On my soap box: Game Shop sales assistants

Ok so I wont be the first to post about this and I am darn sure I wont be the last but right now I want to talk about the opinions of staff who sell video games, the stuff you hear them say and cringe and how they will at times will seem to actively try to sell someone the wrong machine or wrong game and what I feel they should be doing.

Now I am currently working in retail and in all honesty I am dealing with products I don't know very much about so if someone doesn't know something about a product due to the fact they haven't used it/played with it then I am not going to give them too hard a time as long as they don't try to fake it and make wildly untruthful claims, I also do understand the fact that certain machines or games will have a higher profit attached to them so employees may be encouraged to try and up-sell certain things however some people do it in such a way and to such a degree that they just come across as total and utter piss weasels. I guess I should clarify what the wrong game or system is, the wrong game or system is a game or system that is wrong for the person who is purchasing it. So for example if someone told me they hated RPG games I wouldn't try to persuade them to get a Final Fantasy title, if however someone told me they wanted something that was like Resident Evil but wasn't a part of that Franchise I would recommend them The Evil Within. Right and Wrong depends upon the individual, you have to listen to what they want and then try your best to match product to person.

Speaking of The Evil Within I was in a CEX store when someone took a copy of it up to the counter it was pretty darn cheap like £10 and the guy behind the counter physically groaned and then asked the customer ''are you really going to buy this shit?'' This wasn't the end of it, the sales advisor literally went on and on about his own dislike for the game which was a mix of both criticism and made up rubbish. For one he claimed that the game was only four hours long and controlled so badly that the guy would be brining it back the following day either completed or out of frustration. Now I haven't finished it In fact I am only 4 hours in to it myself but it feels like I have only just scratched the surface with a quick search on various websites telling me its an around 15 to 20 hour game. In the end he persuaded the customer to instead spend £22 on Resident Evil Revelations 2 (interestingly both games have more or less the same Metacritic score). Some people might see this as a success as he sold him a higher priced product but then I never see a sales assistant groaning at a consumer and either lying or making stuff up with no real idea of the truth as a positive thing

It is I feel important here to point out that I own a PS4, Xbox One and a Wii U and that my love for them is pretty balanced, all of them have titles I really enjoy for example on my Wii U I love Pikmin 3, where as I find myself hammering Rare Replay and Dead Rising 3 on the Xbox One and then will very happily jump on to the PS4 and really enjoy a bit of Drive Club or Little big Planet 3. If I was to sell someone a console out of these three I would ask them questions, questions which would asses the type of games they like, what they feel they need or want out of a system and then take it from there, maybe if I was ordered to mention certain things I would say them but ultimately I would want the person to leave with the right product for them after all a happy customer is a customer who comes back and shops again. If you enjoy your choice of console your going to buy more games for it.

I have seen people ask about the Wii U at my semi local game shops this includes two games and a Granger games and you know when asked about it all they tend to say is ''yeah its OK if you want to play Mario but other than that its rubbish compared to a PS4/Xbox One'' Now if I was asked about the Wii U as a friend of mine who had been a big GameCube fan did then I would sell it with a whole range of facts, I would give you a whole pile of both positive and negatives. To start with the positive its fully backwards compatible and with a wii-Mote and nunchuck you can play literally all the wii games on it as well as your Wii U games. The games if brought on disc are played directly off the disc with no installation needed, meaning that unless you plan on buying games digitally there is very little need to worry about storage space, If you do want to digitally buy games there is a massive back catalogue of games from old systems available. Also you don't have to pay to play online. As for weaknesses well it has less raw power than the other systems, less third party support, the online side of things although free is very simplistic compared to its competitors.

I don't think a sales assistant in any field should ever be there to try and push and bully people in to believing what they believe the key to the title is the word assistant. You are there to assist someone with there shopping, your there to offer what knowledge you have and to try to give them the information and tools so that they can make a good decision which places there own needs and desires first and foremost. Maybe some people just get in to it because they enjoy games and really want to be games reviewers and see pushing there own opinions as the next best thing, or maybe some people are just in it because its a job and really don't care about the people they serve in there day to day role?