After our production deadline at The Reflector Thursday night, I decided to head up to our local Supercenter to see what the wait for Sony’s Playstation 3, released that midnight, looked like.
The spectacle was short-lived, as six of about 10 people received vouchers for their coveted systems soon after I arrived. Those people had spent the night in the electronics department, braving the fluorescent lighting and country music videos emitting from the TV sets and surviving on Doritos and Mountain Dew. Others who waited since earlier that day went home empty-handed, with at least 12 hours of their lives they could never get back, but on the bright side, at least they didn’t suffer any gunshot wounds like an unlucky PS3 camper in Colorado did.
The six voucher recipients were some dedicated gamers, all right. Except they weren’t. They said they were going home that night to put up bids on the hard-to-find system, which are still selling for thousands of dollars on the online auction block right now.
Two days later, however, it was a different story, and this time I was one of those dedicated campers. But I wasn’t there for a PS3; I was in line for the best invention since language: the Nintendo Wii.
I got up at the crack of dawn Saturday, noon, and headed for the Supercenter. I called my girlfriend to help me hold down the fort if she was so willing.
Thankfully, she was. We were third in line, held outside in the garden center (which felt more like a nicely feng shui-ed prison yard). At the front of the line was the world’s No. 1 boyfriend, who was there hours before us to get his girlfriend a system, and behind him a laid-back computer science major who was internally as giddy as me.
A few hours went by, the weather got colder and the line grew much longer, but at the same time several friends were made. Six hours flew by like nothing. It didn’t feel like a wait, but more so a social experiment, and a successful one at that. But we still had six more hours to go.
Only 20 of us were getting Wii’s that night, but about 40 people including those waiting and their friends came together. A few extra people tried to get in on the Nintendo goodness well after 20 consumers arrived, but like a pack of lions protecting their young, we were on the defensive.
Five more hours went by quickly, but the last one slowed to a crawl. Being oh-so-close was bittersweet. We all wanted our Wii’s, but did we want to leave?
We were all there as gamers, sharing a somewhat healthy addiction and set of interests. We weren’t there to make a quick buck, but we sure made a profit from waiting.
We all took home that night not only a system (and “Zelda”), but several new friends and even a couple of really good ones. Now that’s something you can’t sell on eBay.