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Barnes & Noble Game Nights

edited February 2016 in Board Games
So... Here's a pleasant surprise that I didn't see coming. Barnes & Noble is going to try to appeal to the neighborhood comic shop crowd by hosting game nights on Thursdays, and they'll even offer promotional merch for those who attend. They'll be hosting the following:

-King of Tokyo (Freebie: 11 Power cards)
-Sheriff of Nottingham (Freebie: 6 Contraband cards)
-Splendor (Freebie: Play-mat)
-Codenames (No freebie)
-Lanterns: The Harvest Festival (Freebie: Four promo tiles)

Edit: Here's a list of participating stores.
Post edited by Daikun on

Comments

  • Ooh, nice. They have the Glendale Galleria.
  • Huh, no shit.

    BARNES & NOBLE 2275
    131 COLONIE CENTER SUITE 355
    ALBANY NY 12205

    We do already have gaming nights at two local stores, but Thursday is not one of those days. Maybe I'll pop in and throw support at it.
  • This is an interesting thrust for them. A long time coming, I'd say, but it's definitely a small toe in the water. They've been carrying hobby games for 10 years now. They've been seriously stocking them for about 6.

    For the past 2-3 years, they've given stores the leeway to host their own game nights, and some do. If you search B&N's site, it's like a miniature version of Meetup. There are store-run and community-run events all over the place. I peeked in the other day and there was everything from casual board game groups to full-fledged Pathfinder campaigns running.

    Now there is an initiative from up on corporate high to host some game nights. It's only about 10% of their stores, but the freebies may help pull in enough of the gamer crowd to get a baseline attendance. The worst case is having 1-2 people show up and not even getting a game off. Getting a mousepad-quality Splendor playmat is actually a solid piece of swag (I can't imagine they have many to give away?)
  • That's the kind of thing that Media Play stated doing right before they completely collapsed...
  • Don't get me wrong, the writing on the wall for a place like Barnes & Noble is NOT good. From what I understand, their toys & puzzles expansion over the past decade has actually helped stabilize the company against the sliding book sales, their exit from CDs & DVDs, etc. I didn't expect their game products to sell all that well since they charge at or above MSRP, and board game sticker shock is a real thing among those who are not huge nerds who understand that a big box of wooden euro bits costs $80 sometimes. I guess board gaming has gotten just mainstream enough, and the lack of game store/unfriendly game store problem has left B&N enough of an opening to turn a profit in this category.

    The internet leaves people longing for one thing: dependable physical meetup space. B&N as they are configured has an extremely limited ability to serve in that role. I don't fault them for trying, though.
  • Maybe the B&N near you is like that, but the ones near me often have a ton of square footage dedicated to tables and chairs, which are often filled so I could easily see them adding more. Also, them selling vinyls is kind of a draw for me.
  • Can I comment how weird it is for Vinyls to be back?

    I mean I understand the draw both for the album art and the unique sound but I look forward to the VHS and 8-track tape coming back :-p
  • edited February 2016
    Oh, no, it is TOTALLY weird. But I buy them just because of how nice they are as physical objects. A 1'x1' painting that comes with a shiny, black disc with music on it. Double points if it's a 180 gram record instead of the usual 120. Dat heft.

    Fuck you if you think they somehow magically sound better than a FLAC straight from the studio master, though.
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • Cremlian said:

    Can I comment how weird it is for Vinyls to be back?

    I mean I understand the draw both for the album art and the unique sound but I look forward to the VHS and 8-track tape coming back :-p

    One of the only reasons vinyl was able to make a comeback is because it's flat and easy to store. Cartridges just take up too much space.

    Also, despite being scratchable, vinyls hold up pretty well. Vinyl and 8-track get all magnetically fucked up to the point where no amount of tracking adjustment can save them.

    Also, when you turn on a VHS movie after watching HDTV there's absolutely no question which is superior. When it comes to audio-only, it's much easier to deceive others and yourself. Vinyls sound the way VHS looks, but stupid people don't believe it no matter how much math you teach them.
  • One thing vinyl does (or did) was force everyone to fit an album in ~45 minutes, or opt for the opulent double album. As a fan of shorter cohesive albums, this is my biggest problem with CDs.
  • RymRym
    edited February 2016
    While CDs could be 74 minutes, most albums were much shorter than that. 50ish minutes was about the average IIRC.

    edit: Good god all the citations I can find all back me up, but are really shoddy sources.
    Post edited by Rym on
  • Really, I blame hip hop albums loaded with 20 minutes worth of skits.
  • And now that there are no limits, the best strategy seems to be to not make an album at all. Just make a bunch of singles or EPs. More releases means more individual things to show up in feeds, searches, etc. More releases mean you can stay in the public consciousness longer. Also, if you put so much effort into each song, why not get the maximum ROI on each one?
  • Apreche said:

    Also, despite being scratchable, vinyls hold up pretty well. Vinyl and 8-track get all magnetically fucked up to the point where no amount of tracking adjustment can save them.

