You Can’t Game A Gamer

During the convention season, my small game company has a booth selling our products in the dealer’s room. We have a rather hot and heavy four days of sales activity with hyper-kinetic gamer geeks flush with cash and caffeine buying everything.

Customer: “We saw [Expensive Luxury Game] at [Other Store] and it was $50 cheaper.”

Me: “Great. You should buy it.”

Customer: “Don’t you want to beat their deal?”

Me: “I am literally the manufacturer of [Expensive Luxury Game]. [Other Store] bought their game either from me or from a distributor, who bought it from me. In either case, I already got paid for it once.”

Customer: *Looking victorious* “Then why should I buy it from you?”

Me: “No reason, really. Most of those games are bought from other sellers, not from my company directly. Maybe it’s cool to get it directly from the designer. I can sign it if you want.”

The customer walked off, kind of annoyed. Later, they came back and bought a copy from me without any discount.