What’s this? I’m not sure. I’m flirting with non- fiction. Don’t know what it will turn out into. I think that I’m slowly getting ready to write a novel.
Sometimes, before my Friday night games, I saunter on to my Favorite Local Gaming Store in the north end of Montreal and I sit down with my laptop and soak in all the nerd energy that surrounds this place.
Like many stores in these hard economic time, it is cluttered, dirty and in dire need of paint. It’s filled with obsolete games and spiffy Wizards of the Coast books and boxes on spiffier WotC racks.
Oh, and it contains way too many Games Workshop boxes.
The front half of the store is made up of gaming tables and mismatched chairs in various state of repair. The store’s manager and his employee are usually sitting there, painting Warhammer miniatures
When I’m there, I usually sit at one such table, my laptop open, connected to the store’s Wifi by the good graces of the Manager who enjoys having me around, kinda like a regular veteran sprinkling the endless nerd debates with nuggets of unsolicited wisdom.
Oddly enough, people usually listen to them. It must be my graying temples, I’m easily 10 years older than all other regulars (which brings the question, what the hell are you doing there Phil?).
Yet there’s something morbidly fascinating about the people here. I have many theories about the gamer mind and observing them (and myself) gives me more material to chew on.
The Staff
The manager, Didier is in his late 20s. He used to be the store’s only employee until he got ‘promoted’ when the last manager got fed up and left without saying goodbye. The poor guy is rapidly learning the harsh lessons that all fun vanishes when you get behind the counter of a game store.
Still, he forges on, trying to keep afloat a business whose existence is sadly threatened by web stores and online secondary markets like Ebay and Cardshark.
His only other employee, Marc, was most likely hired because he was willing to work at minimum wage and, more importantly, is the most socially adept of the store’s regulars. Marc’s an arts major and has the dubious honor of hosting the week’s Friday Night Magic the Gathering tournament where people use 100$ decks to win 2$ cards every week.
At least both guys are friendly and laid back. Having been a client of this store since it opened in the middle of the Pokemon craze a few years back, I’ve seen my shares of surly and sometimes downright hostile store managers.
I suspect that the gamers that form the fauna of this store is the same we find all over. Here’s a few of these odd birds.
The Off-Shift gamer
He’s overweight, he’s loud and he works dispatch for some sort of placement agency. He has weird hours so he spends most of his day in game stores, following the different leagues. Here, he plays Blood Bowl, but I’ve seen him playing Magic drafts and D&D minis at other places.
He spends all his money in the latest Collectible Game (right now its World of Warcraft minis) and he always fails to recoup his money, although he says he will someday. He’s a belligerent nerd, always raising his voice when someone takes too long to play or argues rules with him. Oh and he always, always complains. About his job, about his (lack of a) life and, of course, all games!
I tried to be friendly with him, and I actually got him into D&D miniatures a few years ago. He’s an okay guy, but his complete lack of social graces and inability to listen to another voice than his own has made him fade into the background noise of the store.
The One-track mind gamer
One Friday where I was off from work, I came into the store when it opened at 11h00 AM. I stayed there the whole afternoon, planning my evening D&D game and playing some pickup Magic the Gathering. All this time, there was this guy sitting besides the manager, talking about one thing and one thing only: House Rules about the store’s current Warhammer Fantasy campaign.
It was downright scary to see how much energy the guy poured into this. Had I written down all the proposed rules he wanted to implement, the store would have had a 50 page booklet of campaign rules by the time I left.
When I read about prophets in fantasy novels, I think of scribes sitting around such a guy, scribbling all the gibberish spewed by the illuminated soul whose mind is focused like a laser for hours on end.
Yeah, I’m sometimes like that too. Sigh.
History Majors:
I don’t know if it’s a Québec thing or if it’s because they have evening courses, but my gaming store is overflowing with History Majors. When they aren’t part of the staff, they sit around arguing about Hitler’s strategies or how Communism failed because it wasn’t properly implemented.
Always ready to launch into a diatribe about provincial roman governors or the factors leading to the Second World war, these gamers are often penniless and hang around the store instead of working on end of semester assignments. Most of them are great orators and some of the debates, while always overly simplistic to my jaded cynical mid-thirties ears, are great time wasters.
Pity only one out of 5 of them will ever actually land a job teaching history. I used to love history, and I probably would have majored in it if a High School director hadn’t told me to drop my History and Biology electives to pick Chemistry and Physics instead.
Life’s funny like that sometimes.
But you know what really strikes me about all these people lounging the hours away in a Montreal game store on a Friday afternoon?
Most of them aren’t actually gaming while being there!
