exactly what they'd want, the fascists, a bunch of card carrying store members. Where's your card? You don't have one!? GUARDS!

The Independent One: I tried to do some research but they didn't have any of the games I was looking for, instead trying to sell me the same copy of Eternal Darkness I bought six years ago. It's got every single game you didn't want and far far too many beards. Come those rare moments you actually want to buy a game you wouldn't stand much chance anyway, lest the cashier roll round from playing a copy of the game they apparently don't have, to spare you a few precious seconds of his time. At least the neon lights are gone, the sales pressure is gone, nobody is pretending to be ‘cool' and there are no card schemes, it's just a shame they don't have any actual games.

It's a common enough problem for me in buying games. There's just no place where I can turn up, pick something in peace, hand over some money, receive a quick piece of parting abuse about the manner of my dress before heading home happily to play my game. No, it's all lipstick and email addresses, well sod you games shops, I guess I'll just fire up Goldeneye for the nine hundredth time.

Have you had a horrible experience buying games? Let us know...

Craig

(No retail outlets were harmed during the writing of this Editorial)