Forza 3 Just Saved my Life

The time is 10pm, on a freezing December night, 2010. England is experiencing an extended period of icy cold weather. Probably not the best time to be making a long, night-time drive alone? Well it didn’t stop me last night.

Forza 3 on Xbox360

Now, let’s do a “Lost” style flash-back to four weeks ago - the height of my obsession with the Xbox 360 game “Forza Motorsport 3”.

During 2010, I have been going through an achievement-whore phase, spending unholy amounts of time chasing virtual achievement scores on some of the most embarrassing games ever released (yes, Avatar). At some point I decided that if I was going to beat this multitude of sub-par ‘gamer-whore’ games, I should at least set myself the goal of beating ‘triple-a’ games like Halo, Call of Duty, or Forza at least 50%. Otherwise I’d feel too cheap.

Think Gamestop is bad? You clearly haven’t been to GAME in England

Today I’m going to take a quick break from talking about space (don’t worry, the following article will be a tribute to the International Space Station) and instead I’ll talk about Gamestop.

I listen to several gaming podcasts, a number of which are American, and something I’ve heard mentioned a number of times is how irritating gamers find shopping at Gamestop. I went to a gamestop during my time in Chicago, and honestly, I didn't mind it. Why not? The UK equivalent is a store called “GAME” which you will find in any given town or City in England.

GAME - the horrible British version of Gamestop

Let me tell you, if you think that Gamestop is bad, you’ve clearly never been to GAME. It was reported that in the Fiscal Year 2009-2010, GAME had a rough time. I’m not surprised, given their frankly awful customer service.  Let me talk you through my usual customer journey every time I make the mistake of setting foot in a GAME store.

Now before I continue, let me add this disclaimer: I am what I would call a “proper gamer”. In other words, not a casual gamer. But, if anyone from GAME is reading this, don’t use that as an excuse; funnily enough, it is logical to assume that a good chunk of GAME’s customers  are “proper gamers”, so you’d damn sure better think about how you treat them.