Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne talks about viral misinformation, and game shop locators.
 
Given the problems about the delayed promos for Cryptozoic Entertainment's DC Heroes Deck Building Game I mentioned in last week's column (see "Rolling for Initiative--Flooping the Pig, It's a Game Thing"), I was rather amused to see how quickly miscommunication can spread and require a brisk tamping down.
 
Several retailers had been discussing the new Heroes Unite expansion for the DC Deck Building Game (one would think they could have come up with a more wieldy name for it than that) and questioning when to expect receipt of the promised Starfire promo card.  One participant mistakenly typed "Adventure Time" instead of "DC Deck Building" and the gates opened.
 
"What Adventure Time promo card?"
 
"What’s on the card?"
 
"How do we get one?"
 
"I never saw anything about this.  When do they ship?" and so forth.   It took a couple of hours before it was made clear to everyone that there was not, had not and, as of right now anyhow, would not be an Adventure Time promo card.  It was actually pretty interesting to see how quickly the miscommunication spread from a simple error in typing.
 
Last week, I also received an email from Steve Jackson Games, asking me to confirm that the store still operated and to update our information on their store locator.  Yes, Steve Jackson Games has a store locator and it is probably the best one in the industry, for two reasons.
 
First, it is quite easy to register with the SJG store locator.  A couple of minutes spent entering information into the website and you are done.
 
Secondly, and just as important, the SJG store locator polices itself.  Regularly, the website sends out a confirmation email, asking the recipient to click a link to confirm that the store remains active.  I assume that, if no one clicks on the link, the store locator removes the store from the locator (I assume, we always click the link so do not really know what happens if you fail to do so).  From what I can tell, with the exception of Diamond's Comic Shop Locator, once a store gets onto a company's store locator, it remains on there until the locator itself goes defunct.  Even Wizards of the Coast's store locator, which sends us about 5 times the traffic of the SJG one, never asks stores to update listings or removes stores no longer in business.  I know of a number of store owners who have said that when they do a search for stores in their area on through the WOTC store locator, a number of stores come up that went out of business several years ago, which confuses potential customers and directs sales away from existing stores.  If SJG can have their locater send out a regularly scheduled maintenance link, surely WOTC could do the same.
 
Another locator that does a good job of keeping its list clean is Diamond's Comic Shop Locator.  Of course, it uses a different mechanism rather than just registering on the site.  You can only appear on it if you have a Diamond account, which almost all comic shops do, and pay a fee, currently starting at $50 a year.  This serves as a great way to winnow out inactive stores.  If you don’t pay, you get dropped from the locator.  Here's hoping someone eventually does something similar for game stores.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.