Hobbyists Shouldn't Open Game Stores

[Scars Unseen]

Sure but once you state the obvious, the need for the article is summed up in the title and no longer much of a springboard to conversation.

From the article - "It is very well known that women control 95% of all the wealth in the world."

Now *there's* a conversation starter!

The best thing about that statement? It can't be proven to be false. It's also well known that playing tabletop roleplaying games puts your immortal soul at risk. It's not true, but it is well known... by morons.

 

[Mark CMG]

The best thing about that statement? It can't be proven to be false. It's also well known that playing tabletop roleplaying games puts your immortal soul at risk. It's not true, but it is well known... by morons.

Keeping in mind that nearly 100% of such statements are true 50% of the time, plus or minus up to half the original total.

 

[Janx]

Keeping in mind that nearly 100% of such statements are true 50% of the time, plus or minus up to half the original total.

Additionally, once a person points out how "95% of women are in control" isn't accurate or always accurate, somebody else will read that as "that person hates women and is a sexist pig."

 

[Deset Gled]

I believe a key part of the issue is directionality. If you decide you love games so much that you want to open a game store, you're going to do poorly. If you have the desire and skills to go into business for yourself and want to work locally in a retail setting, and you decide to put your hobby to work and use it to help you, you have a good chance.

The closest analogy I can think of is dog lovers and veterinarians. Some kids really love dogs. So much so that when you ask them "what do you want to be when you grow up" they say "I want to be a vet so I can help dogs". But once you go to vet school and/or intern with a real vet, you're going to be faced with some uncomfortable truths.

First, you don't get to just be a dog veterinarian. You get to be a vet for whatever animals you can get business treating. It doesn't matter how much you hate cats, if you're a vet you'll eventually have to treat one. Second, being a vet doesn't always mean making dogs healthy; sometimes it means putting them down. If you love dogs so much that you can't kill one, you simply cannot be a good vet. This will become ever more of a problem on the day when you have to make a cat you hate healthy and kill a dog that you love. Third, you'll be forced to deal with the people you hate most: people with dogs who abuse them, or people who ask you to perform unnecessary procedures that you feel are unethical. You will deal with these people on a daily basis. And finally, no matter what job you take, there's going to be monotony. At some point in your career, your love of dogs will lead you to an entire day (maybe a week, maybe more) of doing nothing but removing dog testicles and uteri. And that will not be a fun day.

Gaming stores are exactly the same. If you love gaming so much that you want to start a store, that's great. But that game store is going to attract Twilight nerds. And you're going to have to lower stock on your favorite game books if it doesn't sell, and increase stock in Twilight books if that's what sells. And you're going to interact with edition-warmongers and closed-minded parents. And at some point you're going to spend an entire day behind a register.

Liking what you do is critical to enjoying life, and hobby stores absolutely require a certain about of emotional investment. But they also require at least some degree of emotional detachment. You have to make the hard calls. You have to deal with the BS without allowing it to taint the thing you enjoy.

Hobbies like gaming (or animals, or bendy straws, whatever) can be a good compass. They can point you in a general direction, and can be a good reference to remind yourself where you're heading and why. But they're not a roadmap for life. Try to follow one too closely, and you'll end up more lost than you started.

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=7808]Deset Gled[/MENTION]
I hate to think of the implications of your veterinarian analogy if applied to a doctor who treats humans. Even though all businesses have unpleasant aspects, if you aren't passionate about what you're doing, it isn't going to well for anyone involved. Doctors of all sorts usually learn to see the greater positives their work causes, even if it isn't always a comfortable to do their job.

Of course, gaming, not being a life or death business, has rather less pronounced ups and downs.

 

[Umbran]

Gaming stores are exactly the same.

Except for the lack of life and death decisions, and how you don't need crushing debt to get a degree to open a gaming store, and...

Yes, there are similarities. But the strongest ones aren't what you mentioned at all.

[MENTION=7808]Deset Gled[/MENTION]
I hate to think of the implications of your veterinarian analogy if applied to a doctor who treats humans.

The more important analogy he missed is very, very simple. Say you love animals, so you become a veterinarian, a good one. However, the schooling to become a good doctor covers none of the training of running a business. None of the financial, office management, or marketing skills required to make a clinic successful come with a veterinary degree.

This is where gaming is exactly like beign a veterinaarian. If you love gaming, become a great gamer, that gives you none of the business skills required to make a game store work.

 

[Janx]

The more important analogy he missed is very, very simple. Say you love animals, so you become a veterinarian, a good one. However, the schooling to become a good doctor covers none of the training of running a business. None of the financial, office management, or marketing skills required to make a clinic successful come with a veterinary degree.

While not surprising to me, that is a darn shame that a college degree didn't include training in how to run the business of working in your college degree.

My degree included business classes. Seems to me, anybody in computer science, lawyering or doctoring ought to have training in running a business, as those degrees have a high tendency to put one in charge of their own business.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The more important analogy he missed is very, very simple. Say you love animals, so you become a veterinarian, a good one. However, the schooling to become a good doctor covers none of the training of running a business. None of the financial, office management, or marketing skills required to make a clinic successful come with a veterinary degree.

Well that's largely true. In the human medicine world, dual degree programs (adding an MBA, MPH, etc. to produce a clinician with administrative or business skills) have exploded int he past decade or two for that reason. I don't know how true that is with vets, but I suspect there are similar issues there.

This is where gaming is exactly like beign a veterinaarian. If you love gaming, become a great gamer, that gives you none of the business skills required to make a game store work.

Okay. But how well does someone with only a business background do at running a veterinary practice? The business skill has to come hand in hand with the professional training and the desire to do it, either all in one very skilled person or through collaboration.

Similarly, being skilled in accounting, advertising, administration and the like are not sufficient in and of themselves to run a game store, even though they are important.

 

[Ahnehnois]

My degree included business classes. Seems to me, anybody in computer science, lawyering or doctoring ought to have training in running a business, as those degrees have a high tendency to put one in charge of their own business.

A valid point, but not easy to implement. Training in these professions is already expensive and time-consuming, and they are unlikely to cut existing content in exchange for broadening their training, even if it is for something that's practically useful. If anything, they're having trouble stuffing in the expanding knowledge of their fields. Which leaves us with the choices of adding more training on at additional time and expense, or leaving it out.

 

[Janx]

Similarly, being skilled in accounting, advertising, administration and the like are not sufficient in and of themselves to run a game store, even though they are important.

Conversely, how skilled do you have to be in those fields to run a game shop?

Plenty of successful businesses have been run by people with high school degrees or less.

Accounting: one simply has to keep organized records of money in and money out. Spreadsheets or Quickbooks can help with that. By now everybody graduating high school (or college) should have taken a class in Office (Word/Excel) as a general requirement.

Advertising: Do a little research on the competition, pay somebody to make a website or put up a Facebook Page and maintain it, and print a few adds in the local paper. After that, run a good shop and your customers will bring in most of your business.

Administration: manage your time well, hire good people, delegate tasks.

These skills aren't extreme, but the planet has a higher than expected volume of people who seem to lack them.