Applying the lessons

A friend of mine owns and operates a game store that sells trading card game stuff (Magic and Pokemon), board games, and tabletop roleplaying games. After reading some of my Lessons from Magic Kingdom articles, he said this to me:

This all makes a lot of sense, but I’m not quite sure how to apply it all to my business.

His comment makes perfect sense, because most of my examples in the articles relate to software or product development, not brick-and-mortar retail. That’s fine, let’s think about it and see if we can find some ways to hack positive impressions at the card shop.

Building a path: Expectation setting → Expectation realization

In Main Street Metaphors we discussed designing the physical space to help the guest orient themselves and understand how things worked. From that post-

All the user needs are consistent anchors (the castle, the street), transitions (walking down the street), expectations-setting (magic up near the castle) and expectations realization (also, magic up near the castle).

On of the most important groups of guests to a card shop are the competitive players. Card shops host tournaments so players can test their deck building abilities and playing skills against each other. Competitive players are the result of a journey the guest has gone through, starting with an introduction to the game, getting a starter deck, playing casually, and then playing more competitively.

This journey is similar to the journey a Magic Kingdom guest goes through. They are introduced to things at the park, they gain interest, and they follow a physical path specifically designed for them to get them more interested in the more “magical” stuff the Disney parks have to offer.

Applying this, there needs to be intentional design in the physical space of the game store to introduce guests to the games and lay out the path to becoming a competitive player. Someone walking in, knowing nothing about the Pokémon Trading Card Game, needs to be able to discover on their own that this is a place where they can learn about the game, get the product they need to be competitive, get help if they need it, and when and how to join a tournament. That’s expectation setting. It needs to be apparent in the space without any guidance.

There’s lots of ways to make this possible, but probably the quickest way is to have an absolutely giant whiteboard with a calendar showing all the events going on at the store, and making sure that calendar covers a clear progression from novice to experienced player. It shows that the store is busy, and it shows the new guest exactly what they can expect here — not just product, but a place to go play the games and all the things that go with developing yourself as a player. The store has a small whiteboard schedule now, but it’s not consistently placed, and it’s tiny. This new board needs to be big, colorful, and constantly updated.

Expectation realization completes the path for the new guest. In the case of Magic Kingdom, this is getting to the end of the Main Street and standing in front of the castle, with the whole park around you. In the case of a game store with tournaments — expectation realization is a big, colorful, constantly updated board of recent tournament winners.

Sure, if you win a tournament, you get packs of cards as prizes. But putting your name (with parent’s consent, of course) on a big board behind the desk would be an even bigger prize for some people. It also shows the new guest the whole circle — buy cards, participate in the events, win and get your name on the board. They can see the path. Maybe the current winners get some kind of special treatment if they come to the store during their “reign.”

But competitive card game play isn’t for everyone

In Transforming Unhappy Users, we discuss that sometimes the product doesn’t fit the user-

Some users are just not a good fit for your product.

You may be getting income from them, but if they aren’t a good fit, the negative experiences they are having may be impacting your ability to grow towards users that are a better fit.

Competitive trading card game play is, frankly, stupid expensive. If you push people into competitive play without making sure they are a good fit, they will have a bad time. The good cards are rare and cost money. New cards come out on a regular basis. With most games, old cards eventually expire, and are no longer legal to play.

Unless the player is ready, able, and willing to spend money to be competitive on an ongoing basis, they are going to have a negative experience. That negativity will be attached to trading card games as a whole and, of course, the store itself. Also from Transforming Unhappy Users-

If you know a user isn’t going to have a good experience with your product, you should discourage (but not block) them from using it.

It needs to be discussed up front that competitive play can get expensive. Competitive tournament entry fees should exist, because if someone is unwilling to pay an entry fee they probably are not going to be willing to buy expensive cards or packs.

