Would you pay to play?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Of course, if you vend snacks, you probably need to have bathroom facilities, and you absolutely must provide some kind of wet/dry/hand-cleaning supplies. People DEFINITELY won't buy a $25 gamebook sticky from soda spills, orange with Cheetoes dust or with greasy fingerprints on it.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Why not?

Say a bunch of you go out to the movies. Depending on your location, you're probably paying something like $8 each for 90 minutes or 2 hours of entertainment. Let us be gracious, and say it is $4 each per hour.

$5 each for even an entire slot (which is probably at least three hours, if not the entire evening) doesn't compare favorably with that?

At the movies, you are paying for a non-interrupted viewing of the movies - yeah, there's always one idiot yelling, or a baby crying, but that's generally not the theater's fault. I'd only pay to play D&D if I knew for sure it wouldn't get interrupted because the dm had to take a phone call, or he'd drawn wife aggro or what have you. At our games, there are a lot of non gaming distractions, and that's fine, we get together to hang out and unwind. Then again, I'm not paying for it either. Once I start paying, I expect a cleaner gaming experience. I'm paying to game, not to hear about the softball game last night. I'd pay for a great gaming experience, I wouldn't pay just to hang out with my friends. I can do that for free.

 

[Alan Shutko]

But you can try to sell all you want; they still don't have to buy. There have been posters on this very board who have stated that they don't- and will never again- buy from brick & mortar stores because purchasing online is cheaper.

Quite true. I'm generally one of those people. However, it's much more likely a LGS is going to get me to buy something from them if I enter the building than if I don't. As it is, since I don't do any gaming in a store at all, I never visit one. They could go out of business and I wouldn't even notice.

For me, a LGS has to offer something to offset the savings I could get elsewhere. Loyalty is intangible and you can't bet on it, but it's better than making things strictly about money, where they can't compete.

It reminds me of the study about day cares and late fees. When daycare places started adding late fees, the number of parents picking their kids up late increased. Without a late fee, parents had an ethical obligation to be on time. With a late fee, it became strictly an economic transaction, and lateness became OK because you could buy it.

(Daycare late fees no deterrent, study finds - Parentcentral.ca)

If this applies as well to game stores, I could see people buying product at the store because of a perceived obligation to keep the free gaming going, but once charges come in folks feel free to go and buy their products elsewhere.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Its not strictly about money, but simply put, if the store isn't at least making breakeven in some way-functional advertising, more sales, direct rents, etc.- on the space being used for gaming, they have to change something or there will be a big hole in their revenues.

In another thread that covered this topic, I pointed out that some stores offer "free" space and subsidize this by having (slightly) higher prices on everything else in the store. Several responded they would stop shopping at a place they noticed doing this.

The fact remains- a store can only support so much space that does not contribute meaningfully to its bottom line being healthy. Game space in a retail store HAS to be paid for, the only question is by whom- the gamers using it, the other customers, or does it come out of profit?