They argue, they eat, they talk… but unless you take out a pack of Magic, they’ll sit there, more or less expecting someone to start something for them to join.
Is your gamestore like that?
If that nonfiction novel you’re thinking of is anything like this, I’d buy it.
Wyatts last blog post..Obelos Session 1: Buffoons Are Dumb Sacks of HP
Yep mine is exactly like that… 😛
@Wyatt: That’s high praises coming from you Wyatt! Thanks!
@Yan: If memory serves me well, you haven’t stepped in that store since we played that Magic Tournament 6 years ago 🙂
The History majors are ones you seem to only find at *certain* gaming stores. You run into them at Fandom II in Ottawa (usually standing around the napoleonics section, not in the RPG area) also, but less often at say the Comic Book Shoppe or the Silver Snail.
What FLGS do you use in Montreal? I usually shop locally, but occasionally go into Montreal for business and drop by the Valet.
Dyson Logoss last blog post..Random Gossip Generator
Hey! I did step in, if only to step out as fast as I could…
@Dyson: The Valet de coeur is by far the oldest and most successful hobby shop in Montréal. I personally do not hang in the local hobby shop, the usual crowd freaks me out. There is some exception but it is usually to kill time with Phil before going somewhere else.
@Dyson: I won’t name the place as I may or may not write about it more. Suffice it to say that it’s in the North end of Montreal near one of the bridges. As for history majors, I feel that with the end of the wargame era, a lot of them seem to be lost in those stores.
I think its time for a new generation of tabletop wargames. Maybe some evolution of Memoir 44 on a grader scale. I should give Tide of Iron a look.
Chatty —
You have a way with words. That was a very entertaining post, and although I don’t hang out at my local game store at all anymore, I used to years ago at another place that’s now closed…I know all those people you described.
The great game store of Tucson, AZ — “Things for Thinkers” — sadly closed for several years now, once spawned a rental game space in another office suite in the same complex. You paid $2 or $3 or something like that to use a room, and were expected to buy all your (junk) food from them, too. They had a huge calendar of games, and it, for the years it was open, became the town squarae of geekdom here — it was great. I ran my best game ever there, and played in my best, too, all with people I met through the place…one of them ended up being my best man.
Of the many interesting personalities that frequented the place, I’ll share one: Roger. I don’t know Roger’s last name, so his identity is safe — plus, this was 16 years ago. Anyway, Roger was the most pale person I have ever met in my life, and staying pale like that in Arizona, really, is quite a feat. He ran a Traveller: The New Era game I joined, and would get very animated whenever we’d get into combat scenes…once even getting up and dancing around the room doing what he said were authentic Shaolin monk moves…since he, of course, had been trained by them. Eh? Come again?
I love, and at the same time pity, those gamers for whom the wall between reality and fantasy has long since crumbled. You can only find folks like that at game stores.
I never got into the FLGS thing. We have one in town to be sure. And I go there. But it is pure shopping for the most part. I may shoot the breeze with the owner for about 5 minutes, discuss D&D and comics, and then I purchase something (lately minis) and roll out.
Most of my social-nerding comes from my gaming group, who I constantly chat D&D with.
The Last Rogues last blog post..Nature and Demeanor / Role-play Points
Sadly I have no FLGS. The closest one is many miles away. There are a few worth driving too, but I only make the trip a few times a year. Mostly I go to mine their bargain bins for used gaming books. I’ve never been one to play games at a store. There is a local comic shop that has some gaming space though, of the CCG variety primarily. The geek funk is strong in that place however. 🙂 The owners are cool and I stop in once a month or so just to bask in that vibe. I miss having a gaming store to hang out in and argue nerd topics.
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@Jeremy: Thanks for the kind words. I already have other ideas to write about in this little series. I think that game store gamers are a different breed than the ones in gaming groups. I think there’s a higher chance of finding socially challenged geeks hanging out in stores than in gaming groups.
In fact I think one of the reason Wizards of the Coast is having trouble with their Delve Nights is because many such nights are prowled by game store regulars.
@The Last Rogue: I too do most of my gaming geeking out with my group. Oddly enough, I spend a lot of my time at the game store talking about other things than gaming… in fact, my next post will probably be about the time I found out that everyone in the store were taking anti-depressant drugs!
@Tetsubo: There’s something about hanging around the cash register and geekout about games that calls very strongly to me. I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I recall being a 13 year old nerd and discussing what was the best Mecha RPG with the owner of Le Valet d’Coeur, Montreal’s most established gaming store. I recall him telling me that Mekton was the best Mazinger Z simulator (Called Goldorak in French, go figure)
Anthropology of the gamer! Love it! Maybe I’ll put my anthropology degree to write up an “ethnography” of the gamer!
