Rantology: That Kotaku GameStop Article

Okay. sooooooo yea, journalism, not just mainstream but games as well, has a really nasty habit of not doing their research and sensationalizing things.  Specifically I'm talking about a recently published article on Kotaku about GameStop's Circle of Life.  What I want to do here is discuss a few critical things in this article, and bring to light a few facts that were conveniently left out, or not communicated.  First though, I make transparency in what I do a point of personal pride, so with that in mind I'm going to be transparent, and as I've stated before, I am employed by GameStop on a part time basis.  I'm not a manger, I'm not in charge of a store, or a district, simply a Game Adviser.  Now along with that, there is a document I signed called the "Social Media Posting Guidelines" that more or less state that I cannot post about upcoming promotions, company "secrets", inventory, and other things of that ilk.  I'm probably going to be going against that, but the truth is way more important in this issue than that piece of shit corporate sellout document in this case.

Okay, I'm going to leave images out of this as much as I can, since this is kind of a brass tax issue.  I'm also going to quote the Kotaku article directly and offer my insights and personal experience about this.  So if this isn't that funny, I apologize, but I feel this is one of the few times I need to be somewhat serious and address an issue head on.

The article starts off like this: "They may simply be lying to you, fueled by a new program that discourages GameStop salespeople from selling unopened copies of video games.

The program, called “Circle of Life,” gives each GameStop store different percentage quotas for 1) pre-orders; 2) reward card subscriptions; 3) used game sales; and 4) game trade-ins."  The fact is that is simply not true.  Circle of Life is a sales technique that has been used by GameStop for years.  The idea is that the PRO card is the center of it all and drives everything else, it further goes on to say when you buy a new game you want to pre-order it to make sure you have a guaranteed copy you can get when it releases, then when your done playing that game you are welcome to trade it back to us and apply the money you get towards another game, if it's preowned all the better for us, and we encourage you to keep pre-ordering games to keep you coming back.  More or less trades drive value, which drives sales.  It's not a new sales program, and neither are the metrics behind it.  They're just now what we're focusing our numbers on.

"Each of these quotas is based on the store’s total transactions. Pre-orders and reward cards subscriptions are based on the number of transactions, while used game sales and trade-ins are based on the total dollar value of transactions. If a store’s quota for used game sales is 30%, and the store sells $1,000 worth of merchandise, GameStop expects at least $300 of that merchandise to be pre-owned."  Wrong.  This isn't true at all either.  In fact it's so untrue it could be called an Alternative Fact.  These numbers are derived from qualifying sales.  If an item CAN be sold as preowned, then it will ping the numbers, but if its a t-shirt, yea that's not happening.  Same with the PRO card.  If you have a PRO card attached to an order already it wont hurt your PRO numbers, same if the card would offer no value to the transaction.  I've done the numbers, looked at the statistics, and personally performed the experiments on all of this.

"In other words, according to salespeople speaking to Kotaku and elsewhere on the internet, GameStop is incentivizing employees to stop people from buying new games and hardware. " Again, this is simply not true, we're not incentivized to do shit.  We don't see extra money, we don't see less.  Yea, they'd like for us to hit these goals, and it makes us look A LOT better if we do, but as far as I've been made aware there has been absolutely no communication from leadership saying we need to stop selling new product.  What this is, however, is a case of shitty employees and managers seeing this, trying to get their numbers up, and telling people this.  If you trust your local store then continue to go there and utilize them as a resource, but I can assure you, the "official policy" isn't to lie to customers.

"“We are telling people we don’t have new systems in stock so we won’t take a $300 or $400 dollar hit on our pre-owned numbers,” one GameStop employee told me in an e-mail, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to press. “This is company wide and in discussions with my peers it is a common practice. We also tell customers we don’t have copies of new games in stock when they are on sale—for example, Watch Dogs 2 is currently $29.99 new and $54.99 pre-owned. We just tell them we don’t have the new one in stock and shuffle them out the door.”"  Again, see above.  This is an example of one shitty person in the GameStop hierarchy making it shitty for everyone else, not the company as a whole.

