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It was only a short while ago I was writing about the future of GAME group and their high street stores. I used to be an employee in one of their stores and during my multiple times there I fully enjoyed myself. I was selling the entertainment medium I loved and felt passionate about and I was able to bring my own sense of quirkiness and edginess to the GAME mix. I also, before it got taken over by GAME, worked in Gamestation and saw things from another retailer’s viewpoint. So it is with great sadness that I read today that almost 300 stores have closed and over 2000 staff have lost their jobs as the GAME group have gone into administration.
A full list of closures is available here
Whilst I predicted doom and gloom for the company, I honestly didn’t think it would be for a long time yet. Game sales offline are booming, the videogames market has overtaken the music and video value and even the government are encouraging British expansion in the market with tax breaks for the companies that make the games. But with high reliance on games holding their value with trade-ins, the threat of future systems not using discs or carts, and online shopping being cheaper for the consumer willing to wait for their item to be posted, GAME needed to plan ahead for the challenges that would await them.
However, it seems that it is the publishers themselves that have hammered the final nails in GAME’s coffin by removing their support of the UK’s biggest games specialist when GAME needed them the most. When the industries biggest giants, Electronic Arts and Nintendo pull their support what can GAME do? Big releases make profits for those who are able to sell them. But when the supermarkets, HMV and online retailers take GAME’s supply of Mass Effect 3, Mario Party 9 and Fifa Street, what can GAME do but watch in dismay as the industry they have helped to grow in the UK destroys them in a financial crisis?
Don’t get me wrong, business is business, and if you’re providing stock on credit, you’re not making any money on the retailer’s sales. Especially if that retailer is struggling to cover the costs of their businesses that are failing, mainly in France and Australia according to the many articles I have read, where games aren’t quite as big an industry.
So I write this as a tribute to GAME. An end of an era that I, as a keen gamer, could not have forseen happening in this way. This is about my memories of GAME, from customer, to employee, to customer:
My first experiences with GAME were when they were using the well established American firm EB Games’s name, Electronics Boutique. I was living in Exeter at the time and occasionally popped in there with my brother looking for Game Boy games at pocket money prices. At the time Woolworths had a huge store in Exeter and so we spent more time looking in there as their entertainment section used to be very impressive.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to South Wales where I would browse the Game store on the side of Queen’s Arcade in Cardiff, or the Electronics Boutique branded store around the corner in St David’s Centre. My brother had then just had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, despite it entering the end of it’s retail shelf-life, which means bargain bins of preowned and new game carts giving us Super Probotector, Zelda, Yoshi’s Island, and more at very good prices.
As a late entrant to the 16-bit era, it was a similar experience for the Nintendo 64: my brother getting it when it was in it’s prime and most of the good games had been released. Games like Turok on the N64 originally retailed at £70, but my brother was picking them up for a much smaller fee.
But it was Queen Street’s GAME PC section that used to be really impressive. A whole floor of PC gaming, with different types of games, strategy, racing, sports, adventure, all located in their own sections and with staff working there who actually knew what they were on about! You could talk to the staff about the games and feel you were talking with equals. Obviously you wouldn’t expect this during busier periods, but you couldn’t fault them for being knowledgeable and for providing a great customer service. One staff member even became a writer for the offical Xbox magazine!
As I grew into young adulthood, I decided that I would get a part time job in GAME, and threw together a CV. Attached to this CV was a huge list of games that I had played on various systems, mainly ZX Spectrum and PC. I handed this in to GAME stores in St Davids Centre, Queen Street and the Debenhams concession. This actually became a bit of a joke between staff in the three stores, but for me my unusual CV grabbed the deputy manager’s attention and curiosity which eventually gained me a job in the Debenhams concession.
Working in that store was brilliant. I was only employed on a casual 4 hour contract but for the majority of my time there I was a full time member of staff and was relied upon quite heavily. I was able to ‘dress the shelves’ following obscure instructions from head office, was able to process the deliveries and most importantly sell the stock. As the only member of staff who worked full time (except for the deputy manager at the time) I did what I could to improve sales for the concession, which Debenhams had hidden in the far back corner of their store.
