Young Reporter-Black Friday Craze Herds in die-hard Gamers
Rampage, rampant and ridiculous. Just a few of the ways one can use to describe the situation at the ‘Game’ retail store at the Nugent retail shopping centre at the early hours of this morning. Over 80 individuals showed up for the annual Black Friday midnight opening of the store to secure the latest games for the cheapest price but many customers seemed to get more than they bargained for.
Many shops across the country have hooked onto this newly created holiday known as ‘Black Friday’. Originally conceived in the US to signify the beginning of the most important season in the year. I’m not talking about Christmas by the way; a day of love, joy and togetherness. No, I’m talking about the season of ‘Christmas shoppers’ which is all about the last minute dash for deals and the pushing and shoving to reach the last fully functioning coffee machine on sale even if you already have 3 others stacked high in your trolley.
Outside one Game retail store in St Mary Cray this morning’s this wasn’t any exception with the gathering of gamers making up queues spanning up to 35 devoted shoppers at once, each braving the 2ᵒC winter chill in order get their hands on Xboxes and PlayStation galore.
With 321 stores spread throughout the country and 1000s of eager workers ready to accommodate their shoppers you’d expect after weeks of planning that this sale would run smoothly, unfortunately the truth is the only time the game store faced an experience as hectic and crazy as this was in the August 2011 riots! One 17 year gamer from Petts Wood was quoted saying ‘it was quite intimidating showing up their even with a lot of my friends’ he went on to say that ‘many people were becoming frustrated with the way the queues were controlled. I was just glad I wasn’t one of the people left disappointed when stock began to run out’. It would seem that this frustration wasn’t just contained to the Orpington branch with the Game twitter page stating ‘We know people are frustrated, that’s the last thing we want- trying to get things sorted ASAP.
In addition to this many of the shoppers were left with less than what they hoped with stock selling out fast. Even the Game website operated by a legion of technicians, supported by an assembly of packagers and porters couldn’t withstand the onslaught of fierce demand from their customers. Even 16 hours after the opening of the event the Game Homepage still reads ‘Due to the overwhelming response to our amazing Black Friday offers, we're experiencing a technical difficulty on our website but are working to get it back up and running as soon as possible’
However, one cannot deny the fact that after receiving their purchases many of the gamers were very much satisfied with the product. Perhaps by slashing their profits with these tremendous deals The Game store did bring a little happiness to some peoples Christmas.
George Wickenden, Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School
