What Will Become of the FLGS?

Role-playing games have always had a curious space in distribution channels ranging from hobby stores to bookstores to toy stores. As geek culture and tabletop gaming increases in popularity, distribution channels are morphing in surprising ways to meet gamer demand.

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[h=3]D&D as Toy?[/h]When Dungeons & Dragons was first sold, it was everywhere, including toy stores. Shannon Appelcline speaks to the game's popularity in Designers & Dragons -- The 80s:

...it’d been on an upward trend since TSR published those first thousand boxes of Dungeons & Dragons in January 1974. Whatever the reason, the result was really big. You could find roleplaying games in mainstream stores like Waldenbooks and Toys “R” Us.

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One of the reasons D&D made it into toy stores was thanks to the release of the Basic D&D set. Appelcline clarifies in Designers & Dragons -- The 70s:

...J. Eric Holmes — a doctor and professor of neurology, and also the author of a Pellucidar pastiche called Mahars of Pellucidar (1976) — approached TSR with an offer to write an introductory version of D&D. The original game targeted the college-age crowd, while Holmes wanted to expand the game’s demographics to younger players — and possibly to get it into the mass market as well.

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It worked. For a time, book stores and toy stores were major distributors for D&D, helped in no small part by the launch of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. The collapse of those chains cut off RPGs from wider audiences.
[h=3]Your FLGS to the Rescue[/h]Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS) picked up the slack and were always a viable source for tabletop role-playing games. They were the original distributors of ancillary markets like tabletop wargames and miniature games, so it was a natural progression for FLGS to carry RPGs too. But then the D20 glut happened. SDLear provides a general outline of the bust cycle:

• Phase 1: Store overbuys on fad product (usually D20)
• Phase 2: Store owner finds that they have product they can't move.
• Phase 3: Store owner cuts out "high risk" product only re-ording backstock occasionally (at our local store its D&D and nWOD almost exclusively).
• Phase 4: Store owner does not realize that his stock is offered for 10% off at Barnes & Nobles.
• Phase 5: Gamers turn to http://Amazon.com for selection, find that they can get a better price online.
• Phase 6: Local gaming community crashes without vibrant local retailer.
• Phase 7: FLGS goes out of business.

The glut hit game stores hard.

There was little review, be it professional or fan based, and purchasing agents for stores had a hard time sorting the good from the bad. This was neither sustainable nor terribly good for the core engine. By 2005, the market was collapsing from too many low quality supplements...The wide variety of low quality supplements resulted in many stores having surpluses of lousy supplements; for many, this was a major hit to their profits, and often, had the effect of damaging all but special orders for 3rd party supplements.

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The final nail in the RPG surge took place in the build up to the Great Recession, effectively pushing game stores that were doing poorly out of business. Wizards of the Coast's experiment in distribution with its chain of Game Keeper stores ended in 2004 when all 85 stores closed. It hurt other distribution channels too: KB Toys closed in 2009; Waldenbooks stopped operating in 2011. But there were still alternative channels to purchase tabletop games.
[h=3]Bookstores Take Over[/h]Bookstores took a hit from the recession too. Barnes & Noble was one of the last bookstore chains still operating. How did it survive? By selling things other than books, including toys and board games. This tactic led to Barnes & Noble holding Casual Game Gatherings in March:

Barnes & Noble will host weekly Casual Game Gatherings, offering demos and space for play, in March, distributor Publisher Services Inc. announced. The events will be held on five Thursday evenings at 57 stores, about 9% of the chain’s 640 stores. Demos will be conducted by Barnes & Noble store employees.

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The events were enough of a success that Barnes & Noble is considering expanding them. Tabletop role-playing games may well be on the horizon. What's behind B&N's sudden interest in gaming? Sales, of course:

Barnes & Noble continued its transition to geek central with continued growth in its Toys & Games and Gift businesses in the results from its third fiscal quarter, reported last week. Toys & Games was up 12.5% and Gifts was up 13.8%, CEO Ronald Boire said the conference call. Vinyl and adult coloring books were the only other categories in which Barnes & Noble reported growth.

