My gaming buddies and I got together at a local Games Workshop for Thursday Deathwatch (a D&D-ish tactical role-playing game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe [more on that in a minute]). The store manager was a perfectly nice guy, and though I didn't know him very long, certainly seemed good at his job and had a massive hand in the central Jersey area gaming community. Also one of the most personable human begins I've dealt with in a while (take that assholes who think us nerds are all social failures).
About two months back the manager threw some racist douchenozzel out of his store for making fun of a black kid at a gaming event. Said racist douchenozzel wrote a letter to Games Workshop about how because he couldn't be a racist douchenozzel and got kicked out, and GW had lost his business forever. GW canned the manager, and with him lost about 90% of their customer base. Here's whats wrong with this picture.
1) Nobody wins in a situation where someone is acting like an asshole, so it's better to throw the asshole out and deal with them being an asshole than losing more customers who don't want to hang out with assholes (I used to work at a coffee shop with music events so I've down some throwing out in my days). Yeah you'll lose the asshole's business and maybe the business of assholes' asshole friends, but it's a hell of a lot better than letting the asshole gradually drive non-asshole customers away.
2) Gaming is a small community, and now that Warhammer 40,000 has some stiff competition from games like War Machine, keeping the community together not only creates something that all people into or having a passing interest in gaming can enjoy, but it also keeps your business alive. Now that the manager is gone, most of the central Jersey community has gone with him. Now gamers like my friends have pledged not to spend cash at the store but instead get game pieces online, often cheaper.
3) Jerk wads like me might post their address and may or may not direct people to make snide remarks when passing by. So save your good ones for when you are in the neighborhood of: Games Workshop at Echelon Village, 1120 White Horse Road, Voorhees, New Jersey 08043.
So a big fuck you to Games Workshop. It's bullshit reactionary capitalist thinking like this that has tanked the living shit out of our economy and will also tank the shit out of your store. To quote Kurt Cobain, "We will survive without you. Easily."
* * * * *
I had some thoughts about the Deathwatch game itself, now that I've gotten into it and have delved a little further than normal into Warhammer 40,000 mythoi (real word, I promise). It's one of the original things, along with the movie Aliens, that introduced the idea of capital-S- space capital-M marines. Only unlike the space marines in Aliens, they lack Micheal Biehn's rugged good looks and the thick James Cameron-esque air of parody (back when movies had more subtlety and less stupid goddamn blue hippies).
Also scratch one Sigourney Weaver from the Deathwatch's arsenal because Warhammer doctrine states all space marines must be male.
The whole thing is so juvenile that it could have been written by the most sexually frustrated and in-the-closet fifteen year old boy on planet Earth. The space marines themselves seem less like battle-scarred heroes and more like tragic figures: somewhat monstrous super-soldiers single-mindedly pursuing a hopeless war of galactic expansion; thugs for hire retaining just enough conscious thought to cling to a past of glory and honor on the battlefield (minus all the diarrhea and post-traumatic stress disorder). Super soldier stories always struck me as too implausible because of two logical errors: how do you control them and what do you do with them when the war is over. I guess the latter is solved by the setting being a universe that has been at war for ten thousand years and nobody has thought to step back ask if there was a better way to approach things besides fucking shooting them.
But I digress. Even if the game is kind of dumb, it's nice to share it with good friend and good players. Because with any collaborative gaming, you can't talk about the game without talking about who you play it with. The most intricately crafted rules and best game scenarios can (and usually do) fall to crap if the people you play it with are jackasses.
I've never been one much for games like Warhammer for Magic. There's a certain lack of narrative that makes the entire thing boring for me. I guess it's the writer in me talking. Or the prick (I almost assume there is some overlap).
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