Hundred-Square-Foot Entertainment

Jack reaches into his front left jean pocket, retrieving three smooth, crisp, green twenty-dollar bills from the rough, cotton-lined depths. Already he can hear the staccato rapport from his M4A1 carbine, spraying thirty bright, glowing tracer rounds straight into his target. He can already see himself crowing his victory as completes the final mission, defeating the ultimate villain with a stab from his tactical knife straight into the heart, a fountain of blood spraying from the chest. All of this is waiting for him ten feet and sixty dollars from where he stands.

When a person steps into a video game store, the first thing he or she notices is the color black, even though the store typically will have white walls and good lighting. The color black evokes a sense of being on the cutting edge of technology, with the entire space feeling like a piece of military-grade hardware. The feeling is further emphasized by the smell of the room—a unique cross between the sterility of a hospital and the faint scent of ink and paper of a printing office. The only usual sound is from the demo games that are available for sampling if a person is curious about some of the latest games on the market, or just bored. However, volumes can be spoken of the store’s layout and its size.

The typical video game store is divided into four parts. Three of them are devoted to the giant gaming companies, while the fourth section is the check-out desk. The three current giants in the gaming industry are Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, all of which have their own unique aesthetic styles. Nintendo, based in Japan and the oldest and most experienced of the three, shows a more family-friendly trend, with cartoon-like characters and bright colors. Its current signature color is a clean white, homage to the Japanese values of cleanliness, and is clearly designed to appeal to younger audiences and parents. Consequently, Nintendo’s section is near the door and off to the side of the shop, out of the customer’s immediate view. Sony, also Japanese, and the second oldest, boasts the most powerful and capable gaming console, and its visuals reflect that, with its console and signature colors being polished, gleaming black contrasted by shining silver streaks. While Sony offers more games suited for older audiences, it does not completely forego a child-friendly cartoon style in a good portion of its titles. These games can be found along the back wall, within the customer’s immediate view from the door but partially obstructed by gaming demos.

The final company, Microsoft, is the youngest in the gaming industry and is based in America. Unlike Sony or Nintendo, Microsoft does not have any sort of classic characters and its American roots segregate it from the unique, child-friendly art forms of the Japanese-based companies, so it appeals directly to the youth of America through its more violent, visually accurate games. Since it is so geared towards the age group that video games appeal to, Microsoft’s products are placed directly in the line of sight of the entrance, with no obstructions to block the customer’s view.

The average video game store is usually small, never exceeding more than a few hundred square feet; this is odd, because other comparable venues that are designed to sell similar items of entertainment, namely toy, video, or book stores, such as Toys R Us, Blockbuster, and Borders, span up to several thousand square feet. Inside those shops they carry a myriad of products so they can satisfy anyone that might step inside, with something to please both the young and the old. A video game store, on the other hand, is not only smaller in square-footage, but is also designed to appeal to a limited clientele, young males anywhere from the age of about eight to twenty, with a special interest to teenagers. The primary selling item in a video game store is a flat disk that varies only by its label and imperceptible software differences. However, in some ways, those few hundred square feet hold the entire contents of the other venues and open a world of possibilities.

Everything that can appeal to a young male is offered in a video game: violence, weapons, vehicles, alcohol, and women. These are displayed in a wide variety of settings ranging from dark ocean depths, nuked-out wastelands, monster-infested planets, to gang-run metropolises. All a young teenager has to do is spend anywhere from twenty to sixty dollars and he is able to enjoy several hours of whatever content he chooses. Comparably, the average DVD costs twenty dollars and offers only about ninety minutes of content with no interactivity. The game store patron can also be whatever he chooses: an ace fighter pilot, a rock star, a famous superhero, or world-renowned athlete. A video game store is by far the most interesting store in a teenager’s mind.

A video game store can offer almost infinite opportunities, but it also severely lacks in other respects. A video game can bring the sights, sounds, and decisions involved in the make-or-break scenarios that are so often displayed in a video game, but cannot bring the feeling, taste, or smell of it, key components humans so often forget. A common story with all war veterans in their memoirs is the smell of unwashed bodies mixed with the scent of blood and guts and burned flesh, and how unprepared they were for it. Video games cannot capture the consequences or other senses that make a situation real, nor can it artistically capture the inner eye a written novel can bring, yet today’s American youth embraces this new entertainment form, with some of the best selling video games on the market exceeding movie box office revenues. Teenagers like Jack are more than willing to spend sixty dollars for the opportunity to conquer the world or save it. These hundred-square-foot buildings seem to be the new centers of American popular culture and are pointing the way to the entertainment industry’s future.

`Benjamin