Well, I've chewed on this a bit and came up with a few issues I have with OP's post.
First, you say that video game consumers aren't any different than other consumers and do not deserve special treatment. You go on to say that it's not their hangout and shouldn't waste the company's time hanging around in there. I have a couple of issues with those statements. Let's go into the latter first.
It would be in the best interest of Game Stop to keep customers in the store as long as possible, and they know it. Many gamestop stores I've been inside often include at least a couple of consoles running new games. The purpose of those games is to tantalize the customer of what they could be playing only if they purchased that title. It has an added benefit of getting more marketplace penetration to the potential buyer. As an anecdote, I purchased Dragon Quest 9 and as much of DQ9's gameplay hinges on ad-hoc multi-player, which isn't so popular here in the states. Game Stop ran a once-per month meet up on Saturdays so people could get together, play and trade maps. The longer people stayed there, the more they purchased product, by the time I left, there were no more DQ9 game guides. This kind-of plays into my next point which is...
An important part of gaming is community. Clans, Servers, Friends, Zones, games are about grouping you with people and creating small pocket communities. I don't know about most of you, but I grew up in the 80's and 90's and most of that time, being a gamer had a social stigma around it. Like minded boys (and a few girls) would meet in a clandestine basement to enjoy games that were never spoken about in school. Dank arcades, thick with gray cigarette smoke, terrifying to outsiders, but you knew everyone there. It is that stigma we remember and hold close to our chest, it's written into our DNA as gamers; and that's why any place that is dedicated to our pastimes fascinates us so much. Arcades and Gaming stores, in them we are with like-minded people who are ready, willing and able to help your gaming hobby along.
In reply to your first statement, that gamers as a customer aren't special and don't deserve special treatment, I'll have to disagrees with that one too.
You see, gamers happen to be the most informed purchasers on the planet when it comes to comparing them with any other purchaser of goods. Their knowledge allows them to automatically block out inferior products based on very few outward pieces of information. Put God of War 3, Devil May Cry 4 and Daunte's Inferno in front of a gamer and they'll be able to tell you which is better and why. Put them in front of a laymen, and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In other industries, this type of person would be a fanatic, but for a gamer, this is the norm. This is the main reason video game players, in general and as a customer base, require special treatment up an over a mother coming in to buy her child the new Sonic game.
Ultimately, you only really have to follow the money trail to see why gamers need to be treated a bit differently than your average consumer. With all of the preorders, game protection fees, magazine subscriptions and edge card memberships, Game Stop is making quite a bit of bank of of things that aren't even video games, sometimes not even providing a real service for it (preordering money goes into a bank and collects interest until you pick the game up). Not to mention, sales associates get bonuses based on the sale of these non-game profits and should be kissing ass accordingly. You have to suckle on the teat to get milk, not gnash and bite.
Luckily for Game Stop, they have people that understand these facts and act in a way that keeps bringing people in and keeps bringing them money.
The only real problem I have with Game Stop is their near-monopoly of used game sales here in the US. If they had some healthy competition, perhaps used games wouldn't be a laughable 5USD off of retail. This would bring down the huge margin they make on used games to a more reasonable level and show game companies that people want to buy games, but not at the price that they sell them for.
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