An example of this was when GAME held regional competitions to sell as many supporting items with a product as possible. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 had just been released on the Playstation 2 and GAME wanted as many sales of the cheats disc made by Datel that allowed the player names to be changed very quickly to the real ones that the players were based on. In the region I managed to sell a huge percentage of them with copies of Pro Evolution 3 and I won promotional copies of the game, or an alternative game, for every member of staff in the store.
What amused me the most about this, though, was that Datel’s disc had a bit of a balls-up on it. Someone in the development team didn’t like Manchester United very much and decided to also implement a change to the logo that was likely to upset a number of people. The product was actually recalled, but the fact was I had done my job well!
The thing I remember more than anything though was the staff I worked with. Most of them great, a real mix of characters who we could all have a laugh and a joke with. There were one or two ‘boys’ in the team who liked things there way or no way, but I don’t think there’s a lot that can be said when you’re good at welcoming customers, helping them with their purchases and giving them expert advice that they’re looking for. And even as a customer now I still enjoy having a chat with staff, and even laugh when they go through the selling spiel about trade-ins, reward cards, pre-orders, and so on that are evolutions of what I had to do back in the day.
I really feel for the staff who are now finding out if they’re still in a job and really do see this as an end to an era. Hopefully, a Moltres will rise from the ashes. It may hold a link to the past, but unless it learns from GAME’s mistakes, I don’t think it will be future perfect. It is safe to say this admin period will have a mass effect on us all. But overnight GAME have become a tiny tower in the city. They need a leader to command & conquer. To restore control in this economic battlefield. And importantly they need to make the business profitable again.
This may be GAME over…but as we all know, it only takes some determination for someone to press start and the GAME can start over again. Good luck to everyone involved.
To the future!
A full list of closures is available here
Whilst I predicted doom and gloom for the company, I honestly didn’t think it would be for a long time yet. Game sales offline are booming, the videogames market has overtaken the music and video value and even the government are encouraging British expansion in the market with tax breaks for the companies that make the games. But with high reliance on games holding their value with trade-ins, the threat of future systems not using discs or carts, and online shopping being cheaper for the consumer willing to wait for their item to be posted, GAME needed to plan ahead for the challenges that would await them.
However, it seems that it is the publishers themselves that have hammered the final nails in GAME’s coffin by removing their support of the UK’s biggest games specialist when GAME needed them the most. When the industries biggest giants, Electronic Arts and Nintendo pull their support what can GAME do? Big releases make profits for those who are able to sell them. But when the supermarkets, HMV and online retailers take GAME’s supply of Mass Effect 3, Mario Party 9 and Fifa Street, what can GAME do but watch in dismay as the industry they have helped to grow in the UK destroys them in a financial crisis?
Don’t get me wrong, business is business, and if you’re providing stock on credit, you’re not making any money on the retailer’s sales. Especially if that retailer is struggling to cover the costs of their businesses that are failing, mainly in France and Australia according to the many articles I have read, where games aren’t quite as big an industry.
So I write this as a tribute to GAME. An end of an era that I, as a keen gamer, could not have forseen happening in this way. This is about my memories of GAME, from customer, to employee, to customer:
My first experiences with GAME were when they were using the well established American firm EB Games’s name, Electronics Boutique. I was living in Exeter at the time and occasionally popped in there with my brother looking for Game Boy games at pocket money prices. At the time Woolworths had a huge store in Exeter and so we spent more time looking in there as their entertainment section used to be very impressive.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to South Wales where I would browse the Game store on the side of Queen’s Arcade in Cardiff, or the Electronics Boutique branded store around the corner in St David’s Centre. My brother had then just had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, despite it entering the end of it’s retail shelf-life, which means bargain bins of preowned and new game carts giving us Super Probotector, Zelda, Yoshi’s Island, and more at very good prices.
As a late entrant to the 16-bit era, it was a similar experience for the Nintendo 64: my brother getting it when it was in it’s prime and most of the good games had been released. Games like Turok on the N64 originally retailed at £70, but my brother was picking them up for a much smaller fee.
