Back in 2009 Wizards released Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox 360, grabbing the attention of my entire play group and re-sparking our interest in Magic: The Gathering. We've been table top players of the game since. We first started with playing casually, and just throwing together the best decks we could with what we could while being short on land because we just didn't have any.
After we were a little better versed in what was going on, we went out looking for a place to buy packs and play. Through the Wizards site I found a small coin shop that was about 10 minutes from my house. One Saturday afternoon my wife and I went to check it out and stepped into a store no bigger than my kitchen. Behind the counter was an older lady, who greeted us and asked how she could help us. The rest was history, I introduced my group to the shop, whom we lovingly referred to as "The Coin Shop".
The Coin Shop was extremely good to us. We would pay $7 for a tournament entry fee and get a free pack for playing. There was constantly free snacks and drinks provided by the store to their players, even going as far as having pizza at big events. The owners provided deep discounts to their regulars, and was a source for much of our product over the three years we played there.
I used the past tense of play for a reason. As of next week, The Coin Shop will no longer be running events.
There's a few different reasons for this, but it boils down to The Coin Shop not making any money off its players. In fact, it was losing money. Somebody might say that the owners were at fault, for bringing in the pizza and charging so low for entry fees. But the real problem was that people were coming in and not buying anything, not even the entry fee to their events.
They used the Coin Shop as a place to meet up with friends and play a game of EDH, or a board game on occasion. They would come, not participate in the other events, and use the space without providing anything back, and they would do it three feet from where the shop owner sat.
So why is this a big deal? Kids are poor, they want to play a game with their friends, they have a safe friendly place to meet up and do something they love to do. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately not. The fact of the matter is that places like this are businesses, and while I know that many shops love to have people come in and play, these shops have bills to pay. They have to keep their products stocked, they have to keep the lights on and the air conditioning going. They have to have the rent covered and their employees paid. When a group of four people come in and take table space without purchasing anything, they're using the resources of that shop, draining them. It doesn't matter if the space wouldn't have been used if those players weren't there, the point is that it is being used, at a loss to the store.
Supporting your Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) is the responsibility of every single gamer that steps foot into that store. Cheaper prices can be found online in almost every example I have ever experienced, but there's something that the FLGS offers that no online deal can match: a place to come and play, and the community that surrounds it.
It's too late for my FLGS. Sure, there's other places to play, larger, more organized places, but it's not the same community. They're not places that I can take my daughter to, whom the store owner knitted blankets for. They're not offering snacks and drinks on hot days. They're not bringing birthday cakes for their players. Don't let this happen to your FLGS. The next time you're there, buy a small something. A pack. A die. Sleeves. Something, ANYTHING to let them know that you appreciate everything they do and you're going to help make sure that they can keep on doing it. Otherwise before you know it, you'll lose the game and the community that you've grown to love, just like we did.
