Death of Game Stores

[kalamire]

That sucks. I live in SE Virginia and the store I would go to still has two locations open.(closed a 3rd a year or two ago because rent was too high but there were plans at some point to maybe open another but I dont know much else)

What city do you live in?

[Tarius]

That sucks. I live in SE Virginia and the store I would go to still has two locations open.(closed a 3rd a year or two ago because rent was too high but there were plans at some point to maybe open another but I dont know much else)

What city do you live in?

I live over near norfolk.(unless people know the area, all people know is either norfolk or virginia beach)

[kalamire]

That sucks. I live in SE Virginia and the store I would go to still has two locations open.(closed a 3rd a year or two ago because rent was too high but there were plans at some point to maybe open another but I dont know much else)

What city do you live in?

I live over near norfolk.(unless people know the area, all people know is either norfolk or virginia beach)

I use to travel to the Norfolk, Yorktown, Newport news, beach weekly, I use to go to a gaming store over there. I think it was called Atlantis? It was over by the beach.

[Tarius]

I use to travel to the Norfolk, Yorktown, Newport news, beach weekly, I use to go to a gaming store over there. I think it was called Atlantis? It was over by the beach.

Indeed, that is the one I am talking about.

[melquisedeq]

Argh! You guys are so spoiled, across the ocean.

Here in Portugal war and roleplay gaming is, and has always been, such a niche activity that to simply grasp the concept of FLGS, to have experienced it at some point, automatically makes you an elite in the gaming community. The vast majority of current gamers have never had the opportunity to gather at a place designed for the specific purpose of gaming, and be able to spontaneously meet other gamers and just play with little planning. There simply aren't enough stores for the few but devout players that exist, and those same players are too few to actually support any store and make it worthwhile to the person exploring it.

The very, very, VERY few stores that exist (probably not even 10 in the whole country) are pretty much MTG-driven, and so must prioritise accordingly.
There are one or two "actual FLGS" at any given moment, but they have a very specific life-cycle:
- Unfulfilled geek dreams of having a clubhouse to roll his dice in, freely - he despises mostly everyone who doesn't share his taste in hobbies;
- Said geek becomes an adult, opens a gaming store, makes concessions for Yu-Gi-Oh and MtG to make it profitable;
- Needless to say, he loathes those Yu-Gi-Oh and MtG idiots, "arses" their custom out of the store with his snobish attitude;
- The guys that do hang out are his mates, his "soulmates" in whatever oddly specific combo of hobbies he allows himself to enjoy and no other;
- Said mates NEVER buy anything (except cokes from the drinking machine), they prefer to order online at 30% off, and also potentiate the general snobism;
- 1+1= non-profitable business starts racking up debt, closes in shame, scares anyone considering a similar investment in the near-future;
- Young geek grows unfulfilled with just the internet, starts dreaming up an oddly specific clubhouse. Turns around to the camera right before the credits roll, his eyes are red and his face is twisted in a wicked grimace...

I mean, the ironically not-so-friendly local gaming store is a fact in my experience (and one so common that it became a transnational trope, even beyond the borders of geekdom).
I remember in my first trips to the only gaming store in Lisboa in the 90's there was always a good chance of me just being ignored, sneered at or impatiently told off for some minor ignorance or faux-pas. I was 12 or 13, and willing enough to try the hobby out that I'd spend an hour getting there and another going back home, and those bellends couldn't at least pretend to be helpful? In the following 15 years the same exact thing happened in every store of the genre I've been in. And they all last 2-4 years, invariably.
Similar experiences in London, in both independent gaming stores and GW stores.
Sidenote - there was ONE cool store, here in Cascais where I live, called Última Sessão, but it unfortunatelly went down because, so the legend goes, the owner (super cool bloke - incredibly helpful and always eager to show new stuff without compromise) had an addiction to original Hollywood Sci-Fi memorabilia. Now THAT is a geek superstar!

At the end of the day I blame a good part on the idiosincrassies of the gamer (specifically crappy personality traits that have a higher predominance among dice rollers than the gen-pop - low tolerance to minor mistakes of others, oblivious denial of their own mistakes, lack of sense of humour / easy offense, grossly misrepresented self-worth, pervasive pettiness A.K.A. *edit* retention, the previously mentioned allergy to soap, etc) that are exponentially exacerbated by their relative rarity. Casual gamers go away because the game is full of dicks; hardcore gamers then become submerged in dickishness; the paradigm of acceptable dick attitude skyrockets. In the middle ages, we'd hunt them down with pitchforks and torches, but now we just strangle them out economically, toss them out of the market, to have another sucky FLGS show up again because all of us gamers would like to own our personal gaming club and "just game full-time, all the time", but only the more hardore of us ever will. And those are probaly also the dickier of us, too.

