GAME of London

For the past twelve days, I was in Europe vacationing in London and Paris. E3 was also happening while I was gone, so all of my knowledge of E3 comes from me trying to watch every game trailer that came out, twitter posts from various journalist outlets, listening to podcasts from Giant Bomb and Game Informer, and trying to watch all of the Giant Bomb talk-overs of press conferences. I am not complete with all of that stuff yet, but I will write about that when I am. As for now, I wanted to talk about my experience in a video game store in London.

I was walking down street in a busy shopping street in London when I stumbled across a video game store. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to pop in and see what the UK's equivalence of Gamestop looked like. For those who don't know, the name of the chain stores is...GAME. That's it. To me, it is a terrible name that is also inconvenient when it comes to google searching the store. But after my experience there, I would happily have that name if it meant having those stores in the U.S.

Before I go into my experience, I want to say that the GAME I went to was most likely a special version of the store (you will see what I mean.) But of all the Gamestops I have been to, I still have not come to a chain gaming store as cool as this one.

Walking in, I could already tell this was a great store. The store was clean, the games were organized, and the employees were friendly. Some employees were behind the counter, but some were also near the entrance as well. The people at the front were really friendly, and me and one other guy struck up a conversation about Gamestop and that I thought EB games was in the UK. He told me the store I was in was pretty new and he never heard of EB games. Anyways, I decided to look around the store and I was amazed. They had just about everything there, and it was all neat and displayed well. They even had gaming keyboard and mice displayed. One thing I also saw was that there prices were fair. Everything seemed up-to-date, and I even saw great games like Horizon: Zero Dawn on sale for half-off. But then I went downstairs.

I saw stairs going down and I just had to look. What did I find? a rental gaming area. Now I know there are such things as rental gaming areas, but I was still shocked to find one in a store like this. They had pc, all consoles, and even all vr headsets. I still have never been to a Gamestop that had a rental service like that (I don't know if there is a Gamestop with one.)

But the biggest thing that got me with GAME was the vibe. When I go to Gamestop, I almost feel like that stereotypical portrayal of thirty-year-old overweight basement dweller vibe, and it makes me want to go in and out of Gamestop really fast with my hand blocking my face hoping no one sees me. But at GAME, I felt more comfortable. Maybe it was how clean and professional the place was, or maybe it was that I was in another continent and I didn't have to worry about what others think of me.

Maybe everything I said only applied to that one store, but that one store sure knew how to properly sell games. I hope someday GAME comes to the U.S. or that Gamestop picks up their act a bit.

UPDATE: Read the comments down below. They are right and I was wrong.

GAME was EB many years ago so I'm not surprised they didn't know. That is definitely a different shop because most are just regular style shops that are mostly filled with gaming merchandise. I haven't been to a GAME in a while but my memory is that all the games are as expensive as they could be.

They nearly went bankrupt a few years back and since then have been the more expensive outlet. I doubt they will spread this style though, most places haven't got the space.

Looks like a fancy version of GAME on high street that has almost nothing to do with any other

Yeah I had a feeling that was a fancy one.

That store is just off Oxford Street, which is the busiest shopping street in Europe. I actually used to eat lunch everyday on that exact road so I can tell you that store is less than a year old. Unfortunately it's not indicative on the average GAME you'd find in less populated areas, but still cool. I actually might go and check it out after seeing this.

I remember Electronics Boutique when I was younger. I think they were bought by GAME. At least, the one we had turned into a GAME, which meant there were two GAMEs in the same mall. Visiting LA a few months ago, I went to my first Gamestop and it was just like a regular GAME I was used to.

We used to have GAME in Australia until the financial problems in 2012 which forced them to close all stores here. I remember they used to sell games fairly cheap (compared to EB Games) and was probably the only retailer to sell older, retro games/consoles.

What part of London were you shopping? I swear you'd only get those fancy GAME stores around Oxford St.

From the photos it looks nice. Much better than what Australia and NZ get. I walk into these stores with a confused look on my face and ask the sales people if they're having a sale just for a laugh. Once the guy told me they had some dick from head office come in and get them to plaster a sale sign on every spot they didn't have it such as the ceiling. Its fucking disgusting.

I went into GAME on the weekend and it was appropriately deserted. We used to have more options but ....

• Gamestation was bought out by GAME.
• Which then had to be scrapped entirely when GAME went under.
• Grainger Games is a viable alternative, although they've become a lot less interesting since they've grown in stature.
• Zaavi went under and re-remerged as an online-only option.

Come to think of it, including CeX and the fact that ASDA now do used stock, we've maybe got the same retail presence as before. There's been more of a shift to used stock rather than new, which only has a couple of outlets.

