The Business: Outside Forces Compelling Change On Tabletop (Part 2)

"But Muh Store!"

I told you already that what's wrecking Conventional Play is an Out Of Context Problem. Time to listen to people outside the hobby.

Tabletop is "catering to an aging demographic" because it's not the younger generations that keep these stores going at all. It's Boomers, Jonesers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Millenials- Gen Z and younger aren't buying nearly as much because they prefer Mobile and thus Digital (when they have disposable income to spend)- Genshin Impact is more preferable to then than Tabletop, even after WOTC's attempts to go all-digital.

Pay attention to what this woman's talking about when she talks about Retail companies that are not dying. The Costco model, relying nigh-solely on membership fees? The Clubhouse took that space, so that's not viable. Relying on fantastic customer service and knowledgable staff? You can do that easier online. Not a viable option. "Better experience" is not something that Retail in Tabletop can do, so that's out also. The stores that survive stop being game stores, as they will also stop being comic shops, and instead pivot to selling something that can justify being in the retail space henceforth- likely something that sells things people need, not luxuries to CONSUME.

It is not enough that distrubution networks--and game stores rely primarily or entirely on the now-collapsing Diamond for this function--are being disrupted, and were before Trump began his tariff-based negotiations with foreign powers, but that doesn't help. The retail game store IN AND OF ITSELF has been rendered Unfit For Purpose and Surplus To Requirements BY THEIR OWN (IN)ACTIONS! There's a reason the savvy abandoned Retail for Online; there is nothing Retail offers that Online does not in terms of Retail as a merchant enterprise selling product- it could as a service-based enterprise, but those stores are run by incompetents or retards so they refuse to do what needs be done and will be added to the tally of Dead Store Lists over the coming years.

They have rendered themselves wholly replacable because all of the same complaints rendered about Retail outside the hobby applies inside the hobby; you will hear similiar complaints in other hobbies with a significant Retail presence, such as Firearms (you can read complaints about shitty stores for YEARS without repeat), but Firearms are under a serious government regulation regime and Tabletop products are not. (Go ahead, try to buy a rifle online in the US; you'll find out very quick that it's not like buying a copy of Current Edition. Hell, buying a car is more bothersome than a game product.)

So why should they be protected? They shouldn't. Let them die.

Between Retail itself becoming redundant, Management refusing to see the sea-change for what it is and pivoting to something that only a physical space can provide, and the products they seek to sell themselves becoming redundant and useless it is no surprise that Conventional Play is now in a state of collapse. You can't CONSUME PRODUCT your way out of such a fundamental shift in the economy; this isn't the Stagflation of the 1970s that ended with Reagan, this is the wholesale reconfiguration that came with Industrialization, reaching final form with how FDR seized the economy to win World War 2 for the Allies- and as I have first-hand experience with the former and grew up with living memory of the latter, I can make that comparison.

Between the products themselves diminishing and the Retail sector as a whole following in diminishment, it is no wonder that Conventional Play is cooked- and the commercial viability of this hobby is over.