The $1200 Players Handbook

Every once in awhile (OK, more than once in awhile) I have to look at pricing on Amazon and eBay for various games and wonder “What are they thinking?”  Happened to be poking around on Amazon gauging prices of some out of print books and found a copy of the D&D Player’s Handbook listed for $1,249.50 plus $3.99 shipping. I would happily sell anyone who wants them all they want at that price and will throw in shipping AND insurance AND a set of dice for free.  I can only assume it comes from a seller that does not actually set their prices but has some form of dynamic pricing engaged and something caused a hiccup in it. I noticed something similar with WizKids X-Men  Mutant Revolution boardgame . A collection we received last year had a copy in it and while pricing out the collection, we found someone had it listed on Amazon at over $1000. Needless to say, we priced ours substantially less.

Target Asking for Markdowns

According to this, Target is asking its suppliers for help in moving slow moving merchandise. Target reported slower than expected sales this spring and is asking for suppliers to give another 3-5% in promotional markdowns to help the store move these products.

Unfortunately, stores like ours cannot ask for such markdowns as our sales are a fraction of the sales that Target does with its suppliers. Even a company like WOTC, of which we sell a large amount of Magic and D&D, would ignore our request for an additional discount, as our sales are small, compared to how much the company sells through Target, or Wal-mart or Amazon.

Changes to D&D OP

Some thoughts in this week's column on ICV2 about the changes coming to the D&D Organized Play program.  Here's a hint, I don't think they bode well for the longevity of D&D OP.

Collectable RPG Pricing

Pricing of out of print RPGs can be all over the place, especially for those produced by smaller companies or that are long out of print. Case in point, the first edition of the Chill RPG from Pacesetter Games. Four sellers have the book by itself and the boxed set listed on Amazon for between $7000 to $9000. I have a copy in stock I will happily sell your for $100. That's a 98% discount. What a deal!

An even better example of the vagaries in pricing on RPG books is the Batman Soutcebook for Mayfair Games DC Heroes RPG, published back in 1987.  One set of sellers has the book priced from $4 to $10 for a used copy, while another group has the same book in conditions ranging from "Good" to "Like New" at prices ranging from $38 to $66. And here's the 1st edition of the Paranoia RPG, with prices ranging from $60 to $550. Unlike RPGS from TSR, which have a fairly consistent price range, prices on other RPGs appear to get set at whatever the sell things they can get.

Make Game Events a Sub-Category on FaceBook

A big problem for game stores with social media has always been classification. Sites like Facebook, Google+ and Yelp do not have a category for “Tabletop Game Store” or most of the time even “Game Store”. The closest we generally get is “Video Game Store” or “Hobby Store” or “Book Store”. It’s enough to make a store feel unwanted and unloved. Give the amount of searching that is done by people looking for a game store on places like Google, Yelp and Facebook, not having such a category makes it that much harder for potential customers to find us.

 The “ comic book store” classification does help those stores that carry both games and comic books, but quite a large number of game stores specialize in that area to the exclusion of the other and the ones that don’t care comics would do themselves no favors by listing themselves in that category, only to have to put off customers who come in looking for comics. Same problem with using the “video game store” category. It is fair to say that there are a lot more video game stores than there are tabletop game stores (though probably far fewer as more video gaming moves to mobile platforms) but listing a store in the video game category would just disappoint customers coming in looking for video games.

Game stores have a similar problem when it comes to categorizing store events. Facebook offers a very powerful tool for stores to promote in-store events with its “Events” section on a store’s business page. However, none of the categories in the event section work particularly well for a Pathfinder Society session, a Yu Gi Oh Sneak Peek, a Pokemon league, a Warmachine tournament or even a scheduled Friday Night Magic. Stores could probably fit in the categories of “Entertainment” or “Interest”, but once there, the choices for Entertainment are Comedy, Concert, Dance Performance, Nightlife or Theater, while under Interest they are Conference and Meetup, none of will really applies well to the tournaments that most stores create as events in Facebook.

