Geek into the Mainstream, a Double Edged Sword

I have been an avid fan of warhammer and it's various systems for close to thirty years now, after starting out with Space Crusade and developing the hobby from those humble beginnings. I have seen the hobby, and societies reaction to said hobby, change a hell of a lot in that time.

I remember as a kid I would have had to travel to Liverpool, a journey that on public transport would take a couple hours, if I wanted to visit my nearest Games Workshop (and public transport was the only option as, while my parents did own a car, they wanted to continue to own said car, including all four tyres, which rules out a visit to Liverpool) One of the highlights of moving to Portsmouth was a GW on my doorstep. Now there is a GW in the town nearest where I grew up, I could have made it on my pushbike in less than an hour. GW has spread and grown, as has Geek culture overall. Boardgames have become big business now, with several thousand titles published each year. Kickstarter is awash with awesome projects that could be the next big thing, and there are no shortage of people willing to put their money into it to see it happen. It's a wonderful new world.

But any brave new world will have casualties, and sadly for me it looks like my gaming club may be one of them.

These guys have a lot to answer for...

When our club started, and I can't even say when it started, but I have been running it for about a decade and was merely a member for a few years before I took the reigns, it was the only club in Portsmouth. There was the GW, overrun with kids. There was a small independent hobby store with tightly packed shelves and no playspace. And there was us. Running from the free function room of a pub where under dim lighting we pushed tables together and balanced foam boards across them... well, the best tables did. Others just pushed bar tables together and hoped people could ignore the step in the tables of different heights. Even more difficult when we had to use the round bar tables... yeah that bit is the abyss... consider it impassable terrain. Our terrain was pitiful, but we couldn't do much more, as it all had to be shoved back into someones car and taken back to their garage at the end of a meeting as we had no on-site storage. Those were dark days.

We have been in a far better place for a good long while now. We have an excellent room that is well lit with good tables, cheap rent, on site storage and the security has allowed us to expand our terrain collection superbly. We could, in that room, deploy 7 full tables with incredibly detailed terrain on each. And we aren't talking London GT terrain, we are talking large amounts of ruins, walls, barricades, pipes, forests, rivers, swamps, fortifications, the lot. The only thing we currently lack? Members.

You see as we have grown so has the scene. It's a fantastic time to be a hobbyist for the sheer choice on offer. We are now one of four local game clubs that I know of, and I may have missed others. We still have our GW, and that local independent stockist now has some space for a table or two in his shop, although he is more of the scene for Magic the Gathering as I understand it. We have a second independent stockist that, while I mock them for having very little stock on their shelves (yes I know you can order it in for me, but I can order it in for me... why would I wanted it delivered to you for me to collect next weds when I can have it delivered to my door by tomorrow?) but they do have a gaming room with tables for hire. We've also recently had a board game lounge open up, and while I have not yet visited, it has made a good enough impression to make the news, and not the local one either. One of the gaming clubs in the local area is most definitely the big fish, and while their starting point was a little underhand (as the official GCN club back when GCN mattered, GW should have referred games club enquiries to us, but because several staff were friends with the guys that were starting this club, they told people there was no club but one would be started soon, severing our supply of new recruits... but on the flip side I don't know why they wanted to start their own club, perhaps they'd been to our one and found it lacking, which to be fair, at the time it was.) they are doing far better, with a far larger membership base, larger facilities, with better transport links.

And that leaves us in a tight spot. We're barely getting enough attendance to cover rent. Last year 90% of club funds went on the rent, and that was after a decent first six months. We made a loss in the last three. I can't see a way for us to attract new members. This is a university town, but the big club is on a free uni bus route, so they have the obvious market there. It's also a navy town, but the easiest way for sailors to get about is to jump on the bus or train... both of which stop right outside their door. The bus runs reasonably close to us but stops running before we do. The train stops nowhere near. We are no longer the cheapest club as the rent increase a couple years back forced me to price match the big club (although if you have a membership it's even cheaper there) They have a larger playerbase which of course gives new members more potential opponents, plus more people to spread word of mouth. The MtG crowd head to the local shop, the boardgame crowd now have a new Mecca. We can lay on a nicer spread, but you'll have barely any company to share it with.

I believe in the new year we will be leaving the function room we have been renting for about a decade, as while attendance is only 3-4 per week usually sat playing a boardgame we could play on my dining room table, it seems pointless to hire a room we could cater twenty odd in. We have some decisions to make about whether to keep the scenery and try to do one off events, perhaps raise our profile and hope to make a triumphant return, or whether to wind it all up and just accept we are a small group of good friends who play games together. Which in itself isn't all bad.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see geek move mainstream, my growing boardgame collection is a testament to how much I embrace the plethora of options we now have available. But in the increase of choices, those who offer less competitive choices are left behind... and my club is one of those. I shall miss it.