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Here I was thinking that my days of writing about my old game store were over, but a recent event that was closely tied to my days there has pulled me back for one more. Not long ago I was invited to a wedding that turned out to be quite an amazing event for me. What do weddings and game stores have to do with each other? Find out below!
Continue reading Game Quest Gets Formal
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My very first customers lining up on opening day!
At some point during this week, my stint as a game store owner will be coming to an end. It's been right around 5 years since I opened a local store called Game Quest and I'm pretty excited to move on from it at this point in my life.
Continue reading Game Store Chronicles
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Last time, I discussed things like setting up the temporary venue, running events, and planning. This time, I'll just discuss how I had fun enjoying the convention!
To make sure I got a chance to enjoy the convention a bit this year, I made sure to load up on support at the event. We had five Game Quest staff there over the entire weekend and typically 5-6 volunteers. We made sure to have our area fully supported so that if any of the people involved wanted to take in a panel, grab a signature, or just shop the vendors, we would be able to accommodate them.
Continue reading Blog Quest: Conventional Pleasure
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If you've been following my game store blogs since around this time last year, you may remember me writing about a local fan convention that we held in my city, the first we'd ever done. This year I got to play a bigger role in our second annual Northern Fan Convention. I thought I'd break my discussion of the event into two parts, since I got to participate as both a vendor/organizer and as a patron. For this entry, I'm going to talk about the business side of the event and then follow up with a discussion of the con as an attendee in my next blog.
Continue reading Blog Quest: Conventional Business
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If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember that nearly two years ago my business butted heads with my local city government. Once we successfully put that behind us, I was hoping to not hear from them again outside of renewing my business license each year. Turns out that was just wishful thinking.....
Continue reading Blog Quest: Crabmaster vs The City Round 2
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Running your own business can be very rewarding. It also comes with it's fair share of headaches. Shoplifting and theft is a constant problem for pretty much any retail establishment. Here are some of our stories regarding the subject.
Continue reading Blog Quest: Batman By Day, Game Store Owner By Night
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The Handsome Group of Organizers Responsible For Power Up Prince George[/i]
Being in a relatively small town and this being our first event, we decided that it would be best to make sure the operating costs were as low as possible so that our goals would be very obtainable. We wanted nothing more than to have a fun event that could be considered a success so that we could make it an annual event. With that in mind, we wanted to have at least 100 people attend the event at some point during the day and raise at least $2000 for the Child Development Center.
Long story short we exceed both of our goals. But you want the long story so click the link below........
Continue reading Blog Quest: It's For The Children - Part 2
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Once every few years, I've been able to attend local gaming events. Four years ago, I was able to compete in a small King of Fighters XIII tournament. Several years prior to that, I was able to compete in a few local Guitar Hero III events. Outside of that, it's been a wasteland for local gaming events up here. With our new location, we've been able to schedule video gaming events much more frequently and have been building our competitive communities. But none of this is on the scale to which I've been craving for years.
After our bylaw issues last year, it was very interesting to see that I could use my platform of Game Quest to reach a fair-sized audience of local gamers. So with some help from friends and the community in general, I've been working to bring about the largest scale competitive video game event that my city has ever seen. Beyond just having a cool gaming event, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show our wider community that gamers can be great citizens and break some of the stigmas that surround gamers at the same time.
Continue reading Blog Quest: It's For The Children
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Two years ago, we started Game Quest exclusively as a video game store. Now that we have the space, we've jumped into all sorts of other games. Many of these, like Magic and a lot of board games, I've played and am very comfortable with, but as we keep getting requests and bring in new products to try, I find myself exploring all sorts of new games, many of which have turned out to be a ton of fun!!
Continue reading Blog Quest: Look at all these games!!!
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We've all heard that old chestnut at one point or another during our lives: "It takes a village to raise a Game Store". I've learned firsthand how true that is over the last couple years though.....
Continue reading Blog Quest: The Crew
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After a great showing at our local fan convention and nearly two years in our tiny downtown location, we were starting to feel more cramped than ever in our store. It had felt small very early on, but it was just getting worse and worse as we had more customers and product coming in. Especially, since we wanted to add tabletop games in a significant way and didn't have the space to do it properly. It was feeling more and more like it was time to start shopping around for a new home for Game Quest!
Continue reading Blog Quest - Location Scouting
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With the Northern Fan Convention setup all behind us, it was nearly time to kick open the doors and let the public in. A public that was still largely unaware that we existed. Even the ones that knew about us didn't know that we were getting into tabletop games. This was our chance to get people excited about us all over again and at the same time, get some feedback about our new merchandise before rolling it out in our store.
Continue reading Blog Quest: Un"Convention"al Appearance - Part II
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A couple years ago my wife and I were fortunate enough to attend our first ever Fan Convention in Calgary, Alberta. I was very excited and prior to the event, I had my wife watch through a plethora of nerdy movies so that she would be well-versed on many of the attending celebrity guests. I knew it was something I'd enjoy, but I wasn't sure my wife would find enough to keep her entertained for the entire three days. Much to my delight, she seemed to enjoy herself as much as I did. From checking out the amazing cosplay, to taking in the often hilarious speaking panels, to meeting strange new people while waiting in line for autographs, and even embarrassing herself while speaking with her childhood crush, Sean Patrick Flanery (she was a big fan of Young Indiana Jones), we both had one of the best weekends we have ever spent together.
Much to our delight, we learned that our own city was scheduled to host a fan convention, aptly named Northern FanCon! This time though we had the unique option of attending as a vendor as opposed to a typical guest.
Continue reading Blog Quest: Un"Convention"al Appearance - Part I
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So you've been operating your retro game store for a few months now and things are going better than you could have hoped. Customers are happy, new stock is getting traded in on a regular basis, bank account is moving in the right direction. Nothing can bring you down. Cue Bylaw Enforcement Officer..........
Getting Political Part I
Getting Political Part II
Getting Political Part III
Continue reading Blog Quest: Getting Political - Part IV The Conclusion
So you've been operating your retro game store for a few months now and things are going better than you could have hoped. Customers are happy, new stock is getting traded in on a regular basis, bank account is moving in the right direction. Nothing can bring you down. Cue Bylaw Enforcement Officer..........
Continue reading Blog Quest: Getting Political - Part II
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