Question for those familiar with the Chicago area:
Where are the geeks? Back in Milwaukee, there were several gaming pubs and a hole-in-the-wall LGS that was packed to the gills Saturday nights, with Warhammer players, at least one 4-player EDH game going, and maybe a D&D session in the corner. There were one or two women there, typically someone's SO, but they held their own in Magic, and knew the references.
I go to a much larger store in a "real" city, and it's a godsdamned ghost town. Empty tables on a Saturday evening. It's got a handful of lumpy, poorly-dressed beardless dudes who use "diversity" in every other sentence, but there's no women, and fewer actual black people than the podunk hole-in-the-wall. I feel like the coolest person there (which is not a good sign).
Most normal people are just meeting with each other at their homes rather than a central location, which to actually be central and desirable would need to also be quite profitable which can be a hard thing for hobby spaces to achieve. There is a certain level of scale this all just falls apart where the place needs to charge customers more than it would cost to just buy the game and play it at home. The killer feature of allowing you to meet more people becomes difficult when all the people it's most fun to play with all meet each other after a few visits and never return while those who would not be invited are a fixture.
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Notes -
Question for those familiar with the Chicago area:
Where are the geeks? Back in Milwaukee, there were several gaming pubs and a hole-in-the-wall LGS that was packed to the gills Saturday nights, with Warhammer players, at least one 4-player EDH game going, and maybe a D&D session in the corner. There were one or two women there, typically someone's SO, but they held their own in Magic, and knew the references.
I go to a much larger store in a "real" city, and it's a godsdamned ghost town. Empty tables on a Saturday evening. It's got a handful of lumpy, poorly-dressed beardless dudes who use "diversity" in every other sentence, but there's no women, and fewer actual black people than the podunk hole-in-the-wall. I feel like the coolest person there (which is not a good sign).
Most normal people are just meeting with each other at their homes rather than a central location, which to actually be central and desirable would need to also be quite profitable which can be a hard thing for hobby spaces to achieve. There is a certain level of scale this all just falls apart where the place needs to charge customers more than it would cost to just buy the game and play it at home. The killer feature of allowing you to meet more people becomes difficult when all the people it's most fun to play with all meet each other after a few visits and never return while those who would not be invited are a fixture.
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