Comprehensive player reviews, video game backlog slaying, and thoughts on video game culture.
The Autumn colors outside have had me feeling somewhat nostalgic lately and I wanted to expand a little on my older piece about how video games influenced the different phases of my life. It is less common than you’d expect for a non-sport hobby to stay with a child into their later adult life. What is it about video games that allow them to stick with us on such a deep, sentimental level for so many years?
Continue reading “Games of Our Childhoods”
PAX West was a blast! My better half and I flew in on Thursday afternoon and spent each of the following four days at PAX from open to close and beyond. I played so many games and met so many people, some of the days are a bit of a blur, but I’m certainly not complaining. This will be a general experience overview and I have another post coming that will focus purely on all the demos I tried. Spoilers- They were fantastic!
Continue reading “Field Report – PAX West 2019!”:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/customer-service-memes-25-5bf46da3c9e77c0051e7b0f4.jpg)
Okay, this one is a doozy and was the first and worst thing I ever experienced in video game retail.
It was my second week on the sales floor. I was innocent and hopeful, not yet jaded by years of entitled customers demanding discounts for no reason and being generally clueless or rude about everything. I had not yet been snapped at like a dog or had anyone yell in my face, so that was nice. Such a sweet summer child…
Continue reading “Tales From Video Game Retail – The Creepy Grandpa”
It’s time for the third and final installment of the Video Game Literary Classics 101 Collaboration! Definitely check out Part One and Part Two if you haven’t already.
Thank you so much to everyone who wrote an article for this series! There were quite a few unexpected picks and I truly appreciate everyone’s participation in my first gaming blogger community event. If you like this sort of video game literary perspective analysis and want some more, I’d highly recommend stopping by the Games as Literature YouTube Channel where the Game Professor has many excellent, long form videos to enjoy about a plethora of titles.
That said, here are the final submissions!
I have spent more time playing Pokémon games in my life than I’ve spent playing the top 5 games in my Steam library sorted by “most time played” combined. I could be considered an expert on Pokémon. I’ve played them all. I know them all. I know the community.
There has been an overwhelming amount of back and forth discourse in the Nintendo Switch gaming community lately about the removal of the National Pokédex from Pokémon Sword and Shield. Some fans support the change, but a majority of fans are vehemently against it. I want to dig a little deeper into the reasons why fans are so upset, and why expressing this outrage does not make them “entitled crybabies”.
Apologies for the delay on the final post of the Video Games Literary Classics Community Collab!
I’ve decided to post the final “syllabus” in three parts due to 1.) My own unanticipated slowness at arranging it, 2.) So readers have time to check out the individual article submissions, and 3.) So a few bloggers have time to get their contributions turned in by the time I get to Part Three.
I’ll have Part Two up in the first half of next week, then Part Three the week after, and a final full post of everything together shortly after that with any requested edits. Plus there’s a special addition to this project that may be in the works – details to come!
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the first 5 games chosen by the gaming blogger community as literary classics…
We had a regular at my second video game store who would come in multiple days a week to hang out for hours on end without buying anything. No one felt comfortable asking him not to loiter because he was a young veteran discharged with an injury, and he was nice, if oblivious. The main problem was that he would follow either me or my female supervisor around the store constantly, talking at us and preventing us from getting work done.
Now, I say “talking at” and not “talking to” because he didn’t particularly care if we returned conversation or not. I think he was lonely, but we had work to do, man.
During College I used to work at a Best Buy and then later a GameStop. If you have ever worked retail you will understand the pain. Customers are almost never right. I took a little time to write down some of my most memorable stories and interactions. I hope you enjoy some of these more than I did when I experienced them!
Continue reading “Tales From Video Game Retail – Peeves and Mistakes”
For those still planning to participate in the Video Game Literary Classics 101 community collab, please try to get your posts in by Monday. I have been commenting on each entry that pingbacks to the original collab post, so if you did not receive a comment from me, please assume I missed it and poke me again. I just got back from a two week vacation and hopefully none slipped through the cracks while I was checking on things from mobile.
If you are a new gaming blogger community member wanting to participate or someone needing a little more time, please let me know ASAP. I’ll be working on the final collab post for a week or two so a little late is totally doable. (Already heard from one or two about late entry.)
Entries so far have been fabulous and I’m looking forward to putting together the final “syllabus”!
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Trade ins. Dear lord, trade ins. Don’t get me started on those sports games that come out at the same time every year, like FIFA, NBA, Madden, etc. Folks would want to trade in last year’s Madden game and FREAK OUT when they saw the trade in value, having not realized that games depreciate like anything else.
Like, bruh. I’ve got 20 drawers of games back here behind the counter and FIVE of them are FULL of MADDEN, and then I have another shelf of them in the back room on top of that. I could literally put out a dumpster fire with the amount of Madden copies in this store — just dump them in to smother the flames. No one would miss them, and we would still have dozens left! Dozens!
Backlog Crusader 