But it was Queen Street’s GAME PC section that used to be really impressive. A whole floor of PC gaming, with different types of games, strategy, racing, sports, adventure, all located in their own sections and with staff working there who actually knew what they were on about! You could talk to the staff about the games and feel you were talking with equals. Obviously you wouldn’t expect this during busier periods, but you couldn’t fault them for being knowledgeable and for providing a great customer service. One staff member even became a writer for the offical Xbox magazine!
As I grew into young adulthood, I decided that I would get a part time job in GAME, and threw together a CV. Attached to this CV was a huge list of games that I had played on various systems, mainly ZX Spectrum and PC. I handed this in to GAME stores in St Davids Centre, Queen Street and the Debenhams concession. This actually became a bit of a joke between staff in the three stores, but for me my unusual CV grabbed the deputy manager’s attention and curiosity which eventually gained me a job in the Debenhams concession.
Working in that store was brilliant. I was only employed on a casual 4 hour contract but for the majority of my time there I was a full time member of staff and was relied upon quite heavily. I was able to ‘dress the shelves’ following obscure instructions from head office, was able to process the deliveries and most importantly sell the stock. As the only member of staff who worked full time (except for the deputy manager at the time) I did what I could to improve sales for the concession, which Debenhams had hidden in the far back corner of their store.
An example of this was when GAME held regional competitions to sell as many supporting items with a product as possible. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 had just been released on the Playstation 2 and GAME wanted as many sales of the cheats disc made by Datel that allowed the player names to be changed very quickly to the real ones that the players were based on. In the region I managed to sell a huge percentage of them with copies of Pro Evolution 3 and I won promotional copies of the game, or an alternative game, for every member of staff in the store.
What amused me the most about this, though, was that Datel’s disc had a bit of a balls-up on it. Someone in the development team didn’t like Manchester United very much and decided to also implement a change to the logo that was likely to upset a number of people. The product was actually recalled, but the fact was I had done my job well!
The thing I remember more than anything though was the staff I worked with. Most of them great, a real mix of characters who we could all have a laugh and a joke with. There were one or two ‘boys’ in the team who liked things there way or no way, but I don’t think there’s a lot that can be said when you’re good at welcoming customers, helping them with their purchases and giving them expert advice that they’re looking for. And even as a customer now I still enjoy having a chat with staff, and even laugh when they go through the selling spiel about trade-ins, reward cards, pre-orders, and so on that are evolutions of what I had to do back in the day.
I really feel for the staff who are now finding out if they’re still in a job and really do see this as an end to an era. Hopefully, a Moltres will rise from the ashes. It may hold a link to the past, but unless it learns from GAME’s mistakes, I don’t think it will be future perfect. It is safe to say this admin period will have a mass effect on us all. But overnight GAME have become a tiny tower in the city. They need a leader to command & conquer. To restore control in this economic battlefield. And importantly they need to make the business profitable again.
This may be GAME over…but as we all know, it only takes some determination for someone to press start and the GAME can start over again. Good luck to everyone involved.
To the future!
GAME will most likely return, and I reckon it will be with the same letters above the door. The offer of buying the reduced and leaner company for the fraction of the usual price would be far too tempting to pass up for many.
But as to what killed game?
The High Street has long been suffering under the current recession, game sales are actually down on last year across the board and the rise of the offshore tax-exempt websites meant the stores and online retailers that were based in the UK were already at a disadvantage.
HMV complained about this and then finally gave in and moved its own business off-shore. Now it's actually doing a lot better and in a firmer position to continue.
GAME haven't been competitive on price for ages and it was actually their second hand business that kept bringing in a lot of the profit, much to publishers' distaste.
But even so, it wasn't the high street or the online retailers that killed the beast. It was overseas investment in areas that sucked money from the company and never gave back. Not Portugal or Spain, whose business ran at a profit, but other countries where things just didn't work out.
It was also the buyout of Gamestation without consideration for the fixed cost of having 2 stores and 2 lots of rent coming out for the same town or city. It was the running of 3 different websites; GAME, Gamestation and Gameplay. It was, more than this, the failure to address these issues in a timely manner and just shrug them off without making the difficult decisions.
It was, in short, Ian Shepard and (more likely) Lisa Morgan.
