This has nothing to do with property but it's the funniest story I have listened to for a while.
If you're aware of anything in the gaming world, you'll know about the next big game is Call of Duty Black Ops. The previous release MW2 was a real success and they acquired alot more fans on the back of it . Therefore this latest one in the series has been MUCH anticipated.
My husband is a big fan and so he arranged to go to a midnight release with his brother and brother-in-law. By the way, in the run up to this, he has spent numerous hours on the internet trawling forums, posts, etc so that he can plan the best way to get his hands on a copy because it has been preducted it will sell out very quickly. I'm not really into all of this but it seems alot of others are - there were midnight launches in many of the bigger branches of supermarkets and game stores. People were actually queuing up nationwide (actually internationally, my husband found a world map locator) for this game?
So this is what happened.
Following numerous calls and texts, my husband and his fellow CODders, decided to head to a location with the most supermarkets in close proximity that were doing the midnight launch. Sainsbury's was their first stop. They thought this would be a good place to start as the Sainsbury's offer required £30 worth of groceries to qualify buying the game - they thought this would put off a lot of young men as you couldn't buy alcohol, car fuel, baby product and electricals. Some people on forums commented that they'll be buying enough baked beans for the next 20 years. Other proposed starting points were Tesco Wembley (not easy to get to), Blockbuster North Finchley (not the most obvious place to buy a game) and Asda (but would be very popular and may have long queues).
So, the three amigos drove up to their chosen Sainsbury's at around 10pm last night. When they got there, there wasn't a queue, so they decided to check out Asda down the road. Then when they go there, there was already a reasonable sized queue. Fearing that they had left a favourable situation at Sainsbury's, my husband's brother-in-law exclaimed "NOooooo, we must get back to Sainsbury's" and they made a mad dash back flying over speed humps in my husband's sisters newish Merc. Guess who wants the game more out of the three.
So they got back to Sainsbury's and it was a 2 hour wait in the cold. My husband said it was actually quite enjoyable, his brother-in-law agreed - note, both men have young children under the age of 2 and don't get out much, so this is all relative. Well, he thought it was enjoyable until at around 11pm when someone from Sainsbury's popped out an announced that all these male gamers should get into single file. So they all shuffled in line, but as it was cold, people were jiggling up and down on the spot, and as it was lots of eager men there was a lot of close body contact. Hmmmm, a long line of young men jiggling up and down behind one another - I think that's when the fun stopped for my husband.
There was also an announcement that anyone who looked younger than 25 would not be sold a game. My husband overheard some adolescents in the queue panicking, fearing they would lose their place in the queue if they left to go get some ID - they decided to ring up their parents to come drop off their passports. Comments like "are you buying a game or going on holiday?" were heard. Remember, this is nearing midnight at a local supermarket.
Another announcement was that there was only 50 of the PS3 version and 75 of the Xbox 360 version. Apparently there were about 100 people waiting to buy the PS3 one and 7 for the Xbox. My husband managed to get his hands on a game (PS3) and left promptly, fearing attack from some game-hungry young males. He was home by quarter-past-midnight. I always thought it took 20 minutes to drive to that local Sainsbury's, but now I know it doesn't when you want to get home to play a game.
Some might say it's just a game but many out there would disagree.
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