Christmas Greetings

It's that time of year again, where frenzied buying and sales become the normal course of affairs in the run up to Christmas. Many people have started early, but in case you are yet to do your Christmas shopping, please bear this in mind: retail workers are people, too.

Everyone, from the person stocking and arranging displays to the till worker selling you your items and the barista serving you your drink after a long day; they are all worthy of your respect. They, like you, are working a job they don't necessarily like in order to pay the bills.

If you've had a long day of frantically buying gifts for everyone in your life, and you feel a bit weary and snappish, please remember that a single day for any of these positions typically lasts eight hours. Eight hours of not being allowed to sit down or rest. Eight hours dealing with the tired and stressed shoppers. Eight hours of the same repetitive phrases and motions. And then they have to do it all over again the following day. For about two months. Then they have to gear up for a month of post-Christmas cleanup and sales.

They are probably only just getting minimum wage, or a little over, to deal with all of this, too. You're likely ringing up more money with one transaction than they will get per day of dealing with this nightmare. They often can't guarantee which days (if any) they'll have free in the run up to Christmas. They might only have a couple of days off over the entire Christmas period. They may not be able to visit family however much they want to.

Trust me, no one hates Christmas more than people working in the retail sector. So before you complain about queues or some tiny imperfection that you wish to rant and rave about in the hopes of some small extra management may be able to give you for the inconvenience, consider just not doing it. It saves you time and effort, it saves people from literally lying to your face in order to placate you, and it just makes things generally more pleasant for workers, other shoppers and ultimately, yourself.

Next time you're out, try saying please and thank you, even when you feel really tired/stressed/hungry/whatever. The gratitude you will get for basic human decency might just be the pick me up you need.

Gaming and the Future: Are Physical Stores Dead?

As the E3 hype train leaves tantalising new games to preorder in it's wake, tempting gamers to think ahead about what new purchases they want to commit to, I cannot help but wonder what the future of the game industry will look like.

There are fewer and fewer places to buy physical games at, here in the UK. Game is still our major video game retailer, despite closing many stores over Easter 2012. Other places to buy physical copies of games here are relegated to second hand shops, HMV (who primarily sell music and films) and supermarkets. Other than those options, gamers can turn to online outlets to get their games. So, what's the problem?

I spent a lot of my childhood in physical game shops. I couldn't buy anything online without going through a parent's account. As a young gamer, my main source of news from the gaming industry was checking out physical games in a shop, reading the blurb and asking around for recommendations. Between this and print magazines, I found some of my favourite games of all time.

I worry that in a 'digital and online only' market, only large triple A game releases are going to get noticed by general gaming audiences. The studios that can afford to pay for advertising will be the only ones with games being bought.

But the issue isn't as simple as 'support physical stores'. Most video game retailers make their money on preowned games. The math is pretty simple - if a store buys a game back from a customer, they can pay what they like, and generally aim to get twice that back for the resale of the product. By offering more in-store credit than cash ensures that many customers will choose instore credit, so the store is making a profit on two fronts - the game they just bought back and the customer who will continue to buy from them with the credit they've just been given. Preowned games are vital for physical stores to stay in business.

But that brings forward an ethical concern - game developers make no revenue from preowned games. Especially for smaller studios, this is a big concern, as they might have a large number of people who have played the games, but see a disproportionate amount of revenue from it.

Some developers have started providing incentives for buying new over preowned, such as one time DLC codes to unlock content (and occasionally, and controversially, to unlock the entire game). Other incentives can include limited editions and merchandise to people who preorder the game.

I feel like pushing for preorders has a more sinister agenda to it, however. Preorders often get taken before a release date is even set, and people are pressured into preording based only off a trailer, with no real guarantee of the quality of the game. It guarantees a certain amount of revenue for a game without the pressure to actually make it good. It encourages people to buy games before any critique can be made public, so if a game were to pan badly, they have still made some money off the idea of the game, rather than the result.

Another issue with physical stores is that some console manufactures pay to have a certain amount of space in store represented by products for their consoles. It becomes a bidding war for space to be occupied by particular brands, regardless of the quality of the console or games. This can push out the few developers who either can't afford to or don't see the need to promote themselves like this. I hesitate to name names, but if you walk into a game store, work out the preportion of the shelves being taken up by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo respectively, and the placement of those shelves (ones easily accessible to the store entrance over the ones towards the back, for example). It should give a clear indication of what I'm talking about.

It is a complex issue, with no simple solution and many smaller problems within it. I haven't even touched on digital gaming as a whole, from Steam or any of the main console's online stores, and how we can now physically buy online codes and credit from highstreet retailers. Or how smaller developers are getting involved with crowdfunding and how that is both a positive and problematic move for gaming as a whole.

Online media can be a good way of spreading the word about obscure releases and information, and it's far easier to access now than when I was young. Blogs, YouTube channels, social media websites can all help people spread the word about the games they're passionate about. Do we even need physical stores to buy games in? I know I'd miss them. I miss being able to have conversations with likeminded people who are knowledgeable about gaming. I miss browsing through titles. I miss making a decision and getting to go home with the case in my hands, full of excitement over my new purchase. But I can't help but feel like high street stores for books, films and video games are soon going to be a thing of the past. And if that is the case, I really hope the future will have some better tools to help gamers make better choices to support the aspects of the industry they love.

