I love going to midnight opening of a new game. There is something very exciting about literally getting your hands on a game the second it comes out whilst being surrounded by like minded individuals. It's not something many people admit to of course. For some reason it gets a bad rep for being too geeky and immature. The midnight launch is dying though.
Problem number one comes from ordering your game online. It's a stupid situation really. It's a well known fact that if you pre-order any game online that you will get it at least one day before it's official release. It is usually cheaper too, so where is the incentive for actually waiting and going to your local store (commonly known as Game or HMV). True, the stores do offer things like giveaways or exclusive extras and the flagship stores often give away some insane prize for being first in the queue.
I have been to a fair few launches in my time too. I remember dragging my girlfriend (now wife) to the launch of the PSP some time ago and my memory of this was not paying over the odds for an average games system, no. It is of nearly boiling to death because the store was so hot and they could not keep the doors open because drunk people kept wanting to come in ; it was awful. Plus I swear the stench of 40ish sweaty nerds put her off videogame stores for life!
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| Queues again! - Look Familiar? |
I also went to the launch of GTA4 at HMV in Bristol with bunch of mates who were all buying it too. It was crap. We were first in the queue and after being left outside in the cold for 40mins we all went home and got online for about 10mins before we were all so tired we went to sleep.
Still, they haven't all been bad. I went to the launch of Kinect at a local Game and to be honest they handled it rather well. We all got a bunch of exclusive levels, they kept us occupied and tried to up sell us every game of course. But it was decent, welcoming and they were efficient. Still, I don't know why I went though because I wasn't exactly going to crack open Kinect at 2am with work the next day.
I know that one of the biggest arguments here is going to be, "it's all about the atmosphere," and I get that, I really do but it is not enough.
I spoke to a friend about this and he said that game stores need to take a leaf out of the "Games Workshop" book. He said go along to one of the stores and see how much the staff live their product. He couldn't have been more right. In that store I knew nothing of the model strategy game thing, and the guys were kind and polite without making me feel stupid. They had kids buying new models, adults buying new paints and more importantly, there were some people actually playing the game. It wasn't a demo game where they kick you off if you're on it too long, it was a full blown 3 hour battle. People were going to the store to visit and have fun and (for all the business nuts) were actually buying stuff too.
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| Games Workshop - Business & Pleasure? |
Imagine if Game or HMV were like this? I don't mean every day necessarily but if they set up a genuine care for their product and I do not mean the extended 3 year warranty they try and latch on to everything. It could be so much more. What do you guys think? Maybe there's more to it than I know.