@probablytuna: We had them here in Ireland too and we also have Gamestops here too. Like in Australia, GAME stopped operating here around the same time. I don't know about Australia, but here people who had worked in the stores had to organize shut ins around the clock in order to get redundancy compensation as the company appointed to GAME shutting down tried to get out of it. Same thing happened with a number of stores at the time.

I will say though, that although the OPs view on game is based off what essentially looks like a flagship store on one of the most important retail streets in Europe, most GAME stores in Ireland that I've been in were always much cleaner and better stocked than any Gamestop.

As mentioned, they used to be in Australia but closed. No big loss as their prices were always retail, and even their 2nd hand were more expensive then EB, which is a tough thing to accomplish. Picked up lots of bargains from them when they were closing down though heh.

Yeah that looks nothing like any GAME store I have ever been to, I'll admit it does look kinda cool though. That said they could all look like that and I wouldn't know as it's been years since I last went in a branch of GAME.

Speaking of old UK videogame stores, does anyone remember Chips? There was a branch near where I went to college and me and a friend spent pretty much every lunch brake in there playing on their 360/PS2 demo station for a solid year. Not sure if they are around anymore.

Yeah, I wouldn't worry that you're missing much. Every other GAME shop in the UK is directly comparable with any given Gamestop.

Good for them for putting the effort in here, though.

GAME is an overpriced cesspit, their prices are utterly outrageous.

@shindig: i remember buying some games from Zavvi to the Netherlands. The price was pretty good but the delivery often took 3 to 4 weeks :D

GAME were good in the 90s. Technically EB bought them and rebranded as GAME...it was a different EB from the US chain though, an unrelated company who had licenced the brand IIRC. You would have to be in your 30s to remember them at all in the UK.

GAME is pretty bad on the whole, although I find the staff in my local one are quite nice.

As for that gaming area, I believe they are expanding it to other branches. HMV had something similar for a while before their financial problems, which led to them almost completely dropping games entirely having previously focused on it quite heavily. HMV is now doing very well but still only sells a tiny range of gaming stuff.

I remember the HMV one in Edinburgh that had a downstairs area like this, it was pretty cool.

GAME was good when I was a teenager and all I could afford were second hand games. I haven't been in one in forever.

GAME went bankrupt in 2012 but were rescued when the owners gutted another chain of game stores they owned (called Gamestation) to raise the cash. Since the bankruptcy, most British gamers would agree that GAME has changed for the worse.

The prices are higher on new and pre-owned games compared to other UK retailers, large amounts of store space are now dedicated to pop culture merchandise rather than video games and the staff will pester you about signing up for disk protection and various reward schemes whenever you make a purchase.

@rebel_scum said:

What part of London were you shopping? I swear you'd only get those fancy GAME stores around Oxford St.

From the photos it looks nice. Much better than what Australia and NZ get. I walk into these stores with a confused look on my face and ask the sales people if they're having a sale just for a laugh. Once the guy told me they had some dick from head office come in and get them to plaster a sale sign on every spot they didn't have it such as the ceiling. Its fucking disgusting.

I suddenly feel the strong desire to buy the entirety of GAME's stock...

This. Why anyone would buy games there is beyond me. GAME charges full price for new games, £49.99 to £54.99, which is extortionate. You can easily shop online and get new games for £35-£40, which is much more in line with what the public are used to. Before, the £50 price tag was for new next gen games (I remember when Prey 2006 came out and it was that price) but we are nearly 4 years into the current console lifespan and they are still charging crazy high prices. My understanding is that they are not doing that well and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why.

@vod_crack: I dunno if charging full price for a new game really counts as extortion.

@danishingact: Not extortion as such, but you can get them far cheaper online or even from supermarkets. I don't know why you would buy a new release from GAME. They sometimes have decent prices on sale, but for new releases you're getting ripped off compared to the competition.

@danishingact: Extortion is probably a slight exaggeration but it's still a rip off.

Sounds like an unusual branch.

One thing I also saw was that there prices were fair.

Yep, that's basically a unicorn.

After a lot of... constructive feedback, I have decided to shut down this blog. I realized how wrong I was and how the one store I went to is the special one. Thank you to those who have showed my errors, but I don't want anyone else reading this to believe I was right.

@themist997: Nah, leave it up. It's a nice blog about your experience, and I for one found it useful to know there's a cool GAME store in London that I should probably go check out.

Operated in the Republic of Ireland too till 2012, not without controversy.

@gunslingerpanda: Ok I guess I'll keep it up.