Is Gamestop Evil? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[ElkinFencer10]

I think we need a little refresher on the difference between "imply" and "infer." The speaker implies meaning; the listener infers meaning. You implied that you're simply friendly with the lady and mean no disrespect; our friends here may have perhaps inferred that you cat-call and otherwise unintentionally act in a way that could be seen as sexual harassment. That doesn't mean that either of you are wrong; it simply means that there was a miscommunication.

Text does not translate connotations the way that face-to-face interactions do. After all, the vast majority of communication is body language, something that text-based interactions omit. Instead of going "nuclear," try to correct the misunderstanding and express your meaning in a different, possibly clearer, way. No one here is "ganging up on the new guy;" we love new members and wish we had more. It's simply that most of us here have known one another for quite some time and, as a result, are better able to interpret intended meaning from each other's posts. As the new guy, we don't know you as well and are left only with our own sometimes mistaken interpretation of your wording to determine meaning. Similarly, having known Popo for much longer than you, I read his response and knew that he was pointing out a possible social faux pas in his typical sarcastic and often crass manner, not personally attacking you. Since you have not know him long, you would likely not know that. With marurun, I know him to be a fair and level headed moderator who does a very good job at diffusing tense situations and keeping general peace on the forum; he's certainly not the type to single anyone out for personal attacks. Since you're new, however, I can see how you might have misinterpreted his posts as such.

Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt - especially when you're communicating through text and ESPECIALLY when getting to know new people through text - can go a long way to keeping situations cordial and avoiding unnecessary conflict. I would politely request that everyone involved here take deep breath and try to keep that in mind. I mean that not as an attack on or indictment of anyone but simply as a general friendly reminder.

[Tanooki]

Goddamn now that was an implosion. Some of you give me crap for being blunt but there's enough lines crossed in the last few hours or so that would make me out to be the patron saint of the forum here. Completely arrogant and condescending entirely. Yes that first mod comment was aggressive and easily could have been seen as rude, but holy crap dialed it up to 11? ...and then some? It's not smart to play the smart card, not at all, and especially like that.

I don't take crap from people either but at least I know when to stop unless I want to get removed. I'm wondering, do you?

[Fragems]

I usually walk in my local GS to give one of the girls working there some compliments and try and holler at her. Never works though and not sure if she's even straight. Emo-ish type with odd hair colors and a big piece of metal through the nose, very cute though.

The way I see it the way you said it triggered a lot of people and for good reason . I feel most people read it this way.

I got to my local game stop to holler at a girl. She dresses funny, has odd colored hair and ignores me though so she is probably lesbian.

You may not see it that way but we didn't have much context to go on so it was easy for it to be seen as offensive/sexist. It didn't help that immediately after you started attacking members telling them to "go back to your den and masturbate to your hentai.". So really just take a chill pill and explain the situation next time if there is a next time .

Jesus Christ, they need to do something about the clutter though. If there's more than 3 people in the store, you're elbow-to-elbow in a maze of retardation. All kinds of dumbass figurines and toys everywhere.

This I can agree with GS seems to love leasing/building small stores and they way over stuff them especially now that they have all the ThinkGeek merchandise inside. Black Friday has to be a nightmare for most stores .

[darsparx]

See and that's the part that bugs me. I don't mind them having thinkgeek stuff but I go in there for games not collectables. I don't have room for as many collectables as I"d like. I barely have room for my amiibo

Especially since I watched the e3 vid finally, and psx got started yesterday and grew my wishlist by at least 20 games. Though some of them are definitely games I'll wait until a price drop for...

[Forlorn Drifter]

I have to say, with my most recent interactions with Gamestop I've been happy, in comparison to before. I know the local one recently changed managers, which I think is a big part of it. While there is still some minor annoyances, I have to give the people working there credit for actually being knowledgeable about games, and helping parents out with decisions. Any time I've been in there the same time as a parent buying for their kid, whoever was working was honest about the difficulty of the games, what was in it, had good suggestions, etc.

[Gunstar Green]

See and that's the part that bugs me. I don't mind them having thinkgeek stuff but I go in there for games not collectables. I don't have room for as many collectables as I"d like. I barely have room for my amiibo

They've got to do what they've got to do to stay afloat at this point. Becoming a general "geek" store probably isn't a bad idea. It's certainly better than some of their previous attempts with used smart devices and their current disastrous retro game stuff.

[darsparx]

I know but at this point I think it would be beneficial to not be so tiny anymore. Stores this small especially if they're getting into that realm are just too dang small at this point. I don't want to go online, walmart, target or bestbuy for games unless I have to, but if the collectable geek stuff takes over I might have too. Heck half the store that's closest to me is all this thinkgeek stuff now. It stinks too since that's the store I've been going to mostly since I was little, though the people I've liked in there(mostly the women since they're the nicest people compared to 95% of the guys I've ran into in there). I already know I"m going to have to go online for vita at least since all the stores near me(including non gamestops) for the most part have eliminated vita on their shelves. Which is sad because I enjoy the system(even if I have to put it on airplane to get it to last long like should've been the goal originally)...

[Gunstar Green]

Bigger stores might not be a good idea though either as that's essentially what Hastings was (though they also had books and rentals) and they went out of business this year.

They're in a weird place right now. If they wanted to upsize their stores they'd have to get rid of a lot of locations, though I've already seen a few of the smaller ones go out in my area so maybe that's what will happen.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Bigger stores might not be a good idea though either as that's essentially what Hastings was (though they also had books and rentals) and they went out of business this year.

They're in a weird place right now. If they wanted to upsize their stores they'd have to get rid of a lot of locations, though I've already seen a few of the smaller ones go out in my area so maybe that's what will happen.

I know they've been trimming the fat for a while. Near where I live we have a strip mall across the street from a mega-mall (you know, the inside kind, whatever it's called). There was a time not so long ago (maybe a couple years at the most) where there was a Gamestop in the strip mall and not one but TWO Gamestops in the mega-mall (one had an EB Games sign on top, but the inside was quite clearly a Gamestop). It was pretty fun to run between all of them and see what they had for sale that was cool that other hunters might've missed, but it was the stereotypical Starbucks problem to the n-th degree

We actually have a couple fairly large Gamestops around here. Ones that are easily two if not three times the size of other ones I've seen. Some stores are CRAZY tiny, and I don't know how they can justify having SO much collectors tat (does anyone actually buy those loose collector's edition statues? O.o) when their space is SO limited. The store just feels so jam-packed inside. I shudder to think what actually browsing or buying anything in there must be like on a rush-day *shudder* *shudder*

[Fragems]

I think the worst gamestop in my area size wise has to be at the Huntington mall there were two locations in there one used to be a baggabogs or whatever those were called and the other was eb games both eventually were rebranded to gamestops and finally one shut down. However instead of keeping the somewhat larger store they closed it down and just remodeled the smaller one and man did they do a horrible job of it . The store there now has an almost U shape to it with a large area in the front then about 3/4ths of the center is the registers/storage drawers so there is about 2-2.5 feet between the register and the wall so if you are checking out your liable to get bumped into by someone trying to look at the wall display or get to the other side of the store . On a day like blackfriday they just put a divider up and try to get people to move in a circular pattern but it's a total cluster fuck I'm sure .

I think there biggest problem right now is they are in no real rush to phase out the last gen stuff it seemed like they were going to for a while and they started to with the Wii at least but things have kind of stalled out. The PS3 and 360 sections of all of my local stores are still 2-3x the size of the PS4/XB1 sections and the Wii U has hardly any space at all . Plus over half of the XB1s shelf space is now being taken over by 360 titles with backwards compatibility .