It’s fairly easy to write the sentence, “We don’t expose any minors to rated M games.” And you can put it in all sorts of promotional materials, employee education stuff, and what have you. Everyone can piously say they’ve got it all figured out.

But applying those rules in real life gets awfully tricky sometimes. Hard and fast rules often run into situations beyond their original scope. We’ve got a situation coming up soon here going to put that one to the test — the Halo 3 launch. I pity the manager of my local games store. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On one hand, this launch has some amazing benefits.

• The store has been chosen to be a “launch event” store. Due in part to the fact that the Master Chief could throw a frag grenade from the front of the store and break a window at Bungie if he calculated the windage correctly. That means this isn’t just the local street team driving sales here. He’s got the best in the business driving customers his way and they have an unbelievably attractive carrot on the end of that stick.
• He’s got a lot of money in pre-ordered sales lined up. I’m not allowed to officially know exactly how many he’s got, but a little birdie made it clear it was in the three digits and not the lowest set, either. Between the $130 price-tag on the Super Special Whatever version of the game and all the associated theme hardware for the wonks to go nuts on this translates into far more than the usual $60 a head from a big game launch. To paraphrase that famous scene in “Pretty Woman”, we’re talking an offensive amount of cold hard cash here. I mean REALLY offensive. That’s nice to have during a fiscal year with no big hardware launches.

On the other hand, these factors together give him a huge set of problems.

• The game is rated M. This brings in a whole set of rules from the parent company about what they can and can’t do to promote it. One of the biggest is the policy that they can’t put M-rated games in their demo units in the store due to the possibility of it being exposed to minors. That’s on the schedule, though, thanks to some clueless marketroids up at the district office conspiring with the Microsoft marketroids.
• That proximity is also a downside. He’s got higher-ups from both the development team and the marketing teams driving him nuts. Not to mention his own district office and PR people from the parent company.
• Then add the nightmares that come from having a bunch of minors and slackers making a huge line around your store salivating over a hardcore M-rated FPS. The composition of this crowd is a recipe for a huge headache. Take a bunch of the most obnoxious underage dribbling junkmonkey XboxLive denizens and stir well with a bunch of their college-age brethren. Mix in a several liberal dollops of 30-something grownups who are wibbling in place just as hard but hopefully with a reasonable amount of decorum. Lightly dust with some of the more conscientious parents. Start lining them up at 10am and let bake until after midnight on a school/work night with a Starbucks three doors down. Yum.
• It’s not just the public relations. It’s business relations with the other stores in the shopping center and their property manager. And considering the sqawking that went on about what they went through with the Wii launch, they’re not going to be happy campers. He already knows the line can’t go outside onto the sidewalk no matter how long it gets; it has to snake through the associated video store next door.
• Add in all the local news media already coming in to record the events for posterity, again thanks to Microsoft Marketing and their Unstoppable Hype Machine. They’ll try to do well, I’m sure. This isn’t that Carl Monday guy. But this is the same bunch who showed their gold-star work on the recent coverage of PAX which didn’t even use the name of the show. But guess who is going to get blamed if that coverage isn’t flattering enough?
• I almost forgot to mention labor. He has three employees to run this with. That’s three guys to manage the whole line all day, the sales starting at midnight, and who have to open the store the next morning and run it all through their normal operating hours.

So what does he do? The real life rubber has hit the road here. No matter what he does there are going to be skidmarks.

He’s already got to card the sales of the game, but should he card people coming in the door to keep out the minors so he can demo? what about a parent who brought their kids? Get corporate to get a clue and give him an exception since it’s after regular business hours? Just do it anyways and hope like heck someone’s clueless parents or a “concerned citizen” don’t raise a stink?

What happens when he runs into the occupancy limit of his store and the video store like he did with the Wii launch? Just hope like heck the Fire Marshall returned his videos Sunday night? Or maybe hope the property manager took a trip to Bermuda?

As far as the line, hope like heck he gets some support from the marketing people who are going to be there handing out swag? Maybe he can get them to hand out even more swag? Maybe he can get Starbucks to offer some sort of deal on decaf. And some sort of bonus for the employees, that’s for sure.

I imagine things will be all right. Gamers as a breed are used to this sort of thing, and 99% of them really aren’t trying to be jerks. It’s just going to be a lot of caffienated yahoos jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas Eve in a small space for a really long time while other people are trying to run their businesses.

But you couldn’t pay me to try to run it. I think I’ll bring him and the employees a batch of cookies that night.

Tags: Misc