I've been curious how others feel about their local game shops. Do you prefer to go in, see wall to wall product, buy what you want and leave? Or do you prefer a shop that offers space for gameplay and group events? What do you like or dislike about how some shops are setup where you live? What are they missing?

Personally,

I've found many shops to be cramped (rather than expand space, they simply cram more tables and chairs into the room).

The bathrooms also look/smell like they haven't been cleaned in months.

It's also nearly impossible to find private game space/rooms.

What would your "wish list" be for a local game shop, that would have you excited to meet weekly?

We had a couple of great shops in my area. One had a spacious back room, almost the size of his rather large store. I went there at least once a week to play Warhammer. It was only 2 miles from my home. The city closed it down 3 years ago to make room for development. Sadly there's still nothing there.

The other is still in operation, Endgames in Oakland. Lots of room but not as much as Scenario but its 15 miles from my home and parking is iffy so I only go there a few times a year and usually just to buy a game rather than play. For a while it sent out its schedule of events, but I no longer receive them (probably because I didn't go or maybe they quit sending them). Actually that was a turn off to me because what they wanted to play and when, didn't meet my plans and so I didn't go at all. If it were closer and more convenient I might go there to risk finding game mates.

In my MTG phase, I played in two locations that fit your description. I went there several times a week because even though they were cramped there was almost always someone there looking for a game. In one of them I gave them a small table and two chairs marked reserved for Diamond Jim (me) and Diamond Jim's opponent, so I'd have a place to sit down. Otherwise you had to be at their one and only table or stand and play on top of the comic books.

So a lot depended on the games I wanted to play at the time. Now I'd probably have to have a schedule and a guaranteed table to play AH. As it is, I just play at my house 2-3 per month.

in Arizona,

There are a couple places I used to frequent:

Game Depot in Tempe, AZ, had a large open play area, but they close at like 7 or 8pm. They're also about a 30-45 minute drive from my home versus a 5 minute drive from work. So it is more appealing to go on a weekday, but not at 5 to only have an hour or two... some arkham games take forever! (not due to the number of turns/rounds, but due to people taking their sweet time)

Gamer's Inn in Mesa, AZ, has computer space where a lot of people play WoW or DOTA, and a large open play space for warhammer/d&d/board games/mtg/etc... The only issue with this one, is that it felt cramped to me, where you are back to back, rubbing elbows with who-ever is sitting right behind you. And if all the miniature gamers are standing, your head is pretty much at crotch level... The bathrooms tend to be pretty dirty too. The real upside is that they are open 24/7, and I've had some board game nights run from 6pm to 6am! That was an "interesting" experience, because there were a TON of people playing DOTA and blasting Basshunter, nothing but Basshunter, on their store radio...

I'd almost like a shop dedicated more to providing nice, clean, private spaces for gaming, versus adding it as an after thought to a retail store... Either way, good game shops seem to be dwindling down year after year

gn0x said:

To have a local game shop would be nice. Even if the toilets stank.

Agree with the last poster. We lost Hidden Fortress in Southampton 5 years ago. We've got a Forbidden Planet, but it's range is pretty limitted. Thankfully the owner of www.boardgameextras.com is based in Southampton, but it's not the same as a FLGS.

I definitely prefer shops that offer tables to sit and hang out at, even if they are somewhat limited in number. Not only does the prospect of socializing with other gamers bring me back in, but the opportunity to socialize with staff also leads to more questions about product and ultimately more sales, I would imagine.

When I lived in Kingston, that was the golden age of FLGSing for me. The Nexus was a store that had all that and a bag of tricks. They moved around a few times, and the place they're in now is really spacious - lots of room for tables without sacrificing shelf space. They also offer pop and candy bars for a quarter apeice, which is a nice (if somewhat unhealthy) bonus.

