Opportunities
I love games. That’s pretty much what it boils down to. Board games, card games, role playing games. Games of chance, games of skill. From Chess to Diplomacy to cut-for-high-card. From the tournament-level competitive to the cooperative free for all – most any game will do. At the shop when it’s time to get coffee, a regular occurrence, we roll dice to see who pays. In fact Good Games Pty. Ltd. Is really just another excuse for us to play another game – albeit one on a different scale.
It started early on for me. I remember whenever it came around to Christmas time all the department stores would send out their massive catalogues. I would spend hours devouring the description of every board game available. I’d ‘circle’ the ones I wanted, which more or less meant every game in the catalogue was marked. Then I’d anxiously wait for Christmas to roll around and hope I’d get lucky. I always did. Perhaps the most difficult thing was convincing my mum and brother to play the games with me. It got to the stage where they’d agree to play, but in my mind they weren’t playing right, or fast enough. so I usually ended up ‘taking their turn for them’ in some sad little solitaire operation. Honestly, I didn’t even mind.
Growing up then this led to Chess and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Commodore 64 and Atari 2600. Super Mario and Maths and D&D and Lord of the Rings and Star Trek. Risk and Magic and IRC. All quintessential gamer material – and a distinct part of who I am today.
Why we do what we do...
When someone asks what I want to get out of this business – what are our long term goals, etc – truthfully I don’t have an answer. What’s the end game in Civilization? There isn’t one. The growing is the game. The process is what’s fun. We’re not out to make a heap of money. If we can open a game store in Gundagai or Backwaterville USA or Skara Brae, Scotland – wherever - and make 57 cents a month then that’s probably something we’d do. Why? Because it’s fun. Because we can say we have 14 stores instead of 13. Because I was lucky enough to come from a small community with an LGS (local game store) and I know how important that was for me – and if I have the opportunity to push the boundaries of ‘viability’ when it comes to a game store, I’m going to. Because I believe that everyone has some measure of ‘gamer’ inherent in them, and without access to a place where that gamer-ness can flourish, it will stay hidden away. Because Joe gamer spends 50 hours a week at one of our stores and would literally be walking the streets if we weren’t around. Because Joe International Student gamer trades a four year uni experience that would otherwise involve spending most of their time in a 3x3 uni dorm apartment for one that involves the weird and wonderful community of one of our stores, making friends and generally removing some of the barriers to acceptance that they otherwise would not have the opportunity to overcome. Because Joe introverted quiet guy gamer can finally find a social situation where he is not only accepted into, but can flourish in. I know it sounds like a wank but, no jokes, we see it every day. What other retail store owner gets people coming up to them saying “Thank God you’re around, or I’d be back into drugs and pretty messed up by now”. It makes us proud. Fiercely proud. Sure, we’re not a community outreach centre. We are your local game store, and we’re happy to be there.
You can do what we do too – Franchise OpportunitiesThink you’re situation is too small for a Good Games? – check out Good Games Express
Other Opportunities – this is the great wide open