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Books-a-Million has also jumped into the geeky fray, dedicating entire sections to themes that encompass all forms of gaming. Geek & Sundry teamed up with Books-a-Million for International Tabletop Day:

They are holding events at many of their stores throughout the nation. They will have free play, plus giveaways, discounts, and the coveted ITTD premium and promo kit items available on-site. So go visit them to score these exclusive items! After International TableTop Day, BAM and Geek & Sundry will continue the partnership to display a whole bunch of recommended games all summer long! Many of which have been featured on TableTop.

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Bookstore aren't the only chain distributing tabletop games however.
[h=3]What About FLVGS?[/h]There's another kind of store that is expanding to include all things geeky, the Friendly Local Video Game Store (FLVGS). These stores began distributing primarily video games but have since branched out to all sorts of geeky gadgets, including collectibles, wearables, and toys. This makes it appealing as a possible distribution channel for tabletop games:

There are many reasons people come to a FLGS, such as meeting new people, play games they can’t play at home, learn about new products through demos, friendly competition, etc. Many also go to their FLGS to see if they like a game, and then buy it on Amazon at a discounted price. They will now have a new alternative for Cryptozoic games: Game Stop.

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Some consolidation has happened:

What do you do when your primary physical sales channel is drying up? You sell something that your audience loves, preferably online, and if that doesn’t work you buy someone that does. To that end, GameStop, the beleaguered game sales company, has bought ThinkGeek, a beleaguered geek toy company, for $140 million at $20 a share.

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ThinkGeek's brand is particularly friendly to tabletop gamers and even began experimenting with brick-and-mortar stores of its own. GameStop's growth in the game distribution market has turned it into a viable channel for tabletop games, so much so that Cryptozoic Entertainment decided to sell its games through GameStop. Cryptozoic is known for a wide variety of licensed card and board games, including Adventure Time, Batman, DC Comics, and several television and movie franchise brands -- the most recent being the successfully Kickstarted Ghostbusters board game. ICv2 explained:

Cryptozoic has made a number of distribution changes in recent months, expanding its merch relationship with Diamond and its game relationship with PSI, ending its exclusive hobby distribution relationship with Diamond/Alliance for games, and ending direct consumer sales of trading cards on its website (see "Cryptozoic Expands Merch Relationship with Diamond"). Adding a 6,600-store chain brings an important new channel to Cryptozoic’s distribution options.

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[h=3]FLGS Live![/h]There may still be hope for your friendly local game store. A BoardGameGeek poll of 130 voters indicated that 75% still thought there was a role for them in the marketplace. The top three most important attributes for game stores to be successful, beyond being merely the least expensive (and therefore losing out to online competition like Amazon), were knowledgeable staff (54%), playing tables (34%) and gaming sessions/tournaments (34%). Game stores fared well in 2015:

Over 80% of game retailers are experiencing increased sales in 2015, according to the results of a new survey conducted by ICv2 in the run-up to the holiday season. Asked about the 2015 trend for their business, over 30% said sales were up over 10%, and over 50% said sales were up from 1-10%. Only a little over 10% of game retailers reported flat sales, with single digit percentages down 1-10% and none down over 10%.

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In some ways the collapse of the other distribution channels has made FLGS more important than ever. With tabletop board games surging in popularity, larger chains like Target have begun carrying board games too -- and this occasionally causes some fiction when a popular board game like Pandemic gets released in Target before it reaches hobby stores. Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University, expressed his concern about the early release in his Roll for Initiative column:

BTW, I would be remiss if I failed to mention last week's release of Pandemic 2nd Edition by either Z-Man Games or their mass market distributor to the Target chain a week before the official release date, (according to Alliance Distribution's Website), of February 6th. Given that the game has been out of stock since the holidays, finding it on Target's shelves a week before the hobby gets it is annoying to say the least. I would certainly like to see some repercussions, but given that Target will sell more Pandemic in a week than I will in a year, I sincerely doubt it. However, the game store channel is the primary outlet for the rest of Z-Man's catalog and causing them to sell a hot product at more of a disadvantage than usual is not good for the long term channel relationship.