Having moved to Ottawa, I never really found a similar place around here. There are FLGSes, of course, and some of them have rooms to run games in, but they're different. It's hard to describe, but it's like the tables are there for paying customers only. Not that I can blame them for that attitude of course - they are a business after all - but the constant expectation that you must buy something to hang out here kind of ruins the whole "hanging out" vibe. The tables are almost always deserted when I walk in, so of course I don't hang out there myself. I just shop and move along.

Now I'm moving down south to Toronto in a couple months, so we'll see what kind of stores we find there. Being an ever bigger city than Ottawa, I have my doubts, but you never know, right?

All the gaming store bathrooms I've been in do kinda stink, but I think that's a byproduct of being a public restroom. Unless you have a full-time janitor to clean it out three times a day (which most gaming stores I've bene in certainly don't) it's going to build up a stench. I'm sure my bathroom at home doesn't smell like sinshine and roses either, I'm just used to it because I live there.

I have an online gamer friend in Toronto, Steve-O. I'll try to get him to come to these forums; maybe you can get him into cool board games.

Back on topic: the ideal local game shop should have space to play for sure. Coffee shop and snacks for sale, along with games for sale, and an online presence of some sort for posting the calendar and whatnot. I'm lucky enough to have one nearby and I'd be there 24-7 if I didn't have other commitments.

I really was impressed when I visited the FFG event center with all their tables, copies of games available for playing (try before you buy kinda thing), and regularly scheduled game nights that are well attended. This has just about everything you could want. Can't comment on the restrooms as I didn't visit those.

Gaming as a social activity sometimes means needing to have a space where alcohol-drinking and smoking friends (while they're with us) can indulge themselves during the gaming experience as well. Throw in cursing and the ideal game shop may start to look more like a pub. So much for clean restrooms!

Existence. I haven't found any sort of gaming shop in the entire Buffalo / Amherst area. So existence would be my primary qualification for a good gaming shop.

Does the play space need to be free space? Or would a combo of free play space and paid/rentable private gaming rooms be an attractive feature? For example, would you be more, or less, likely to invest $20 an hour for a private room that included $10 worth of snacks/beverages? etc.

I personally would relish the thought of having access to private lockers to stow personal belongings while gaming, and if you can rent the locker itself, be able to store some gaming supplies so I wouldn't need to tote them back and forth from the shop

I also wouldn't mind having a few classic arcade style games to play with while waiting on tourneys to start or in between sessions...

I know that game shops probably have higher overhead than some mail order places but I would like to see some kind of discount when buying the games at the shop. There are two shops around here, one that does not offer any discount but is big, like about 3500 to 4000 square feet. It has plenty of tables in the back room where most people play warhammer but some play french and indian war and some play civil war. Other tables are in the larger area for people to play. They even have a large table that holds about 10 people where they can paint their minatures. They sell lots of cookies, soda and candy which I think is good for the people that play there although I don't eat the stuff. The problem there is they must make their money selling space at the tables and selling candy because except for Warhammer the stock pretty well sucks. I went there a couple of days ago and they had even less stock. I must admit however that about 4 months ago they did a major overall and put in new carpet and changed the place around and it is pretty clean. I have never played there however, just mainly go to look at games from time to time but like I said they don't have much and now not even any card games at all.

The other shop is about 30 miles away and I went there and bought a few games at 15% off but after you pay tax it is like 8% off. But at least they discount and have a lot of stock. Their games room is downstaits in a basement that is HOT. It is super crowded, mayb e 6 Warhammer size tables 6x4 feet and too high to sit and play cards, the garbage cans are always full. I played Warhammer the Invasion card games there a few times. My cards still stick together the place is so filthy. I stopped going there completely. The weird thing is their bathroom was pretty clean, probably the only clean area in the shop.

So..........I just play at home now. I order quite a few games online at 30 to 35% off, get free shipping over a certain amount and no sales tax. I like co-op games but have others. The thing about Arkham Horror is it can ruin just about any other game because it is so much fun. Looking forward to the new expansions.

My ideal game store would actually be a pub.....with big tables.....that also sold games.

