I'm not talking about the everyday things, store behaviors we hear about on the regular and have become depressingly accustomed to, such as the payroll fraud, the filthy facilities, buying from minors, mistreatment of women and others, and so on. At this point it's so characteristic of the comic and hobby game industry that when you tell someone a store is doing it, they look at you like you just told them that used-car dealers tend to engage in pressure sales. Sky blue, water wet. And this reality is not gaining us many allies.
Unfortunately, there are times when some comic or game store takes the next step, and does something truly deplorable. These, unfortunately, are the incidents that create deeper impressions in the minds of those involved or affected, and contribute an outsized portion to the general public's overall disdain for stores such as mine.
The following are things actual comic or hobby game stores have done in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eighteen. These actually happened. I won't call out the stores by name, purely on the off chance that I've mischaracterized something, and not because I think any of these deserve charitable anonymity.
Here is the, by definition incomplete, list.
-> A comic store closed forever on zero days' notice and took all accrued customer store credit with it. This is not a unique scenario, but it was one that has occurred less often with the rise of Magic-heavy clubhouse closures, since they tend to continue liquidating online afterward and many attempt to make good with store credit holders. Not this time, and apparently with an unusually large escrow figure involved.
-> A game store took official Magic: the Gathering product art and added giant porn-style "chest augmentation" to the main female character image for their event advertising on Facebook. Because if there's one message Wizards of the Coast wants to be sending, it's that they are the same as the companies that make all the anime lolicon TCGs.
-> A game store closed but didn't tell Wizards of the Coast, so as to preserve the temporary ability to get Magic booster boxes at wholesale to sell out of the trunk of their car, which they did, at a nickel over cost. After a few weeks of seeing dwindling player engagement -- possibly, and I know I'm reaching here, because they no longer had a real store -- they finally threw in the towel, posted a ferocious Take That message on Facebook blaming their former customers for their store's failure, and sold off their remaining inventory at a nearby Grand Prix to one of the visiting dealers.
-> An antique store side-dealing in video games in the southeast decided, what the hell, we're going to sell the Chinese counterfeit NES Classic Mini, and posted to their Facebook wall a photo with a huge stack of them for sale at $40 apiece.
-> A game store cut to top 8 of its Store Championship when only five players were left in the event. (Not a clue how they got the event software to perform this; it was reported by players who lost in the quarterfinals.) The bracket of four players played a quarterfinal and a semifinal, while the 5th seed was given a bye all the way to the final. Oh, and the fifth seed was an employee of the store. And he won.
-> The new owner of a fully diversified and established game store exited the video game category not by holding a liquidation sale, but by trading in the entire store's inventory to GameStop.
-> A game store attempting to crowdfund its opening budget fell woefully short and launched a diatribe at its community promising them they would never "have a store that cares about them" if they were unwilling to pony up cash in advance for an unproven dreamer.
-> Craigslist spam appeared repeatedly offering "OG XBOX Softmoded w/30,000+ GAMES" (sic) -- normally the work of garage dealers and hobbyists who apparently don't fear a C&D, this time it was discovered to be the work of an area video game store that has built itself a shady reputation.
-> Multiple stores of each kind closed for the day at various times due to light rain, light snow, didn't want to miss the big game, or because the owner and sole employee wasn't feeling up to it, and/or a plethora of other excuses that aren't really malice on anyone's part, but amount to simple unprofessionalism and beg for the worst possible customer reaction when one approaches the door and sees only an engaged lock and a dark room beyond.
-> A game store asked for community help in starting the construction buildout of their new facility, heedless apparently of the scorching level of liability at risk and the strong likelihood that their insurance, if any, would not cover such a volunteer deployment. (For that matter, the tax code is also relevant to this situation.) When only one volunteer appeared, the store posted a video to Facebook sneering and shaming the community for not turning out in greater numbers.
-> A game store known as a loose fence for stolen collections offered to sell a prominent judge's stolen collection back to him, at "cost." Fortunately, in a happy ending, the store was persuaded (once an attorney got involved) to return the collection to its rightful owner, rather than seeing the matter get referred to the state Attorney General. This same store, during the publicity morass that followed, decided to double down by engaging in misogynistic social media activity. They are still open and doing business and area grinders defend them passionately.
-> The CEO of a small game store chain took to social media to call out and harass an executive with a publisher that had cut off that chain's access to tier-exclusive upcoming products and promotions. The CEO in question, possibly drunk or high or both at the time, tagged into the meandering trainwreck of a post virtually anyone he could think of that knew that publisher or who he himself had verbally sparred with in the past, including at least one tasteless tag of a deceased store owner who was well regarded and truly missed by his peers and community. The CEO's diatribe degenerated from empty but obnoxious blandishments to outright threats, before mysteriously disappearing from Facebook. Fortunately, there exist these things called "screenshots."
-> A comic store employed Ken Whitman. On purpose.
The reality is this. The comic and hobby game industry is niche of niche -- about $2 billion, half of it comics and media, as of figures published in 2017. The video game industry is somewhat larger at $100 billion, give or take cab fare, but the independent stores' share of that scene is utterly minuscule, a fraction of a fragment. There is frighteningly little money to be made in this space because everyone wants in (presumably to work with fun things all day, de-emphasis on "work") and that has given us a landscape in which landlords don't take us seriously, the media doesn't take us seriously, publishers don't take us seriously, distributors hedge from every angle with us, and ultimately the customers don't take us seriously. My family has been mostly supportive, but many of my peers have found that their own family and friends think of their business and profession as a joke. And every time a retailer in this industry does something like the incidents recounted in the list above, that reinforces the belief that all those parties are right. They disregard us and for all they know, they should disregard us.
Some of us are trying to do this better. We don't have the deepest pockets to do it with, and much of what we're doing amounts to "run our store, but exhibit integrity wherever possible," but it's something at least. Will we ascend to the "established" cred that the nicer local or regional microchains in other industries have achieved, in time to avoid being crushed by one mass-market entity or another who decides to lean on us with a chip stack we could never match? If we don't, will anyone but us care?
We're broadcasting now and the clock is running. This show will be however good we can make it.
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