I don't even know anymore... (Locals rant about Gamerz)

Back when I first started Vanguard, I was extremely hotheaded with people.  This was largely due to a large chunk of people having no appreciation for any rogue decks I would build, essentially labeling them as unplayable in spite of any arguments, testing, or results I'd show without any consideration or testing of their own.  When I first moved to Indianapolis, I went to the Dugout, a card shop I had seen on Google.  That didn't exactly end well.  I don't have anything against the Dugout or its management, at least not anymore.  I heard that the primary guy that set those things into motion was banned from their store later on, anyway.  So that's all good.  It's too bad they don't have a Vanguard base anymore, but Midwest Gamez has taken on all of the Vanguard players in Indianapolis, especially after the events I'm about to speak to.

After I left the Dugout, I started going to a shop called Gamerz.  I really liked the atmosphere and the location.  They had great networking, a solid display of non-Bushiroad card games, and a spacious location for many people to enjoy playing card games at.  At the start of things, I liked the store and the store owner seemed to like me.  I offered to write articles for the store and use my connections (I had several toppers and even the Vanguard world champion at the time willing to write articles for them).  I didn't care about getting paid.  I just wanted to grow Vanguard because it was still a small game at the start of 2013.

After a few months of going to tournaments and buying boxes at their exorbitant prices (over 85 dollars per box was killing me, but I wanted to support my locals, so I purchased about 6 boxes from them over my time there, and I don't even typically buy boxes, and I also bought a bunch of Magic there), I tried to get them to stock some particular product so I could buy it from them.  I was told on multiple occasions that their "shipment didn't come in" or "it will be in next week".  Almost every time, when I heard this, it didn't happen.  At first, I believed their claims about shipments not coming in.  After going to Midwest Gamez and watching the owner of that store order the product that Gamerz said was out of stock from the same vendor, I realized that I was just being flat out lied to.

1st thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Lying to their customers when lying isn't even necessary.

I would understand if they said, "I don't want to stock this product".  Or, "I can't take your word for it that you will buy this because other people have said they would and then didn't."  I'm an adult (at least most of the time), I'd like to believe that I can understand those types of things.  This led to other issues.  First, I waited a full month and a half after a set came out before I got the hint that they weren't going to be restocking it.  This led me to purchase boxes for that set online for significantly cheaper, and that was the dividing point where I decided I wasn't going to purchase boxes at Gamerz anymore. When I asked about lowering the price, I was angrily told that if I wanted to buy them for cheaper and could find them for cheaper, that I should go somewhere else to buy the product.  I wasn't banned at this point in time, but I was banned from the store before the next time I showed up.

2nd thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Lack of willingness to listen to sound business advice in any way, shape, or form.

Now, not everyone is going to give sound business advice, but when someone wants to buy a box through their locals to support it, and their locals turns them down... I can't speak much to the defense of the locals.  Then, saying you're going to stock that product that your customer wants to buy from you and lying about how said product is coming in soon so that your customers won't buy them anywhere else, even though you aren't going to restock that product is just nonsensical and made me want to stop going to the store.  But I endured, still, for the sake of loyalty, and because I enjoyed the crowd and location.

Another thing to add to the silliness of how they were running Vanguard was, back when the OTT and Nova Grappler extra boosters came out in the tail end of season 2, we said we'd buy several boxes of them from the store because we wanted to support them, even though the prices were still pretty steep.  They said they were going to stock them.  They kept saying they were on their way for roughly 3 months.  We stopped asking after 2.  About 8 months after these sets came out, they decided to stock a carton of both.  Mind you, set 14 was out at about this time.  Even the new OTT extra booster was already out.  The cards in these boxes had become hopelessly obsolete, and no combination of RRR/SP in the box could possibly value as much as the box itself would cost, especially at the escalated price.  Nobody bought them.  And I have a feeling that the owner of the store felt like we were liars for not buying out the cards, even though it had been half a year since we requested them and had long since purchased everything we could possibly want from the boxes online.  I can't even feel bad for them for ordering the boxes without asking their playerbase if they were still wanted or relevant.

