but on a much more important note… is that a fat blue highlighter hanging from OUTSIDE her pocket protector (in her closing comments)?!?

Someone mentioned in part 1 how Gamestop grew out of Funcoland. I actually have fond memories of Funcoland. They actually let you TRY a game before buying it. I remember they had WORKING video game consoles where you could try out any game you asked about. They concentrated on the gamer and what we valued. Funcoland had more of the local comic shop feel to it and because of the openness of the people and customers, created a sense of community and culture around video games. I wish Gamestop would revisit this idea and modify their business practice. In the meantime, I will be happy purchasing new games online or at the B&M stores or searching craigslist for deals on used games.

Zunafish allows registered users to trade used video games, DVDs, CDs and paperbacks with other users. The ONLY cost to you is postage (usually around $5 to send something via Media Mail) and a $1 service fee to Zunafish. You can only trade like for like – so games for games, DVDs fr DVDs, and so on.

Here’s how it works:
You post the titles you’re interested in trading and categorize them according to their condition (Perfect, Excellent, Good, Fair).

Zunafish notifies you when someone is interested in one of your games. You can review that person’s list of games for trade to see if they have anything you want. You can also see a simple trade history: how many people have been satisfied with their trade, how many feel neutral about it, and how many feel they were scammed. Helps you to avoid trading with someone who’s getting himself a bad reputation.

Put your game in the mail within 72 hours and the other party does the same. Within about a week, you should receive your game.

Yes, it’s on something of an honor system. Traders are expected to be honest about the condition of their items and abide by the website’s policies. I made a couple of trades on Zunafish and I don’t have any complaints.

Finally – if you trade an Xbox game, you aren’t limited to only trading Xbox games. If someone wants to trade for your copy of Gears of War 2, and they have some PC game that you really want, or a PS3 title, or Nintendo DS, then you can trade for that title. It’s really up to you to decide what game is worth making that particular trade.

anyway, i think i understand what you’re trying to say though about wanting Gamestop to be a safe haven for gamers like comic book shops, and even that store called Games Workshop or something. Any time I pass by one of those Games Workshop stores in a mall, part of me just finds it endearing to see kids (and grown adults) all socializing and hanging out with their hobby without a care in the world.

I’m thinking two of the reasons why Gamestop can’t be a safe haven for gamers is just due to how many stores there are (spreading themselves too thin, so they have to just hire anyone they can) and the customer types that come in. if we compare it to Games Workshop, there aren’t as many of them throughout the U.S., and because it’s such a niche hobby you probably have to be into that hobby to want to work at the store. Combine that with pretty much only fans of the hobby frequenting the store, and boom you have a safe haven for AD&D and Warhammer and all that.

But Gamestop is different because it sells so many types of games for all audiences, which means the customers that come in are not just hardcore gamers, but pretty much every type of person. I’ve definitely met some cool Gamestop employees before, and terrible ones as well, but I think the turnover rate at Gamestop is pretty high just because of what they have to deal with. Imagine if you worked there – sure it might be nice for some gamer to come in and just chat with you about the latest games and stuff, but then you have to deal with phone calls every few minutes asking if you have the Wii or Wii Fit in stock, people knocking over magazine racks, parents dropping their kids off at the store and just disappearing for a few hours, etc. And then on top of that, their pay is most likely some combination of minimum wage and commission, so they probably go home every night not happy. I’ve seen some of them at midnight releases for certain games, and they definitely don’t want to be there. While working at a gamestop might seem enjoyable in theory, the proliferation of kids and parents in the stores probably kills any sense of haven actual gamers may have and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

I guess the closest gamer “haven” that I can think of is PC bangs or whatever you call them where they have dozens of PCs setup and people just come in with their friends to play counterstrike or warcraft or something. that makes more sense since those weed out the kids and parents so only gamers are there. of course, they end up socializing with each other and not the cashier guy that sits up front bored out of his mind, but i would go there if i wanted to socialize with like-minded gamers. i myself am happy with just visiting gaming blogs and forums from the comfort of my desk though.