Staffing logistics, registration timing, playspace prep—there’s a lot that goes into providing a great event experience.
In the first of a two-video series, Jamison Sacks of Common Ground Games shares how he prepares his store for an event. See if he’s doing something you could be and give it a try at your store.
And stay tuned for the second video, where Jamison dives into specifics on how his store runs great events.
If you’d prefer to read a full transcript of the video, click the button below the video.
My name is Jamison Sacks. I am the owner of Common Ground Games in Dallas, Texas.
The big thing that I've learned is that, no matter how many times you've run events, there's probably something you can improve.
Most of my staff is pretty empowered. We've trained them all to find the information in the same place that I put it for the customers.
So, they all know where to look it up if they've forgotten, plus, we have weekly staff meetings and we talk about that sort of stuff—you know, here's what's coming up—and I think it makes a big difference.
The thing that makes Common Ground Games stand out is the friendliness of the player base and the friendliness of the staff here.
The second time I came to the store Jamison knew my name. He makes people feel very welcome here at Common Ground Games and the store is a very friendly environment to come and play in.
Prerelease is a good time to make sure you're really showing everybody what your store is like and what it's about because what they bought was their experience at the event. And you want to provide them with what they paid for, make it so that they want to keep coming back to the events.
The best way to maximize event sign-ups tends to be through preregistration online.
Once you've set up preregistration, allowing people to do it online and in store I think gives you a better understanding of how many people you're going to have showing up.
Jamison runs a very tight ship around here, which I like. Whether it's signing up for Magic, collecting your cards at the end of Magic—having a clean shop as opposed to a less clean shop is the difference between feeling comfortable someplace and never wanting to go somewhere.
Finding judges can sometimes be a challenge.
We try and make sure a month before any event like a Prerelease that we know who the judge is going to be.
In general, you want to have one staff for probably about every 25 people. Whether that's judges or staff, you need to make sure that you can cover everything adequately.
Coming in here there's a wide-open space for me to play.
You meet new people that enjoy doing what you do and there is so much more room.
Providing a good player experience comes down to simple things like keeping the store clean, having your air conditioning running keeps the air flowing through the store, having tables with enough space, the chairs you buy, making sure your bathrooms are well stocked, that sort of stuff. And we want to make sure that people understand we're grateful that they're here.
