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 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I assume you don't play in your FLGS? and you don't wish to help support a local business?

Its never that simple. Past experiences for my part have shown I wouldn't piss on many FLGS if they were on fire. Generally speaking coming from NY, they weren't worth it, given that I use to support them and....that support never seem to come back to me or other players.

Just because your a FLGS or a local business doesn't make you worthy of support. You actually have to provide goods or services I find useful to get my money. Most FLGS do not. Which is why in NY my friends and I started our own club that paid for its own space and then eventually moved again to new space.

However, having just said all that, my opinion is changing again, given my move to MD. At least one store I visited looks like its worth support. Getting support means giving it as well.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
FLGs in the US fit a role that, along with being a retail store, are meant to have functions to further support those that purchase from them not simply as a marketing tool but as support for the hobby.

No they don't. Stores, at least if they're run as a proper business instead of a way to subsidize the owner's gaming hobbies, don't exist to support the hobby, they exist to sell stuff. Support for the hobby only exists because store owners know that gaming is a social activity and if people don't have a place to play their game they're not going to buy those games. Providing some 6x4 tables and cheap terrain is just the bare minimum required to sell miniatures at all, not a service done purely out of love for the community.

And nothing you said changes the morality of the decision to not support the store.

You're right, because this isn't a moral question. If the store can't sell things then it's their fault for failing to find a way to get customers to buy stuff. We, the customers, aren't obligated to give them charity donations to make up for their failed business.

It does amuse me how you seem to live in a totally binary, black and white world Peregrine.

Why can't a store owner provide tables as both a means of encouraging sales and because of a desire to support the community? Why can't a store both be focused on sales and a focus for their customers to meet and play games? Let's face it, if you're going to open a business purely to make money, regardless of how competent your ability or how professional your approach, this ain't the sort of business you'd want to be running, and some love for the hobby and desire to build a community is going to be a factor in even the most successful business owner's plans if they decide to go down this route.

I say again, there is a section of society as a whole which has no compunction about taking advantage of what they perceive as a "free" service, and it is the retailer's own responsibility to protect themselves from that, but the majority are decent people who appreciate that any business they feel benefits them in some way needs their financial support in return in order to stick around.

Are they obligated to for some reason? No. They choose to do it because it is the right thing to do on several levels, for both parties, which makes it a moral decision.

I've always been under the impression that supporting the community is encouraging sales. I'm not a retail genius or anything, but it has always seemed to me that the most successful shops put a lot of effort into engaging with customers, supporting the local gaming community, and generally giving customers 101 reasons to be in the store, whether or not they're buying anything on any given day.

 azreal13 wrote:
I say again, there is a section of society as a whole which has no compunction about taking advantage of what they perceive as a "free" service, ...

If the store doesn't charge a fee or require a purchase to use their tables, then that is a free service. 'Perception' doesn't enter into it. A service offered without charge is the very definition of a free service.

...but the majority are decent people who appreciate that any business they feel benefits them in some way needs their financial support in return in order to stick around.

So in order to be a 'decent' person, I have to prop up a business owner who hasn't managed to work out how to run his business profitably? Nice.

I'm a little curious as to how far this extends. Should we also be offering to pay extra over the ticket price in order to better make sure that the business is turning a profit? Maybe we should all just set up a direct transfer so a quarter of our pay just transfers dfirectly to the store each month, so we're supporting them even if they don't have anything that we want to buy right now?



A free service, freely offered, is a free service. By all means support the store by buying from them if you see that as a reasonable exchange for the service rendered... but getting judgemental about people who don't share your opinion of the importance of that specific business in their lives seems a little off, to be honest.

For what it's worth, I have absolutely no objection to the idea of a store charging a reasonable fee for the use of its tables, in the same way as a pool hall does. If I come across a store that I want to play at, they would get zero argument from me about supporting that store by paying to play.

But if they're going to choose to offer those tables for use at no charge, I'm not going to go out of my way to hand them over cash. I'll buy something if the price is right and there's something that I want, but if they're not asking for money, I'm not going to just give them money, any more than I'm going to insist that the corner store should be charging me more for a bottle of coke.

At this point we've moved into a purely theoretical discussion, because if you think in the real world that any profit making organisation of any flavour offers anything genuinely for "free" then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.

If a "free" service, and I will continue to use quotation marks in this context, is not benefitting the business to a greater degree than it is costing them, assuming a reasonable level of competence, the the service will not remain, or remain "free," for very long.

 azreal13 wrote:
At this point we've moved into a purely theoretical discussion, because if you think in the real world that any profit making organisation of any flavour offers anything genuinely for "free" then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.

If a "free" service, and I will continue to use quotation marks in this context, is not benefitting the business to a greater degree than it is costing them, assuming a reasonable level of competence, the the service will not remain, or remain "free," for very long.

Of course it won't. But that doesn't make someone a bad person for taking advantage of that free service while it is offered.