When he learned a few weeks ago that Facebook planned to revise how the website handled the Event category in its software, Pat Fuge of Gnome Games decided now would be a good time to try to get  “Tabletop Games” added as a choice in the options offered so he sent out the following email, reprinted in part below:

We all want people to play games together.  Telling people about the Tabletop Game Events that are being played is an important part of bringing people together at the table; and Facebook is one of the best social media tools to do this.  But currently there is no option for us to do this.  We can have an event that is a festival, a dance competition or a sports event - but nothing resembles a simple tabletop game event.

I am asking for your help today. Like and share www.facebook.com/TabletopisanEvent and if you so desire, put a pic of you playing your favorite game on the page as well. Use the hashtag ‪#‎tabletopisanevent and tag Facebook too to help increase the exposure.

As Fuge pointed out in another section of his email, doing this will not cure cancer, fix the economy or anything like that. If it Facebook makes this change though, it will make it a little easier for people to find other people with which to play games and that is certainly worth a smidgen of effort.

Privateer Press: The Undercity

Privateer Press just announced its new boardgame The Undercity. Unfortunately, I can't get too excited about it for two main reasons:

1) Track Record.  Unfortunately, their other non-miniature games (Infernal Contraption, High Command, Grind) have proven less than successful. They are quite playable games but have just not caught the boardgaming markets interest. I think they would better spend the money on a national campaign for WarMachine.

2. Price.  $95 is quite a bit for a boardgame. The only three companies that have had success with games at this pricepoint are Games Workshop, with several sets out priced in excess of $100, Fantasy Flight, again with several boardgames near or over $100, and Cool Mini or Not,which uses Kickstarter to regulatory produce and sell Zombicide which also bumps the $100 mark. Cool Mini or Not and Games Workshop both have specific markets they target, while FFG has developed a reputation for high priced, high quality games.

I hope Privateer does well with the game, as I have heard it plays well and you get a lot in it but I, as you might have noticed, have doubts.

Looney Labs Expands Distribution

It won't mean anything to the purchaser but Looney Labs, maker of Fluxx, Just Desserts, Chrononauts and other fine card games, announced this week they are adding another distributor:  GTS Distribution. Up to now, if a store wanted to carry any of the Fluxx games, it had to buy direct from Looney Labs or buy from one of the two distributors that LL allowed to carry its games:  Alliance Distribution or ACD. This meant, in order to stock LL products, a store had to have an account with one of those two distributors. Now, at least, stores have three places to get LL games from.

Why does this matter? Mainly to stores because this gives them more options from which to get LL products. If Alliance or ACD is out of Regular Show Fluxx, the store can check if GTS has it in stock, meaning, hopefully, fewer out of stocks.

Store Philosphy and Product Mix

Every store is different. No store has the same product mix, target market or philosophy of business so what works in one store will not work in another.

Take Cards Against Humanity. It is probably the most in-demand game in our industry over the past 3 years. Some stores with which I am familiar view the game as vile and refuse to carry it, saying that to do so would go against their moral beliefs and counter the store’s positioning as “family friendly”.  Other stores say it is the most requested game in their store and that new customers, including families, come into the store daily looking for Cards Against Humanity and only for Cards Against Humanity. These stores have decided satisfying customer demand takes precedence. Each one believes they are right.

Take Yu Gi Oh! Several stores with which I have spoken dropped in store play for Yu Gi Oh due to problems with theft amongst players as well as well as cleaning up after them.  Sales of Yu Gi Oh there weren’t worth the hassle of dealing with in-store play. On the other hand, other stores either are willing to put up with the difficulty of dealing with in-store play or have lowered the “ban-hammer” on players to get them to straighten up (Of course, there are many stores that have no problems with Yu Gi Oh players at all, but as a group, they are the ones stores consistently report having difficulty with).

Take Role Playing Games. Save for the big two, Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, RPGs sell very slowly at most stores. The ones that do well with them put quite a bit of work into the category, making sure the staff is familiar with them, stocking a wide selection, running regular demoes and encouraging in store play. It pays off for them. Other stores, however, look at the amount of work it takes to generate strong sales in the line and prefer to focus their efforts on only product categories. Once again, philosophy of the store influencing product mix and, through that, the target market.

