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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Illrein" data-source="post: 953844" data-attributes="member: 3937">I feel bad right now.Currently, the gaming business is bad in my area.The FLGS I go to is the oldest in the city. Nearly ten years it has stood across from a university and by a plethora of fast food restaurants. New management and relocation in the year 2001 resulted from the then shop owner being hired by Wizards. It is under WotC policy that it would violate the conditions of his job to own and operate a gaming store (he had something to do with Magic: The Gathering and tourneys and such). I was worried, along with the entire city's gaming community, but, as luck would have it, two of the guy's best friends bought the place: two well-known local role-players (one's liberal DM, one's conservative DM, though). This was good for me and other gamers alike: the current employees were a guy who hated everything (Magic, D&D, customers, everything!) except Battlefield Earth and techno music, and the other stole Magic cards from the store and was eventually fired. The solution was solved. A few months later, the original shop owner was laid off from Wizards, and at the time, it left a bad taste in my mouth about WotC.Since then, this FLGS has been antagonized by Challenge Games. If anyone's familiar with this franchise, it sells a large assortment of Games Workshop stuff and paintball materials, but a minimal supply of D&D (WotC stuff only; no small indie press stuff). They moved out of the local mall, getting rid of an employee everyone there disliked. This employee decided to open his own Challenge Games-clone: Victory Games. Little did he know that doing this greatly crippled the business of all three gaming stores.Now, business is so bad, my FLGS is close to being closed. Their landlord dislikes them, and he tried to shut them down this past weekend by locking their front door so they couldn't conduct business (luckily, one of the new owners was in the store at the time, so he just opened up the shop again). I talked with one of the owners, and he said that his best guess is that only one of the gaming stores will be left within a year. The owners miss the glorious days of Pokemon (when they'd get tens of thousands of dollars a day!), and the only thing being close to that is Yu-Gi-Oh, which has barely made a couple hundred dollars for the fledgling FLGS. Last November, the store had its worst sales in its history, in spite of several promotional offers. The D&D scene is almost dead here. The only gaming groups left in the city that know of the FLGS are down to three, two of which I am in. I live in Lubbock, which is large small town. All of the former gamers have either moved away, got full-time jobs, enrolled in college or some other school, or quit playing all together (some blame the d20 system, some blame Wizards and their high prices, others blame that no one plays any decent RPG anymore).I've decided to buy my books at the FLGS, but I do reconsider often, thinking about my small amount of money I have. The total amount of books I want are about $120 (all 3.5 and Ghostwalk).Personally, I support my FLGS over Wal-Mart or Amazon any day. But then again, I am really short on cash. In the end, I'll probably end up buying the gift set from my FLGS, along with Ghostwalk.Sorry for being long.</blockquote>

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