Roughly in order of importance...
Discounting:
As much as I buy, this has to be the major concern. I get a 25% discount from two local stores, but neither of them is a really typical game shop and neither of them really satisfies my selection requirement (see below); the fact that almost all my purchases are made through one of those two stores forces me to put Discounting at the top of my list. Before sitting down and writing this, I would probably have said that Selection was the #1 concern for me. I don't negotiate terms with stores, because I don't want/expect to be given special treatment compared to what their other customers get. I've just been lucky running into these two places.
Before I go on, it may be useful for me to introduce my local game shops:
"Jay's" (my shorthand reference for the Alamo Heights Hobby Heights Flag and Game Shop, run by Jay Moore) is a TINY place, something on the order of 65 sq ft. I barely have room to turn around in there, and the perishingly small amount of stock space is split between model kits, board games, Osprey books, RPGs, gaming magazines, flags and paints.
"Round Table" does most of its business as e-commerce, through Ebay. They don't have a store as much as they have an office with a small adjoining warehouse space in an industrial park. Their usual discount on most new products is 20%, but they kindly offered to match the 25% I get from Jay, once they saw the obscene volume of products I buy.
There are several local comic-shops-that-carry-games, with variable selections and price discounts ranging from 0% to 10% on new items.
Selection, Selection, Selection:
I make infrequent trips to two game shops in Austin (70 miles from my house) just to be able to look through a HUGE array of stuff on the shelves, much of which I would never get to see at the local stores in San Antonio. I rarely buy from the Austin stores (heck, I'm only there two or three times a year), instead using them to check out the things I can't see elsewhere, then ordering from Jay or the Round Table to get the discount.
One of two local comic shops (sadly, NOT the one where I buy my comics) is good about keeping the current d20 and other popular game lines on the shelves, so I do have at least one option for previewing games in town. But their game stock is
maybe one-fifth of the volume of games that the Austin stores stock, so it's not a real replacement.
Jay or Round Table will let me order anything I want, so in that sense selection is broad, but OTOH neither of them is really set up to allow browsing; I can't use them to
decide what I want, only to act on the decision.
Getting new stuff in fast:
Or at least being able to do so on demand. Since he has no room for shelf stock, virtually 100% of what I order from Jay is done by special order -- something I may have seen and browsed at another store, then ordered through Jay in order to get the hefty discount. Five years ago, I was getting a 30% discount from him, plus the ability to place an order on any Thursday and almost certainly receive it the following day; now Jay can only place orders every few weeks and my discount has dropped to 25%...still hard to beat.
Round Table places an order almost every week, but like all retailers, they're at the distributor's mercy, so even they can't guarantee that I'll always receive an in-print item right away.
I often end up not being able to take advantage of their usually rapid service, because I have to wait until some less on-the-ball store gets the game in, which allows me to look at it and make a decision, then place an order at one of the discount stores, at a time when the distributor may have started to run low on his stock.
Remembering My Name
I buy a lot of game stuff. I'm going to be a frequent customer. I don't give the retailer a hard time about things he can't control, like his distributor, or the failure of a publisher to make their announced release dates. I don't ask for special treatment or pricing compared to other customers. But I would like to be treated like someone the retailer knows and isn't unhappy to see. I want to be on a first name basis with the store owner and/or primary employees, and I want them to have an idea of what kinds of things I like to buy so they can help keep me informed of new stuff coming out. The comic-shops-that-sell-games tend to have a high employee turnover, so it's almost like every time I walk in there, it might as well be the first time: the store employees know nothing about me and don't want to.
This should be more important than getting stuff in fast, but I am not the most patient guy around, so let's call this equally important...
Used Items
It's often nice to be able to trade in stuff you wish you hadn't bought, or pick up cheap copies of things you don't think are
quite worth the retail price but might have some use for.
20th Century Technology
Yes, I said 20th, not 21st. The best game shops, online or otherwise, will have an online game inventory, updated weekly, and allow ordering online...or they'll have a weekly mailout telling you what new items came in that week...or both. A second-class game shop will have a web page and an email address, and may accept manually-processed orders by email, but will have no provision for point and click purchases (a la "Add Item to Cart"). A third-class store -- by the way, these "class" ratings apply only to the "20th Century tech" rating, not to the overall worth of the shop -- will have no website, no mailout, and indeed no ability to receive email. In this category, Round Table is first-class, Jay's is third.
Community Support:
I don't generally game at shops, but I appreciate a store that provides space for them as needs it. HOWEVER, I really wish this space would be limited to a back room or side room...some of the local stores have folding tables set up right in front of the game shelves, so that if I go into the store at the wrong time, I'm having to crawl over hordes of MtG-playing kids to peruse the shelves. By all means, give 'em a place to play, but I don't want them underfoot.
Location:
Well, the two stores I buy from are much farther than the stores I don't buy from, so obviously this isn't a huge consideration for me.