Of course, all the socio-economic factors that people have mentioned (cost of the hobby, wider offer of alternatives) are undoubtedly factors in this phenomenon, but seriously: it may have never been this expensive, but was this activity ever "cheap"? or truly "popular"?
The people shaking their fist at "kids nowadays with their videogames" kind of could have sounded to me like "these damned kids just stay indoors all day rolling dice and moving toy soldiers! why don't they go kick a ball at the park?" which in turn sounds like "vile young'uns and their ball-kicking ilk! could they not make themselves useful at the coal mines?"
This is an expensive hobby, of very limited appeal, and as such has a much higher susceptibility to loss of buying power or fad-like interest. Remember how much effort GW put into the LotR game right after the movies, a game that has been dying a very slow death ever since? But it's broad appeal has not faltered much, I don't think, that it justifies the complete abandonment of the physical store, so something else must be the matter as well.

Oh, and when I said you american guys are spoiled, I meant in your expectations of a brick and mortar store. A much more developed market with plenty of offer, I guess.
Here I can either buy online and pay shipping through the nose, or go to the store where I have to sacrifice a kidney in order to be aknowledged by the owner. The only store in a 500km radius. Oferring discounts on the dental hygiene of the owner.
I wish I had a store whose only problem was giving me a 10% discount as opposed to "the internet's" 20%

[kalamire]

I agree with you on some of your reasons, I have known 2 local stores that had a massive following but all the customers were “good friends” and never bought anything other than soda’s and hot pockets. So those stores ended up going under due to finances. I do like the idea of a brick and mortar store for several reasons. One I like to support my local community and helping a small business thrive and survive makes me feel like I contributed. Two, it is a great place to meet like minded people who share the same hobby as yourself. I think you had some bad experiences at several stores if they shunned you and wouldn’t help you get what you were looking for. I’ve been to several different game stores through-out several different states and I don’t think any of them have been rude or not helpful while I was visiting.

I think the real problem is “gaming” falls under a luxury class for society and luxury items are only purchased by about 10-13% of the population. That’s the same class as people who buy picture frames, and random artwork. You get the occasional gamer that has a really good job engineer, IT guy etc, but, for the most part gamers don’t have a lot of money. (In my experience only) So, paying full retail on GW minis or any other game tends to be really expensive. Which the game store has a pretty high overhead if he has rent, utilities, stock, etc. You need a dedicated group of spenders weekly in order to survive long-term or to even make a worth-while profit.

That’s where I think online stores are killing the FLGS dedicated gaming groups can order everything they want online at 25-35% off with free shipping, play in their buddies’ basement and order some pizzas. Now the group has saved hundreds of dollars a month playing their hobby, which sadly ends the local stores business. IMO

[melquisedeq]

No doubt!
I meant to say, not as economically as I should have, that despite the direction of socio-economic change allowing a real advantage to those who do not customarily use physical stores, there is still a very stubborn expectation of what a hardcore gamer should be that in fact hinders the gaming community in their pursuit of a compromise. Physical stores simply cannot offer the same range of prices that the lower-logistics online store can, but they can perhaps invest in a noob-friendly environment that promotes the hobby and the store itself to foster a "gamer community" spirit, which is an enormous advantage over strictly online stores - I mean, do you own any allegiance to MiniatureMarket despite their good service? There is something to be said of the faceless aspect of the online world and the way us humans empathise. Yet instead of betting on those strong-points, those unique aspects of face-to-face communication, seems to me that the same store-owning-hardcore-gamer-crowd actually indulges in the opposite of it, the misanthropic vibe that likely justified the tipping of the scale towards the internet commerce in the first place. The "we're Elite" mentality. This is in strong disagreement with even the very broad concept of "services" in which functions you "serve" others. This is quite broad a concept, no one debates that an overly arrogant waiter is just plain disgusting, or that cashiers with attitude are often enough to forfeit the purchase, but the "gamer" service-provider has a dickishness-shield because we somehow forgive him for having, I don't know, his mind full of many rules for all different systems? For being a powerful overlord of a pretend army? For quoting Pokemon card values by memory?

