Family Friendly Game Stores

 

 Yesterday's post does tie into what types of games are appropriate for a store to stock and what qualifies a store as a “family friendly game store” , a significant topic of conversation amongst game stores mid decade when Cards Against Humanity sales boomed   https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/31544/rolling-initiative-rpgs-cah-ygo-philosophy-store. Store owners discussed as to whether to stock Cards Against Humanity and its offshoots or not. On the one hand, we had store owners who saw themselves in the position of gatekeepers and curators, working to select the best games available for their customers and , while they did not dispute the right of those other games to exist, did not want to expand their product mix to include the new “offensive party game” category. On the other hand, other store owners looked at the demand for CAH and its offshoots and decided that given, the number of calls received weekly for the game taking the money made much more sense than continually telling customers they did not stock the game and sending them to Amazon.

It would appear that, given the trend in the offensive party game category, those store owners that decided to add Cards and its ilk to their product mix made the right decision early on.  With Cards available for purchase in Barnes and  Noble and Target alongside Jenga and Harry Potter merchandise and dozens of games that adopted the “judge format” popularized by Cards Against Humanity (and before that by Apples to Apples but the CAH publishers never mention that) in both safe and “Not Safe for Work” formats, such as Exploding Kittens and Unstable Unicorns, it is not surprising that, if there is enough customer demand, a poop or other bodily function themed game will, with little discussion, make it onto store shelves.