That was one of his primary strategies, to evaluate the company as personally and anonymously as possible.
He’d even shaved off his short beard, lest it be too easily remarked upon.
The problem was that he wasn’t just investing in any old company. Somehow, Tristan needed to come up with an exorbitant sum of money within two months.
Fine.
So he would.
He just needed to figure out how.
And so, just after lunch, Tristan was deep into his recon mission and bounded into his fourth GameShack store of the day, looking around the small storefront in a strip mall near Southwestern State University.
Bright desert sunshine shone through the clean glass of the front window, but the beams glinted off shirts and plastic toys related to a game that had been discontinued the previous year.
When he opened the glass door, a chime played the theme song from last year’s biggest videogame, and a woman’s voice yelled from the back, “I’ll be right there! Just go ahead and look around.”
As with the other GameShack retail outlets, a piano version of a popular song that he didn’t recognize was playing over the speakers to cover the silence. A seven-foot-tall cardboard cutout of a sword-wielding barbarian at the end of a row of shelves loomed oddly close to the sprinklers on the industrial ceiling, and other two-dimensional game characters guarded the ends of the other rows.
No customers were browsing or being helped in the store.
Tristan strolled through, noting the merchandise for sale. He ran his finger over the top of one glossy black box. The pad of his finger came away clean, but a residue of grit on the box suggested that someone had dusted it recently.
Footsteps pattered from the back of the store. The woman’s voice called out, “Are you still here? I just had to move some boxes around. I can help you now.”
A curvy little brunette bopped around the end of the aisle. Her hair was twisted up in a messy bun that dripped tendrils around her oval face and bright brown eyes.
Her name tag on her blue uniform shirt read Colleen.
She stared up at him, way, way up, because she was a petite little thing. “Oh, well, hi! I don’t see how I could have missed you. Is there something in particular you were looking for?”
All sorts of smartass comebacks wove around Tristan’s head—I’ve been looking for you—but this wasn’t a meet-cute in a Hallmark movie. He was on an intelligence-gathering mission to save his company and future. So instead, he dredged up his blandest middle-American Iowan accent from his childhood and told her, “I’m setting up a new gaming rig and was interested in what you had in stock.”
She grinned. “We have lots of consoles in the store right now. It just kind of depends on what you’re looking for. Do you have a budget? Or are you looking for some sort of a vibe or feel for your setup?”
He bent at his waist, a quarter of a courtly bow. “What do you suggest?”
The girl, Colleen, laughed. “You don’t want me to design your gaming system. I have very expensive taste that even I can’t keep up with. So what do you have now? Are you looking to upgrade a little or a lot?”
Tristan smiled down at the girl, who blinked like most girls did when he turned on his big Midwestern smile. “The other GameShack stores I’ve been to this morning were staffed with pimply adolescent males slouching behind the cash register and ignoring me. You’re a breath of fresh air.”
She grinned up at him. “I can’t speak for the other GameShacks, but the employees here like to have fun when the manager isn’t around.”
Her manager wasn’t around?
Brilliant.
And now for the interrogation. “Yeah? How’s business?”
“Well, stores like this are kind of dinosaurs. A decade or more ago, brick-and-mortar stores sold videogames burned on CDs and packaged in boxes, and maybe ten percent of the store was given over to the expensive hardware to play them on. Now most video games are downloaded or streamed directly from internet servers, so stores like GameShack have tried to adapt by selling game consoles, gaudy accessories, and collectible memorabilia. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out very well.”
Tristan nodded. He hoped he nodded sagely, but he had definitely bobbed his head. The curls of his dark hair flopped over his temples. “I noticed that some of your equipment is last year’s model.”
Colleen grimaced a little, wrinkles appearing around her pert little nose. “Yeah, a lot of the consoles that we have for sale are last year’s model or before. We don’t get many people in here, so we don’t have a lot of stock turnover. The problem is that we’re selling outdated high-end equipment. People who game a lot won’t buy it because it’s outdated. People who don’t game very much don’t come into stores like this. They go shop at the big box stores, not specialty outlets.”
Yes, as he’d thought. “Is GameShack a good company to work for?”
She glanced toward the back of the store and then leaned toward him a little conspiratorially. “If you’re looking for a job, look elsewhere. GameShack stores are a money pit. I don’t know why the corporation keeps throwing money into them. The only part of the GameShack business that makes any revenue is the streaming side. You know, streaming, where gamers stream video of themselves playing video games, and other people watch them play? I keep an eye on this company's financials because I like to know what’s going on with the people who pay me, and I can’t figure out how on Earth they haven’t gone bankrupt yet. Even the streaming side of the business only takes CurieCoin, which is just obscure enough to make it a hassle to buy. I don’t know why the whole thing hasn’t collapsed yet.”
