Who's Listening?

by Dan Highwind

It's a bright Saturday afternoon. You decide to go out to your local department store to reserve an upcoming RPG that you know will be hard to find. You say to the clerk, "Are you accepting reservations for 'Such and such' for the 'System of your choice'?" The clerk then politely, but ignorantly answers, "Ummm...No, we don't have any." You stare blankly for one moment and then say thank you and walk away wondering, "What in the world? I didn't even ask if they had anything, I just wanted to reserve a game." This is a horrible scenario that's been happening to my friends and I, and it seems to be an increasing problem, affecting not only RPGers, but then entire gaming community as well. These clerks that stores like Wal-Mart and Sears have working for them are rather clueless. I remember last year when I reserved my copy of Final Fantasy VIII, that the clerk took nearly 20 minutes to figure out what I was asking him for. It's frustrating to go to a store and have the clerk look at you in a way that says, "Are you serious?!" It also pains me to think that not only is this happening to RPGers, but also to Tony Hawk fans, Mario fans, and even the sports fans. These clerks seem as if the information you ask of them goes in one ear, and out the other! Another area in which the people seem very ill informed is the news reporter group. As you can recall, there was a small system launched no more than a week ago called PlayStation 2. Well, the reporters had a field day with this story, simply because PS2 is this year's big holiday gift. When I watched these reports I ended up practically screaming at my TV because the information these reporters were spewing out was all wrong! News reporters always seem to be the most ignorant when it comes to games though, so it didn't surprise me. To reiterate what I've said, I'll say this: most everyone watches the news, the news only gets information from formal sources, not from gamers. If the news continues to be ignorant, then the stores will also continue along the same path. The people who own these stores watch the news, and the people they hire know absolutely squat about games around 75% of the time. My theory is that these employees will get their store information from their employer, who gets his business information from the ill informed news programs, and the cycle will continue. What I'm trying to say is if the media doesn't listen to us, and the businesses certainly don't, then who is listening to us? Think about that, we are like flies to these people. I hope you take my thoughts to heart, or at least to mind, and think of ways us RPGers, no us gamers can be heard!