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Another poll to help with my college course, planning to run a 4 hour gaming day in Wisbech and need to know what people are willing to pay ^^


LazzurusMan

£1 an hour seems reasonable, in my mind.

My FLGS has 4 hour games sessions (though you can walk in and have a game anytime it's open) every Friday for free, but I would pay a $1-2 fee if they had it and there was nowhere else to go.

I have voted £4 - £4.50 on the basis of a pound an hour, but really it would depend on the state of the table. I have assumed that it has plenty of terrain.

I wouldn't pay for a spartan table full stop. i.e. bring your own terrain.

I would pay more for a really good table, I would suggest the generic Warhammer World tables as a good standard, their city fight and big tables as a great standard worth more than £5.

If it's an event that's costing the organiser's time to set up I would happily pay a fiver, it's no easy feat setting up an event (assuming there are more than a certain amount of players).

My FLGS is free all the time. But honestly I wouldn't mind paying about 2 euro every time I gamed there.

LazzurusMan wrote:Another poll to help with my college course, planning to run a 4 hour gaming day in Wisbech and need to know what people are willing to pay ^^


LazzurusMan

That depends.

What are you playing? An RPG? Warhammer 40k? Computer Lan Party?

Where are you playing? Are you having to rent a space somewhere (dining hall) to play? Are you playing in your home?

Who is coming, and so on? Are there going to be hot chicks?

Is this your gamer buddies?

Have people been mooching off your food/beer?

Are you going to invite strangers to play? Like, post a flier in the food court?

Too many questions to give you an answer.

TheBlueRedPanda wrote:If it's an event that's costing the organiser's time to set up I would happily pay a fiver, it's no easy feat setting up an event (assuming there are more than a certain amount of players).

For clarity, are you saying that you wouldn't pay to play in a shops gaming area on a random day with a mate?

Are you renting space, if so I'd let everyone know and see if they're willing to spit it all evenly and mention that the more people come the cheaper it will be. That said I don't think I'd want to pay more than like $10, and for that much I'd want to play all day not just 4 hours.

But if it's not costing you anything and the college is just letting you use the area for an afternoon, then keep it free

notprop wrote:

TheBlueRedPanda wrote:If it's an event that's costing the organiser's time to set up I would happily pay a fiver, it's no easy feat setting up an event (assuming there are more than a certain amount of players).

For clarity, are you saying that you wouldn't pay to play in a shops gaming area on a random day with a mate?

Playing in a shop's gaming area on a random day with a mate you are using the shop's space & property (terrain) for your benefit & enjoyment; to that end I would think nothing of paying them a few quid. Although that said, when playing in a shop with a mate you are effectively advertising the product that the shop is selling (i.e. people who come into the shop see you & think "wow, if i were to spend lost of money on miniatures, paint, rulebooks etc., I could be enjoying myself & having a laugh like these guys are), so with that in mind it certainly is a two-sided debate.

However at the end of the day if they charge me a couple of quid to use their facilities I would have no issue with that.

With regards to an event organised by someone at their own expense (time-wise, money-wise) then I would happily pay a little bit more to these organisers in order to participate, to compensate them for their work & effort of organising the event - assuming that it's not just your mate in his garage. I'm assuming here that the event in question involves acquiring several large gaming boards, lots of terrain, an adjudicator(s) and a certain amount of time spent organising/promoting the event by the organisers. However, if it is (as previously stated) just your mate in his garage with 1 table & some crappy terrain, then I would probably not pay to play.

Whilst the examples I have used were obviously the two extreme ends of the spectrum, I think they aptly illustrate my standpoint. I hope this is enough clarity for you.

In my experience, I have never payed for using a shop's game space for a random game day. If they asked me to do so, I probably would not play there. As stated by others, I feel that I am helping the store move product because people see others playing and possibly ask questions. I became a 40k player because I was on the fence, visited the shop, and had two guys that were having a random game invite me to jump in by using one of their secondary armies.

If it were an organized tournament or game day of sorts, then I would be ok with it as I would quantify it as an entry fee.

Why pay when you can have a game at home for free?

For walk-in open gaming:
Assuming The following
Clean air conditioned/heated area
Feels safe to play and park at
Has at least one clean restroom
Minimum of 4x6 ft table with minimum 25% terrain

I would be comfortable with a 4 hour table fee of $10 us, Thats $5 per player or about $1.25 an hour. Cheaper than most pool tables and arcade games per hour.
That is a small price to pay to have a neutral place to meet new players that I dont know well enough to invite into my house, cause lets face it alot people in this hobby fit the sterotype of unwashed social misfits that you would not want in your house.

AvatarForm wrote:Why pay when you can have a game at home for free?

Thats my way of going. There was a small period of time where I did some in store gaming which was free. I played a demo Warzone game in a store once. The vast majority of my gaming has always been done at my home or a friends.

However there are some people who want, need, etc a store to game in.

Nothing, but if I did have to pay I suppose I'd just cover that cost by buying models and paints from online stores instead of the local shop.

AvatarForm wrote:Why pay when you can have a game at home for free?

Some advantages might be: Bigger or more tables, more and better scenery, don't have to invite strangers to your house, etc.

That said, I'm not a fan of a FLGS charging for play time. I think it's more profitable long term to not charge, and encourage as many people to come play in the store as possible.

