Would you pay to play?

[NewJeffCT]

Back in my old group, the DM asked each player for $2/week per person to help cover his costs (miniatures, books, copying, etc). And, since we had a big group, it added up to $16 to $18 week in total for the group (the DM didn't charge his brother)

However, because the DM did such a terrific job, everybody paid the money willingly.

Also, the games were at his house, so we weren't gaming in somebody in a gaming store or anything like that.

 

[Ixis]

$5 for a game, maybe, but only if it happened to be an incredibly amazing game. (This is my personal opinion).

I once played in a Vampire LARP that was $15 per game, but it was to cover the cost of hosting the game run by some very imaginative and talented folks in a church. In this case I can see the game costing that much because I know it's covering the expenses of running the game, but more importantly the value I associate with the game (the high quality STs) is worth $15/game in my eyes.

The analogies to movies is a common and flawed argument in my opinion, because we're not robots, we're humans. We don't sit down at movies, have "entertainment" fed into our heads and then walk out feeling totally satisfied with the experience. People see movies based on taste and quality. I'm not going to pay $9+ to see Ryan Reynolds muck up one of DCs premiere B-list superheroes in 3D but someone else WILL pay to see Hal Jordan become a Green Lantern and beat up Sinestro and buy the Burger King promotional items afterwards.

If we want to spend the time to count up the utilities spent running a game store for X amount of time in Y conditions we can come up with some nebulous hard value to tack on to how much it really costs to host a game, but that's not a good number to go by because people aren't trying to discern hard costs of playing a game at a store, but the value. Furthermore, would you calculate the costs of running the store when X number of customers only browse? Would you increase the costs because the heating bill goes up during the winter? If we were having this discussion from the perspective of the shop owner, yes, these would all be perfectly valid and expected topics to discuss, but from the perspective of the customer we're not talking about the physical costs, but of value.

If the games seem valuable enough to the person then it will obviously justify the cost. Seeing as the OP feels this is wrong I'd say in his case $5 per game is too much to ask for (I'm assuming, at least on some level, that Kzach feels that the benefits do not outweigh the costs.) That said, it is somewhat common for certain stores to charge for games, and that the value is very lucrative to the customers and fair to the shop owners. Some people do pay-to-play.

One last subject I'd like to touch on, a store charging to pay-to-play is competing with people who could very well play at home for free. In order for pay-to-play to work there needs to be some added value or incentive. It is my opinion, that the stores should provide more than just a space (unless everyone in that particular area cannot play tabletop games anywhere. Which seems highly unlikely but completely possible.) This is slightly off-topic from my main point (utility costs =/= customer value sense) but I think it further illustrates why someone of the opinion "charging to play a game here is strange" isn't so far off. Why should I pay to play here? What value is in it for me, as the customer?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why should I pay to play here? What value is in it for me, as the customer?

Because, as has been pointed out, not everyone has a place where they can comfortably & conveniently play for free...and THAT is their target market.

Our group doesn't have a problem with finding a free place to play, but we often cannot play in the same place every session. Currently, 3 different gamers rotate hosting, and we've had that number as high as 5. But we do know that if it came down to it, there are places we could go if we had to...even if it involved paying. Heck, we've even talked about pooling our resources to do something like this:

AFK Tavern

 

[Elephant]

Some folks I know do. I don't. But then again, I don't play RPGs every week either.

I'm comparing flat time being entertained - hour for hour. I don't see what other comparison would be equitable. How frequently you can then afford to undertake the entertainment is a separate issue.

Not all entertainment is created equal. $8 for a movie ticket ... $20 for a baseball game ... $100 for a Lady Gaga concert ... all covering about the same amount of time. Using the same logic as the movie ticket comparison but subbing in "music concerts by big-name stars" instead, we can conclude that paying $50 per game would be a bargain!

 

[Raven Crowking]

It should be obvious that, if you don't want to play in a space, or you don't think it a good value, don't play there. There is a world of difference between that attitutude and the expectation that you are entitled to a free space to play in a store. Regardless of your personal opinion, play space is paid for by someone. I don't think anyone is entitled to to expect someone else to pay so that they can play.