Disney leverages their ticket pricing model to encourage repeat visitors over single-day guests. They do this, because they know if a guest can plan repeat visits, they likely aren’t as sensitive to overpriced food and merchandise as a single-day guest. Therefore the chances for negative experiences go down

You aren’t excluding people by having fees for competitive tournaments. You’re helping to ensure the people that go to those will be the people who are willing to invest as needed to enjoy it, and you are discouraging starting players from getting steamrolled and going home sad.

Barriers to entry are good. As discussed in How to Hack Positive Impressions, you can use them to slow down guests and manage their mental state — but you can also use them to make sure guests who will enjoy the event are the ones attending the event.

So what do we do with all these guests that aren’t good candidates for competitive play?

Simple.

We know they don’t work well with the competitive play product, so we build another product just for them.

We build a free casual play tournament, specifically designed to keep the expensive over-powered competitive play decks away, so these casual and newer players can have positive experiences.

There’s a lot of ways to do this, but the first idea that comes to my mind is a free tournament limited to currently tournament-legal starter (theme) deck cards. You can buy a theme deck and play immediately, or you can buy a few theme decks and build something from the cards in them — but if a card isn’t available in a current theme deck, it’s not legal in the casual “Theme Deck” tournament.

Naturally this would get people used to the tournament idea and may get them interested in playing in the competitive events — but they get to go on that journey on their terms, and they get to approach it with positive experiences instead of the negative ones you get when you go to a competitive tournament with a starter deck.

You can do similar things with beginners to tabletop and roleplaying games, create events for the serious people and create intentionally restricted events for the newcomers.

This also gives more events for the big whiteboard out front, which makes the store look that much more lively.

Limiting Choice Remorse

In How to Hack Positive Impressions, we discuss the magic of giving the guest a zero-rammification choice —

There are two routes to chose from to get from the parking lot to the Magic Kingdom main gate: The ferryboat or the monorail. Which one you choose is entirely up to you. This is brilliant.

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Since there’s only two options, the guest doesn’t even have to worry about having remorse after making the choice — they can always use the other method of transport when leaving the park.

The main way of buying trading card game cards is in randomized packs of cards. Choosing a trading card game product, be it an individual card pack or a box of packs and other stuff, is never a zero-rammification choice. It’s stressful. If the pack they chose to buy doesn’t have a good card in it, they will immediately wish they had picked a different one.

Sometimes this effect is so strong it’s paralyzing before purchase; people will decide not to buy a pack instead of dealing with the remorse of buying “the wrong one.” Choice paralysis loses sales.

Limiting the pain of choosing needs to be a focus of the sales counter. Here are a few ideas —

• Never ever ask the guest to pick which pack or product they get. Just grab one and give it to them. If they want to pick, that’s fine, they will ask — but if they don’t want to pick, asking them to pick will trigger choice paralysis.
• Have a single example of the products available on display, and when someone wants to buy it, either give them that single example or pull an identical one from behind the counter. This prevents the guest from asking themselves which one to buy, therefore avoiding choice paralysis — and it may even make them perceive the item is in short supply, which may be a purchase motivator.
• When a guest shows interest in an item, offer to explain everything about it to them. Customers are going to have all different levels of knowledge about the product. The customers that are uninformed are going to be hesitant to buy something, so offering clarification will help (eliminates fear, uncertainty, and doubt). The customers that are informed already are going to have a unique and positive experience buying something from the card shop over buying the same item from a big box store (or online) because someone offered to talk about it with them.

And finally, build a community

One of the most amazing things about a local game store is all the people you meet. The games may get you to go there, but the community will keep you coming back. Getting people to try more games, come to more events, and keep in touch with everyone they meet at the store is all positive. It’s important the store itself does what it can to encourage the development of a community.

In Transforming Unhappy Users, we discuss the benefits of a community, specifically gathering feedback and finding negative experiences to address. Building events for people to attend will do this, but the community needs to extend outside the store’s walls.

Get a discord server. Encourage setting up and playing the online versions of the trading card games. Discuss other events the store’s community may be interested in.

In the software world, there’s a lot of focus on engagement. The same concept exists for places like a card shop; the more the store is able to engage the community, the more the community will engage the store.