But yeah, maybe that has to do with my very own experiences and the fact that Portugal has to little to offer in the way of game stores that it would be natural that such a niche void would be "passed down" by similar-minded people. But the one store I really considered myself a customer of, that I "customarily made purchases in", was such an atypical and positive experience that 15 years later I am still bitter about my gaming store followups. And yet still a geek, still buying and collecting and playing stuff, because of that little seed planted at that store that time ago.

[Mistress of Minis]

Even when the economy was doing much better game shops came and went with great regularity. Just here in Arizona, between Tucson and the Phoenix metro area there have been dozens of stores start up and close down over the last 10 years. I was having this conversation at one of the newer and succesful shops (Empire Games) about why some stores succeeded and many failed. Of the many that failed- all of them had one thing in common- I was ignored when standing at a counter with stuff I wanted to buy. That equals poor buisness regardless of the niche.

Lets face it, most of these failed shops were started by gamers wanting to share thier love of gaming- not by buisness people with the acumen to make the right decisions to perpetuate a buisness in an unstable economy. A game shop can't just sell minis paint and glue. They have to really work at becoming a sort of gaming community center, provide more than just a shelf of minis to buy. They have to organize and get people interested in campaigns, frequent(and fairly ran) tournaments, hobby events, the whole package. If they can't do that, or won't, people buy stuff online and play in someones garage.

[kalamire]

Even when the economy was doing much better game shops came and went with great regularity. Just here in Arizona, between Tucson and the Phoenix metro area there have been dozens of stores start up and close down over the last 10 years. I was having this conversation at one of the newer and succesful shops (Empire Games) about why some stores succeeded and many failed. Of the many that failed- all of them had one thing in common- I was ignored when standing at a counter with stuff I wanted to buy. That equals poor buisness regardless of the niche.

Lets face it, most of these failed shops were started by gamers wanting to share thier love of gaming- not by buisness people with the acumen to make the right decisions to perpetuate a buisness in an unstable economy. A game shop can't just sell minis paint and glue. They have to really work at becoming a sort of gaming community center, provide more than just a shelf of minis to buy. They have to organize and get people interested in campaigns, frequent(and fairly ran) tournaments, hobby events, the whole package. If they can't do that, or won't, people buy stuff online and play in someones garage.

I think my experience is slightly different. I knew a store that was opened and ran by a business man, the problems he had were he didn’t know enough about the different games to keep the necessities in stock. So people always complained about never having what they wanted in the store so they just decided to start doing group orders for online purchase. On the other hand a good friend of mine opened up a store who was a gamer and avid hobbyist himself. He ran into the problem of most the dedicated customer base used the store as their own personal club house and after awhile didn’t need to buy anything new to support their hobby, so they ended up just buying coke’s and hot pockets. When the store owner did finally make some changes to make a profit like charge a small fee to use the gaming tables or membership passes. The customer base flipped out and stopped going which resulted in him shutting down shop.

My opinion is you need a store opened up by a business man who fronts all the money and you need a gamer to actually run the inventory and events. This is kind of hard to do though since most gaming stores can’t afford to pay 2 full time salaries. What I see happening is more game stores trying to be competitive online while running a store front. I think this is the best option for stores so they can survive off the online sales and use that money to pay the stores overhead. If I had the start up to open a store I would have a EBay store, a website store and a brick and mortar location. I’d heavily discount online and even in my store, and try to run large events monthly that charged. I don’t think I would make a large sum of money doing this, but maybe just enough to survive.

[Tarius]

Ah, I would have to agree that not treating customers right will definitely drive people away. The one GW store I have been to that was/is in northern Va a few years ago had a guy working that was acting kinda elitest or whatever you wanna call it. I came in to browse and since I had been walking around for a while, I decided to sit down at the one table and chairs that happened to be in the shop while I looked at the wall of stuff(it was fixed, so I couldnt move it, but the wall was only a coupel feet away). I was then quickly notified by the guy there that I could only sit if I wanted painting lessons. I questioned this because the store happened to be completely empty but he didnt seem to care, just that only painting lessons use the chair and table. There wasnt exactly a sign mentioning this either so I assume he basically had to tell people when they sat down.

I suppose one reason that Atlantis stays open is because the guy that owns it and the people that work there are nice. Plus he offers incentives to those who come in and play games. Plus he interfaces between online and physical world. You can go in there and have them list things on ebay for you and you will get store credit from it. The people who work there are generally knowledgable about the games. Interesting fact, when I was last there one of the GW forum mods was a regular at the store (maybe he still is) . Guy has/had a handle bar mustache, knew tons about the game and was sharp at tactics.

