Off the Beaten Cobblestones; Hope and Disappointment

So, the other day, I had to run down from the store I was shopping to hit an ATM. On the half block walk to the ATM, I saw the former facade of the train store (they moved), and there was a flyer on the door. It was for a gamestore! A gamestore opening in my neighborhood! If the place was halfway decent, I would be able to get some games in without having to go to the gamestore in the college area where parking was expensive, or the crappy gamestore that had NO parking, or the good gamestore in the north hills, which was a half hour drive! I was geeked! Then I did an internet search on it. I found their website.

http://gamegodtemple.com/

Wow. Total let down. Black text on white background. That wouldn't have flown in the days of geocities. Now, there's tons of places to get html script, not to mention free WYSIWYG editors. While that in and of itself is bad, that's not the worst. There is no mention of wargames...at all. Lots and lots about WoTC stuff. Magic, and D&D 4th Ed. It chills me to the bone. A gamestore without miniatures. I'm going to have to do an expedition there to really take a look at it. I was geeked, but now I am apprehensive.

So let me break it down;
1. Black Writing on white background. This is just plain old laziness. It is the modern equivalent of putting up a sign that you painted with spray paint on a piece of old particle board.
2. No real list of store hours. From reading all of the posts, I now know that they are open on Fridays and Saturdays from noon-10pm. What about the rest of the week? God help them if they aren't open on Sundays. That's like asking not to make any money.
3. No true list of products. Reading their announcements I can see they do a fair amount of card games, and some D&D 4th Ed, but that doesn't make a game store. A WoTC store, yes, game store no. Seriously, do they even carry dice? Or games from other companies? Kids like the Fantasy Flight 40K RPG, do they carry it? How about snacks? Though, they choose a really bad area for that, since they are between a McDonald's and a grocery store (which is mentioned in thier website), but gamers are LAZY.
4. No information about what kind of game area they have. Do they have folding tables for their card games, or a separate area for Roleplaying games?
5. What is the deal with the political commentary? WTF? I play games so that I don't have to think about religion or politics or any of that real world Bull Shit. Either make it funnier or don't bother.
6. Where's the pics? I realize that I'm not a big person on pics, but seriously, at least take a picture of your front door so that people know when to stop on the right street.
7. What games are you allowed to play there? Seriously. This may not even be an issue for them, or one they haven't even thought of. But all of us wargamers know that if you show up at a GW with a bunch of Maulifaux, you are going to be asked to leave.
8. About the only thing they did right was keeping in theme for the posts, some sort of gaming god. Cute. I like it, others might not, hence on the list.
9. I'm posting this short of one day of a month after opening. If the store hadn't opened yet, I could excuse this type of thing as they get stuff sorted, but nope.
10. The tournament page has two listings. Both for MtG. Look, I've been around gamestores, Magic pays the electric bill. I realize that. The issue I have here is that there is a date when the tournament is, and the cost of the tournament, but there is no start time and end time. Man, tournaments should be something that are really well planned, and booked well in advance. Not just about two weeks worth.

Ok, ten things that I mentioned that could be improved. I'm half scared that this is being run by someone that I actually know. This webpage could be done better in blogger, or wordpress, or hell, even in word pad. I'm half tempted to offer to pimp their site in exchange for hosting my kids games every week, or half a box of GW skeletons, or one whole box of Mantic ghouls. It would still look like amateur crap, but it would look like amateur crap that was trying. Seriously, I was going to wait until tomorrow to and stop by after work with Megan. She was going to buy dice (yeah, she's falling into that addiction).

Now, I have to go by and see if it is even worth showing anyone else. That would be a travesty. In all of my years, I've seen several gamestores go under. The Comics and Gaming Dungeon, Helm's Deep, both gone. From just this webpage it ain't going to last very long at all. Even the crappy gamestore has a facebook (and looking at that it doesn't seem as crappy now).

Wow, I was really a bastard to a place I haven't even been to, haven't I? I should give them the benefit of the doubt.