The Wanna Be #11 "Time For a Bit of Reality, Part II"

The Wanna Be #12 “Time For a Bit of Reality, Part II” By Jack Spencer, Jr.

[Last time I did one of these bits of realities, a few people got upset. I don’t mean the subject matter so much as some thought the subject was completely off-topic for a game site.

In any case, I hope they’ll find this offering a bit more on-topic]

Do you like getting mail? I love it. You never know what you’ll get. Let’s see what I got today.

Ames flyer. Ooh! Towel racks are on sale!

Bill. Bill. Bill.

Pre-approved credit card. Not a chance. I’m in enough debt, thank you very much.

Bill. Junk mail.

Oh, hey! What’s this? A small, nondescript postcard. Let’s read it

Giant Game and Hobby Store Liquidation Sale Having discontinued operations at their current location we will be offering the entire contents of a large Game and Hobby store specializing in rare and out of print games. More than 30,000 items. Ten years of accumulation. Many bargains. All products moved for convenience of the sale.

West Henrietta Road in Rochester, New York. This can mean only one thing. Crazy Egor’s is shutting down.

Many of you don’t know about Crazy Egor’s, but some of you may. They’re a game store (naturally.) Probably one of the oldest and largest in central New York. The first time I heard of them was in the pages Dragon magazine, of all places. I was living in New York City, and my eye was attracted by the ad for TWERPS Super Dudes. Mostly because the ad listed stores that carried TWERPS, and one of them was a store in Rochester, NY. I’m originally from the Rochester area, so any mention of it draws my eye.

Fast-forward about five years and I get an apartment with my brother, and not too far away is Crazy Egor’s.

Egor’s was a great store. I never had a real hobby shop in my neighborhood growing up, even though I had lived in six different places all over New York State. Egor’s was exactly what I expected a game store to be. A real hole in the wall. Egad! Games in great big stack on the floor. Just walking around was a challenge.

The reason why is that Egor’s specialized in rare and out of print games. I got my first copy of HeroQuest there. I managed to pick up Villains & Vigilantes, Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, and of course TWERPS in that cramped little store.

Somewhere around 1995, Egor expanded. He got space in the old patio furniture store in the same strip mall he was already in and opened his “big store.” Now that was a cool store. The size of a small discount store, but nothing but games, wall to wall.

Glorious, but it couldn’t last. A few short years later, he closed his big store due to health reasons the exact nature of which I have never learned. But he cleared out a great deal of his inventory, and set up shop down the road a piece in yet another small store, just like the good old days.

Now he’s closing down for good.

To be honest I don’t know what to feel.

It’s not like had been going there since I was nine. To be frank, “Egor” could sometimes be a prick. I’ve had one or two sour dealings with him, mostly about unloading some crap I wasn’t using, so who am I to judge?

This is just a recent personal example of that tragedy every gamer dreads: the closing of your favorite game store. Sometimes your only game store.

But what does this actually mean? From what I know about Egor, he’s probably just retiring. Hell, he might be dead and his widow is just unloading everything. There is an auction house running the auction the last day of the sale.

Damn. He may have been trying to screw me out of a couple dollars on a TSR product I picked up in Kay Bee Toys for a buck, but I didn’t want him to die.

I really don’t know, though. He did have health problems. They may have finally caught up with him.

With most game stores, like any small business, they tend to go under fairly easily. This is mostly due to the fact that a lot of game stores are owned and operated by gamers. It’s the dream job this side of owning Wizards of the Coast. All you have to do is play games all day. It would be a dream job, except that it doesn’t always work.

It’s tough to make a buck off of gaming these days. Probably a lot of game storeowners are, like most people, just bad businessmen. And even a good businessman can make a fatal mistake that’ll eventually drives him out of business.

Come to think of it, I don’t know exactly how long Egor’s was in business, but it’s amazing he kept it going so long.

However, are game stores really all that necessary? These days you can order games on-line. Wizards has their products in major bookstore chains. What do you need a game store for?

