It is always amusing to look back at various predictions after the fact and see how they turned out. (As a side note it’s equally amusing to read over game previews where the producers gush about this feature, and that feature, and then when the game comes out you discover not a single thing the producers talked up actually appears in the game.) Whether it’s an end-of-the-world prediction (I seem to recall a movie about Nostradamas with Orson Welles narrating and according to it the world was going to end in 1999…oops!), or simply an end-of-an-era guesstimate, very often dire foresight ends up being no sight at all.
One such prediction that appears silly today is the fact that dot coms were going to wipe out the brick and mortar business. Yeah, like if I’m hungry at 3 in the morning for potatoes au gratin I really want to jump online and order it through a netgrocery store and have it take to whenever they actually deliver when I could simply get into my car, drive the mile to the 24 hour Kroger, and get it right then. Likewise I can’t imagine your newborn turning into a fudge factory and telling your wife that you’re still comparing prices on diapers at Priceline so just use the good guest towels to swaddle him in until you can find someplace with free shipping.
Yet dot coms do seem to be killing off one business, your local neighborhood game store. Here in Atlanta an era ended when a couple weeks ago, Sword of the Phoenix, in business 28 years here, shut their doors for the very last time. The reason? The cost of leasing space constantly goes up and to keep the lights on they have to keep their game prices at retail. In turn a consumer is then presented with a choice of either paying full retail for a game and having it right then, or getting it online at a significant discount. Sure, you’ll have to wait a few days to get it, but a game isn’t a badly needed organ transplant so the wait isn’t going to kill you and you may end up saving a massive amount of money. Heck, often times when I order games online I’ll end up with essentially two games for the price of one game at full retail. You can’t compete with that.
Interestingly there is a place here, Atlanta Games Factory, that is trying to compete with that. They’re a brick and mortar store down near Georgia Tech (being near a nerd school of course grants them a +2 circumstance bonus to drawing in a customer base) that offers a healthy 35% discount off all their boardgames and RPG material. I haven’t made the trip down there yet because of their location (trying to navigate Atlanta highways is akin to being a pilot bombing Hanoi during Vietnam, with the same level of danger, and of course they are located in downtown Atlanta, which is a very grimy, very disgusting city) but will hopefully get down there in the near future. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off and stay in business with those discounts.
Does the fate of Sword of the Phoenix have to repeat itself though? Ultimately there is no reason why brick and mortar game stores, with their convenience factor, have to go away in the face of online shopping. But they do need to make some changes if they want to keep bringing in the customers. The following are some observations on game stores and ways they could help themselves out. If you’re lucky perhaps your local game store already does most of this.
1. Give us a break off of full retail pricing.
Even if a game store doesn’t discount all their games, all the time, any sort of break would be welcome. Why not have weekly sales? This week all Napoleonic titles are 20% off, next week all Wizard of the Coast supplements are 10% off? Something, anything. If I can walk into a local game store and pick up the third edition of Twilight Imperium for $80, or I could order it online for $51 and pay $5 for shipping, gee, what am I going to do? We can understand if you can’t discount everything, but give us some sort of incentive for walking through your doors. Which sort of ties in with the…
2. Be courteous, and try and make us feel welcome.
If you’re a gamer you’re going to spend quite a bit of money over the course of a year. From new dice, to games, to miniatures, to supplemental books, and more, chances are you could walk into a game store once a week for the year and walk out with something new. And for many people that’s exactly what they do. Yet very often the people who run the game stores are too busy writing up Warhammer fanfic to even acknowledge when someone walks through the door. And for crissakes, if I’m in your store every week buying something, and you’re the same damn person who always rings my order up, do you really have to check my driver’s license when I use by debit card?
A game store isn’t a big, faceless retail corporate entity with a high turnover rate of employees and thousands of customers walking in on a daily basis. They’re small enough, with a stable band of employees and customer base that saying “Hello!” when someone walk in isn’t that monumental of a challenge.
Hell, if someone feels like they’re walking into the game store equivalent of Cheers then maybe they won’t mind spending full retail. Friendliness and personality can go a long way.
Oh, another aside…I’ve always thought if I would open up a game store (c’mon, every gamer at some point thinks it would be cool to open a game store, just like alcoholics want to open up a bar) I’d make sure the staff would be nothing but hot young spankalicious babes, sorta like the Hooters of game stores. Surely that would increase foot traffic!
3. A demo table is good, but a game space is bad.
At some point, I think around the time when Magic: The Gathering grew in profitability, game stores started opening up space for gamers to play games. In some cases the space dedicated to the actual gamers was more than the actual shelf space for the games the store was trying to sell. While this may seem like a good idea in theory (a place to forge a community and have an instant customer base) the reality is that it is a very, very poor idea.
First off, if people are playing games they’re not spending money. Oh sure, they may buy a Coke or a bag of chips off of you, and maybe sometimes they just have to have that rare BDSM Serra Angel card to win the match, but overall they take up space and contribute nothing to your store. I believe the biological term would be parasite.
Second, they distract the staff from helping out real customers. Instead of being able to easily answer questions someone may have about a potential purchase you, the owner, are caught settling a debate of whether a Khador steamjack is better than a Cygnar one.
Third, it turns your store into a day care. I’ve been in game stores during summer which are filled with scores of under-14 year olds, with the resultant cacophony, and you damn well know they were dropped off as an easy out for mom and pop. That’s not the environment I exactly want to shop in, and I’m betting that’s not an environment most people old enough to drive want to be in.
Fourth, in conjunction with number three and one, most of the people spending all day at your store don’t have money (obviously since if you’re spending all day at a game store you probably don’t have a job…), so why not start catering to people who actually do have money to spend?
Having a table or two to demonstrate new games isn’t a bad idea. Running a tournament isn’t a bad idea. Both of these will expose new games to folks, and will draw people into your store, but no one will overstay their welcome. After all, there’s being friendly and there’s being taken advantage of.
4. Have an interesting selection.
Too many local stores seem to end up having the same product, when a search online reveals there is so much gaming goodness out there it’s almost impossible to even begin to take it all in. Sure, obviously no store can afford to order every single product available in the hope that someone will eventually snag them, but at least try to offer a few hard to find items. Discovery of something new is always a wonderfully intoxicating experience.
Ultimately it all boils down to having good customer service. Make people feel welcome, and provide a decent shopping environment, and people will want to buy from you instead of some faceless online vendor. From my understanding Atlanta Games Factory is such a place, so maybe they will keep on ticking. And who knows, maybe they’ll start to influence some of the other places around here! (Yeah, I’m looking at you War Room…)
-Scott
Current music: 3 Inches of Blood – Advance and Vanquish, Dying Fetus – Destroy the Opposition, Iron Maiden – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Current comics: Red Sonja, Common Foe, Deadworld