Again, I'm not expecting businesses to give me something for nothing. I have no problem with paying to game. But if a business chooses to offer a service for free, why the hell should I give them money for that service?

You're not obligated to, but failing to support the business offering you that service in a direct, financial way will ultimately result in the closure of the business and the loss of that service, so it is essentially a case of self preservation.

 azreal13 wrote:
You're not obligated to, but failing to support the business offering you that service in a direct, financial way will ultimately result in the closure of the business and the loss of that service, so it is essentially a case of self preservation.

Which makes it a personal issue as to whether or not the service being offered is important enough to make you want to support the store... not a moral issue.

 azreal13 wrote:
You're not obligated to, but failing to support the business offering you that service in a direct, financial way will ultimately result in the closure of the business and the loss of that service, so it is essentially a case of self preservation.

At the end of the day, businesses come and go regardless of whether I "support" them by wasting money there. The FLGS I've supported most my life still closed despite my supporting them (they never even had tables until the last year or so).

It's up to the manager to make their business viable, not the individual customer. If they happen to have customers who buy a lot regardless and play games on the tables so the tables can be "free", cool.

Personally I think the idea of placing the responsibility of supporting a wargaming store on the customer is a bit silly, even if I do purchase exclusively from my FLGS, sometimes I'll go months or sometimes even years without purchasing anything. It's nothing like the Starbucks analogy where you go in, purchase a coffee and then sit down at the tables they provide to drink it. I'm not going to take it upon myself to try and figure out how much the gaming tables are worth and whether that is sufficient to keep the store afloat. It's up to the manager to decide if having a free table is advertising enough to pay for itself or if they need to charge for it or if they can't afford it at all.

It's particularly problematic given that ongoing purchasing isn't really a requirement of playing most wargames.

Unlike Magic, where drafts and release events can keep people coming back and buying more and more stuff, a veteran with a reasonable army finished off, barring widescale changes in a new codex, really never needs to buy anything in order to keep playing.

But the logic that the player shoudl 'support' the store puts this player in the same category as the guy who buys all of his models online and then plays in the store. Neither of them have any need to buy anything more than snacks.

So should the veteran be going and buying models he doesn't need, just to support the store having free table space?

Or, if the store is really interested in fostering the local community, should the onus be on the store to do so in a way that is sustainable?

 insaniak wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
At this point we've moved into a purely theoretical discussion, because if you think in the real world that any profit making organisation of any flavour offers anything genuinely for "free" then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.

If a "free" service, and I will continue to use quotation marks in this context, is not benefitting the business to a greater degree than it is costing them, assuming a reasonable level of competence, the the service will not remain, or remain "free," for very long.

Of course it won't. But that doesn't make someone a bad person for taking advantage of that free service while it is offered.


Again, I'm not expecting businesses to give me something for nothing. I have no problem with paying to game. But if a business chooses to offer a service for free, why the hell should I give them money for that service?

I think what people are saying is that it does make you a "bad" person if you expect the service to remain or remain free, but nevertheless take advantage of it without giving something to support it, like listening to NPR every day but never pledging.

But at the end of the day, it is in the interest of a game store to encourage the playing of games, and lots of games require multiple players. If you're playing but never paying and it allow me to play and I am paying, mission accomplished, right?

weeble1000 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
At this point we've moved into a purely theoretical discussion, because if you think in the real world that any profit making organisation of any flavour offers anything genuinely for "free" then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.

If a "free" service, and I will continue to use quotation marks in this context, is not benefitting the business to a greater degree than it is costing them, assuming a reasonable level of competence, the the service will not remain, or remain "free," for very long.

Of course it won't. But that doesn't make someone a bad person for taking advantage of that free service while it is offered.


Again, I'm not expecting businesses to give me something for nothing. I have no problem with paying to game. But if a business chooses to offer a service for free, why the hell should I give them money for that service?

I think what people are saying is that it does make you a "bad" person if you expect the service to remain or remain free, but nevertheless take advantage of it without giving something to support it, like listening to NPR every day but never pledging.

But at the end of the day, it is in the interest of a game store to encourage the playing of games, and lots of games require multiple players. If you're playing but never paying and it allow me to play and I am paying, mission accomplished, right?

Yeah, I think at the end of the day having people playing is better than not having people playing regardless, as you want to encourage the player base. If a store told people they aren't allowed to play without buying product, I think it'd harm their overall business even if the people weren't buying anything, which is why I think a better business plan would be to require a membership or have organised events that require an entry fee.

Why do fast food places open next to fast food places: it is better to have people eating than not eating, right? That's a bit different as it is a colocation issue, but similar. You want customers in proximity even if they are not buying from you specifically. If they are there, there's a highe chance they'll buy something, or so I have heard. It's also a social activity that depends greatly on a community.

How many of us would be buying if weren't playing on a regular basis? I bet I can correlate my spending habits, hobby-wise, to how frequently I'm playing.