The policies Lisa put in place and the ignorance of decision making pretty much set the future of the company in stone. Shepard then failed to turn that around.
But as to what killed game?
The High Street has long been suffering under the current recession, game sales are actually down on last year across the board and the rise of the offshore tax-exempt websites meant the stores and online retailers that were based in the UK were already at a disadvantage.
HMV complained about this and then finally gave in and moved its own business off-shore. Now it's actually doing a lot better and in a firmer position to continue.
GAME haven't been competitive on price for ages and it was actually their second hand business that kept bringing in a lot of the profit, much to publishers' distaste.
But even so, it wasn't the high street or the online retailers that killed the beast. It was overseas investment in areas that sucked money from the company and never gave back. Not Portugal or Spain, whose business ran at a profit, but other countries where things just didn't work out.
It was also the buyout of Gamestation without consideration for the fixed cost of having 2 stores and 2 lots of rent coming out for the same town or city. It was the running of 3 different websites; GAME, Gamestation and Gameplay. It was, more than this, the failure to address these issues in a timely manner and just shrug them off without making the difficult decisions.
It was, in short, Ian Shepard and (more likely) Lisa Morgan.
The policies Lisa put in place and the ignorance of decision making pretty much set the future of the company in stone. Shepard then failed to turn that around.
It was only a short while ago I was writing about the future of GAME group and their high street stores. I used to be an employee in one of their stores and during my multiple times there I fully enjoyed myself. I was selling the entertainment medium I loved and felt passionate about and I was able to bring my own sense of quirkiness and edginess to the GAME mix. I also, before it got taken over by GAME, worked in Gamestation and saw things from another retailer’s viewpoint. So it is with great sadness that I read today that almost 300 stores have closed and over 2000 staff have lost their jobs as the GAME group have gone into administration.
A full list of closures is available here
Whilst I predicted doom and gloom for the company, I honestly didn’t think it would be for a long time yet. Game sales offline are booming, the videogames market has overtaken the music and video value and even the government are encouraging British expansion in the market with tax breaks for the companies that make the games. But with high reliance on games holding their value with trade-ins, the threat of future systems not using discs or carts, and online shopping being cheaper for the consumer willing to wait for their item to be posted, GAME needed to plan ahead for the challenges that would await them.
However, it seems that it is the publishers themselves that have hammered the final nails in GAME’s coffin by removing their support of the UK’s biggest games specialist when GAME needed them the most. When the industries biggest giants, Electronic Arts and Nintendo pull their support what can GAME do? Big releases make profits for those who are able to sell them. But when the supermarkets, HMV and online retailers take GAME’s supply of Mass Effect 3, Mario Party 9 and Fifa Street, what can GAME do but watch in dismay as the industry they have helped to grow in the UK destroys them in a financial crisis?
Don’t get me wrong, business is business, and if you’re providing stock on credit, you’re not making any money on the retailer’s sales. Especially if that retailer is struggling to cover the costs of their businesses that are failing, mainly in France and Australia according to the many articles I have read, where games aren’t quite as big an industry.
So I write this as a tribute to GAME. An end of an era that I, as a keen gamer, could not have forseen happening in this way. This is about my memories of GAME, from customer, to employee, to customer:
My first experiences with GAME were when they were using the well established American firm EB Games’s name, Electronics Boutique. I was living in Exeter at the time and occasionally popped in there with my brother looking for Game Boy games at pocket money prices. At the time Woolworths had a huge store in Exeter and so we spent more time looking in there as their entertainment section used to be very impressive.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to South Wales where I would browse the Game store on the side of Queen’s Arcade in Cardiff, or the Electronics Boutique branded store around the corner in St David’s Centre. My brother had then just had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, despite it entering the end of it’s retail shelf-life, which means bargain bins of preowned and new game carts giving us Super Probotector, Zelda, Yoshi’s Island, and more at very good prices.
As a late entrant to the 16-bit era, it was a similar experience for the Nintendo 64: my brother getting it when it was in it’s prime and most of the good games had been released. Games like Turok on the N64 originally retailed at £70, but my brother was picking them up for a much smaller fee.