"GameStop staff have told me that corporate managers are monitoring both stores and individual employees, asking everyone to get a COL score of at least 75% by hitting at least three of their four quotas. If a store is hitting their COL targets but one salesperson is not, that salesperson may face punishment or even lose their job, according to company employees." While some of this is true, the fact remains that its not in the official policy that we can be fired over this.  If it was, we would have signed a form to acknowledge the policy changes as is federally mandated by US law.

Really the take away here is that the people who were talking to Kotaku either made a lot of this up, are really shitty people, or have really shitty people directly above them.  Yes the CoL is a thing, no it doesn't mean we're out to get you.  Yes PRO and preowned make up a HUGE portion of our profits, no that doesn't mean everyone is going to try and push you on all of it and make you do the 20 questions dance.  Yes its important for us to hit our goals, but its no more important than you and your job, and even if we do face punishment up to including termination we still have a right to fight back and ask why.  This is all just another one of those desperate stupid post holiday policy changes every store does to make its final quarter look a little better than it actually is and end on a high note.  Why is it so aggressive then?  Well 2016 sucked, and surprisingly enough it sucked for games too.  not much major came out and even the yearly heavy hitters didn't do well, but 2017 is looking to change that.

I could go into this more and talk about how we used to push the warranties and season passes super hard and were judged off them as well, but I'm not, I've said my piece.  I hope you found this insightful and somewhat useful in trying to get a better grasp of this situation.

Rantology: How Nintendo can make the Switch succeed

Ugh, so this really kinda makes me mad, I've been telling myself to stick to reviews and not get into opinion pieces about how the gaming industry can improve itself, but wouldn't you know it Nintendo had to go out, announce the Switch, and make me go back on my word to myself.  Well God-fucking-dammit, if I can't catch a break here we go again.  This is something I like to call Rantology, in other words me spewing on about a subject for who the hell knows how long trying to make it as funny as possible while hopefully offering a potential fix that the gaming industry is then able to use free of charge (though a few free games wouldn't hurt).  So buckle up kids, we're about to get dirty and possibly shove our face in something we really want nothing apart of.

On January 12th Nintendo did a full reveal of their Nintendo Switch, the successor to the shit-laden thrown of the WiiU.   And boy, was it a train wreck.  Now the hardware looks solid and has a solid idea behind it.  A home gaming console you can take with you and play with your friends on the go.  I love it, purely and simply this is the kind of idea that put Nintendo on the top back in the 90's.  Now their execution of it during their live stream, well lets just say embarrassing barely does it justice.  Nintendo fucked up this conference in the only way that Nintendo possibly could have, and now, we have to hope and pray that Nintendo can save the Switch from the same fate as the WiiU.

Well what happened to the WiiU you ask?  Well sit right the fuck down, strap in (and on where appropriate, I don't judge), and get ready for one mild ride.  Ultimately the WiiU failed for being the Wii, but also not being the Wii, and not the PS4 or XB1.  What does that mean?  Well simply put it was something most people saw as something that should have been an expansion for the Wii and not a standalone console.  A tablet that doubles a controller is a really good idea, just not at a $150 price point for a tablet alone, and neither is the idea that only one player can use it, oh and you can't do asymmetrical games with it, oh and it will play original Wii games, but you need to go into an emulator mode, and there's no decent 1st or 3rd party support, and all those old digital games (in the digital fucking era I might add) are getting left out too, and what do you mean its not as powerful as a PS3??????   Yea the WiiU was a let down, and there's really no two ways around that.  Now don't get me wrong I love my WiiU, and Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of my favorite games, but with that being said Nintendo really missed their mark on the console.