A month or two after this, they have their "Vanguard judge" come in to run a sneak peak for set 15.  They weren't a bad person or anything, but they had no business being in charge of a sneak peak when their most recent deck was from set 8, they didn't know that all cards were all clans in that format, and they didn't know what a break ride was in the break ride format.  Long story short, the judge made an incorrect ruling and I took over the tournament, undermining their judge, and we carried on.  The next time I came back to the shop, I was banned.  Ehh, fair enough.  Undermining a judge is a pretty serious offense, no matter how unqualified the individual is.  I definitely overstepped a boundary.  Would a warning have made more sense?  Probably.  I didn't have any previous infractions at the store (but the owner was quick to tell me that he wanted to warn me on several occasions for my prior conduct, which I had received no indication of previously, so what he said was completely meaningless).  I just rolled with it.  I was already feeling pretty at-odds with the store, so I took my business over to Midwest Gamez full-time at this point, convinced that the Vanguard community at the store, of which over 60% was my group of friends, was going to die shortly thereafter.

3rd thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Liberal usage of banning players and groups of players, resulting in a large loss of consumers.

For the year in which I was banned from the store until its closing, I heard horror stories about how many people would get warnings or banned for stupid things like joking about banging their head on the wall, disagreeing with the shop owner, or being too loud or rowdy in the store.  After I was banned, they apparently banned over half of their Yu-Gi-Oh! playerbase, causing them to move on.  The Vanguard community moved on as well.  Other players had received warnings for the most minor of infractions and chose not to come back.  Many players went to newer card shops like Game Paradise.  I have met people who would complain about Gamerz and how rude they were before I even got to put my say into the conversation.  Customer satisfaction seemed to go down the drain to the point where I could swear it was intentional.


4th thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Blatant bullying of customers, up to and including legal threats.

In the conversation I had with the owner as I was banned from the store, I ended up venting a bit to him about how poorly the store was managed and about how I legitimately tried to help make the location the biggest store in the Midwest for Vanguard. 

He responded with another lie.  "We are." 

I ask him, "How are you the biggest store for Vanguard?"

He said, "We have the largest supply of Vanguard cards."

I bring up how Midwest Gamez doesn't just have more supply than him, but individual players like Aaron Netabai have a bigger stock than he does.  And that's just in Indianapolis.  Chicago sellers have way more stock.  I probably even had more stock at the time, honestly.  I donated two large boxes of commons/rares, which I'm fairly sure exceeded his bulk in Vanguard, to Midwest Gamez for the sole purpose of guaranteeing that his claim was a lie after this.

I then go on to speak about how his pricing for boxes was keeping people from buying them from the store, stagnating the growth of the game.

He replied with, "My prices are the same as Troll and Toad, which is the lowest you're going to find boxes."

With him selling his for 80 bucks a box, I said, "I will get out my phone right now and prove you wrong.  Troll and Toad has them for cheaper."

He changes the subject, of course.

He knew about my article on the Dugout.  He knew that I liked to write about things like this.  He knew that I had at least some popularity in the community, being an admin on NACFV and having a relatively popular blog and YouTube channel.  So he literally threatened me with a lawsuit if I attempted to defame Gamerz in any way, shape, or form.  No, I'm not joking.

Additionally, literally a week after I had gotten back from judging a regional tournament for Bushiroad, he said, "I called Bushiroad.  They said that you're not a judge, judges for Vanguard don't even exist, and you are blatantly lying in my shop about being a judge.  And the "judge test" which you supposedly helped write also doesn't exist."



Except I have proof that my questions were used and that I was solicited by Bushiroad for them to use my questions on my unofficial test I created.  And I literally just got done judging an event.  But sure.  Okay.