But it was Queen Street’s GAME PC section that used to be really impressive. A whole floor of PC gaming, with different types of games, strategy, racing, sports, adventure, all located in their own sections and with staff working there who actually knew what they were on about! You could talk to the staff about the games and feel you were talking with equals. Obviously you wouldn’t expect this during busier periods, but you couldn’t fault them for being knowledgeable and for providing a great customer service. One staff member even became a writer for the offical Xbox magazine!
As I grew into young adulthood, I decided that I would get a part time job in GAME, and threw together a CV. Attached to this CV was a huge list of games that I had played on various systems, mainly ZX Spectrum and PC. I handed this in to GAME stores in St Davids Centre, Queen Street and the Debenhams concession. This actually became a bit of a joke between staff in the three stores, but for me my unusual CV grabbed the deputy manager’s attention and curiosity which eventually gained me a job in the Debenhams concession.
Working in that store was brilliant. I was only employed on a casual 4 hour contract but for the majority of my time there I was a full time member of staff and was relied upon quite heavily. I was able to ‘dress the shelves’ following obscure instructions from head office, was able to process the deliveries and most importantly sell the stock. As the only member of staff who worked full time (except for the deputy manager at the time) I did what I could to improve sales for the concession, which Debenhams had hidden in the far back corner of their store.
An example of this was when GAME held regional competitions to sell as many supporting items with a product as possible. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 had just been released on the Playstation 2 and GAME wanted as many sales of the cheats disc made by Datel that allowed the player names to be changed very quickly to the real ones that the players were based on. In the region I managed to sell a huge percentage of them with copies of Pro Evolution 3 and I won promotional copies of the game, or an alternative game, for every member of staff in the store.
What amused me the most about this, though, was that Datel’s disc had a bit of a balls-up on it. Someone in the development team didn’t like Manchester United very much and decided to also implement a change to the logo that was likely to upset a number of people. The product was actually recalled, but the fact was I had done my job well!
The thing I remember more than anything though was the staff I worked with. Most of them great, a real mix of characters who we could all have a laugh and a joke with. There were one or two ‘boys’ in the team who liked things there way or no way, but I don’t think there’s a lot that can be said when you’re good at welcoming customers, helping them with their purchases and giving them expert advice that they’re looking for. And even as a customer now I still enjoy having a chat with staff, and even laugh when they go through the selling spiel about trade-ins, reward cards, pre-orders, and so on that are evolutions of what I had to do back in the day.
I really feel for the staff who are now finding out if they’re still in a job and really do see this as an end to an era. Hopefully, a Moltres will rise from the ashes. It may hold a link to the past, but unless it learns from GAME’s mistakes, I don’t think it will be future perfect. It is safe to say this admin period will have a mass effect on us all. But overnight GAME have become a tiny tower in the city. They need a leader to command & conquer. To restore control in this economic battlefield. And importantly they need to make the business profitable again.
This may be GAME over…but as we all know, it only takes some determination for someone to press start and the GAME can start over again. Good luck to everyone involved.
To the future!
A full list of closures is available here
Whilst I predicted doom and gloom for the company, I honestly didn’t think it would be for a long time yet. Game sales offline are booming, the videogames market has overtaken the music and video value and even the government are encouraging British expansion in the market with tax breaks for the companies that make the games. But with high reliance on games holding their value with trade-ins, the threat of future systems not using discs or carts, and online shopping being cheaper for the consumer willing to wait for their item to be posted, GAME needed to plan ahead for the challenges that would await them.
However, it seems that it is the publishers themselves that have hammered the final nails in GAME’s coffin by removing their support of the UK’s biggest games specialist when GAME needed them the most. When the industries biggest giants, Electronic Arts and Nintendo pull their support what can GAME do? Big releases make profits for those who are able to sell them. But when the supermarkets, HMV and online retailers take GAME’s supply of Mass Effect 3, Mario Party 9 and Fifa Street, what can GAME do but watch in dismay as the industry they have helped to grow in the UK destroys them in a financial crisis?
Don’t get me wrong, business is business, and if you’re providing stock on credit, you’re not making any money on the retailer’s sales. Especially if that retailer is struggling to cover the costs of their businesses that are failing, mainly in France and Australia according to the many articles I have read, where games aren’t quite as big an industry.