In a mass market or chain store there is one overriding store philosophy directing  the decision(s) to add an item or items to the product mix. If you go into an Fatburger or Barnes & Noble, you will find the same offerings, no matter what store. Due to the diffusion of the retail side of the game industry, not so here.

TableTop Day: The Poster

International TableTop Day is this Saturday and we have events scheduled for all day. But I don't wanna talk about that. Instead, I want to talk about the poster that Geek & Sundry created for the event and that just arrived in our kit (that arrived today). You can see the poster I am referring to here.

Back from looking at it? You probably didn't see anything wrong with it but then most of the people reading this probably don't run stores. The problem is at the bottom where it tells people to look for an "event near you" and gives the TableTop Day url. The problem:  if you got the poster, that means you got the kit, which means you plan to run TableTop Day events. So why do I want to put up a poster telling people to go to the website to look for an event when we are hosting events in the very place where you saw the poster.

You see, retailers, once we have you in the store, want you there as long as possible. Many stores don't have clocks so you cannot tell how long you have been there and we certainly don't want a sign up telling you to elsewhere for an event that we will host at the store.

Oh, well, a paper cutter fixed the problem really quick.

What We Sell

I had thought to comment on why WOTC’s Organized Play program surpasses, currently, any other company’s OP program or why, for the umpteenth time, an established publisher launched a Kickstarter for their next release. However, those can wait.  

The store stet up at Concave, a relaxacon ( as science fiction convention with little to no programming, designed mainly to allow people in the SF fan community to visit with each other and drink large quantities of alcohol), looking out the window at rain falling on the snow covered Kentucky landscape and musing about what I see as I gaze across the convention space.

People playing games.

People playing Magic, Chaos in the Old World, Cards Against Humanity (multiple groups of this), Wizard, Munchkin, Dungeons and Dragons, Talisman (with most of the expansions, it takes two 6’ tables to set everything up), Netrunner, Pathfinder,  Cthulhu Fluxx, Ogre. There’s a group organizing a Vampire:   The Maquarade LARP (Live Action Role-Playing for those who don’t speak acronym) down the hall for later on tonight.

What I don’t see:  people hunched over, staring at screens, interacting with people through the Interwebs rather than across the table.

What I do see:  people talking with each other, laughing, cursing, waving their arms around as they show the size of the monster they just killed.

What I don’t see:  people sitting around shut out because no-one wants to include them.

What I do see: players inviting others to join them for a game, experienced players offering to teach new players how to play, people enthusiastically pulling the shrink wrap off the copy of Machi Koro they just bought, ready to separate the pieces and dive into the rules.

What I don’t see:  people playing a game because they “have to”.

What I do see:  people of multiple ages, races and sexes, stilling together around a table because they want to.

What I don’t see:  any form of directed or Organized Play taking place, no one recording points or running any tournament software.

What I do see:  People having fun.

That is the wonderful thing about working in the gaming industry. I get to sell things people use to have fun. I get to sell a good time. No one ever plays a game because they “have to”. Playing games is something we do because we “want to”.

People in the game industry, especially the retail end, complain a lot about  out of stocks and industry exclusives and reductions in discount and price increases and out of stocks…wait, I said that one already. We are actually luckier than the manufacturers and distributors because we get to deal with the people who actually buy the games.  Yes, it is a pain in various parts of the anatomy when a customer asks us to pull two-dozen cards out of a binder than changes their mind and only buys 4 of them (and if you do this, know that the person behind the counter is annoyed with you) but we also get to see the kid dig out just enough change for a pack of Pokemon and excitedly open it.

I get to sell fun and, you know, that’s a pretty good job to have.