I honestly don’t wish to game in a store. I feel more comfortable in someone’s house. And if I hadn’t totaled my car, I’d probably spend more time in my FLGS’s (my University is four hours away from my home, so I have a FLGS for when I’m in school and one for when I’m not). From what I’ve seen, the patrons are relatively normal.
I highly doubt that though, so more investigation is needed.
I also find myself most self-conscious about my weight in game stores, moreso even than in sporting goods stores. Motivation! Maybe I can finally huff off my butt and lose some weight this summer.
Chatty – Now that sounds like an interesting story. What does that say about gamers? Or, perhaps more precisely, what does that say about the Quebecois?
😉
The Last Rogues last blog post..Quick Hits
@Karizma: Lol… you remind me when I read Margaret Mead’s biography (for children). You are right, I’m basically doing anthropology in a game store! I highly doubt I’ll ever put my post-graduate degree in applied microbiology to use in such a place 🙂
As for feeling self conscious in a game store, I wouldn’t worry too much since game store gamers are usually very self centered. At least that’s how the ones in my store is, but then again, as The Last Rogue says, maybe its a Quebec thing, what with most of us being genetically French mixed with Native American… 🙂
@The Last Rogue: I think that the explosion of using pharmacotherapy to treat many teenaged issues is starting to show. I don’t know if the gamer demographic is more at risk, I’ll think about this some more and I’ll write about it.
I’m also more and more convinced that there’s a higher % of Autism (or sub-clinical autism) in gamers than in the average population.
@ Chatty – My fiancee is a pharmacist. We have endless discussions regarding the overdosing, over-prescribing, and the over-drugging of America. I am sure much of the same applies to Canada.
It is an interesting topic, to be sure. It would be interesting to see how that applies to ‘the gamer.’ Then again, just describing ‘the gamer’ would be an interesting anthropological study.
Good post, food for thought.
The Last Rogues last blog post..Quick Hits
I’ve worked in a gamestore for two years. I was hired to help the guy responsible of the roleplay and card game section. He got fed up by the management and left. I took his place, a friend took my place and a year latter it was me who left… I think it’s the way things work in the gaming world.
It was great most of the time. One of the things that I loved the most was the obligation we had to know our stuff. We had the right to bring books from the store at home to read them. Of course most of the time I would end up buy them because I was discovering cool things I could use in my games. I think our manager knew it. He was getting back some of the money he was paying us!
Most of the regulars I had back then fit in one of those description. I don’t remember any History major kind ever being there though.
I miss the time when I would work all day get off at night and continue working but with my friends… by work I mean talking, arguing, thinking and sometimes playing with RPGs of all kinds…
@Chatty –
“I highly doubt I’ll ever put my post-graduate degree in applied microbiology to use in such a place”
You don’t play enough zombie survival games, then.
@The Last Rogue –
“We have endless discussions regarding the overdosing, over-prescribing, and the over-drugging of America. I am sure much of the same applies to Canada.”
Less so, actually. Partially because prescription drugs aren’t allowed to advertise to “Talk to your Doctor about Zanax!” on TV.
Grahams last blog post..32 hours of D&D gaming party!
We have everybody but the history major, with a few additions:
* The guy with poor hygiene who spends hours looking through Magic commons, leaving apronounced odor in the area that lingers for at least an hour, and trying to haggle the best price for $1.50 U.S. worth of cards;
* The guy who tries to leverage the owner for a better price for hard cover books because (1) they’re cheaper online and (2) because the guy thinks he’s doing the store a favor by buying something instead of stealing it off the Internet;
* The guy who has something to say about everything, until a female walks into the store. Then he buries his nose in a book until she leaves. And…
* All the owner’s friends, who spend hours socializing.
.. I see Yan still makes small mistakes with his pronouns.
The crowd doesn’t freaks him out; he freaks the crowd out.
I think Chatty forgot one; “the Spender”.
The Spender is the game store owner’s wet dream. He comes in regularly and buys something. Anything. He doesn’t really care what. He usually realises a month down the track that he has 3 copies of Races of Stone for some reason (true story – not me 🙂 ).
@PM: I would not know, but usually to freaks somebody out you have to say or do something. Usually, I go in to buy something and go out. 😛
I didn’t forget about the spender Colmar because I AM the spender in that shop… or at least I used to.
But you are right I should focus my attention on walk in clients too… including the clueless parent looking for Yugi-Chaoti-kemon cards!