Waxing and Waning

I had my monthly phone survey from Wizards Of The Coast recently. Being a Premiere Wizards store, we help them by answering questions about sales trends and such and we get special events that only we are allowed to run and better discounts on Wizards' products. The survey got me thinking. The folks in marketing never, ever, talk to the folks in sales. My guess is the folks in marketing have never tried organized play. If the they did, they would not suggest that stores run organized play events every night of the week or that they schedule such events for high traffic times. For those folks who do not know what I mean by organized play, I mean regular, or reoccurring, events that a store uses to promote the games that they sell. Mainly organized play is tournaments and leagues, and maybe, maybe, intro games.

Wizards asked me if I ran leagues or tournaments for their games. Understandable. The games they asked about specifically included Magic the Gathering, the new Star Wars trading card game, Pokémon, Harry Potter TCG, NBA Showdown, NFL Showdown, and MLB Showdown. For those paying attention that is seven games, or one day a week for each Wizard's game. Huh, funny that those numbers match. The surveyor I spoke to seemed a little surprised that with all the support Wizards offers for those games, and leagues that they sponsor, that we do not run events every day. The surveyor has obviously never run an organized play event either.

Currently, we run the Wizards Friday Night Magic (only available to "Premiere" stores like ourselves), which is a sanctioned and scored tournament, on Friday nights (duh!). FNM is popular and a good draw. Wizards offer special premium foil cards as prizes; those cards are only available to FNM players. On Saturday afternoons we run another Magic tournament, this one also sanctioned and scored by Wizards, actually the Wizards off shoot, DCI. The Saturday events draw well when other Magic events (Pro Tour qualifiers and Pre-Releases in particular) are not being held near us. About once a month now we also run tournaments for Warhammer 40,000 by Games Workshop. WH40k events are little more intensive to run and play in and players like to look forward to them and plan on new additions for their armies. Games Workshops recommends running tournaments like those no more than once a month, or else interest wanes, as the events seem common and mundane. We fluctuate with leagues and other tournaments. Currently we have Sunday leagues for Mordheim, another Games Workshop miniature game. We were, and are still trying to, run Tuesday night events for the Whiz Kids game Hero Clix. Interest has waned on that and we may have to stop until interest picks up again. Waxing and waning interest is the reason that I say marketing folks have no idea about organized play.

Trying to artificially create interest in a game is hard work, and lets face it, organized play is sometimes artificial. Magic and WH40k are popular and have a dedicated following and that following likes to play competitively. For popular games like those organized play is somewhat easy and not artificial. In a nutshell you find out the nights or days most players are free and offer them a space and structured format to play in. Running such events is not easy. Players are messy, rude, self-centered, loud, and when in the down time between rounds or games, have the attention span of a ferret overdosing on caffeine. Organized play for popular games is stressful at best. I see organized play for popular games as a way of continuing interest for veteran players, showing new players what can be done, and as a method for getting players to keep buying product. We charge for our events and we use that money to give prizes and keep the continued interest of the competitive players. With the exception of huge events, with several hundred participants, it is almost unheard of to make much of profit from weekly, or monthly-organized play itself. Players do buy a ton of soda and candy at such events and any profit we see is from those sales, and from players buying pieces or cards to make their armies or decks better for next time.

Now, if a game is not popular or brand new, trying organized play is a royal pain in the buttocks and a huge drain on the nerves. This is the type of organized play that I see as artificial. This is also the type of play that the marketing guys at Wizards see as the norm and necessary for all stores. Great, thanks a bunch. Wizards wanted, and even threatened, their Premiere stores to run a Harry Potter tournament on the day after Thanksgiving 2001. That is our 2nd or 3rd busiest day of the year and space in our store is at premium. On that day we actually considered canceling the FNM event, but since the traffic usually slows down at night, we opted not to cancel. Wizards, without asking us and ten days before the event was scheduled sent us a huge box of Harry Potter packs and prizes, tournament score sheets, entry forms, and flyers to hand out to promote the event. They also sent a nice little cover letter that hinted, strongly, that if we did not run this event and send them back the results that our status as a Premiere store would be reevaluated. Uh oh.

Wizards is very generous in the support for leagues and tournaments, and I think the world of them for that, but threatening me to try and get me to run an event for what I consider a 3rd line game, is right over the top and royally ticked me off too. Luckily my Wizards sales rep said that he is the only one that can evaluate, or threaten my status, and he likes me. We play the same armies in WH40k and have the same name. Luckily he likes me a lot.

In one day I received from Wizards the information packs on how to run the MLB Saturday leagues and tournaments, the Jedi Knights leagues for the Star Wars TCG, and the FNM info for July. I have also received (unsolicited) league kits for MLB, Chainmail (Wizards' miniature game), and tournament kits for Scores Dragonball Z and Alderic's Warlord. Wizards is not the only player in the organized play game, they are just the most prodigious.

If we see a need, or hear a request, we will run an event or league. We have tried in the past to run leagues and tournaments for less popular games, like Inquisitor and Warhammer Fantasy from Games Workshop and Hero Clix. These attempts are generally prompted by our desire to jump start sales or promote sales for these games. I would consider us lucky if the events run more than two meetings in the case of leagues or if we have two or more players show up for a tournament. Initially interest is high and all the players we can reach say that they will show up, and that they love idea. Then there interest wanes, they have other things to do, the game costs too much, their girlfriends want more quality time; the list goes on. We have done everything from plaster car windshields with flyers (at all the gaming stores in a forty mile radius), run radio and TV ads, and pester every person who comes in the store to try and promote our organized play. It is stressful, expensive, and really annoying when you throw a party and no one shows.

Deciding what games to offer organized play for is hard, and one major factor that I have not mentioned is money. Some times a new game draws players from another existing game, (Mage Knight did from WH40k for a while) and as a player's pocket is limited, we have to take into account what game does better for us, and what game should we support. It is not really a good idea to try and get players to fill up on a game that might be "fluff", when they already fill up on your bread and butter games. Interest in games waxes and wanes depending on what is popular or liked. Organized play is the same. When something is hot, there are players and they want competition, so we try and give them some. We try and focus our efforts and resources where they will do the most good. Unfortunately that usually means only supporting the more popular and better selling games, and letting some less popular, and sometimes better games, fall to the way side. Sorry. Sometimes the deciding factor whether or not we run organized play is how much stress there is in our running it, and our stress and interest waxes and wanes too.

ARF!