25 Years and 4 Big Trends

Castle Perilous Books and Games opened 25 years ago this month, actually on St. Valentine’s Day. Why we chose to open on February 14, I have no idea all these years later, except maybe since it was St. Valentine’s Day, we wouldn’t see much traffic, giving us a chance to shake out the bugs without bothering customers the first day. We operated out of a 2^nd floor suite with no elevator and about 500 square feet of retail space. What can I say, rent was cheap and we were right across the street from SIUC and we did well. Today, the store occupies 6000 square feet 8 blocks from campus with about 10,000 cars passing us per day and our sales flabbergast me compared to what I considered a great day back then. Oh how times have changed and this seems a good time to look back at 4 trends that shape the game industry today (there are certainly more but four is a nice round number):

1)      The shift of RPGs from print to PDF—As have mentioned in previous posts, we started off dealing RPGs and miniatures. While there were many companies dealing in RPGs (see Shannon Applecline’s Designers and Dragons for a overview), TSR and AD&D dominated the field and with no crowdfunding, no desktop publishing and no PDFs, a company had to have a lot of faith in their product to launch one. In most game stores, the RPG section dominated, unless their focus was historics, either miniatures or boardgames. Today, due to the aforementioned crowdfunding, desktop publishing and PDFs, the overwhelming majority of RPGS reside on computers or the Internet, with most stores only stocking Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder with maybe a few local favorites.

2)      The shift of historics from stores to mailorder—When we opened, every game store worth its salt had an Osprey book spinner rack and likely also a selection of historic miniatures, as well as some shelf space devoted to Avalon Hill, Victory Games and SPI wargames. Today, Osprey racks are scarce as hen’s teeth, historic boardgames are limited to Memoir ’44 and Axis and Allies and, should you find historic miniatures in a store, they likely consist of Flames of War, Sails of War and Wings of War. Most historic boardgames and miniatures sell at wargaming conventions or over the Internet.

3)      The rise of the trading card game—Ah yes, Magic the Gathering and all its offspring. When the Alpha set of Magic released, my distributor could not explain the concept to me so we bought 1 deck and 2 boosters, which sat on the shelf until players came back raving about this new game they found at GenCon. The industry adopted the TCG and never looked back, with, I would estimate, 95% of all game stores stocking at least some Magic, if no other TCG.

4)      The (concurrent) rise of the boardgame—As I noted earlier, most game stores, when we started, focused on RPGS. If they carried boardgames, they stocked historic ones. No long, the last years have seen the rise of the Eurogame, led by Mayfair Games and Settlers of Catan (now just Catan). While playing boardgames in the US still does not have the cachet of those produced in Europe, witness the number of boardgames imported from Europe each year, sales and importance of them to most game stores supplanted the RPG in the product mix of most existing stores and fit as a major component of the business plan of most new game stores (that don’t focus on TCGs).

More changes coming. Yeah, I would bet so. What they are, not a clue.

Trading Card Games: The Perfect Gift

Speaking of the desire of the gift-giver to give the gift-givee something they don’t already have, this is when Yu Gi Oh, Pokemon, HeroClix, Magic, Cardfight Vanguard and any other collectable game is the perfect gift for those people who do not want to give someone  a duplicate product.  Fairly regularly, I have a customer come in, usually a parent or friend looking for a birthday or other present who doesn’t really know what to get them. That is when I put on my salesman’s hat and do a little prospecting to find out why they came in here to look for the present rather than one of those stores out at the mall.  

 Generally, if they come in here, they may have little to no interest in the game we sell but they have heard from the person they want to buy for that they can get the game here and what they want, much like the Christmas buyer, is to get them something they do not already have.  Collectable or trading games are made for this very situation but they generally require a bit of explanation, since the typical gift buying customer is not familiar with the concept of a collectable game. This is something that is very valuable for game stores to remember.

The gift buying visitor to a store is most familiar with “traditional” board game.  They know chess, checkers, Monopoly, Clue, Life, Sorry, etc.  Thanks to mention in the mass media as a favorite game among millennials, they likely know Cards Against Humanity and Settlers of Catan as well. However, the concept of a game that does not have fixed components is alien to anyone who has played any  traditional boardgame. 

This is when you have to explain the concept of the trading card (or miniature) game, how it differs from traditional games and why it makes a great gift since booster packs by their very nature differ one from another. The hardest thing, I have found, is to get the customer to understand that, although the packs all differ, every pack of Pokemon or Magic or DiceMasters works with every other pack. Once I make that clear, I can easily sell 5-10 packs with the assurance that getting so many packs will delight the recipient.  I always have to remember that the collectable concept, so familiar to game stores is still unfamiliar to hundreds of thousands of people.