As I write this over the weekend, Desert Sky Games has a closed game room and closed arcade, but is open for transactions Monday through Saturday from noon to 7pm, and in order not to leave our staff starving, we've got most of their assigned hours directed toward online replenishment and fulfillment. Online sales are down, but still represent meaningful volume. But things seem to change practically within hours, and by the time this article goes live, we might be forced to close the storefront -- or we might do it unforced, because some curveball has spiked the risk of being a contagion vector, outweighing whatever business might be walking in the door.
In the first week of no-gameplay low-hours, the store hasn't been crowded, people are coming in small numbers at a time and keeping their distance, contact is minimal, and the risk is at lottery-ticket levels. And it's critical that we try to do business if we can, because regular sales are way down, and revenue coming in is keeping us away from the danger zone that leads to being dead in the water. Right now with Gamestop not accepting trade-ins, we've got virtually unimpeded access to that market, and Clorox wipes and gloves are right there at the buy counter for our staff. Since the two biggest things in our business are Magic cards and video games, we want to continue to buy, sell, and trade them as long as possible, and if we can move other products too, so much the better. (We don't wipe the cards, but we do sequester trade-in singles for a few days.)
But a cliff is coming. Customers who work in shutdown industries, such as waiters, bartenders, travel sales, personal trainers, and (I assume) strippers, are going to start running out of money. The cascade effect is that people will wind down their purchasing. The store doorbell will stop ringing, and we will lock it and process online orders exclusively from then on, unless or until a full quarantine order is issued. All the staff have been excused if they want to be, for those who wish to self-isolate. Most declined.
The work we're doing now is less in service of immediate survival, since we're stable, and more in service of whatever comes next. And when will that be? Something to keep in mind as the media stokes fear with tales of months-long shutdowns is that it basically can't happen. There are several reasons for this:
- First and foremost, it isn't necessary. Wuhan and Hubei are already on the other side of the spike, opening back up. And they did almost nothing to stop the spread until it was too late.
- Americans will tolerate pretty strict rules... for a limited time. My personal prediction of the breaking point is going to be near the end of April. If we aren't already back to work by then, you're going to see the masses go "F**k it. They can't arrest all of us." (See file photo below.)
- Speaking of which, they can't arrest all of us. Breathless fantasizing that there will be martial law or some other severe lockdown beyond even what we're seeing in Europe is absurd and people repeating that stuff are stupid and should feel bad for being so stupid. There are not enough soldiers, police officers, guardsmen, and reservists on the rolls to detain 340 million of us. And we coordinate. We possess technology.
- Most importantly, the longer this shutdown goes on in some form, the more you'll start to see a death toll far higher than the virus, from such causes as crime, drug overdoses, suicides, medical problems that weren't able to get hospital resources, and so on. We all want every possible coronavirus sufferer to be saved -- except maybe those students from spring break -- but it hardly makes sense to keep humanity at a standstill if we lose ten, fifty, a hundred, or more people to the above causes for each virus victim that makes it through.
So we can say with reasonable certainty that this economic catastrophe has a time limit, even if nobody in charge of anything dares whisper what they think that time limit might be. This is justifiable for now, because an unpopular answer could bring about reflexive nonparticipation in the isolation practices that are so very beneficial thanks to us having done them sooner than later.
And since we know that this will end, but not when or how, that puts small businesses like mine in quite the predicament. It is difficult to plan and prepare our deployments, processes, finances, procurement, scheduling, and everything else, on such scant certainty.
Especially where it comes to the hobby game industry. Will players roar back to in-store events with a passion, or will they stay away? Will governments even give them any choice, if mandates remain in place long after the crisis that gatherings must be small? I can talk a pretty big fight if you need me to, but anyone could run into a gut check when they show up to a 100-player prerelease and hear some jackwagon coughing from the fifth table. Are you sure you want to sit down in this throng for four hours?
It's difficult to emphasize enough just how uncertain this point is. Will Magic actually push to Arena in a way that wasn't really happening, but everybody thought was happening? Will that crash the value of the paper Magic secondary market for years to come? (I stand to lose six figures of moneys if this is the outcome.) Or will this kick off a renaissance of in-store play where attendance peaks and players remember why it is that they craved the social aspect of the game? Resulting then in a boom of market prices and vaulting every store's inventory value into the stratosphere? (I'm sure all of them will dutifully report the value increment and pay taxes on it.)
On the supply side of Magic, Wizards of the Coast has been about as reasonable as any retailer could ask. Back before we knew how bad things were going to get, they reassured us that lack of event attendance wouldn't crash our metrics, which is a big deal when those metrics are what assures a store is able to continue to fuel its product engine. (And for that matter, part of the cycle is self-amplifying.) They haven't announced anything more recently than that, which makes sense if many of them are working from home or otherwise isolating. If I had to guess, based on no inside information whatsoever, I would expect the Ikoria expansion to be delayed into May. Wizards spends way too much on a high-profile booster product to release it into a maelstrom. They don't have to make that call yet, but likely will within the next couple of weeks.
I've been following the board game scene mostly vicariously, through friends and peers. In-store play wasn't the norm for that category anyway, and once again it's hard to know how much of that will come back once this is all over with. From among those game stores that reported their COVID closure is going to be permanent, almost all have been "board game cafes." Rough break. In terms of product sales, online channels already represented a substantial portion of all transactions of boxed games that don't require much in the way of organized play support. I don't know how much the present pandemic is going to push that trend along, but it sure won't help. On a related note, we sold out of Pandemic and its expansions, and had to restock. I guess some people like their entertainment extra-real.
Dungeons & Dragons represents probably the highest per-capita risk of virus transmission among all of tabletop, because your typical Adventure League game puts five to eight humans at a table, in a circle, all breathing toward each other for three hours. This entire time I've been skeptical of the "Stranger Things Boom" for D&D and it wouldn't shock and astound me to see the fervor evaporate as quickly as it materialized. But nobody wants that because we love selling dice, minis, accessories, and even the occasional sourcebook. So we'll see.
Not much to report about video games. Every Nintendo Switch that any store could lay hands on basically sold out in the ramp-up to isolation. My main distributor has zero in stock. More will surely be on the way, but the used market has spiked in response. Sales of other consoles have been absolutely outstanding and in some cases we barely have had time to Clorox wipe an inbound unit, run a system reset, and then sell it right out the door. The huge "console wall" is looking pretty bare right now, which is just as well because we're installing new fixtures anyway.
What's that? New fixtures? Yes. Among the things we can do in a mostly-empty store are projects that require that there not be very many people around. We have seized the chance and moved right ahead on it. It's spending that I'd rather not do with such an uncertain revenue picture, but a meaningful amount of it was already committed and in absolute terms it's not a large outlay anyway. We had some electrical work done in the suite as well and we're able to power more areas, and better, than we were before. In particular the arcade is vastly better in playability now that we've set it up where the ceiling lights don't reflect in the screens for the most part.
We don't know when this will end, or how, and in the face of uncertainty all we can do is take courses of action that are "correct" across as many branches of the outcome tree as possible. That means maximizing our online throughout capability, keeping our personnel as healthy as possible, careful procurement, and making sure we don't waste windows of opportunity to upgrade the physical plant. And if the powers-that-be tell us to knock it all off, I'll come into the store myself and quietly catch up on my task backlog. Keep moving forward, everyone. You'll want the momentum when the barricades fall.
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