The management at Game failed to answer to a series of questions that every retailer has to respond to in the current climate.

When Woolies went under in 2008, there was much wailing and lamentation about how this could have been allowed to happen. Initially, there was a sense that something had been lost and that we were the poorer for it.

Gradually however, a subtext emerged which found expression in the simple question: ‘When was the last time you went into a branch of Woolworths?’ The fact that so few were able to answer this was precisely the reason that it met its demise and a few years on, history seems to be repeating itself.

Game went into administration last week, presumably because too few shoppers felt it worthwhile crossing the threshold of any of its stores. In this instance, parallels can also be drawn with Woolies. The reason that so few people actually shopped the chain because everything it offered was sold by other retailers and generally within better environments.

For Game, the villains of the trading peace were certainly other retailers, but this time round it was the virtual, rather than terrestrial, traders that pushed it over the edge. This is curious, as the central proposition at Game is a digital one. Shoppers visited Game’s stores to buy merchandise to be played on high-tech pieces of consumer electronics and yet its stores were firmly rooted in a non-digital world.

Visiting two Game stores in central Paris last week (within 400m of each other - over-expansion is also unhelpful) was akin to walking into a branch of Blockbusters back in the days when you picked up a DVD or, heaven forbid, a video, to while away a Saturday night. There were racks of electronic games, waiting to be scrutinised and standees of the kind that occasionally used to get pinched only to be reinstalled in a teenager’s bedroom.

The real point is, where were the kiosks? How come the multimedia card wasn’t being played more effectively? And why did the stores look quite so, well, old-fashioned? If you seek to combat the online threat, there has to be a reason for shoppers to enter your store otherwise they may feel tempted to sit at home laptop and credit card at the ready.

Game seems to have overlooked this and the results were sad, but predictable, albeit a white knight in the shape of Opcapita appeared over the horizon yesterday. The next time you walk past a bricks and mortar store without taking a look however, consider whether a supplementary Woolies question has been answered - ‘Have you given me a reason to come into your shop?’ Game failed to respond to this enquiry recently. Others are probably following a similar path.