ALBERTO GONZALEZ & CONNOR MAUCHE
Staff Lampoonist & Special to the Lampoon
GameStop, also known as the Blockbuster of games, closed around 150 stores in an attempt to stem the financial bloodbath that is their business.
We reached out to Aron Ralston to get first hand (singular) experience on what it’s like to cleave off your own arm to survive.
“Are you kidding me?!? In no way, shape or form are these even on the same level. If you call me about this again I will get a restraining order,” he said.
Clearly Aron has a strong love of used games, and he was right; 150+ stores was undoubtedly worth more than one man’s mere arm. One store is worth at least 62.5 human arms after adjusting for inflation, so that is 9,375 arms! It looks as though you will need a leg, as well, if you plan on trying to trade in used games towards a new game.
A new trade-in currency is being implemented in all remaining GameStop stores, called Stopcash. The way it works is that it looks at how much the game would have cost upon release and credits the customer that amount in Stopbucks.
This may be a little misleading for the majority of the demographic consisting of young adults and teens that are constantly visiting the business, because a single Stopbuck is worth .001 of a dollar, which means that someone who comes in and gets 60 Stopbucks for a used game is really getting 6 cents. This model, which is being hailed as the next stroke of genius in the used game market, is being implemented to try and combat the loss of income from the closing stores.
To gain inside perspective, we went down to our local GameStop, which has been listed as one of the affected stores, to talk to the staff and see what they had to say about the situation. The employees wanted to keep their anonymity, so we will be referring to them as a non-player clerk or NPC for short.
So how do you feel knowing that tomorrow will be your last day here at GameStop?
NPC: “Wait, what? I thought you wanted to talk about the new Stopcash we will be implementing soon?”
Wow, you clearly are still in denial. You must really love this company, so it must be hard accepting that you must let it go.
NPC: “I would do anything for this company. I have come in on holidays, I have done every midnight release event, I was the only employee to be featured on the company’s employee magazine three times for exemplary work! This company is the only resemblance to a defining feature I have; without it, I am nothing. This company would never leave me high and dry. You must be mistaken, because corporate loves me. They know I would give my life for this job!”
We thought that you did not want to be mentioned by name, so why would you give us such a specific detail about yourself?
NPC: “ I did not think about that. Oh my god, what if they see this and don’t like it? I don’t want to get in trouble with the company!”
It doesn’t matter, tomorrow is your last day anyways!
NPC: “Wait, what? I thought you wanted to talk about the new Stopcash we will be implementing soon?”
Did we not just have this same exact conversation literally about 45 seconds ago?
NPC: “I would do anything for this company. I have come in on holidays, I have done every midnight release event, I was the only employee to be featured on the company’s employee magazine three times for exemplary work! This company is the only resemblance to a defining feature I have; without it I am nothing. This company would never leave me high and dry. You must be mistaken, because corporate loves me. They know I would give my life for this job!”
At this point, it was apparent that this employee was in such denial that they were having short term memory problems and were only capable of responding with the same dialogue over and over no matter how many times you walked up to him and tried to start a conversation. For now, we can only hope that he finds a better job to devote his life and identity to after this one.
Editor’s Note: This article is written in memory of John Smith , known to readers of this article as NPC, who devoted 23 years of his life to his passion of giving people horrible deals on used games. He died 2 days later from an apparent “suicide by ritualistic controller asphyxiation” according to the official police report.