So I write this as a tribute to GAME. An end of an era that I, as a keen gamer, could not have forseen happening in this way. This is about my memories of GAME, from customer, to employee, to customer:
My first experiences with GAME were when they were using the well established American firm EB Games’s name, Electronics Boutique. I was living in Exeter at the time and occasionally popped in there with my brother looking for Game Boy games at pocket money prices. At the time Woolworths had a huge store in Exeter and so we spent more time looking in there as their entertainment section used to be very impressive.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to South Wales where I would browse the Game store on the side of Queen’s Arcade in Cardiff, or the Electronics Boutique branded store around the corner in St David’s Centre. My brother had then just had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, despite it entering the end of it’s retail shelf-life, which means bargain bins of preowned and new game carts giving us Super Probotector, Zelda, Yoshi’s Island, and more at very good prices.
As a late entrant to the 16-bit era, it was a similar experience for the Nintendo 64: my brother getting it when it was in it’s prime and most of the good games had been released. Games like Turok on the N64 originally retailed at £70, but my brother was picking them up for a much smaller fee.
But it was Queen Street’s GAME PC section that used to be really impressive. A whole floor of PC gaming, with different types of games, strategy, racing, sports, adventure, all located in their own sections and with staff working there who actually knew what they were on about! You could talk to the staff about the games and feel you were talking with equals. Obviously you wouldn’t expect this during busier periods, but you couldn’t fault them for being knowledgeable and for providing a great customer service. One staff member even became a writer for the offical Xbox magazine!
As I grew into young adulthood, I decided that I would get a part time job in GAME, and threw together a CV. Attached to this CV was a huge list of games that I had played on various systems, mainly ZX Spectrum and PC. I handed this in to GAME stores in St Davids Centre, Queen Street and the Debenhams concession. This actually became a bit of a joke between staff in the three stores, but for me my unusual CV grabbed the deputy manager’s attention and curiosity which eventually gained me a job in the Debenhams concession.
Working in that store was brilliant. I was only employed on a casual 4 hour contract but for the majority of my time there I was a full time member of staff and was relied upon quite heavily. I was able to ‘dress the shelves’ following obscure instructions from head office, was able to process the deliveries and most importantly sell the stock. As the only member of staff who worked full time (except for the deputy manager at the time) I did what I could to improve sales for the concession, which Debenhams had hidden in the far back corner of their store.
An example of this was when GAME held regional competitions to sell as many supporting items with a product as possible. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 had just been released on the Playstation 2 and GAME wanted as many sales of the cheats disc made by Datel that allowed the player names to be changed very quickly to the real ones that the players were based on. In the region I managed to sell a huge percentage of them with copies of Pro Evolution 3 and I won promotional copies of the game, or an alternative game, for every member of staff in the store.
What amused me the most about this, though, was that Datel’s disc had a bit of a balls-up on it. Someone in the development team didn’t like Manchester United very much and decided to also implement a change to the logo that was likely to upset a number of people. The product was actually recalled, but the fact was I had done my job well!
The thing I remember more than anything though was the staff I worked with. Most of them great, a real mix of characters who we could all have a laugh and a joke with. There were one or two ‘boys’ in the team who liked things there way or no way, but I don’t think there’s a lot that can be said when you’re good at welcoming customers, helping them with their purchases and giving them expert advice that they’re looking for. And even as a customer now I still enjoy having a chat with staff, and even laugh when they go through the selling spiel about trade-ins, reward cards, pre-orders, and so on that are evolutions of what I had to do back in the day.
I really feel for the staff who are now finding out if they’re still in a job and really do see this as an end to an era. Hopefully, a Moltres will rise from the ashes. It may hold a link to the past, but unless it learns from GAME’s mistakes, I don’t think it will be future perfect. It is safe to say this admin period will have a mass effect on us all. But overnight GAME have become a tiny tower in the city. They need a leader to command & conquer. To restore control in this economic battlefield. And importantly they need to make the business profitable again.
This may be GAME over…but as we all know, it only takes some determination for someone to press start and the GAME can start over again. Good luck to everyone involved.
To the future!