Save Our Beloved Gaming Community

Dearest Gaming Community,

It’s difficult for me to ask for support, and also, I genuinely need financial support to keep our store open. The impact of the hardships our gaming community and myself have endured pushed me to realize that I am doing this because I love to serve others who love what we do.

These events have made it challenging to keep our gaming community thriving financially over the past four years:

• We closed our store in March of 2020 due to COVID for four months, which impacted on our ability to financially support our gaming store and myself. We took out loans to float us.

• In 2021, my appendix burst, I almost died, and I received the financial burden of surgery on top of my body slowing down. I was out of work for three months. It took me a year to heal my body.

• Inflation began rising in 2022 while our store continued to make the same amount. We started losing money due to the cost of supplies increasing. This was the year I had to begin paying back the state loans I took out to keep our store open during COVID.

• In 2023, we lost the hotel in which we held our Warhammer Tournaments four times a year.

• This same hotel also hosted our yearly Forever Knight Games Con. We haven’t found a replacement hotel to host our gaming convention.

When I began my journey as a store owner, I believed owning a game store would allow me to get my nerdy stuff at a cheaper price. Now I know it’s more than having access to the games, it is the community I value most. Gaming in a community we’ve built together over the last twelve years has given me more joy than I could have imagined.

• Our gaming community first started as a kiosk. I felt nervous as I set up our tables for the first Friday Magic the Gathering tournament, worried I wouldn’t be successful. As time went on, our kiosk became so successful in running tournaments that Wizards of the Coast no longer allow tournaments to be run at kiosks.

• After 2 years we successfully acquired our first store front with shelves and products. My fondest memory of that store front was when a community member drew the employees as Dungeons and Dragons characters; I was drawn as a sorcerer, and I continue to appreciate it to this day.

• The third time we moved was when we merged with PLAYlive; where we combined board and card games with an arcade style video game set-up. This shift challenged me to find creative ways to have space to play board games and card games due to space and lighting. We learned to build a new community through video game tournaments.

• After 2 years we moved into our current community space with enough space to have all our nerdy gaming needs met.

As we became established as a gaming community, I noticed patterns of how different ideologies affected the way people gamed together, the low participation of girls, women, and queer folx, and how people interacted socially. This led to the development of the Gamer Initiative:

“All gamers are due an equal level of respect, that respect shall not be withdrawn based on age, race, gender, sexual preference, or political affiliation.”

My intention in the development of the Gamer Initiative has been to intensely shift how I train my managers and volunteers, to set a precedence in community development around the 7 Cs: Community, Communication, Conflict, Consistency, Cleanliness, Consent, and Cash. Each of these C’s impact how we serve ourselves and others as humans. Humans deserve to be treated with kindness, compassion, and care.

My goals in the development of the Gamer Initiative are to help gamers to be inclusive, to find personal growth, to build lasting community relationships, and to support healthy conflict resolution skills. This fuels my passion and my purpose; to make space for everyone to play games in a kind, inclusive place where hard conversations can be had with mutual respect and understanding.

My goals for the future are to own a building for our gaming community and to teach the Gamer Initiative to other leaders. To accomplish these goals, we need support to reduce our debt and keep our doors open.

Please donate if you’re able.

If you’re not able to donate, please share.

Local Game Store Owner and Dad,

Timothy Alexander