Sure, you can’t check out the books on-line and maybe you want something besides Wizards products, but how necessary is all that? Is it just nostalgia from those people who grew up with a game store? I know a game store in Syracuse has a lot of space with tables set up for games. But a lot of game stores are like Egor’s was. A hole-in-the-wall cramped little shop.

In fact a lot of game stores are just comic book stores with a section of games. I remember what one area storeowner said when a friend wanted to help promote gaming in the store. “If the gamers don’t buy comic books, screw ‘em.”

Nice.

I have no idea how many game store operators are in this category. But if they don’t care about their customers, screw ‘em.

I don’t know. My current store is probably like a dream store to most people. It’s huge, lots of space with tables and chairs set up all over for people to game at. I’m not sure how free they are with letting people game there, but I have someone on the inside. I suppose if I wanted to run Spawn of Fashon, I could do it if wanted to (and could find players for it.) They have been trying to stock up on items, including out-of-print stuff, but haven’t got even a fraction of the variety of Egor’s. Mostly all they carry is Magic and Warhammer. Everything else is in limited supply. In a fit of fan-boyance, I decided to give 7th Sea a look. They barely had anything and still haven’t restocked. Maybe that particular game just isn’t popular in the area. But even Dungeons & Dragons is stocked in small supply.

I can’t say I blame them necessarily. If it sells, stock it. If not, don’t. But there really isn’t anything in there I want to buy.

That seems to be the rub. Spend enough time on an RPG forum and you’ll find at least one guy asking for opinions on the best RPG for this or that style of gaming. I believe this shows jadedness in the game buying public.

Jaded. Is that the word I’m looking for?

In the old days, you find a system you lined, for whatever reason, and change it around to fit your needs. These days, they seem to not want to bother with that. The want to find a system that works without any modification.

Actually it’s worse that that. They’re looking for the best system.

“What’s the best system for comic book super heroes?”
“What’s the best system for medieval fantasy?”
“What’s the best system for modern-day horror from the vampire’s point-of-view?”

The problem with this is there is no best system. Not overall (the mythical BEST RPG that does everything for everybody,) and not in particular genres. What I believe is a perfect system for a genre may not be the same system for you , or your GM, or your mother.

It’s a very subjective opinion, this best system stuff.

This means an extremely wide product range for the game storeowner to stock, and even so, the items may not move. Providing a place for gamers to come together, meet and play a couple games is a noble goal, but that doesn’t make money. You need to sell stuff. I can only imagine how much capitol it takes to keep a store like that in operation.

Small wonder a lot of stores are smaller operations with barely enough room to walk around. You go in, buy your game and take it home to play it.

In the end, it’s hard for me to be truly sad to see another store go under. First of all, I already have more gaming material than I’ll ever use. I probably have a good $2,000 tied up in role-playing games, and my collection is small compared to some people. And of that $2,000, maybe $100 worth of it sees much use. How do I account for the other $1,900? Impulse buys? Game store sales?

Somehow I doubt enthusiasts in other hobbys spend that kind of money on stuff they just don’t use.

I don’t know. There is something rotten at the core here. Something about find this perfect system, the need many seem to have for their favorite game to stay in print as if the game going out of print means they can’t play it anymore. At the heart of this is what keeps game stores afloat, or drives them under.

Oh well. I think I’ll check Egor’s web site just to see what happened.

...click... click...click...

Crazy Egor's Benifit Liquidation sale & Auction.
ATTENTION ATTENTION
PASS THE WORD
Crazy Egor's is holding a benefit liquidation sale to help us over our recent store disaster. In conjunction with Reynolds auction house, we are sacrificing the entire contents of one of our sheds (roughly 30,000 items) in a five day sale with a final auciton of everything left.

Hmm...

Store disaster? Sound like structural damage, maybe a water pipe.

In any case, it sounds like they’re just scaring up some cash to cover some recent losses and moving expenses.

Only one of their sheds. It makes you wonder how many they have.

Uh,... Forget everything I just said.