Veet said:

...I like this. A lot. Like...a Dave & Busters but with table-top gaming instead of an arcade. Mmmmmm, I suddenly have a delicious thought, and a potential new business plan...

I do appreciate everyone's input, I am in the middle of doing market research on a potential project

Jake yet again said:

I'd even settle for a Forbidden Planet. When I said I had no local game store, I mean no store at all. Southampton is gaming central compared to Hawkes Bay, New Zealand!

Veet said:

There is actually a gaming pub near me, the AFK Tavern, and on Friday and Saturday nights it's packed with gamers. Of course, it doesn't actually sell games, but it serves all the social purpose of a game shop and also has a wide range of gamer-themed food and drink. It's a great place to play Arkham Horror (though if you're playing with all three board expansions, you'd best get there early and ****** up a big table before it's full of Warhammer minis...)

gn0x said:

My local gaming store was nice. It was a little small (single lane aisles, basically) for customer browsing areas, but had a HUGE back room for things like Friday-night magic, mini-painting, and other events they held often. Never went to the bathroom, though. Never had to, because, well, I'm a responsible human being

But I like the idea of having snacks/sodas available during events. Perhaps even in machine form in the backroom/basement area for the gaming events.

Vylanis said:

This place sounds awesome.

Coffee, games, girls, dancing girls, wall to wall protucts, that new shop smell, helpful friendly staff, space and privacy to play games, nearby pub and shops, these are a few of my favourite things...

Thing wakes up - from the musical

where i live... Zip, nothing, execpt the dancing girls of course but thats a whole different type of game.

The Thing In The Attic said:

Some children of the goat making a disco-party? ::laughter::

EcnoTheNeato said:

Never went to the bathroom, though. Never had to, because, well, I'm a responsible human being

Going to the bathroom is irresponsible? It's a basic human function. I can see how using a public restroom might be considered indiscrete to some people, but saying it's irresponsible strikes me as a tad retentive, no pun intended. =P

gn0x said:

I wouldn't be willing to pay $20/hour to use the gaming space at a store, that's too rich for my blood. Really, even $20/day would strike me as too steep to be worth it, considering how often I'd want to go there to make it worth my while. I wouldn't waste time protesting it or anything, but I sure wouldn't use it either.

If the store wanted to set up a membership plan (say $50 for a year or something) and say only members can use the gaming space, perhaps in addition to some other minor benefits, that might be worth considering.

Once again, it's not that I want to be a freeloader or that I begrudge a store trying to earn a profit for the services they provide, it's just that constantly being asked to cough up cash for a place to hang out is at odds with the concept of hanging out, to me. A membership fee paid once and then monitored by a card of some kind at least allows me to separate the cost from the activity for most of the year.

i was thinking more along the lines of room fee, not personal fee, i.e. 10 people could split the $20 rental fee. What I'm thinking has nice private rooms, nice furniture, access to tools to enhance gaming, i.e. speakers in the room for music/ipod hook ups, as well as tv/monitor for laptop connectivity (d&d/movies/etc). this wouldn't be a roped off section of folding tables/chairs, rather designated rooms for 8-16 people.

gn0x said:

Depending on where you live, but there are probably community halls/schools that will rent space out to you if you had a dedicated group of gamers wanting to play together.

On a general note there seems to be 2 common demands on a local game shop:

1. Somewhere with a good selection of games
2. Somewhere with a good place to play

What would probably be better for a shop is to work with existing game groups and have a centrally (ish) located physical store and a satelite games room for organised games nights.

Having lots of room for players to sit and play games is going to be very expensive if the store is located in a town/city centre. The shop should look to be "the hub" for gaming groups and your first point of call as a gamer.

Krawhitham said:

I think the pub-like atmosphere is the way you support having space to sit and play games. If people are ordering food and beverages, creating a ruckus, and protecting the world from Ancient Ones, this is bound to attract people who come for the mere spectacle. Geeks are cool, and no geek is cooler than gamer geeks doing their thing. Someday, maybe we can even get a place in the Olympics if this really takes off.