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With tabletop games surging in popularity, distribution woes will likely be an ongoing problem as publishers navigate between the hobby stores dedicated to gaming as a brand and mass market stores that offer access to a broader customer base.
[h=3]The Future[/h]As geek culture thrives, game stores will need to evolve with them, adjusting to multiple gaming formats that help them survive the boom and bust cycle. Geeks and their children have a lot of buying power, but in the highly competitive world of online stores, distributors are still figuring out the best way to reach them. The friendly local game store of tomorrow may well offer a mix of electronic and tabletop games.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, and communicator. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[delericho]

BUT...there are still people out there who will drive to a store and pay 30% more for a product they could get more cheaply online.

I was somewhat surprised to learn (at Christmas) that online shopping still apparently only accounts for about a third of all shopping - I had expected it to be higher. That said, I think the percentage is still growing (and, also, is higher in some sectors than others).

I also think, but am far from sure, that they were counting products ordered online but then collected from the store as "in-store" purchases. And that's an increasingly big thing, as arranging for someone to be home to receive a parcel is a pain and not everyone can have stuff delivered to work.

I know a lot of people in my local rpg community who still buy their game materials from local game stores. I don't get it, but it's true.

To be honest, there's a lot about the RPG market I don't understand - my understanding is that the majority of gamers actually buy nothing to play and that the next biggest segment buy a Core Rulebook (PHB) and nothing else. (That's several years out of date so it may have changed, but I'd be surprised.) So it's actually a tiny percentage of gamers who are buying all those other books.

If that's the case, I'm amazed that there's even a market at all, since you're then catering to a small percentage of a tiny niche.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

To be honest, there's a lot about the RPG market I don't understand - my understanding is that the majority of gamers actually buy nothing to play and that the next biggest segment buy a Core Rulebook (PHB) and nothing else. (That's several years out of date so it may have changed, but I'd be surprised.) So it's actually a tiny percentage of gamers who are buying all those other books.

If that's the case, I'm amazed that there's even a market at all, since you're then catering to a small percentage of a tiny niche.

My direct experience over the years supports that. I suspect that most rpg materials only sell to a tiny portions of the rpg community in general, even those from the larger, more popular games like Pathfinder and D&D.

I GM and play. When I am a player, I usually still buy a copy of the Core Rules if I think we'll be playing the game more than once, even if I have no interest in GMing that game. Most other players I encounter don't even own the basic rules to any of the games they play, though.

 

[delericho]

Most other players I encounter don't even own the basic rules to any of the games they play, though.

Yeah, I actually got very annoyed with my then-players back in 3.5e days - we played the edition for 6 hours a week, every Saturday, for years, yet only two of us even owned a PHB (myself and the other DM in the group). By that point, and given Amazon's discounts, it worked out at pennies per hour.

Then 4e came out and every person in the group bought a PHB. We played it once.

 

[Umbran]

To be honest, there's a lot about the RPG market I don't understand - my understanding is that the majority of gamers actually buy nothing to play and that the next biggest segment buy a Core Rulebook (PHB) and nothing else. (That's several years out of date so it may have changed, but I'd be surprised.) So it's actually a tiny percentage of gamers who are buying all those other books.

I think that you'll find that fits many folks around here. I just started running an Ashen Stars game. I'm the only one who purchased any materials for it.

 

[3catcircus]

I dunno - my own experience (going back 35 years or so) isn't that it is smelly FLGS play space with unfriendly staff; it isn't CCGs taking over from RPGs in terms of shelf space; it isn't a glut of awful quality product for popular gaming lines sitting on shelves for years.

Based upon my experiences, the single biggest factor in the decline of the FLGS is the inability of most of them to stock up on obscure items that no one thinks of until they see it and then realize they can't live without it.

