Quote from: J Arcane;753708I think it is more accurate from what I have seen both in the US and Finland that the old FLGS is dead.

The poorly stocked, barely staffed dingy yellow dive full of sweaty neckbeards glaring like morlocks at any who dare enter their self-appointed exile space, that place is gone or dying. The one where the F part of FLGS was always more ironic jest than literal descriptor, because if you weren't male and into exactly the game the owner or the residents were into you were more or less made explicitly unwelcome.

The new FLGS though? The ones that are built to be gaming and nerd Meccas, accepting to all who seek the faith, regardless of taste, experience, interest, or gender, those seem to be doing quite well. Booming in fact.

Imagine that: if you don't make your business hostile to perceived 'outsiders', people will want to go to your place just for the experience of it.

There were never stores that survived dedicating themselves solely to one interest, but bringing it all under one roof and making it a welcoming space to any of those interests can create a pretty great thing, and people respond to that.

The FLGS was always about creating a social space. It is never gonna compete with Amazon, but that's not really the point, anymore than the point of a bar is to compete with the liquor store, or the point of a restaurant is to compete with the grocery store. They're never going to win on value, but they will win by being a place people go to in order to have experiences they can't have at home.

What I have seen is that there's a new generation that gets that, and an old generation who doesn't, and still thinks its good enough to keep milking the same dwindling assortment of social malcontents.

The latter is dead. The former gives me hope there's a future.

I would say J Arcane pretty much nails what I've witnessed in Northeastern Oklahoma. If you were dark, dingy and exclusive, everyone left to go play at a brighter, friendlier store.

Hell, my FLGS only excludes folks on the merits of things like hygiene and general cleanliness.

That is, they expect you to not smell like catpiss, and you will be asked to leave if you do.

Our FLGS is fairly lively, but make no mistake: it's primarily a Magic: The Gathering store, with Boardgames and RPGs being a near afterthought. But they do have multiple events for boardgames and RPGs every week (and this doesn't seem that unusual here in MD: two to the next closest non-comic-store FLGSes have similar arrangements. I am taking arrangement as fairly typical locally.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;753637The Twin Cities is one of the geekiest areas in the nation, and is one point on the axis between here and Lake Geneva wherein TRPGs still thrive.  We're an outlier.

Mm, but we really don't know: the nuts and bolts of the gaming industry are famously opaque, and I don't think there's ever been a credible, independent study of where gaming stores are, with what longevity and in what numbers.  Is there a rhyme or reason to their location?  What exactly constitutes a "gaming store" anyway?  (The Boston Borders, when it was still in business, had a whole aisle devoted to RPGs, more volume than I've seen in some FLGSs.)

Quote from: J Arcane;753708The poorly stocked, barely staffed dingy yellow dive full of sweaty neckbeards glaring like morlocks at any who dare enter their self-appointed exile space, that place is gone or dying. The one where the F part of FLGS was always more ironic jest than literal descriptor, because if you weren't male and into exactly the game the owner or the residents were into you were more or less made explicitly unwelcome.

And quite unfamiliar with the concept of "retail store."  I've an anecdote.

After moving back to the Boston area in 2000 after over a decade elsewhere, my fiancee a couple years later cajoled me into getting back  into tabletop.  As part of my outreach, I found the online forum the Boston Compleat Strategist branch had going (damn near moribund then, but).  I duly registered, said that I was interested in running a game, and responded, when asked by the then-owner whether I was familiar with the place, that I'd been a patron going back to the 70s.

He immediately went all fanboy over me: I must be "wise in the lore" of Renowned Owner Of Old X, and of all the great campaigns played by Awesome FLGS Groupies Y, Z and Q, and all manner of store history and culture.

Errr ... no, I replied, I never viewed the place as a clubhouse; what I did was go there to buy stuff.  I never played in a game in the back, I never knew the name of the bloke behind the counter, I never hung there like a barnacle.  I browsed stuff, and sometimes I bought stuff, and the bloke behind the counter wrapped it up and took my money, and I bid him good day and hit the road.

That was the last anyone on that forum spoke to me, and I stopped bothering after a couple weeks.  Heaven knows why they bother to keep paying to have the website up, because it hasn't been updated in several years now.

I think there's a number of outlier "pockets" were the RPG hobby is just much stronger than elsewhere; not just in North America, either.

I live in the sticks in north-central Florida, and nowadays, unless I want to drive fifty miles, I have to order off the internet.

In the late 90s, however, it was a fucking golden age. In Gainesville, there was Megacomics, Novel Ideas, Border's, B&N, Waldenbooks, Media Play, and B. Dalton. They all stocked 2e, plus various other stuff. Solid gold. Every one except B&N is gone, and B&N doesn't have much in the rpg section nowadays. A shame. It's cheaper and easier to order from Amazon or wherever, but I miss the experience of walking into a store and making a selection.

Quote from: Ravenswing;754575Mm, but we really don't know: the nuts and bolts of the gaming industry are famously opaque, and I don't think there's ever been a credible, independent study of where gaming stores are, with what longevity and in what numbers.  Is there a rhyme or reason to their location?  What exactly constitutes a "gaming store" anyway?  (The Boston Borders, when it was still in business, had a whole aisle devoted to RPGs, more volume than I've seen in some FLGSs.)