I can dream.

Pub-esque would be ideal or at least a store with a liquor license. The best gaming I have done in the past involved people with strong buzzes and even certain people getting smashed, yet able to game. We had a Pathfinder campaign going for a while and our Bard would drink mass amounts of booze when we played. His character was a total douchebag, yet his character was such a important part of our party and when he got hammered, the fun really started. However, if a store has a liquor license, you would also bring in riff raff, which could end up being extremely negative for the store, so what abou t a BRING YOUR OWN BEER TYPE PLACE? Just make the place 18 and over after a certain time. Again, the majority of the most important gaming I've done in my life happened under blood filled moons

Space is always a must. I understand with starting up a place, you might not be able to snag a place with enough room. If you try and make room, then you eliminate product off your floor. You want to catch someone's eye in a gaming store, have a million things EVERYWHERE.

Here is my rant on FRIDAY NIGHT MAGIC. I used to play MTG all the time. I do not hate it at all, I just moved on. I've moved quite a bit over the years because I am military and I always stop in to the local comic and gaming shops. Every time I ask what night's host what games, its always "WELL FRIDAY IS MAGIC NIGHT". I don't know what promotion stuff WoTC does for businesses and obviously it brings in a lot of people, so yes it is smart for a business owner to host FNM, but if you are going to do this, think about space. I guarantee if you had the extra space, you could bring in more neckbeards that may play other things. If all else fails, you'll just have A LOT OF PEOPLE possibly playing Magic all night.

Public computers and free WiFi! I just moved up to Alaska and in my drive, we drove through Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. I found Titan Games (I think that is what is was called). It was a pretty nice store. It was small, but it was a small town and the store was not cramped. There were dudes playing MTG, but there were also people playing WoW and Starcraft 2. It was not their computers. There were like 8-10 computers set up in one part of the store and half of them were taken up. The people playing were WoWing it up and probably getting destroyed by Koreans on SC2. The other computers not being used all had STEAM up on the screen. I didn't talk to the guy because he was on his cellphone the whole time, but I bet he charges per hour or something. You have a place that has free Wi-Fi, I bet people paying to play videogames may at least help pay your internet bill. The only downfall of free WiFi is if some jerk wants to start messing around on your IP address.

My other ideal piece is more customer oriented. It would be trying to find a way to get different games being played all the time. All stores will have MTG, DnD, 40K, etc being played on a routine basis. But what about ARKHAM HORROR SATURDAY NIGHT? or DUST TACTICS SUNDAY? I guess it would revolve around having a variety of product available and the minute someone buys up a new game, try and convince them to host a game or two in store. I just moved to the Fairbanks, Alaska area and I went into the COMIC SHOP OF FAIRBANKS the other day. I was talking to the owner and asked him about what games people were playing. He was saying that Saturday is usually a "whatever" day. I inquired about me bringing Arkham Horror and he was all about it. They have a Facebook page and have over 1000 LIKES. When I am ready to go over there and start playing, I am going to make an announcement on their Facebook a day or two in advance to try and draw some players. I have a feeling if I draw in some players and get them hooked, BECAUSE THEY WILL GET HOOKED AND THEIR MINDS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WRAP THEIR FEEBLENESS AROUND IT, someone may go and buy up the game right there in the store. He one copy and one copy of every expansion....EXCEPT DUNWICH HORROR :| or else I would have bought it. Anyways, if you get locals in the habit of trying out different games in that manner, you could possibly sell more product, increase variety and interest in your store, and maybe even become the GOD STORE. Whenever I move into a house and unpack my stuff, I am getting some ELDER GODS on in that store. I'll come back and post anything from the interest/marketing perspective for ya.

IA

Krawhitham said:

Your local public library might have available space. Or not. Doesn't cost anything to ask though. If on the odd chance they want the activity to be book related (many modern libraries won't), point out that H.P.L. comes in paper form.