Game stores of all stripes have a problem. A big problem. A tragedy of the commons in a way.
At least the ones that have dedicated play space do.
The question is “What do you do about the people who want to use your space without spending money with your business?” You know the ones, the people who buy their games or cards or supplies on Amazon and hold the belief that your gaming tables are a public good, not something valuable that needs to be paid for.
They don’t necessarily need to buy their hobby online either, it could just as easily be the shop on the other side of the city that undercuts your prices and doesn’t run events themselves, or the local Target or Walmart. The end result is the same.
People taking up your space, time, and resources from what could otherwise be generating revenue for your business.
Culture and perception
In some ways, we have created this problem ourselves. Too many store owners see their business as an act of charity in the service of a nebulously defined “community”.
They regard profit as a base motivation, something to be frowned upon.
That’s bad enough.
Even if that’s not the case in your shop, there is a pretty high chance that you have trained your customers to expect your play space to be freely available. It is after all, outside of scheduled events.
Most customers believe that the tables are free, and the word ‘free’ comes with a lot of baggage these days.
For the past 10 years or so, people have been widely getting their music for free. First on Napster, now on Spotify.
They get their movies for free via bitTorrent and Pirate Bay.
They even get most of their games for free, especially today with the video game industry’s new obsession with the Free to Play model.
Gamers expect free, and when something is free that often means it has no perceived value.
The price of something is intrinsically tied up with how we think about that thing, at least to some extent.
Think about it. If you saw a car for sale for $5000, and then saw another car the same make, model, and general condition for $10,000, you would probably assume the $10,000 car is superior in some way.
Why would it be priced higher if it wasn’t, right? But obviously that’s not necessarily true. They may have just slapped a different price tag on one of the cars by accident.
If you saw a car with the price of $0, you would probably assume it’s junk. Again, may not be true. Price doesn’t always reflect quality. But it does affect our perception of a thing’s quality.
Customers like this believe that your play space is a cost of doing business, something in the service of the community, a cost that you as the owner just have to deal with. They don’t see it as a value-added service you are providing. That it’s supposed to drive sales in the products you carry. That it creates value by being an event space for a community that probably wouldn’t exist without it.
These customers are the same ones that only shop at your business when you have a sale or deep discount on something, that expect your prize payouts to be large and entry fees to be low. They want their gaming products for the lowest possible price, which thanks to Amazon, is almost impossible to achieve.
So what’s a game store owner to do?
Solutions
The first step is realizing that you are providing something of value and should be compensated as such. You wouldn’t go into a cafe and sit at the tables, talking loudly with a large group of your friends, with your backpacks and binders laid out everywhere, without expecting to spend some money there (at least, I hope you wouldn’t!).
So why is it okay for your customers to do that to you?
You could start by educating your customers on what the play space is for (generating business) and what it’s not for (loitering and free loading). You could have conversations with people when they visit your store, put signage up on the tables, talk about it on social media, there are lots of options and frankly, game store owners do a terrible job communicating what their business is all about.
But that’s going to be hard.
A large portion of your customer base is probably already entrenched in gamer culture and have the same expectations around play space.
An alternative would be to either host events all the time and say the tables are off limits unless the person is participating (overload strategy), or just removing the play space altogether (scorched earth).
But my favourite method is the one expounded by Gary Ray, the author of Friendly Local Game Store and interview guest on the Manaverse Podcast.
Gary put in place a policy a few years back that is essentially ‘Pay to Play’. Black Diamond Games has a fantastic dedicated play space, and if a customer wants to make use of it they have to pay $5. The trick here is that the $5 is not just a cover charge, though I like that idea too, it goes towards that person’s store credit.
This has a few major benefits.
- The customer is retaining some value that they can use to buy products or enter events later on.
- The store is generating revenue directly from the play area.
- The perceived value of the play space is no longer “free”.
But those are just some of the ideas.
What do you think about the free rider issue? Is it something store owners should care about? Does the Pay to Play model seem like a stretch for your business? Have you tried any other ways to squeeze more revenue out of your play space that you think could work?
Let us know in the comments section down below.