Wal-Mart Rules : Wal-Mart Rules

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But don't interpret that to mean Wal-Mart will just fade away. The company owes its current supremacy to its embrace of high tech logistics, and that attitude remains strong; Wal-Mart, along with the Defense Department, is the chief force behind the imminent adoption of radio-frequency ID tags (RFIDs or "arphids"). So it's possible Wal-Mart itself might move into online games.

But in the digital distribution era, Bentonville's unquestioned domination of electronic games will still decline. It's simply too easy to get online without their approval; online is the realm of the infinite shelf. "New opportunities will open up at the micro-studio level," Bartel says, "where small teams, both casual and professional, first-party and third- party, will be able to develop, market and sell compelling gameplay and new intellectual properties within the frameworks created and supported by the larger players."

Then, like the great trusts and monopolies of the early 20th Century, Wal-Mart's dominion will finally fade.

Allen Varney designed the PARANOIA paper-and-dice roleplaying game (2004 edition) and has contributed to computer games from Sony Online, Origin, Interplay and Looking Glass.

The Controllers from Bentonville
Wal-Mart is the leading retailer in almost all categories of consumer goods, including electronic games. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has over 3,500 stores in America alone, including hundreds of Supercenters and Sam's Club warehouse stores. Serving a third of the U.S. population every week, the company accounts for 8% of all U.S. retail sales, excluding cars, and represents over 2% of the nation's economy. Annual revenue is close to $288 billion, which in Gross Domestic Product terms would make Wal-Mart the world's 23rd-richest country, just behind Austria. Wal-Mart employs 1.8 million people, more than the U.S. Army.

Readers outside North America know Wal-Mart is the world's largest company, but they may not appreciate the strong, almost neurotic mixture of feelings it inspires in many American observers. Business magazines simultaneously celebrate the company's relentless efficiency, clean dealings and willingness to pass on savings to customers, while gasping at its colossal reach, devastation of local competitors, offshoring of entire industries, and damaging effects on product quality and diversity. Social activists decry Wal-Mart's fanatical union-busting, poverty-level wages (some of its full-time "associates" earn so little, they need food stamps to survive), miserly benefits and ghoulish willingness to take out "dead peasant" life-insurance policies on its own employees without their knowledge. Wal-Mart defends against about 5,000 lawsuits a year.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), outspoken videogame critic, served on Wal-Mart's Board of Directors between 1986 and 1992.

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Best of The Escapist
Wal-Mart Rules

Did you know?

Best of The EscapistWal-Mart Rules

Best of The Escapist
Wal-Mart Rules