The third place is the concept of having a social location where people spend time that's not home or work. It's all the rage and the key to getting more customers in the door. You see it in Starbucks, where rather than rush you out the door, they encourage you to stick around with popular music, Internet access and comfy chairs. Bookstores do this too, with places to sit and read, waterfalls, and their own coffee shops. We've added the mom's lounge, but the game center is our third place.
A game store is actually a much better third place than the examples I've given, because people actually interact. Are a bunch of people drinking coffee physically in one room, but socially isolated, really together? A game store is unplugged and you'll need to interact with others to play our games. But this opportunity can also be a problem, because I'm first and foremost a business owner, a merchant, and not a cop, psychologist, or your mom. Our high level of interaction can be fraught with perils, something the average Starbuck's employee probably hasn't had to deal with.
This was made clear this week when an upset mother paid me a visit. Her daughter met a boy at the store. Hyjinx followed when they got together later on. Although I'm sympathetic, what was I to do about it? The mother was hoping to track this guy down, through sign-up sheets or the like, but we have open gaming, and no such sheets. She shook her head in disbelief at our open third place community. Starbucks doesn't sign you in, nor does the park down the street, so it doesn't quite follow that we would somehow log our customers (another consideration when considering security cameras). In fact, that assumes a level of responsibility that I frankly don't want to have. If you ever doubted our third place was more intimate than a Barnes & Noble, here's your proof.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Double Edged Sword
My competitors went out of business, partly because what they were doing was wrong. Maybe they stocked the wrong product, staffed the wrong people, or spent all their product expansion money on fancy carpet. Who knows? They stopped doing business and are gone now, meaning their store wasn't worth continuing with someone else at the helm.
So when their ex-customers come into the store and find it "strange" that I don't carry a wide selection of jigsaw puzzles, bridge score cards, or funky dice, like that other store did, there are two parts of my brain that start to analyze this.
First, I want to please my customers. I often err on the side of pleasing them, even if it means busting my purchasing budget. Pleasing your customers is good, but you can go too far. You can't have everything people want and those most demanding are those less likely to special order. I have a sales track record for the area that says if I buy bridge score cards, I'll sell them once a year. Yet, with new customers comes new opportunity, so I can't just throw my head back and cackle at their misfortune.
Second, it's their own damn fault. That's my inner cackle. They shopped at this other store instead of mine. They play games that will die out in their generation. They're fringe gamers with bad taste. Where were they when the rent was due? Alright, it's wrong to think this way. I admit it, but when you spend years wondering how to get those people into your store, spending thousands of dollars, and they only come because you're the last resort, there's a certain level of, well, conflictedness. I have to step back from my ego and try to conjure up a little Buddhist compassion. It's potential opportunity as well, along with a potential danger of listening to the wrong customers. I've done just fine without those two bridge card sales a year or the funky dice. I don't feel socially responsible for carrying slow selling or bad games, although there are those who expect you to take up some sort of local game store mantle and bite the bullet.
A Tale of Two Releases
One publicly traded company just released the latest version of their top game. They've re-aligned themselves to focus on independent retailers and just spent a small fortune on building a slick and powerful new website. They deny the use of any of their intellectual property to online discounters and provide hundreds of dollars of free product to customers who play their game in stores.
The other publicly traded company also just released a new version of their top game. They sell indiscriminately to anyone who can prove they at least have a storefront (although Amazon is somehow exempt). This makes them money but drives down the price of their products to near cost. They attempted to release digital tools when their new product was released, but so far the project has been delayed. They've pulled back their licensing to deny the ability of third-party companies to do things they might not be so good at, such as those digital tools. They just shut down their social networking site, an ill advised project to begin with. Their prize support is comprised of a monthly stipend of a set number of playing cards, regardless of how many people are playing their game, while support for their other games comes with a price tag. Getting hold of anyone there to answer questions is impossible and it can take many months for them to just change your address.
