Two Hundred Thousand Years of Retail – Part One

For two hundred thousand years we lived on the plains of the Serengeti. Before the first cities. Before the first discount spear shop. Eridu and Uruk, seven and a half millennia ago. We were hunter gatherers for ten thousand generations, city dwellers for a mere 375.

Two hundred thousand years. Ten thousand generations.
Being good hunter gatherers is literally in our DNA. Eyes front and centre, opposable thumbs, tool making, colour and pattern recognition. But one thing made us superior – Homo Superior in fact – to almost every other species.

We were social.

“The lone wolf dies but the pack survives” as GRR Martin would say, before presumably apologising for the ending of the TV show. A good hunter gatherer always knows where they stand. Standing downwind is important for hunting. Standing side by side with somebody you trust. Standing up to protect those unable to defend themselves. Together we were stronger. We hunted mammoth. We dammed rivers. We cultivated crops and eventually we raised pyramids.

But from the earliest there was a dichotomy in our existence. Because while we achieve more together as a group, we mate as individuals. Mostly. I mean, its 2019 and the internet is full of things I cannot unsee.

The point is that we crave individuality even as much as we crave being in a group. Individually you are Dave who builds pyramids. In a mass you are pyramid builder 4635. And nobody wants to be that guy. Everyone needed to know where they stood – subsumed into the mass gave you security. Individuality gave you opportunity. But if you stood a little too far out? ROOOOAAARRR! eaten by lions.

This dichotomy influences every single action every single human being does every single day on the planet. It’s hard wired into us. That fight flight response when you see a mass of football fans wearing the wrong colour shirt? Two hundred thousand years of hurt.

Why are people homophobes? Why are people racists? Why do some vote Republican and others vote Labour? The simple fact is they look around themselves and they know where they stand and who they stand with. People who look like you. People who talk like you. People who love like you. It’s simple, tribal and instinctive. But we can choose to be individuals too, and as individuals we have what our Serengeti roaming ancestors did not.

The ability to forge our own tribe. Our own city state. Our own polis.

Human evolution has given us this need to belong, the ego to exert our individuality and the ability to question and reason. Within the last twenty years it’s also given us the ability to expand our horizons. My ‘tribe’ is global now. My friends are retailers in every continent, all facing the same trials and tribulations, all asking the same questions.

The essence of quantum retail is to understand dichotomy. And then to make it work for us.

In fact we need to do very little, which is why the barrier to entry into our industry is so low. Any space can become a third space when it is inhabited by people, and shared common interest has been a third space driver since the very first instances of third spaces in those proto cities. “If you build it, they will come” said the mysterious voice of baseball god to Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, and anyone who has ever opened their own game store understands that this is true. They WILL come.

But Kev didn’t have to monetise his cornfield. And sadly we do.
The earliest games were designed to hone the skills you’d need for war or a career in Uruk temple middle management. We like it when we win, but we improve when we lose. We needed good focus and pattern recognition as hunter gatherers AND good game players, and we use those skills when we graze the shelfengeti of our local game stores.

You ever hear that Richard Garfield intended Magic to be a game where you just bought a deck and a couple of boosters, and wherever you played somebody knew you’d have the fun of discovering new cards you had never seen before? Ha! Humans have an almost pathological need to complete sets. We hunt. We gather. It’s literally called Magic: the Gathering. And that’s always great news for the folks who sell sets. There’s a reason singles dealers exist, and a reason why most of the early adopters became the Fortune 500 retailers of deep discountsville.

Secondly, we need to encourage folks to participate in our activities. Look in the window, walk through the door, sit at the table – these are still huge steps for some people. Participation is scary – to subsume into a mass – even a mass of individuals – is a scary proposition for people on the outside looking in. The fear of rejection by the polis is very real, because once it literally meant death. We are the gatekeepers of our third spaces, which is great. Because we know what life is like on the outside looking in, and we say “bring it on!”

Thirdly, people inside the mass fear the loss of their individuality. I tell people that I ask everyone their name, even if I know them because it’s embarrassing if you are the one person I’ve forgotten. The average human brain can remember five thousand faces but only 150 names.

At Fan Boy Three we call that Tuesday.

Celebrate diversity. The more ways your customers have to express their individuality the happier they will be. I run forty different game lines for a reason. If one deck or army or game is dominant, then individuality of choice comes under attack by the mass, and you can only express the individuality of success by further subsumption into the mass. This is triggering for a whole load of reasons, and many people will chose to express their individuality by not playing.

We say ‘the format is stale’ or ‘Hogaak is broken’ when what we mean is ‘our polis is approaching critical instability, please send philosophers’.

I would rather at that stage they switched game than switched hobby. I honestly feel that this is a healthier pattern of behaviour long term, and it’s certainly healthier for my store viability in the short term!

Because at the end of the day, the best game in the world isn’t a function of Boardgame Geek rating – it’s the one another person will play with you.

Diversity isn’t just about your Organised Play offering of course. If you are not a diverse play space? Well, you are missing a trick. We are literally spaces where people can be anyone, anywhere at anywhen in human history. All those baggage tags that we humans come with that identify us with who we were born are meaningless in a place where everything is possible. We are the vanguard for the mutability of self. And you should lean in to that as often as possible.

Ten generations of human evolution has led us here, to you. Like those early hominids you are perfectly adapted for your environment. You are the apex predator of retail. Make you store as welcoming as a brightly coloured edible berry. Stock your shelfengeti for ease of browsing and hide your gems around your store to reward the canny. Welcome everyone – be the safe space that nobody knew they needed but that everyone secretly craves. Celebrate individuality and difference within conformity. Allow others to explore their own duality so that you can embrace your own – a third space for fun and profit.

Jeff Bezos? He has delivery drones, algorithms and discount hunting spears.

You won this battle two hundred thousand years ago.

Now go be fabulous.