Example - in the 1980s, while perusing The Armory and Warrick's Custom Hobbies on various weekends (both South Florida game stores that I don't even know if they exist any more), I found The Compleat Adventurer, The Compleat Alchemist, the Compleat Spellcaster as well as The Arcanum. To a teenage boy looking for more depth in his AD&D games, these were amazing products. I had never even heard of Bard Games before I found these products sitting quietly on the store shelves. Fast forward to oh, about 10 years ago or so - quietly sitting on the store shelves at Jester's Playhouse here in South Jersey were these interesting little AoE templates from Steel Sqwire.

Other "finds" for me due to browsing at various FLGS over the years (all across the country from Florida to Hawaii and in between): Dangerous Journeys (ok - the rules were unwieldy, but the premise was intriguing), Dark Conspiracy, DC Heroes (the original version), Delta Force, Twilight:2000, metallic dice (copper and nickel versions), terrain, etc.

Compare that to another local game store (All Things Fun). They had a sad little section of RPG products consisting mostly of old 4e and Pathfinder releases, WFRP, FFGs's Star Wars product, and Dark Heresy. Tons of shelf space devoted to comics, CCGs, geek "toys" like overpriced Mcfarlane figurines. Heck - they had more shelf space devoted to used paperbacks than they did to RPGs. They had friendly staff and quite a bit of gaming space. Yet - when I went in to pick up a copy of Ed Greenwood presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms, they had sold off the whole 2 copies they stocked in less than a week and I didn't get a call until several months later that they had more stock. They've now closed their location closest to me with only the one near McGuire AFB remaining.

Give me a place where I can discover new and interesting products

 

[innerdude]

While I agree with you in principle, @3catcircus, the difficulty lies in the business owner's dilemma --- do I stock things that are likely to sell, or take a risk on something that isn't likely to sell immediately, but may win me a "loyal" customer by catering to their unique tastes?

Your description of your game store sounds very much like the one closest to me (maybe 3-4 miles up the road). And I'm grateful at least that they carry Savage Worlds stuff. But I have to say that I think the super-niche-within-a-niche, extra-long-tail products are what internet retailing is strongest at promoting, not brick-and-mortar. All those little things we "didn't know we needed until we saw it" are what DriveThruRPG, Kickstarter, Amazon Marketplace, eBay, and home-grown digital storefronts are for. Yes, I absolutely love it when I wander in to my FLGS and see some little thing on the shelf that I suddenly recognize as being the perfect product for this "thing I've had on my mind for four or five months," but if I'm a game store owner really trying to run a profitable enterprise, I see myself as carrying less and less that kind of product.

The biggest problem to an FLGS is sales volume. RPGs, though we see them as being a "big deal," don't generate enough revenue throughput. The overall volume of RPG product sales WORLDWIDE is so small that to any major corporation it wouldn't even register as a line item. Wizards of the Coast couldn't even get D&D to hit Hasbro's $50 million annual revenue goal to be considered a "core brand." Paizo's not sharing their revenue numbers with any of us, but based on company size, they're probably in the neighborhood of a $6-$10 million annual revenue enterprise. How much in sales does Fantasy Flight generate in a year, and of that, how much of it can directly be attributed to its RPG lines (WHFRP, Dark Heresy, Star Wars) versus board games and card games? (I'd be willing to bet that Star Wars Imperial Assault generates 2-3 times as much revenue BY ITSELF as Fantasy Flight's entire RPG arm.)

Once you get past those three, it's a litany of other publishers of varying size, and we have no idea how well they're doing. How much in sales does Pinnacle Entertainment Games, makers of Savage Worlds, generate in a year? Green Ronin? Kobold Press? Goodman Games? Troll Lord? Kenzer? Steve Jackson Games?

