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We speak to GAME Southampton sales assistant Tom Dent about the importance of knowing the titles you’re selling, making the effort for midnight launches and the effect Mario Kart can have on team bonding.
Tell us about your store team.
Our team currently consists of 14 passionate gamers. Although we have a wealth of information on mainstream titles like Titanfall and FIFA, our passions can be found in console exclusives, digital titles and PC games. At least four of our guys dedicate themselves to League of Legends on a daily basis.
With this knowledge, we can help any type of customer and maybe introduce them to something new. We don’t shy away from sharing opinions on games to customers, and regularly get them involved with our online gaming.
What’s your store’s speciality?
Our specialities include interacting with our community with things like online gaming and over our social channels.
We also pride ourselves on our extensive knowledge of indie titles, as well as hardened console games like Dark Souls and The Witcher.
What’s been your favourite midnight launch so far?
The midnight launch that has stood out to us the most would be the recent Watch Dogs one. We injected a lot of theatre into our launch, with our entire staff dressed as Aiden Pierce and even involving the Chicago Rib Shack restaurant to serve Chicago-style ribs and chicken throughout
the night.
An honourable mention goes to our GTA V launch, for the amount of people we served until 3am, with a queue that began at 10am, and, of course, the console launches. They were amazing.
How else do you get involved with the gaming community?
Two of our guys here in store run a gaming news website, four local Southamptonites have a very successful podcast called ‘Ready Player 2′ and Street Pass Southampton regularly holds events around the town; most recently they hosted a Mario Kart 8 Grand Prix over at Orange Rooms. .
Which games bring out your team’s competitive side?
Some of our staff got caught up in the leaderboards for Trials Fusion.
A few long evenings have also been spent huddled round a GameCube playing classics such as Mario Kart Double Dash. Bonds are formed that are only possible through the satisfaction of hitting each other with virtual shells.