And quite unfamiliar with the concept of "retail store."  I've an anecdote.

After moving back to the Boston area in 2000 after over a decade elsewhere, my fiancee a couple years later cajoled me into getting back  into tabletop.  As part of my outreach, I found the online forum the Boston Compleat Strategist branch had going (damn near moribund then, but).  I duly registered, said that I was interested in running a game, and responded, when asked by the then-owner whether I was familiar with the place, that I'd been a patron going back to the 70s.

He immediately went all fanboy over me: I must be "wise in the lore" of Renowned Owner Of Old X, and of all the great campaigns played by Awesome FLGS Groupies Y, Z and Q, and all manner of store history and culture.

Errr ... no, I replied, I never viewed the place as a clubhouse; what I did was go there to buy stuff.  I never played in a game in the back, I never knew the name of the bloke behind the counter, I never hung there like a barnacle.  I browsed stuff, and sometimes I bought stuff, and the bloke behind the counter wrapped it up and took my money, and I bid him good day and hit the road.

That was the last anyone on that forum spoke to me, and I stopped bothering after a couple weeks.  Heaven knows why they bother to keep paying to have the website up, because it hasn't been updated in several years now.

I never knew the name of the guy behind the counter at the Complete Strategist either. I did, however, shop there in Boston hundreds of times over the years. They moved to somewhere on the Red Line.

Never knew they had a forum.

Quote from: gonster;753198As far as the industry is concerned, the FLGS concept is over, and any mentioning of it is just a marketing ploy.

I agree with others that RPGs are just one aspect of what you have in a game store; but there's also a "macro" transformation that's been happening from about that time in retail in general for quite some time.

Easily portable products have been moving online for some time.

Anything digital is online; the more sales that are generated off of digital content, the less important mass produced items become.

While you can buy a car online or major appliances, they are among certain products that some people want to have a showroom experience with. Same with clothing - products that you typically want to (but don't have to) experience. But even those, you can still test a demo version and then order - and that's a part of the showroom / catalog experience that's been around 100+ years.

Quote from: Piestrio;753217I'm fairly positive nearly every FLGS in Colorado (with a couple exceptions) carry more than just D&D and PF.

Er....
We have three here in FT. Collins, which is like 3rd in population for the state, I think, and I think one of stores has some Savage Worlds stuff on top of the DnD and PF. The other is all boardgames all the time with like one small, extremely well hidden shelf in a difficult to access, poorly lit part of the store , that has PF stuff on it and some old, used DnD stuff. Of the two the former sells comics, the latter is like a cafe. The sad thing is there are much better cafes, and we have a much better (really, it is a couple orders of magnitude of difference) comic store.  The third literally has so little inventory of anything (I think they have a few PF books) that I think they are not really trying to make money. I think the dude who owns the big video rental place next store just rents that place out to game in- or something.


The last product I bought at an LGS was True20, when it first came out. That was during the D20 boom. Those were good times, I actually had to choose what to buy from several options as opposed to sighing and walking back to the car after 30 seconds.

The B&N has the best selection in town, I think, but that has been shrinking.

I think FLGS might be a viable business these days, but it is not one that has anything to do with me.

Quote from: Bill;759829I never knew the name of the guy behind the counter at the Complete Strategist either. I did, however, shop there in Boston hundreds of times over the years. They moved to somewhere on the Red Line.

Never knew they had a forum.

201mass.com, for what it's worth.

Actually, not out on the Red Line -- they're out near BU, back by Comm Ave, in a teensy cubbyhole (significantly smaller than before) at the end of tortuous passages.  They were soured on Mass Ave partially because of a nasty armed robbery that took place after hours when they were having a gaming session in back, followed by losing their lease, but God alone knows how they sell enough to stay afloat back there.

I'm not sure it's a measure of anything but yesterday I was looking for any local games stores participating in Free RPG Day and there weren't any... not just in my city but in the entire state. Which I guess isn't that surprising.

Quote from: Ravenswing;759906201mass.com, for what it's worth.

Actually, not out on the Red Line -- they're out near BU, back by Comm Ave, in a teensy cubbyhole (significantly smaller than before) at the end of tortuous passages.  They were soured on Mass Ave partially because of a nasty armed robbery that took place after hours when they were having a gaming session in back, followed by losing their lease, but God alone knows how they sell enough to stay afloat back there.

Green line maybe? It that the place where you can't really see the sign for the store from the street, and its hard to even find the store once you enter the main building?

I remember going to Fat Cat Books in Johnson City, NY (now Fat Cat Comics) several months after getting my copy of Holmes Basic. Bought my first issue of Dragon there (#44, the December 1980 issue). Even then the store was as full of war-games and SF/fantasy novels as it was of RPGs.

Quote from: Bill;760457Green line maybe? It that the place where you can't really see the sign for the store from the street, and its hard to even find the store once you enter the main building?

Pretty much.  The way I figure, if I have to do a safari in order to reach a cramped, dank FLGS, I'm going to go on Amazon, pay two-thirds as much for twenty times the selection, and spend less time and fuss doing it.