We're special stores for both companies (premier and partner, they call their programs). Sales for the first game, Warhammer 40K, by Games Workshop are very strong, supported by a release tournament with hundreds of dollars in prizes, while sales of Dungeons & Dragons, by Wizards of the Coast, lag far behind expectations, partially because of weak and late company support along with the product being sold online for up to 45% off, like a box of Magic cards. The bottom line is that we are a value-add to miniature gamers, and just another place to buy books for D&D players. Each of the companies that sell their product to us seem to understand this, and treat us accordingly. As we plan our company strategy, we will also plan accordingly.
The other publicly traded company also just released a new version of their top game. They sell indiscriminately to anyone who can prove they at least have a storefront (although Amazon is somehow exempt). This makes them money but drives down the price of their products to near cost. They attempted to release digital tools when their new product was released, but so far the project has been delayed. They've pulled back their licensing to deny the ability of third-party companies to do things they might not be so good at, such as those digital tools. They just shut down their social networking site, an ill advised project to begin with. Their prize support is comprised of a monthly stipend of a set number of playing cards, regardless of how many people are playing their game, while support for their other games comes with a price tag. Getting hold of anyone there to answer questions is impossible and it can take many months for them to just change your address.
We're special stores for both companies (premier and partner, they call their programs). Sales for the first game, Warhammer 40K, by Games Workshop are very strong, supported by a release tournament with hundreds of dollars in prizes, while sales of Dungeons & Dragons, by Wizards of the Coast, lag far behind expectations, partially because of weak and late company support along with the product being sold online for up to 45% off, like a box of Magic cards. The bottom line is that we are a value-add to miniature gamers, and just another place to buy books for D&D players. Each of the companies that sell their product to us seem to understand this, and treat us accordingly. As we plan our company strategy, we will also plan accordingly.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
D20 Dump
Wizards of the Coast declared that all D20 products must be sold through to retailers by the end of 2008 and the rest destroyed. You may remember this familiar tactic from White Wolf, and hopefully WOTC will note what happened to them afterwards.
The result? Goodman Games put all their D20 products at 50% off on their website (we followed suit in the store). This actually means we're selling their product at a loss, since our costs are 50%, but there's another 4% or so associated with incidental costs (credit card fees, bags, office supplies, etc.). Other D2o companies, most of them long done with their product lines, are actually thinking their best solution is the recycling dumpster.
Honestly though, at this stage of D20, I might take new product if it was given to me, but this stuff is a big risk even at 90% off. A year ago I would be making phone calls to snap it up. Now I'm just glad it's not on my shelves. Well, not a lot of it anyways. We've got about half our Ding & Dent bookshelves crammed with D20. At it's height you could value that shelf at around $25,000. We bought it for about ten cents on the dollar (so $2,500). Now it's worth maybe a penny on the dollar ($250). The effort to wheel it to the dumpster seems not worth it.
So what has value in D20? The Wizards of the Coast D&D books, technically D20, are immune from this purge, I'm guessing. However, they've declared they'll be out of product around this time, and D&D 3.5 books are already hard to find. Distributors are wiping them from their systems the moments they sell through. Nevertheless, we're still re-ordering popular D&D 3.5 books from WOTC, seeking them out where we can find them. Also considered still of value are Paizo adventures, both stand-alone adventures and the Pathfinder series. As much as I've railed about the company in the past, Paizo makes the best adventures, although some people still like the slog of a Dungeon Crawl Classic (yawn) or the official mediocrity of a WOTC 3.5 adventure (the 4.0 ones are much better).
The result? Goodman Games put all their D20 products at 50% off on their website (we followed suit in the store). This actually means we're selling their product at a loss, since our costs are 50%, but there's another 4% or so associated with incidental costs (credit card fees, bags, office supplies, etc.). Other D2o companies, most of them long done with their product lines, are actually thinking their best solution is the recycling dumpster.