A London Primer For The Curious

To be honest, I wrote this more for my fiancée than anything. I wanted to make a list of the things people should know about London but never really get written down anywhere. Of course, if this helps the curious, from people who want to move or visit here to a writer looking for more information, then I'm happy to help (and if you have any more questions, please let me know below!)

View of the City of London at Dusk - Amelia Springett (2011)

The Newspapers 'City AM', 'Metro', 'Evening Standard' and the magazines 'The Stylist', 'TimeOut', 'The ES' and 'ShortList' are all free and distributed outside most Tube stations. The magazines are a really good way of keeping up to date on new events and fun things to do in the city. Feel free to take these when offered, or help yourself to one from the pile that usually lurks outside if there isn't a person to hand them out.

Be wary about accepting anything else a person is handing out on the street. This can be anything from religious dogma to a begging tactic (people will hand you an item like a flower and then try and get you to pay for it).

Supermarkets are where most local people buy food. From cheapest to most expensive, generally speaking, these are:

• Aldi/Lidl
• Asda/Morrison
• Tesco
• Sainsburys
• Marks & Spencer
• Waitrose

Eating out is really easy – virtually anywhere where there are people, there are restaurants and cafés of various cultures. It's also really expensive – even 'cheap' fast food is comparatively more expensive than some other countries. In many restaurants, service is not included on the bill, and it's considered impolite to tip under 15%. In most cafés, change is greatly appreciated as a tip.

Travel can be really expensive in London. From most expensive to least, generally speaking, your options are:

• Owning your own car/vehicle
• Taxis
• Mainline trains
• The underground/Tube/Overground network
• Buses
• Cycling
• Walking

Public transport is generally quite reliable in London, with most Tube services running a train every 3 minutes and most bus routes operating a daytime service of 5-10 minutes, with some offering 24 hour service. The exception to this is travelling on weekends, where planned engineering works are reasonably common, though they limit disruptions as much as possible.

Always use an oyster card in London. They can be bought at all ticket windows and some machines, and it's a card you preload with money to pay for tube and bus travel. Given that buses have recently stopped taking cash, your options are oyster or contactless credit/debit card or paper tickets. Paper tickets are ridiculously expensive and totally unneeded - if you are doing a lot of travelling in a day, and oyster card will cap off at the equivalent day roamer price, and every journey after that is effectively free. (For example, a single paper ticket for zone 1 is £4.80. On an oyster card, it cost £2.30 - under half! And if you make journeys after spending £6.40 on journeys that day, your oyster card will not be charged any more money, and you travel for free until midnight that day.) In theory, a contactless credit/debit card should work in exactly the same way as an oyster, except you don't need to preload it. I haven't tried it out for myself, yet.

Generally speaking, within central London, if a place is only one or two stops on the tube, then it will be faster to walk than get public transport.

Buses can't be hailed from any point on the route and they can't stop at any point on the route except at designated bus stop, unless in exceptional circumstances. Luckily, bus stops are quite distinctive and very common, as below. They always have a list of the buses that will stop there, the rough direction they're travelling in and the name of the stop itself. There is occasionally, but not always, a shelter along with the stop, which often has a map of local bus routes and what nearby stop they can be found at, and a map of night buses. They've recently added codes that can be texted to find out when the next bus will be, if there isn't an electronic display built into the shelter.

Picture sourced from here

Buses are a little more confusing than the tube, and I'd always recommend asking the driver before you pay, if you are unsure about the route and the area.

There is also the option of taking a boat up/down river. Of course, both locations would have to be near the river, but theoretically you could commute from North Greenwich to Blackfriars or Westminster. For infrequent journeys, it's about 4 times more expensive than the tube, but if you were to make that journey every day for a month, it's very similarly priced to the zone 1-2 travelcard for a month. Of course, the tube services more stops and a wider area, so it's unlikely to be better value, but in exceptional circumstances, perhaps!

A smartphone is a great tool to have in London. Lost? You have maps. Want to know if there's a bus route going where you want? There are many free apps available, usually with a tube map in there, too. Want to know if there's a branch of your favourite store nearby? Search for it. That being said, if you are lost in central London, there are helpful little posts with maps and directions to local landmarks quite commonly dotted around.

Most people live outside of central London and commute in to work. Generally speaking, if you can afford to live in zone 1, you are making quite a bit of money. However, there are little pockets of local council houses dotted around central London which are cheaper to live in, but are difficult to get and are becoming rarer.

Generally speaking, west and north London are more affluent areas than east and south London. There are exceptions - Brixton was formally seen as quite a rough area, but lately it's been revitalised as an art/culture/food hub. Similarly, Old Street was run down and shabby, but it becoming quite trendy.

Camden Lock is a great place to visit if you like alternative culture, street markets, music...even just fancy a canalside walk. Places of note include Cyberdog - a cyberpunk clothing/accessories store with the atmosphere of a nightclub; and the Horse Market - named for all the metal horse statues and the fact it once was a stables, you can find vintage clothing, intricate leather work, unique hand made gifts...and a fair bit of tourist-y garbage, too, to be fair. I would recommend taking a canal boat from Little Venice into Camden on a nice day - it's a relaxing journey that takes you through London Zoo and gives you a chance to see an entirely different side of London.

Camden Lock - By Amelia Springett (2011)

Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus aren't actually circuses in the sense of clowns and animals and acrobatics... It comes from the latin word for circle, in this context being a round open space. It's a posh way of saying junction or crossroads, essentially.

So, hopefully this is a helpful short guide for you. If you have any questions, or tips of your own to add, please don't hesitate to comment below!