YMMV and all that.


RC

 

[SquareKnot]

One of my local stores recently started requiring Encounters players to purchase one $5 token for each session they play in. The DM plays for free.

The token is good for $5 in store credit. What this comes down to is that playing in the store is more or less free for loyal customers who spend money there anyway. If you just come in, play, and never buy anything, then now you're paying $5 per session.

The token is good for snacks, gaming stuff, and items they special order for you, if you really don't like their selection.

I look at it as "I could buy this book from Amazon for $15.00 or I could buy it here at the FLGS for $25.00. But for that extra $10.00, I get 10 hours of gaming and support my local store."

I think it's a fair system.

 

[El Mahdi]

It's not the price (which isn't very much), or the comparison to other products or services (of which $5 gaming is obviously cheaper)...

It's the very concept.

If a storeowner can't develop a way to get that money from customers through snacks, credits, or other means...then they should not be in a retail business.

If the store's model was specifically about providing a place to play, with better environments or reasons for playing there instead of at home, and they specifically advertised their store in this manner, then sure - a pay to play model makes sense.

But doing it in this manner is essentially telling your customers that you see them as a bunch of freeloaders who only come to their store to play and not buy anything. It's condescending and creates an us-vs.-them environement.

Come on! You're in Sales!

Woo me in. Do your job and make incentives for me to spend money in your store - not reasons to walk away.

There's been multiple people pointing out how it's really not that much money so it's no big deal. Yes it is. It's lose-lose.


Pay-to-Play

• Small financial return for the store.
• Participants feel that since they have paid to play, they don't need to feel guilty about not spending money in the store (less unplanned, random purchases).
• The majority of participants are those who have no other alternative to group play, leaving a higher percentage of inexperienced players and players/GM's that are unable to find or generate a group of their own (many times due to their own personalities, or lack thereof).
• Likely to generate ill will with customer base - and if an alternative establishment is available, will likely incentivize them to go there instead.

Incentive Based

• Higher financial return for the store ($10 in shacks vs. $5 pay-to-play fee; or $5 credit leads to buying a $25 dollar book, rather than buying nothing; more unplanned and random purchases).
• Participants feel "beholden" to the establishment, rather than "entitled" because they paid.
• An overall more diverse and better group of customers and participants (the bad apples are outnumbered).
• Generates good will and an incentive to patron the establishment.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Now, if they paid the DM a cut... or set up store-run games...

Yup. Those would both be value-adds (player-matching services; providing a DM to make play possible) that would justify the price.

Maybe you see it that way. To me they are basically the same - I pay, I walk in, experience the entertainment, and walk out.

But you aren't even accurately comparing the costs involved. You're comparing the partial cost of one form of entertainment with the full cost of another form of entertainment.

These apple-to-hydrant comparisons seem to happen all the time with RPGs. Another classic one is "you pay $20 for a DVD that lasts for 2 hours; but you'll get hundreds of hours of play from the $50 RPG core rulebook". (You'll never watch the DVD more than once? You'll play every RPG you buy for dozens of sessions and never buy another supplement or miniature or dice for that RPG?)

And even if you did a comparison of actual cost to actual cost, there's still the fundamental flaw that comparing the value of entertainment on a pure "time consumed" basis doesn't actually have much of anything to do with the way people make decisions regarding the entertainment they'll consume. (4 hour movies are not automatically considered better than 2 hour movies.)

 

[Holy Bovine]

Whatever they're doing, it's working. They're a chain of franchised stores that have, over the last five or six years, been popping up all over Australia. They're at about a dozen or so stores now. Their setup is very basic. Cheap chairs and tables and a good 70% of the store devoted to gaming space. They have more space devoted to snacks and drinks than they do RPG or other geek merchandise.

They hold weekly, organised, tournaments for MTG, Yugio and all those other CCG's. D&D Encounters and living games is more of an after-thought.

I have to ask - why aren't you playing there instead? It sounds like they are offering a lot more of what you want than this other place.

 

[TarionzCousin]

A fully-functional Holodeck™ you say? I'm in!