Mainstream companies fail at gamer marketing

Where’s my “I brake for Chocobos” bumper sticker? I think that’s what a lot of gamers are asking themselves these days. I don’t mean that item in particular, rather, “where are all the gamer related products?”

I’ve been noticing in the last month that mainstream companies seem to be lacking in the marketing and designing of products towards adult and child gamers. You would think with video games being the number one form of media today that more brand-name companies would start producing more gamer-related products for sale.

Hit the jump to listen to my rant.

Go to any mall in Canada today and you’ll be lucky to find a Pokemon toy in a store like Zellers, let alone any gamer-related product created for adults. Mainstream stores like Wal-Mart, Zellers, The Bay, and Sears do carry video games, systems, accessories, and strategy guides, but don’t expect to find a Halo t-shirt in the men’s section or a Final Fantasy key chain. I would expect that US gamers find the same problem with their mainstream stores, but since I don’t shop there, I’ll just have to assume for the sake of argument.

Back in the late 80s when Nintendo became huge in North America, I remember you could find hundreds of products in stores from Super Mario Bros. backpacks to pajamas, and now there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of anything gamer-related in stores. You go to Japan and you’ll find hundreds of items in stores like Dragon Quest bath mats and Final Fantasy Potion drinks and yet Canada and the United States has very little to choose from in the way of gaming products.

Japan’s mainstream market has adopted the gamer culture so much that you can video game endorsed products everywhere. Shops carry every item imaginable like Final Fantasy sunglasses, Resident Evil cosplay items, The Legend of Zelda belt buckles and Castlevania Soundtracks on CD. Whole districts in Japan are dedicated some much to electronics that you can find hundreds of arcades, cyber cafes and stores selling everything gamer and techno related. Yet I can’t find one gamer product for adults in my local Wal-mart. How is that fair? 

Of course, if you really want a t-shirt that says “I pwn boys,” you can find one online — but how does that help a 12-year-old with an allowance and no credit card, or a person who doesn’t want to pay for shipping and duties? Also, some items are just not available online. For example, I wanted a video game cake for my birthday, so I decided to check out the local grocery store and Dairy Queen designs for something and low and behold… nothing. Not a single Pokemon, Mario or Halo design to be found. There are hundreds of kids playing video games around the world and Dairy Queen can’t produce one Mario Bros. design for their cakes?  That’s ridiculous.

Even places like Canadian EB Games which sell all things video game, don’t carry anything besides games, system and accessories.  I think once I saw several Halo figures but that’s was when the first game came out over 5 years ago. Where are the t-shirts, the plushies, and the figurines? Why wouldn’t a gaming store carry other gamer-related products? Game Stop in the United States does, so why haven’t they changed the stores in Canada to carry them too?

If you go to a music store like HMV or Sunrise Records in Canada, you’ll find hundreds of CDs, along with band t-shirts, posters, figures, patches, CD cases, concert DVDs, etc. So why doesn’t a place like EB Games haven’t gamer-related products too?  Where are the Halo t-shirts and Mario plushies? Sunrise Records stores even carries NECA’s Player Select line of video game figurines and they don’t even carry video games.

The best chance of finding anything gaming related offline is to check out local comic book stores. In most cases, you’ll find some Halo or Hellgate: London comic books or some Resident Evil action figures, but still that isn’t much. If you’re really lucky, you’ll have a specialty store or Korean family run convienince store near by that will import gamer products from Asia at low, low prices. Even local bookstores like Chapters are carrying fewer and fewer strategy guides in their stores, but seem to stock a lot of Dungeon and Dragons table top RPG guides.

As a gamer who loves to shout to the world that I play, I find it sad that the mainstream product market in North America can’t seem to realize that they are missing out on a huge demographic, and that they can make lines of original gamer products without ever having to sign a licensing rights deal with any gaming companies.  Many online stores like ThinkGeek.com have their own t-shirt lines of gamer related slogans that don’t require licensing rights and they sell quite well.

Stores could also look into importing products from overseas. They do spend a lot of money shipping items over from their own sweat shops, so its not like it would cost more since the gamer items would probably be coming from another sweat shop right next door. Basically, stores need to look at what is selling really well over in the Asian markets and starting importing those items over here because the gamer market is pump and ready for someone to dig in.

The mainstream market needs to wake up and realize that the gaming industry now holds of the attention of men and women ages 3 to 80 and that those gamers ages 20 to 40 probably will buy up gamer-related products for themselves and their children.  That’s a lot of money that could be spent in your stores instead of being spent on products from eBay and other online stores that market to gamers. So get to work Old Navy and EB Games, I want my “I brake for Chocobos” bumper sticker and “Gamers do it online” t-shirt.