What does this mean for Nintendo and the switch?  Well they need to really overcome the failings that happened with the WiiU, or history is doomed to repeat itself, and some of these things, the Nintendo Switch, or what I hope to not have to call it, the Nintendo Shits, is already doomed to do.  First and foremost, the Switch needs to have the same graphic performance as its competitors.  Lets be real, we live in an age of 1080p and 4k, and if you can't AT LEAST hit 1080p in the home (the whole 720p on the go is fine as its a smaller screen and much more reasonable for conservation of battery life) then you need a serious cognitive re calibration (read: kick to the teeth).  Unfortunately, I see Nintendo failing on this aspect.  I don't see them releasing an upgraded dock (for a reasonable price) to upgrade the output to 4k, nor do I see them even making that a priority, which will drive down other areas.

The next HUGE thing Nintendo needs to do, coincidentally, is also the first step of the D.E.N.N.I.S. System: Demonstrate Value.  As if I, the consumer, am one of Dennis' many sexual targets, Nintendo needs to demonstrate their value to me.  And by value I mean justi-fucking-fy the goddamned subscription cost of your online services besides a one month rental of a classic game (that chances are I won't even be able to pick) and just fucking give me like 4 of them.  I mean seriously, how much money will they be out in the long run? Nothing? I mean these games have already made their initial sales when they launched, and most of them don't even hold the replayabilty as they once did due to the limitations of the time when they were made.  Seriously, its not that goddamned hard Nintendo, get your literal head out of your literal ass and give me value in your online subscriptions, or this potentially awesome console or face me not giving you money for them.

Oh, while were on the subject of retro games, I have one more teensy weensy, itsy bitsy request.  *ahem* NINTENDO, IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME YOU RELEASE MORE THAN ONE CLASSIC GAME A MONTH.  Seriously.  I can go online right now and get a SNES emulator, and a ROM for each and every game on the system.  For every game that Nintendo holds the rights too for older consoles (and trust me, theres a lot of them) there is zero, zlich, nada, nuffin, none, no reason why they aren't available digitally for a reasonable price (read not $10-$20 and more like $5).  Seriously, unless you want to change the graphics interface looks, in which case you haven't really made a huge effort recently, you have no excuse here.  In fact let me give you one very large reason to do this instead: MONEY.  It will make you money, especially from people like me, who like to play older games sometimes, and have disposable income to purchase them, especially if they aren't $20 for a game I'll play a couple of times for like an hour or two.

Now, this is a big one, and by big I mean huge, like mega huge.  So big it makes yo mama look tiny, and she chased your school bus this morning thinking it was a twinkie.  Third party support.  What does this mean?  Well simply put Nintendo needs to make sure that they not only have 3rd party companies make games for them, but these companies are committed to making games for them.  I mean how much fun is it really if the only games I can play on a Nintendo system are games only Nintendo makes or licenses, and I can't play other huge games like Overwatch, Mass Effect, Batman, and others, all because of Nintendo's dumbass quality control and insistence on the Switch being "family friendly".  Sorry Nintendo, that won't earn you a top place in the current industry.

Finally, and this is probably the biggest, the last thing Nintendo needs to do to make the Switch successful is to not forget about it like we all try to do with our alcoholic, misogynistic, and racist uncles....unless that's just me.  But really, the WiiU fell out of relevancy because Nintendo spent so much time and money on the 3DS that they just kinda forgot it was a thing after pitiful sales and poor release numbers.  With 2 million units preordered world wide Nintendo is looking at a bigger launch than the PS4 and XB1, so they certainly have the momentum, but with some of their release lineups I'm not sure they can last very long out of the gate till we start seeing a good amount of games consistently coming out for it.  Ultimately time will tell, but Nintendo needs to understand that if their sales drop after a month or two, they need not panic, just to commit to their customers and buckle down for the long run.

So really that's it.  I feel like a whore for going back to this whole Rantology thing again, but you know what, I kinda don't care.  Either way the Shits comes squirting out in a month and we'll see how it goes.  Till next time kids.