 

[tuxedoraptor]

Our FLGS is strange, well the older one is at least. Its a computer repair store in the back and a FLGS in the front, the owner runs the game part out of passion and is a great guy, the computer part makes money though. I actually felt slightly bad for them as they still have kaijudo cards from 2014 before WotC killed it off and I dropped 40$ on them to help clear stock. I miss kaijudo and I keep it going at my school, the fustrating thing is that very few people/sellers are willing to part with their cards, the ones that are willing generally offer very few I am interested in. Off topic ramble over, back on topic now. Our store charges 5$ a player, but the GM plays for free, snacks and drinks are a dollar each and the staff know everyone by name pretty much, most of it is warhammer players but even then, they have pokemon, FoW and I belive weekly D&D stuff, plus a custom MtG format

 

[Relic Dice]

FLGS have many problems, but a good one you can spot within a few moments after entering. The two things you absolutely NEED to have are 1: Knowledgable and friendly staff, who probably do something more then just "manage" events. 2: Events. FLGS are great because they are a place to play, both during event time and not. Being active in the community (for me, it's board games and RPG games) is what sells me.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Last year I worked at a used book store for a few months as a temp. Since people sold them their used books, they had a lot of older, out-of-print rpgs at prices that were at least comparable to what you would find online. They sold a lot of stuff from that section, but even then there were certain things that moved very slowly, if at all. Interestingly enough, the old D&D stuff was completely stagnant, even though they had a relatively good selection going back into the 80s. The section served as a loss leader of sorts - they "lost" shelf space by keeping stock that moved slowly, but it insured that area gamers would keep coming in to see the new items as they trickled in. They would inevitably end up buying something from outside that section whether they bought gaming material or not, since most rpg people read a decent amount of fiction, too.

Shelf space in most FLGSs is even tighter, and most of them can't maintain a diversity of stock (things beyond games) that pretty much guarantees some sort of sale every couple of times a customer visits. According to the game owners I have talked to (online and off), MTG cards make up something like 70-80% of their sales. Many of them don't even like MTG and would prefer not to carry it, but it's the only way they can stay solvent.

Space for gamers to play (and for events) eats up a huge amount of floorspace that could be used for extra stock. For many, though, renting that space to a couple of groups will generate more money in a 6 hour period than they would make using it for stock over the course of several days or a week. They have to pay rent for the building according to square footage, though, so balancing that with what they can get from using it as playspace is a delicate balance. I'm really surprised that more of them don't use rolling displays, to be honest.

In the end, even if FLGSs cut their product prices to the very bare minimum they could to simply break even each month, they still couldn't get them as low as what their customers could find those products for online. That's the biggest issue.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Ain't that the truth.

I've never understood how these places expect to make any real money offering players a metal folding chair, a plastic folding table, fluorescent lights, and the smell of armpit. I wouldn't want to use that kind of space for free, much less pay for it. If the space were attractive and comfortable (I've seen some really nice gaming tables that weren't overpriced) then I'd be eager to try the place out, even for a $5 cover and a 2 drink minimum. Run a pizza oven in the back, and you'd make even more money off of me, and I'd tip the server well.

Like I said, people who have been into D&D since the 1980s can mostly afford to pay for a good experience, and have a low tolerance for abysmal play spaces.

I agree with the problems you mention but I can't see myself or my players paying a cover charge to go sit at someone else's table.

For RPG's specifically I have seen very few games played in stores over the past 35+ years. My own experience is that RPG's are typically played in someone's home as a kid, dorm room in college, and back to someone's home once they are out on their own. The only consistent activity I have seen in stores is demo games and organized play. I would venture that there is a very small set of RPG'ers looking to play in a public space, whether that's driven by comfort, interference from other passers-by, or the numerous distractions in a game store. What's the upside of playing in a store if you have any other option? I do pay for a good experience - my house!

For CCG's, boardgames, and miniatures - sure. A store is great as it's a short-term, typically simpler type of engagement where it's perfectly normal to play a total stranger and have a good time. An RPG usually involves a standing group and an ongoing campaign and is a very different animal.

Also, these other types of games tend to heavily rely on events which are usually centered on a local level around retailers. There's a big reason to play at the store for those games to keep up on the latest and greatest and have a regular group of opponents. It's a very different model than RPG's. An FLGS could carry zero RPG's and still be a good FLGS for those games.

In a big enough college town I can maybe see the "gaming cafe" or "geek cafe" being a viable business but in most places I just don't think there's enough of a crowd to make it work.