Gamers often need a place to play D&D or any other game, but up till now the space has been subsidized by book sales. But why, well the truth is the space that most FLGS provide to play the game is crappy.

But what if you FLGS had a few rooms with some of these ( http://www.geekchichq.com/Co_Store/The_Showroom/The_Sultan/The_Sultan.html ). And what if it had over head projectors that pointed down at the table so you could plug in a laptop and project your map. What if each room had a complete book library.

No longer do gamers need to buy from amazon, they pay $100/month to get 4 hrs per week at the coolest gaming place.

I have little sympathy for game stores, over the years they have proven to be a cannibalistic bunch, never working together to get better deals from the distributors, they get crappy pricing on gaming books then are surprised when they can’t make a successful business of it.

Most game stores I have encountered are dirty, lack good customer service, cater to nerds but do not create and environment that non-gamer parents would feel comfortable letting their children hang out it.

They focus to much on hobby games and can’t see the potential in working with the family market to make real money. Most store owners are gamers themselves who have little business or marketing sense so lack the agility to keep their company afloat when time are bad.

Anyways I digress, but my point is gamers could use a service more than they need to pay extra for the same product they can buy elsewhere.

I’m actually glad to see the FLGS go.

Our club as awards for members and chapters, but for gaming stores (or any business that helps the cause) we give awards like our Ambassadorial Award or NPC Accreditation. Just pieces of paper, but a way to show our support. They in turn give us a slight discount, and we keep getting more members and sending them that way.

You wouldn’t happen to live in Mount Pleasant would you?

When I was a kid, the closest hobby shop was 60 miles away. I had to save up, and get rides once every other month or so, to support my gaming habit. When I was 22, I went to work for a comic shop that had opened a year or two prior to that. They had already started carrying Magic: The Gathering, but I helped guide them into a true tabletop RPG market. Over time, I came to own that shop, which had gone from comics to games and comics, and then to games exclusively.

We’ve had to close a number of times over the years, and have found a way to come back each time. 4th Edition has been a great boon to the hobby locally, as we’ve been bring in a lot of new players. But while activity and attendance has been greater than ever, sales were not enough to keep our doors open.

Page: We are in a small college town (20-30k people) and hate that we have to take our shop away from our players. But sadly, it takes more than active players to keep a game shop open.