The Blame Game Part 2 – Suck It Up Cupcake

Part 1 talked about the gaming heaven Game Stadium, A Sony PS3 lounge in the South coast of England. But why did Game Stadium close its doors for good less than a year after opening, in September 2008?

Sony had been the only who were willing to let there name be used. Yet Sony didn’t make it easy. In addition to stalling for months, costing the owner thousands in legal fees, rent and other pointless expenses that I’ve forgotten about, they set him stupidly strict rules. For example, the owner had to use the Sony architect, an architect that would cost him nearly £90,000 before he would even build anything! To add further insult to injury (and I think this one shocked me the most) Sony didn’t even give him discount. That’s right, all those PS3 and Sony HDTV’s that you saw in Part 1? He bought all those himself at full retail price.

Were they trying to bankrupt this man before he even started? Surely a company that promotes individuality, unique concepts and a ‘˜look towards the future’ would have jumped on this idea? Once built, Sony still showed no interest in promoting this business. This place would have been perfect to demo games, hold press events or as a way to promote Sony; beneficial to both them and the owner. But, nothing.

The owner on the other hand, was not inexperienced in the business world. He had owned a few businesses in the past but he didn’t seem to have the first clue about ‘˜gaming.’ It takes a lot to get us to put our XBL headsets down and leave our houses, but even if we did there was no advertising. In fact, I only knew it existed because I happened to know the manager.

Bournemouth is a HUGE university town and he didn’t even bother to send flyers around the campus or dorms. I don’t know the first thing about ‘˜running a business’ but even I know that you need to advertise! Even now, when I tell people about how much fun I had there and they look at me blankly; nobody knew it existed. Did he hope that gamers would spread this place by word of mouth? Since we’re gamers, on the whole we’re either chatting to people in another county or to the rather small amount of ‘˜gamer friends’ that we have. I live with 5 other people and while I could spend all day telling them about this place, it is only the friends who I play against in America who would actually care (and that’s a little far to travel for Call of Duty night).

As a European gamer I feel that we spend a lot of time complaining about how we are ‘missing out’ and that there isn’t anything for us. Yet here we are presented with a fantastic opportunity as gamers, and we let it slip by. Those who did know about Game Station and were interested in it or those who had been wanting a place like this couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to go, they would rather sit at home in there room alone, the opposite of what this was trying to give us. Worst of all were the gamers who couldn’t bring themselves to go to a ‘˜Sony’ lounge; theMicrosoft fanboys blinded by there love for their favorite system. I was never a PS3 fan; I was a Microsoft girl through and through until I went there. Now I want a PS3 more than ever. I shake my head in disbelief that a gamer would pass up an opportunity to go here because Sony was above the door and not Microsoft.

It is a pity that this opportunity has already come and gone, and I certainly hope we see something like this happen again with a great deal more success. I know HMV already have plans to expand the Gamer Base (PC café type set up) currently located in their flagship store. It will be interesting to see how successful they are instead.