What is your local game store situation?

[Dykstrav]

I'm near SciFiGenre(www.scifigenre.com), and it's the best game store I've ever been in. It's big, clean, hosts lots of events, and best of all, they've got a warehouse connected to the building for their Internet discount sales, so they always have what I'm looking for. The coolest thing by far is that you can order via the website and get the Internet discount (15-20% off usually) and then swing by the store later in the week to pick your stuff up.

It's an absolutely stellar business model (that's working very well for them, I hear), and I'm going to miss the store quite a lot when I move out of NC in August.

Never even heard of this place and I live in Durham too. If it was a snake it'd have bit me... Definitely going to check it out.

 

[ivocaliban]

While there is a nearby comic/video game store that keeps the core D&D books and a few minatures in stock, I hardly consider it a LGS. No, for me it's about a four hour drive to a really decent store. There are a few that are closer, but they're really not worth the trip considering the poor selection of books they offer.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I live in the northern suburbs of Sydney, about forty-five minutes' drive from the city itself. I haven't had access to what I would consider a Local Gaming Store since about 1995, when the one which used to operate in Hornsby went out of business for the usual reasons - i.e., the guy who ran it was basically using his access to distributors to buy cheaper games for himself, and not focused on running a profitable business.

There are stores north of the city which sell gaming products; for instance, there's a Games Workshop not far from me in Chatswood, another in Hornsby, and a branch of the city gaming store at which I used to work in Warringah on the coast, but only the last sells roleplaying games and only very much as a sideline to their mainstream boardgame and puzzle sales.

So, as far as I am concerned, the only accessible gaming stores worth the name are found in the city. I won't shop at the store at which I used to work, but there are two others from which I'm happy to buy. Their prices can't compete with Amazon (even including shipping to Australia), but I would be willing to pay them anyway (to a point) for the sake of convenience.

Unfortunately, they're very much not convenient. A forty-five minute drive one-way plus parking adds a real premium to the cost of the book, and there's absolutely no attraction for me in the idea of a games store as a meeting place or whatnot. Besides which, I have my old university gaming club for that.

In the next few weeks, I'm moving much closer to the city, so things may change then - but I haven't had a real LGS for over a decade.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

That's not too surprising, since a strong gaming community (which is needed to support multiple games stores) creates more gamers. Areas with no gaming stores aren't going to create many gamers.

Unless they have other means to "create gamers", like high school or university gaming clubs, which is how the Sydney gaming scene is kept alive. There are also LARP organisations - the Camarilla and others - and conventions (on the Australian all-gaming no-dealers model) run by both private organisers and some of the university clubs. MURPS at Macquarie University runs MacquarieCon, for instance.

 

[Glyfair]

Unless they have other means to "create gamers", like high school or university gaming clubs, which is how the Sydney gaming scene is kept alive.

I'll buy the second, but the first still needs the gaming store to get the ball rolling. In the second case, a lot of people who were gamers are congregating in a new area and creating new gamers. Most of them likely had a gaming store where they came from.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm sorry, to which first and second cases were you referring?

 

[Belen]

I've heard of them but never gotten a chance to head out that way. Never gotten around to swinging by Lost Goblin Games either. Hence, while I knew of them, I didn't consider them for purposes of this poll...

Incidentally, the places I was talking about before are Hobby Masters (on the corner of Lynn and Creedmoor in Raleigh) and Cerebral Hobbies. Hobby Masters has always been cool to me and there are some real treasures in their bargain bins. I stopped going to Cerebral Hobbies a few years back because they always pressured me to either buy something or leave (not politely, either) whenever they had CCG things going on there. That, and Hobby Masters is closer to me anyway.

Their store is huge. They sell CCGs, Card games, board games, minis games, and RPGs. They have a massive game room and even held the January NC gameday at their store. They easily have the largest game room in the triangle and the largest I have seen anywhere. They also offer a 20% discount on special/pre-orders. I have never been to the new scifigenre store, although I work in Durham. I heard it is run by the old store manager from Cerebral since they went out of business.

I agree with Cerebral hobbies. The place reeked and they may have had a good selection, but it was hard to want to spend any time at the store. I have not been to Hobbie Masters in 8 years. I went to the grand opening of Lost Goblin. They couple sells swords there, which is cool, but the store is small and in a bad location. They do have a good selection of RPGs though and the owners attend a lot of local cons etc.

 

[Dykstrav]

Their store is huge. They sell CCGs, Card games, board games, minis games, and RPGs. They have a massive game room and even held the January NC gameday at their store. They easily have the largest game room in the triangle and the largest I have seen anywhere. They also offer a 20% discount on special/pre-orders. I have never been to the new scifigenre store, although I work in Durham. I heard it is run by the old store manager from Cerebral since they went out of business.

I agree with Cerebral hobbies. The place reeked and they may have had a good selection, but it was hard to want to spend any time at the store. I have not been to Hobbie Masters in 8 years. I went to the grand opening of Lost Goblin. They couple sells swords there, which is cool, but the store is small and in a bad location. They do have a good selection of RPGs though and the owners attend a lot of local cons etc.

I'll definitely have to check out All Fun & Games then. Don't suppose there are scads of gamers waiting for or running a Greyhawk game?

What really keeps me going back to Hobby Masters are the bargain bins. Especially when the old World of Darkness material went out of print it was a great way to clean house.

 

[two]

There was a very good one in my area, but it got sold and the new owners sell things for *much* more than I can get them for in Melbourne. It is cheaper to go down to Melbourne by train ($20), buy one $50 book (like Expedition to the Demonweb Pits) and come back rather than spend $75 in the LGS.

Given I generally spend about $200 a month on games...

Cheers!

Thus rating your time in transit at about $2/hour?

Why bother wasting time to save a piddly $5?

Unless that's all your time is worth, I suppose.

 

[Glyfair]

I'm sorry, to which first and second cases were you referring?

First case "high school clubs," second case "college clubs."