As GAMA hosts Origins Game Fair, its annual consumer event, I am proposing two big projects that would allow the organization to take advantage of its many strengths to grow the games business for years to come.
One of the things we all learned during the Covid pandemic was the importance of the communities nurtured in game stores. Both of these proposals would strengthen that community, one by making game stores the visible center of a major international event, and the other by supporting those stores when they need it most.
There are several examples from other categories, and one from right here in the games business, on which to build. In the games business, we have Free RPG Day, organized by Gaming Days, LLC, which is coming up this weekend (see "Free RPG Day Set"). This is a great event, but it only features one type of game, and there's an opportunity for something much larger that would attract fans and potential fans of all types of gaming, and create great visibility for the hobby.
In the comics business, there is Free Comic Book Day, which is the largest sales day of the year for many comic stores, and a day when they see new faces every year. It was founded by a retailer, who convinced the dominant distributor in the space to organize it. It has grown to encompass nearly all major publishers, and is held in a high percentage of comic stores around the world (see "Sponsors Announced").
Also in comics, there is Local Comic Shop Day, organized by ComicsPRO, the comic retailer organization. They're mounting a big relaunch this year, which looks very promising (see "LCSD").
For record stores, there is Record Store Day, organized by volunteers, and for independent bookstores, there is Indie Bookstore Day, organized by the American Booksellers Association.
All of these events have things to teach the games business, which also has the unique quality of having a specific in-store event (playing games!) to build around. An International Tabletop Day organized with the resources of GAMA could rival any of those events the first year.
GAMA should create a support system for independent retailers impacted by natural disasters and other difficult circumstances. This program also has an example from another industry: Binc, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which was originally organized in 1996 to support book retailers. It expanded its focus in the late 2010s, just in time for the Covid pandemic, after a major donation by a comic publisher kicked off a program to provide the same kinds of support to comic stores (see "Lion Forge Donates $100K"). Binc's methods for fundraising, handling grant requests, disbursing funds, and reacting to crises provide plenty for GAMA to learn from.
From the pandemic to hurricanes to wildfires, Binc has stepped in to help retailers in trouble through no fault of their own. I don't know how many stores the Binc program has saved, or how many lives it's improved, but it's a big number.
GAMA's role in creating a similar program for game stores would be to raise money through contributions, including its own, processing requests, and disbursing grants. It could be done through a special fund at GAMA or through an affiliated non-profit seeded and staffed by GAMA until it can stand on its own.
Neither of these is a small project. But GAMA is not a small organization. According to its most recent 990 filing for 2023, GAMA had about $1.5 million in revenues and about $1.1 million in expenses, for a $400,000 net. It is at least one order of magnitude larger than ComicsPRO. Even more importantly, it has membership in every part of the games business, and a network of businesses that have participated in GAMA's shows to form a foundation for these new initiatives. These are worthy projects that are well within the reach of the game trade association, and GAMA should kick them off as soon as possible.
