Game stores
By: Ethan Young
Hi, I’m Ethan Young. Today I’m going to be speaking my mind about a topic that I’m sure all of you have a few things to say about, that’s game stores. I’ll cover a few topics like why they go out of business, how they do well and what kind of people frequent these mysterious places that we all call “The Game Store”.
First of all there are two kinds of people that run Game Stores, A: the people that do it for the money, and only for the money. Now I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing for a store owner to want to make a lot of money because let’s not kid ourselves that’s what their there for is to make money. But the people who do it only for the money usually don’t know sh!t about magic or how to satisfy customers, and most of these owners simply go out of business. Reason being is that usually there is more that one game store in that area and they would rather spend their money in a store where the owner is more likeable, because when a owner is only interested in a gamers money it shows and it really turns people off.
Now on to the next type of owner, now I am lucky enough to be able to go to a game store that is owned by this type of owner. This type of owner usually started out playing magic and by the hands of fate ended up owning his own store, something which by the way is a dream for many gamers. Now this owner knows a lot about the gaming public and knows how to treat people because he knows what it is like to be a player and he knows how to treat them. You know the kind of guy that will jump in Friday night magic if there are only 7 players and they need an 8th. He will let you sell cards in his store as long as you ask him, and he will give you a fair deal on trade in’s and will never in a million years think about ripping off a little kid because the kid doesn’t know anything about how much the cards he has are worth. HONESTY, HONESTY, HONESTY. Always.
Now on to the people, wow I could talk for hours about the people that go to game store’s or the people that play magic in general. If you just a normal person and you walked into a game store not knowing anything about magic or alike, you would freak out. All the words and phrases that magic players invented to describe our game would give the Webster’s people fits. Top Deck, Metagame, or “moving your beat sticks into the red zone and swinging for 10”. Hell my spell check on my computer is giving me fits just from me typing these words, not to mention I’m a really bad speller. Anyway the point that I am trying to make is that, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, yadda, yadda, yadda. We all can come together and gripe about how our opponent top decked a rage just when I had millstoned him down to one card in his library. It’s a wonderful community that is rarely seen anywhere else. Dequan Watson a friend of mine that owns the game store that I go to once said, “game stores are like singles bar’s, their places where you can get together with your friends at the end of the day and have fun, where every one knows your name.” So know I’m at the end of my article and all I have to say is “Don’t you want to go where everyone knows your name”?
If you want to give me an e-mail I would be happy to read it.
And after you’re done reading this go check out Dequan Watson’s articles in the Dragon’s Den he’s a good writer, and one hell of a game store owner.