[melquisedeq]

"Hooot Pooockets" (lol) I can't see that written without imediatelly imagining Jim Gaffigan hushedly singing it!

[kalamire]

Now that it's been almost a year since I started this thread I am curious to see if any people have seen more stores close or any new ones open in there area? I've seen a massive increase in brand new games on Kickstarter I am hoping that generates some interest in people actually meeting and playing face to face again.

[ntperry]

I remember when I worked in a GW retail store from '98-'00. We were taught to make the pitch that you could get into 40K or Fantasy for less than the cost of a video game system and a few games. I haven't been in a GW store for years so I wonder what the pitch is now considering that oldie is 100% lies under GW's current prices.

"Hey kids! Like poor quality plastic kits? Want less models for double the money? Pick up Warhammer! Yea! Did you know you too can be a warhammer player for the price of a down payment on a small house?! Why aren't you playing this already!?!

Something like that, I'd imagine.

[TheRhino]

Now that it's been almost a year since I started this thread I am curious to see if any people have seen more stores close or any new ones open in there area? I've seen a massive increase in brand new games on Kickstarter I am hoping that generates some interest in people actually meeting and playing face to face again.

There are three shops in the area I live in, with one in the Augusta area, and two or three further north in Bangor.

The shop I play at has been around for 14 years. It's in an out-of-the-way town and the building is a little run down, but it's the gaming hub for Southern Maine. It's an easy drive from a small college campus. The shop's owner is great, but he's not a wargamer. He's a certified Grand Poobah of MtG. He's got all kinds of crazy judge and organizer certifications or something, and runs the annual Magic States event. MtG is the shop's bread and butter. 40K and other games are good too, but they don't bring the same reliable week-after-week income. The guy is smart enough to go with what he knows, and it works. We have a pretty good local 40K scene, with weekly 40K nights that can draw 10-20 people easy, and a monthly tournament that draws about the same.

There's a show further north that opened a couple years ago and IIRC nearly went under until it was taken over by a group of friends. They have a reasonable area in a strip mall plaza, and their space is clean and bright. I've only stopped in a couple times during lunch hours (I work in the same town), but from what I hear it's a good shop. I think they've even sold armies on consignment a few times. They also run weekly MtG events and get the folks that are too far out from the shop I play at.

There's a third shop that just opened in the next town over from where I live. I've not been in yet, but from what I've read they do the standard gaming store stuff as well as comic books. The pics from their Facebook page look like it's a nice interior.

The nice thing about three shops in the area is that if you have the inclination, you can play 40K on Wednesday at the big shop, Thursday at the north shop, and Friday at the new shop.

Now, on the flip side, there used to be a shop in the downtown of another town near where I live that my apartment was three blocks from before I bought a house. I went in to this place two times. Once to order some stuff, and again to pick it up. It took me 45 minutes to order two blisters. I stood around for most of that waiting for the employee/owner to finish his game of Magic before he could talk to me. It took me half an hour to pick that order up a month later for the same reason. They closed half a year later.

There was also a shop in Portland for a few years that I never went to because all I heard was customer service horror stories. Players being yelled at for not bringing a pen to write on score sheets, rules disputes settled by staff who didn't even play the game, and a local crew who were less than welcoming to new players.


Seems that running a shop requires two things: passion and business sense.

[Ablakley]

I live in upstate NY and there are still plenty of gaming stores around. There are 6 within 60 miles of my house actually. I think the issue is not clientele or prices, I think the issue is adaptability. Like anything else there are trends in the gaming/comic world and they need to be recognized to be successful. The store I am involved with Coopers Cave stays current on everything. When tabletop gaming trended downward as a whole in our area we started selling POP figures and other Funko Vinyl products (this was before walmart and target carried them) and sales went through the roof. We probably still have over 100 different POPs in the store. Collectable action figures, books, board games, terrain, Magic singles (being the biggest seller), and miniatures all need to be rotated so it doesn't grow stale within the area. Lets face it, there's only so many customers in and area and only so much they will buy. One idea that has been successful in keeping things fresh that I got from a GTS Distribution conference is a showcase game night. Every Wednesday for awhile I would showcase and teach a new tabletop game (usually board games as they were easier for people to learn in a short time). Our crowd grew and people started buying the games almost weekly. A half a dozen board games and dollar sodas and candy all night once a week pays the rent, throw FNM, MNM, and MTG/Xwing tournaments on the weekends and you've got success. Bottom line - keep it fresh and sell through doing because if they aren't already at the store, they wont drive there to buy a figure they can have delivered for 30% less than retail.