Honestly though, at this stage of D20, I might take new product if it was given to me, but this stuff is a big risk even at 90% off. A year ago I would be making phone calls to snap it up. Now I'm just glad it's not on my shelves. Well, not a lot of it anyways. We've got about half our Ding & Dent bookshelves crammed with D20. At it's height you could value that shelf at around $25,000. We bought it for about ten cents on the dollar (so $2,500). Now it's worth maybe a penny on the dollar ($250). The effort to wheel it to the dumpster seems not worth it.
So what has value in D20? The Wizards of the Coast D&D books, technically D20, are immune from this purge, I'm guessing. However, they've declared they'll be out of product around this time, and D&D 3.5 books are already hard to find. Distributors are wiping them from their systems the moments they sell through. Nevertheless, we're still re-ordering popular D&D 3.5 books from WOTC, seeking them out where we can find them. Also considered still of value are Paizo adventures, both stand-alone adventures and the Pathfinder series. As much as I've railed about the company in the past, Paizo makes the best adventures, although some people still like the slog of a Dungeon Crawl Classic (yawn) or the official mediocrity of a WOTC 3.5 adventure (the 4.0 ones are much better).
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
This Week
Best Sales Week of the Year. That was last week. The week before was in the top 3. In retrospect, the new Magic: Eventide release sales are way slower than I expected. I'm told Summer Magic releases are like that, but man. I know it will pick up later. Also not helping sales this week was the re-paving of the parking lot; half on Monday and half on Tuesday. I'm guessing sales are down about 20% from that. Luckily they finished before our evening rush.
Spamalamadingdong. The more tight it gets for game manufacturers, the higher the frequency of their emails. Some of these companies send me so much stuff that I've stopped opening the mail. I want to tell them "I'm sorry, but my level of interest in your company, based on my sales, doesn't allow me to spend the time to read these." If they called on the phone that often, nobody would think it was acceptable. If you want a guess at who they are, check out the companies that are down from a year ago on my Sunday post.
40K. I'm painting up my additional Apocalypse infantry squad while I await my Forge World order. I allow myself to order stuff if it will take a while, but I require that I paint what I have before something else arrives. After the squad and the Forge World Hellhound, I get to pick up the Hellhammers. I don't have the money anyway, so it's a good rule.
Traveller Character. I'm making a character for Fulminata's RPOL game. It's not quite as confusing as Mutants & Masterminds, but I couldn't have done it without the narrative in the book. My first attempt was flat out wrong. My second attempt was mostly right. My third attempt for someone else was WAY broken, but fixable. My fourth character was juuuuust right. One problem is that if you follow the flow-chart for generation, you only age when you bail out of a career. If it were software, many Traveller characters would be 18 year old supermen.
In case my computer blows up and Carbonite fails:
Spamalamadingdong. The more tight it gets for game manufacturers, the higher the frequency of their emails. Some of these companies send me so much stuff that I've stopped opening the mail. I want to tell them "I'm sorry, but my level of interest in your company, based on my sales, doesn't allow me to spend the time to read these." If they called on the phone that often, nobody would think it was acceptable. If you want a guess at who they are, check out the companies that are down from a year ago on my Sunday post.
40K. I'm painting up my additional Apocalypse infantry squad while I await my Forge World order. I allow myself to order stuff if it will take a while, but I require that I paint what I have before something else arrives. After the squad and the Forge World Hellhound, I get to pick up the Hellhammers. I don't have the money anyway, so it's a good rule.
Traveller Character. I'm making a character for Fulminata's RPOL game. It's not quite as confusing as Mutants & Masterminds, but I couldn't have done it without the narrative in the book. My first attempt was flat out wrong. My second attempt was mostly right. My third attempt for someone else was WAY broken, but fixable. My fourth character was juuuuust right. One problem is that if you follow the flow-chart for generation, you only age when you bail out of a career. If it were software, many Traveller characters would be 18 year old supermen.
