Tradecraft: Problems You (Want/Don't Want) To Have

The new issue of ICV2 put the current game trade problems into context (the article isn't online yet). The game trade is booming. It has been booming for years now, but this year is one of the best in recent memory. Product availability, however, is poor. What am I talking about? The hottest games of the year, Marvel Dice Masters and X-Wing are gone. The D&D 5 Player's Handbook and the Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide are missing from our shelves. Board game mainstays like Betrayal at the House on the Hill and Carcassonne are gone, and worse, the new games, the ones we would like to build on, have disappeared without a trace in fire and forget fashion.

So who is at fault for this? Nobody. Everybody.  Retailers are told to order deeper. Publishers are either frustrated or elated by this increased demand. Some will call a sell out a victory, while others are seriously concerned with satisfying the market. If you're at a bake sale and you sell all your cookies, that's a clear win. You have the money and no need to take perishable cookies home.  If you're the guy in charge of selling the cookies, you're frustrated that you won't be taking in any more cookie money.

That's where retailers are right now. No more cookie money. The hottest games of the year are worth nothing to us if we can't put them on the shelves. We can't even call them hot, really, because we don't know the depth of the demand. Being the last man standing when it comes to inventory is great, but it doesn't build your confidence in a product line. There is a sense of a "ceiling of success" when there's a supply ceiling that can't satisfy demand. It's not greed, but a perceived limit to what's possible with hard work.

Will the next Dice Masters or X-Wing release be hot? Who knows? Some say Dice Masters is done. Some have massive pre-orders in. Not only do we not know our own depths of demand, but the lack of product overall perverts the local market, driving people to our store to suck up the last dice pack or space ship. When supply is plentiful, those people are not our customers. So without a way to plumb the depths, we're reluctant to take chances, to dive deep, on the next release, which means pre-orders are low, and the process repeats itself. Madness.

The next problem is organized play. If we were online retailers, no big deal. Sell whatcha got, blow it out or speculate, wash rinse repeat. In the case of game stores, publishers are expecting us to provide the value adds that we do so well, what differentiates us from everyone else. They want us to run organized play for their games, but think about that. Why would I run organized play for Dice Masters or X-Wing when I can't sell the product? Out of a sense of charity? Our customers certainly want that. So now we're in a jammed up position of wanting to satisfy customers, but not having financial incentive to do so.

There are bright spots of course. Besides miniature games, which generally have it together this year, there's Magic. Oh Magic, you savior of stores. We would run Magic events every day of the week, if we could. Wizards of the Coast almost always has supply. They provide wonderful organized play. The judges have it together. In fact, it's so easy right now, there's talk of game store blight, too many craptastic Magic only store stinking up the market and offering very little to their local communities. We're always lecturing them on diversification, but it's hard when the rest of the trade can't get their supply and demand formulas right.

So times are good, very good. Success is limited by the supply of products. I find it hard to blame anyone really. We're ordering what we think we need. They're making what seems a reasonable amount. Demand is outstripping supply. Future demand is hard to divine. If we could all just crack the code, there could be success at a much higher level. That potential is what's frustrating to retailers. Just don't call it a win.