Wow, thanks everyone

I will be setting it up hopefully at a local youth centre that will be charging for use of their....area.....that i believe is air conditioned and there will also be plenty of terrain to use on 4-5 good sized gaming tables.

We will be posting fliers etc around Wisbech to get more people in as it is not only going to be people we know but also people that just ewant to come in and see what it's about.
We will be playing a mixture of games, 40K, WFB, various GW board games (possibly, no confirmation on the board games yet).

So i deffinately think it's worth asking for a small entry fee

Thanks again for your input everyone, and keep them comments coming ^^


LazzurusMan

mikhaila wrote:Some advantages might be: Bigger or more tables, more and better scenery, don't have to invite strangers to your house, etc.

That said, I'm not a fan of a FLGS charging for play time. I think it's more profitable long term to not charge, and encourage as many people to come play in the store as possible.

I take it you don't charge then? How's the new store coming along btw?

On topic - I said £0.00, there are enough costs in the hobby as it is

Store still not open as the place we wanted was WAY too much, but we are currently sorting it all out again to go to the bank, but one of the partners was ill recently and i havn't had any contact with him so, yeah :/

AvatarForm wrote:Why pay when you can have a game at home for free?

This.

If a store ever wanted to charge me money to play on their tables then I'd never shop there. I'd play all my games at home and buy all my models online.

If it's a tournament/event charging me an entry fee then it better be worth the money, lol.

As i have said, we are only charging an entry fee as we will most likely have to pay for use of the building.

I would only pay if the table has decent quality terrain. If its just a bunch of polysterene blocks I would not pay. But if its stunning, I would happily pay up to a tenner for 4 hours.

The terrain will not be stunning, but it's also not just polystyrene blocks, more like cheap trees, GW style houses etc ^^

The club I went to at the weekend is in a church hall.
They had a range of scenery, lots of tables and chairs, and car-parking. IT is not in town, or too close to shops, so it didn't seem as though the use of the hall was in too much demand.

The club charged £2 for their 5-hour use of the hall.

This is for a long-established club, so it may have made more economical sense when they might have had 20-30 people at some point. For the 7 people there, I hope they aren't being charged that much to use it these days.

Sidstyler wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:Why pay when you can have a game at home for free?

This.

If a store ever wanted to charge me money to play on their tables then I'd never shop there. I'd play all my games at home and buy all my models online.

If it's a tournament/event charging me an entry fee then it better be worth the money, lol.

It is only feasible to play at home if:

1. You have friends that play the hobby
2. You have a gaming board
3. You have a decent amount of terrain
4. You have a quiet place that you & some friends can play toy soldiers for a couple of hours uninterrupted

For someone like me, who has none of the above, than paying to play in a store/event is the only real alternative. 3€ isn't a massive sacrifice, given that you've probably spent 100x that amount to get your army ready to play anyway.

I'd pay $5 USD for an event like the one the OP laid out, assuming there weren't already FLGS's in the area with free tablespace.

However, here in Chicago we have a good FLGS with table space, so it's unlikely that I'd come as an attendee. However, I'd probably try and run a game and contribute to the event.

As to the gaming at home vs gaming at a store. I've got a table and terrain and I still game at the FLGS. It's closer to some of our club member's homes and we can have more than 1 game going at the same time.

Making a gaming table and hills to go on it has cost me around £30 in MDF alone. I will have lots spare though, for someone else to use. You've got to love B&Q's pricing, where 32 square-foot of board costs about the same as 8.
I've yet to cut it, shape it, and paint it.

So, once I have something to play on (I've been allowed use of the dining room table), it'll have cost around £50. At £2 per player, and 2 players per game, it'll take a dozen games to pay for itself.

And, no, I'm not charging anyone to play at my house Nice idea though.

I wouldn't. GW don't charge, home gaming doesn't charge. Paying a sub to a club every week is a different kettle of fish, as you are contributing to the venue. But to pay to play? Hell no.

Nothing.

In the past 19years that I have been going to game stores I have seen all but one shut down. probably 20 or so different stores. The one that is still open has a 6x4 and 2 4x4 tables in a back room that the store does not need for dispplaying merchandise. All other gaming store/venues had far more tables, in some instances as many as 9 6x4 plus a hobby build & paint station. These stores often had good people and were friendly, the problem was they had to be much larger in terms of actual store size.

This means the rent was higher for the location, heating and cooling bills were also much higher, and the store had to spend money on tables, chairs, terrain, and maintenance. All these extra costs in the hope that the other half of the store makes more money to offset the costs. THEY ALL FAILED.

All other retail operations ensure that they maximize the profit return on the sq footage they pay for. Expecting a shop to double or triple its size and overhead costs so that it can provide you a free place to play is ridiculous.
Most other gaming establishments charge to use the facilities, be it bowling, billiards, darts, foosball, etc. Sure many of us buy our own supplies to play these games and some of us even buy our own billiard table. Having purchased these things does not entitle us to free use of them at someone else's business.

The shop owners are not driving around in a new porsche eating lobster dinners fed to them by bikini clad slave girls. They are People that are struggling to make it work every month, year after year.

Your options are simple;
Support your local store pay retail prices to the local business person that is helping build a solid gaming community and be prepared to pay a reasonable table fee.

or

Sell your stuff cheap on eBay when the local gaming community dries up and dies, leaving you and TFG from the shop as the last gamers in your home area.