Hated Questions

Ah, retail. Everyone has horror stories, or glory stories, or something. I have my hated questions. Questions that I hate to hear. They aren't bad questions - in fact, they are good questions, but they're asked by the wrong people, or at the wrong time.

Let's tackle the first one. Person walks into the store, looks around a bit, perhaps a bit of initial banter betwixt me and they confirming that yes, indeed this is a game store and we sell games. Perhaps a bit of clarification about the lack of video games. Then it comes.

"What's the hot game?"

ah. If only there was a proper answer to this¹. An honest answer that I could feel good about. But let's run through the real problems with this question. You refers to the person mentioned above. Not you, the Gone Gaming Reader.

1. There are about 4-8 major categories of games in this shop². Different people shop for different games. Do you want the Hot Roleplaying game? Probably not. So which type of game do you care about?

2. The "Hot" game isn't necessarily the game you (the asker) want to be shown. Case in point - Spring of 2006. Caylus hit US shores in December of 2005. Supply was short and wouldn't even out until May of 2006. It was in demand. No one could deny that Caylus was the "Hot" Strategy game. And I would never mention it to anyone who didn't already understand the words "Settlers" "Ticket to Ride" and "Puerto Rico". So you probably don't want to know the hawt newness.

3. Really, you are probably asking what the newest FAD is. You've heard about Pokemon and Yugioh. You remember Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Perhaps you want to be ahead of the curve with "What the Kids are playing these days". Unfortunately, most of the time, the newest fad isn't a game. Games made great fads when manufactured party games broke into the mainstream, but that was twenty years ago. Sadly. And the days of fad CCGs are over³. Thankfully.

So really, there's no answer that is satisfactory. I can make a couple snap judgments and talk about Pokemon making a comeback, or talk up Ticket or Carc or Settlers, or mention that Dungeons and Dragons is still around. Toss around the big names. But ultimately, there's no really good answer. Maybe you leave impressed with the variety and ingenuity of games these days. Often you leave wondering why there isn't a new Trivial Pursuit⁴. So I'm left to rant.

Another question.
This one is situational, and mostly down to my own preferences, because it is:

"What's your favorite game?"

Oh how I cringe. First, see item one above. I'm blessed and cursed to have played and enjoyed multiple games in many genres. Can I really compare a role-playing game to a board game to toy soliders?

Second, I'm not usually asked this by a seasoned gamer. It's usually someone to whom I'm currently explaining Ticket to Ride or Warhammer or Settlers. Segueing from Ticket into an 18xx game isn't really the best idea. Not only will I probably lose all chance of 'making a sale', but I'll probably also lose any chance of 'making a gamer'. All from a perfectly reasonable question⁵

Finally, I personally fail royally at naming a 'favorite game'. I'm constantly amazed that 'geeks can make Top 10 lists without major qualifications. Oddly enough, this is related to my inability to rate games. This year I took myself to task and have managed to start rating games under the special aaron scale - Great, Good, Okay, and Horrible. Even that is hard for me. My list of great games is long. My list of Horrible games is short. So even when qualified properly - i.e. "What's your favorite Ticket to Ride game?" I wind up dithering between Marklin and America+1910. Sigh. I'm such a failure.

Of course these questions follow me outside the store as well. I'll be at a party and when the inevitable query about jobs cycles to me⁶, these are the two most common follow-up questions. Even harder to answer when you are sitting outside and trying to not think about selling games. Probably just as hard to answer if I didn't sell games! To continue beating my analogy to death, it's much faster to explain my 'favorite' game Ticket to Ride than my 'favorite' game 1830. At least there's no chance of 1830 being the 'hot' game.

Ah. Ranting.


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¹Don't get the wrong idea about this - I've got nice pat answers to these questions, developed through extensive testing (uh, yeah). Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So in some respect, I've found the proper answer. But I still like to rant about it.

²Depending how much you want to break "board games" down. I usually break it into Kids, Strategy, Party, and Classic, which sort of covers the different type of people that might be looking for a game. (Miniatures, RPG, Collectibles, and Puzzles are the others).

³Except for some foolish insanity about the World of Warcraft CCG last fall. But thankfully it went away quickly. Very quickly. Barely even counted as a fad.

⁴A side note. This year has been the year of suck for trivial pursuit. Hasbro usually issues a new edition every 2-3 years. We've been stuck with 6 for a couple years (plus all the mostly-bad decade editions). This year, Hasbro not only did not release a new basic set, they discontinued shipping on Edition 6 and have announced the release of "The Best of Trivial Pursuit". Wow. What a lame edition. "We couldn't come up with any new Trivia, so we're recycling old questions"! And the retailer is left with no Trivial Pursuit to sell for most of 2007.

⁵At this point I usually rephrase the question into "oh, between Settlers and Ticket I like Ticket better!"

⁶And it's clear that these same questions would pop up if asked what my hobby was, or some other way. But it's far more frequent to be asked what your job is than what you do in your spare time.