At this point, I was fuming.  I decided that further conversation wasn't in my best interest and the entire Vanguard community headed home that day, essentially.

Naturally, my kneejerk reaction was to laugh at the audacity of his comments, especially the legal threats.  I chuckled audibly and let him know that I didn't feel threatened whatsoever by them.  I had planned to write out, essentially, what I've written out today.  But I sat down and thought very deeply about the implications of the actions that he took, and made a decision.

The first conclusion I drew was that, after the extra boosters fizzled, there was an extremely good chance that Gamerz didn't want a Vanguard playerbase.

The second conclusion I drew was that, after seeing how I reacted to the Dugout, there was a chance he was intentionally riling me up so that I would defame his store and remove his Vanguard playerbase so he would be able to say, "The game has died", and no longer stock it.

The third conclusion I drew was that if I did go out and make an article about Gamerz, they would be getting attention.  And, because I don't have it in me to write a partial review of the store, I'd have to be honest and say that the location was great and their MtG selection and playerbase was top notch, and that might have given them exactly what they wanted.

I decided to be completely silent for three reasons.

1.  I knew that with or without my action, the Vanguard playerbase was going to die without me.  And it did.
2.  I didn't want to accidentally give them good publicity leading to good business.
3.  I didn't think they would actually go out of business, but now I am able to make this post after they crashed and burned and get the satisfaction of knowing that during my post.

So, I stayed silent on my blog about the store until I believed the time was right.  It's been half a year since they've shut down, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that they are ever opening back up again.  I believe that the time to tell this story is now.

I don't really have too much more negative to say about the store.  I do have a conspiracy theory, though.  I honestly believe that the store owner wanted to go out of business.  That doesn't sound like it makes a single lick of sense, but I can't fathom why he would have taken the actions that he took unless that's what he was going for.

Reasons why I think Gamerz was intentionally trying to go out of business:

1.  Nobody would ban large sections of their consumers unless they weren't making money off of them.  I could see an argument here for their Vanguard playerbase.  I don't think they managed Vanguard wisely enough to profit off of the game, even with those box prices, so I could see them making the business decision to stop supporting the game.  But Yu-Gi-Oh!?  That's their second biggest game.
2.  You don't just casually make legal threats at your consumers who have done absolutely nothing remotely illegal against you, even if you're banning them from the store/don't plan on them being consumers anymore.
3.  You don't make grandiose claims of being the biggest and the best at something without someone calling you out on it.  You don't ban people who call you out on your bullshit when you are, in fact, spouting bullshit.
4.  You don't intentionally piss off your customers and expect to not have repercussions.

I have two different scenarios of what could have happened with the store.

1.  They could be genuinely incompetent at managing a business, especially in the areas of customer satisfaction, card pricing, keeping a well-stocked inventory, and drawing in new customers.
2.  They could be intentionally incompetent at managing a business, especially in the areas of customer satisfaction, card pricing (non-MtG), keeping a well-stocked inventory (non-MtG), and drawing in new customers.

Considering how good the company has proven to be at networking, hosting large events for everything at their shop, getting huge turnouts for MtG pre-releases, and selling mountains of MtG cards, I just can't believe that they could go out of business on accident.  I have no business management experience, and I could have remained in business with that prime inventory and business location by just not being an asshat to my customers.  I can't help but think that maybe the owner decided it was time to hang up his hat and move on to something different.  He stated that he was going to change locations, then ended up never getting a new location.  It wouldn't be the first lie he told.  I can't imagine it would have been hard to get a new location, either, but maybe I'm wrong.  I don't think it matters as much at this point, but I can't help but shake the feeling that after seeing the good business practices instantiated by Gamerz that they could bomb this badly.

Regardless, I am personally glad that the store is out of business, just so that people don't have to deal with the abuse.  Midwest Gamez, my new locals, has gotten the entirety of the Vanguard playerbase in the Indianapolis area, and the game has continued to remain stable for well over a year, so there were benefits to this turn of events as well.