In case my computer blows up and Carbonite fails:
Petty Officer 3rd Class Rendell Farseer
Age: 42, 6 terms, 37,000 credits starting money
Str 5 (-1), Dex 7 (+0), End 6 (+0), Int 13 (+2), Edu 4 (-1), Soc 6 (+0)
Retirement Pay (Navy): 10,000 cr. Year.
Ships Shares: 3
Credits: 1,480
Skills: Computer 0, Deception 1, Drive: Wheeled 0, Engineer: Manoeuvre Drive 1, Engineer: Jump Drive 1, Engineer: Electronics 1, Engineer: Life Support 1, Engineer Power: 2, Flyer: Wing 1, Gun Combat: Energy Rifle 0, Gunner: Turrets 0, Mechanic 4, Pilot 1, Sensors 2, Survival 0, Tactics (Naval) 1, Vacc Suit 1, Zero-G 0.
Equipment:
Plasma Rifle
Auto pistol (210 cr.)
Dagger (10 cr.)
Flak Jacket (TL8) (300 cr)
Wafer Jack (TL12), Expert 2: Life Support software on wafer, Expert 2: Electronics software on wafer. (total 30,000 cr.)
Engineer Toolkit (1,000 cr)
Mechanical Toolkit (1,000 cr)
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Brown Follow-Up
I was in the store this week when a guy in a UPS uniform was shopping at the same time my FedEx delivery arrived. As the two delivery drivers saw each other, I was expecting some sort of molecular reaction, ions repelling each other or something. What did happen was interesting. With one look my FedEx guy identified the UPS guy as ... a manager.
UPS managers are rumors, mythical creatures that I didn't know actually existed. This particular manager was even more unique, because he listened to me as I told him my store of the troublesome driver. He was like a UPS commissar. My FedEx driver quickly excused himself, having heard this story before, and the commissar and I began some forensics to figure out the identity of the driver.
One reason I could never do law enforcement, despite wanting such a career when I was younger, is that I have a horrible memory for faces. So after vaguely describing this problem driver, who looked like about half the population of Concord, we came up with a much easier solution. Remember that package that he wouldn't pick up without a scheduled delivery? By picking it up he left his UPS DNA evidence all over it. The manager told me he would follow-up by Tuesday.
UPS managers are rumors, mythical creatures that I didn't know actually existed. This particular manager was even more unique, because he listened to me as I told him my store of the troublesome driver. He was like a UPS commissar. My FedEx driver quickly excused himself, having heard this story before, and the commissar and I began some forensics to figure out the identity of the driver.
One reason I could never do law enforcement, despite wanting such a career when I was younger, is that I have a horrible memory for faces. So after vaguely describing this problem driver, who looked like about half the population of Concord, we came up with a much easier solution. Remember that package that he wouldn't pick up without a scheduled delivery? By picking it up he left his UPS DNA evidence all over it. The manager told me he would follow-up by Tuesday.
Top Games
Comparing the top 25 games of the first half of 2007 to the first half of 2008. Here are the games and differences (by sales dollars):
Not on the list because they didn't make the list in 2007 (too few, if you ask me):
| Game | Percent Change |
| Warhammer 40K | 908.66% |
| Melissa & Doug | 438.08% |
| Shadowrun | 418.06% |
| Warhammer Fantasy | 219.65% |
| Magic | 172.86% |
| Yu-Gi-Oh | 145.12% |
| Fantasy Flight Games | 91.89% |
| Dungeons & Dragons | 34.64% |
| Rio Grande | 28.07% |
| Mayfair Games | 15.02% |
| Days of Wonder | 9.99% |
| Paizo Publishing | -2.58% |
| World of Warcraft CCG | -2.70% |
| Flames of War | -2.94% |
| AT-43 | -3.40% |
| Steve Jackson Games | -17.38% |
| Reaper | -23.47% |
| Pirates of the Spanish Main | -24.98% |
| Warmachine/Hordes Star Wars Miniatures | -39.60% -54.21% |
Not on the list because they didn't make the list in 2007 (too few, if you ask me):
- Dark Heresy
- Bleach
- Kingdom Hearts
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