The Business: No Future In Pushing Product At Any Level

Folks are having a hard time acknowledging that the existing business model for hobby gaming is no longer viable.

The reason that the stores are closing is because they are trying to compete with online retail.

You will lose that fight every single time unless and until the government intervenes to make it (nigh-)mandatory to use a realspace retail outlet to make or finalize a purchase, as the Federal Government of the United States did with regard to firearms. (Yes, even if you order online, you have to go to a local outlet to finish the purchase.)

The stores that remain in the retail space did (and do) so by pivoting out of tabletop games and towards niche retail, but that's only going to buy time for a while before this is no longer viable at all unless you go into a heavily regulated sector (such as firearms).

That stores that folded refused to admit that they have to change business models. The stores that, henceforth, survive stop being stores.

They become what I have called for previously: Exclusive Membership Associations (i.e. a clubhouse) that owns and operates a secured event space.

"But that's-"

DO YOU WANT TO PLAY SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN AT HOME OR AT A CON OR NOT?

You do? Great. This is what it will take to make that happen. People pay for Golf Clubs, Gun Clubs, Car Clubs, even Book Clubs. They will pay the fee for a Game Club, especially if it controls a secure location where members can play.

The cultural institution of the Tabletop Adventure/Wargame cannot endure as it is now. It has to revert to a prior form and change how it finances itself accordingly.

Yes, this means it's a service business and not a product business. Yes, this means that publishers and their products are going to scale back or go away because clubhouses have no patience for all of the problems that Conventional Play's piss-poor products promulgate; Golf is Golf is Golf, Trap is Trap is Trap.

Yes, this also means that local organization is going to have to become a little more formal and Normie-friendly. Deal with it. That's the price you're going to pay to keep this cultural institution around for another 50+ years because the Consumerism-based mode we have now can't be sustained any longer, not with Wizards' on a countdown to a controlled demolition via its own actions.

That's what will happen as the hobby sloughs off the industry and returns to the Clubhouse. By the time I'm in a home or having to live with younger relatives, people will talk about "going to the Clubhouse for the weekly Braunstein" once more.