Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Why Gamer's Haven

Why Gamer’s Haven? 

I’m sure you have asked yourself, “Why would I buy a membership at a place just to play games when I can do that in my own home?”

I did…I asked that question when my partner, David, suggested the idea.  


Why would I pay to play at a club when our group could play at either of our homes? Or, I could just go play 40K at any local game store?  

Then we were playing a role playing game (RPG) at my house and I had to buy a dice tray for one of my players because, when he rolled his dice in a plastic box, the clatter was so loud I got worried it would wake up my daughter sleeping just down the hall (anyone who has kids knows you don’t want to wake up a sleeping child!).  Or, I repeatedly asked the more animated players to keep their voices down for the same reason. This really put a damper on the players’ enjoyment of the game.  

Now, the groups I play with are, shall we say, more mature and a few of us have younger kids.  We are fortunate enough to have wives that enjoy these games and tolerate our eccentricities.  At one point, we tried to play Sunday afternoons thinking the kids would play together while we rolled dice for the RPG game we were playing.  The game day quickly deteriorated as players/parents were constantly up addressing issues with the little beasts (and that’s if they didn’t want to be right in the middle of our game hoping to role dice and otherwise insert themselves into the game).

Perhaps you don’t have children?  Okay…quick question?  How much room do you have?  Do you have nice comfy chairs for all the players?  Do you spend as much time setting up and cleaning up as you do actually playing?  What about a library with hundreds of RPG books?  Do you have hundreds of miniatures for your Pathfinder games? Do you have a custom RPG table with a 40” flat screen imbedded in the table to display maps and fight your epic battles on?

Here’s where the benefits of a club dedicated to your enjoyment comes in.

Game stores often do provide a suitable table or five to get your armies out and do battle, but what kind of environment do they provide?  Generally you are playing amongst other gamers playing their games.  It’s loud, probably cramped, and let us not talk about the restroom.  Does the friendly local game store (FLGS) have mats to play on or are you forced to imagining your epic battle is taking place on a frozen wasteland while you what you are really doing is playing on a sheet of plywood?  Do they provide fully painted terrain, or do they have some unpainted medium density fiber board (MDF) old west buildings.  I know I’ve spent many long hours getting my Space Marines fully painted and it breaks my heart to play on a felt mat and shoe box terrain.   

Perhaps you love X-Wing (I’m just getting into it and I do).  You can throw a few asteroids down anywhere and get a game in.  That’s cool!  But how many people can you have playing on the kitchen table?  It’s just more fun to with more people sharing in on the glory and be able to spread out the misery of a crushing defeat.

In my last few posts, I’ve shared that we’ve built Gamer’s Haven to be a community center for gamers and an epic place to play your games that most of us can’t recreate at home. Please come by and play some games.

Thanks

Dave

About Gamer’s Haven.

Gamers Haven is a membership club that caters to the gamer in all of us. The basic membership is $20 a month. With that, you are welcome to enjoy the club for whatever games or events you are interested in. Just let us know when you want to use the club and we'll schedule you in.  There is wifi access, TVs, surround sound, custom tables for a variety of games and more. Plus, given that it's a new business, if there is something you think we should have but don't, bring it to our attention and we'll see about getting it.


As a member, you also get discounts on any games you are interested in purchasing. Hopefully, we've created a game environment that you just cannot replicate in a home (or at least not without a significant investment on your part). Please come and check out our place and see what you think.

Community for Gamers.

Last week I blogged about the vision for Gamer’s Haven. Today I want to talk about 'community.' I need your help to share this message and help build a thriving gaming community here in the inland empire.

You can all look up the definition of community just as I did. Several points that stood out to me were: Community can encompass almost any group; Communities are often defined by location; and, We self-select into and out of communities of our choosing.

So, obviously, I’m going to talk about the community we are trying to build here at and around Gamer’s Haven. If you love games like my partner David and I do, you’ve chosen to be a member of the WORLD WIDE GAMER COMMUNITY (WWGC, which I’m going to trade mark thank you very much;-), which is great. I hope you are playing all the games you love. If not, let David and I know and we’ll find you some people to join you in the games you love. For example, do you want to play an AD&D 2e game on Wednesday mornings? Let's find you some people with similar interests as your to play with. If you are like most of us, you need a group that meets after work or on the weekends. Let the community know what game you want to play and we will help you and promote your game. Lets get people who love to play games together playing games, connecting with people, and making new friends.

Thanks
Dave

Why we built Gamer's Haven


We want you to play games! Yes you can play games on any of your devices and that’s great...but we want you to play games with people. Yes, real people...in person...face to face...across the table from you. 

Why? 

We built Gamers Haven to be the premiere destination to play games with our friends and we want you to do the same. We believe that the more time we turn off our devices and have real face to face interactions with each other, the more we all benefit. We want to build a community of people who love to play games and hope that Gamers Haven is the location that brings this community together. 

Gamers Haven is a membership club that caters to the gamer in all of us. The basic membership is $20 a month. With that, you are welcome to enjoy the club for whatever games or events you are interested in. Just let us know when you want to use the club and we'll schedule you in. There is wifi access, TVs, surround sound, custom tables for a variety of games and more. Plus, given that it's a new business, if there is something you think we should have but don't, bring it to our attention and we'll see about getting it.

As a member, you also get discounts on any games you are interested in purchasing. Hopefully, we've created a game environment that you just cannot replicate in a home (or at least not without a significant investment on your part). Please come and check out our place and see what you think.