    ...Contradiction?
  • Vinyl easily avoids scratching by not being a dumbfuck.

    Tapes degrade even if you do nothing to them.
  • While I understand that thinking in popular music just from a money perspective, I prefer actual albums as a whole to listen to rather than just as a collection of songs sold together. I like albums with a story arch and songs that flow into each other, and weird little interludes.

    Plus, if you're big enough you can still release the album and have singles released leading up to and after its release to keep it in the public consciousness.
  • I prefer actual albums as a whole to listen to rather than just as a collection of songs sold together. I like albums with a story arch and songs that flow into each other, and weird little interludes.

    This. CD's made it waaaay too easy to skip to the songs you liked instantly. This may sound like a good thing, but there are lots of songs in, for example, Nujabes' discography that I got super into after I had a chance to listen to them a few times and really parse the lyrics and composition.
  • Huh, no shit.

    BARNES & NOBLE 2275
    131 COLONIE CENTER SUITE 355
    ALBANY NY 12205

    We do already have gaming nights at two local stores, but Thursday is not one of those days. Maybe I'll pop in and throw support at it.

    I'm game.
  • Maybe the B&N near you is like that, but the ones near me often have a ton of square footage dedicated to tables and chairs, which are often filled so I could easily see them adding more. Also, them selling vinyls is kind of a draw for me.

    Actually most of them do have a cafe area. I suppose they could use that, if they were OK with roping off some tables and potential damaging their high-margin food and drink sales for a few hours. I'd venture that most of the sales are coffee, and not to the people squatting tables with their laptops, so I guess it wouldn't be a big ding on their income. Outside of the cafe, all of my area B&Ns have been actively reducing the amount of places you can sit. It's down to basically nothing now, maybe 2 beat up lounge chairs at best.

    On the topic of vinyl, I also find it weird personally, while also understanding why. I wound up buying one vinyl record last year: the Super Hexagon soundtrack. It was on hexagon-shaped vinyl! I had to! I was almost tempted to get the limited edition Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack vinyl release last week, but I talked myself out of it b/c it would literally just be a thing that sat on the shelf and never got touched. At least the Super Hexagon one is something I'd display on a shelf, not hide away.

  • From what I remember the big selling point for Vinyl over CD was the frequency range they recorded. Vinyl captured everything, while CD audio captured a narrower frequency range to save on space on the CD. Don't know if that's strictly true anymore, but it wouldn't surprise me.
  • pence said:

    One thing vinyl does (or did) was force everyone to fit an album in ~45 minutes, or opt for the opulent double album. As a fan of shorter cohesive albums, this is my biggest problem with CDs.

    Limiting the number of songs is a good thing?
    Whenever a medium could potentially hold more of a type of artform it has always been adopted. There were double albums to get around this convenience or sitting on songs to add it to your next album where the song might not fit so it becomes a B side or a song that becomes hard to get but is good.

    I may be in the minority but all the CD shops near me have shut down, they take up a few racks in a department store or an electronics store and that's about it.
    pence said:

    Really, I blame hip hop albums loaded with 20 minutes worth of skits.

    I blame all the orchestral music.

    I agree with @ninjarabbi on the whole album listening approach but I would only listen to whole albums occasionally on CD but it has become really quite common since I started using streaming music. Sometimes I just sit back with my headphones on thinking I'll listen to 1 or 2 songs on my headphones while I'm browsing some other stuff or doing chores and what not but I end up listening to the whole thing.

    Sure the singles flood is the best "make money" approach. However if you want to release a number of songs linked with a specific musical style, theme, lyrical links to represent an idea, an album makes some sense from the creative point.
    The intermediate point is being adopted where a few singles are released as they are written and performed then added to a more cohesive album a few months later, which could either be for the creator's choice or the label wanting to stick to producing something that can be placed on a collection that can be sold as an album.
    Rym said:

    Vinyl easily avoids scratching by not being a dumbfuck.

    CDs, DVDs, Blu Rays are all the same but I would guess there are the same or more discs which are scratched than the less robust vinyl. There is a case for a robust medium (i.e. not physical so there is a limit on how many ways you can break it).
  • Raithnor said:

    From what I remember the big selling point for Vinyl over CD was the frequency range they recorded. Vinyl captured everything, while CD audio captured a narrower frequency range to save on space on the CD. Don't know if that's strictly true anymore, but it wouldn't surprise me.

    While there are technically some very specific ways to have a wider frequency range on very particular vinyl formats/players, in actual practice vinyl has never had a better actual range than CD.

  • Raithnor said:

    From what I remember the big selling point for Vinyl over CD was the frequency range they recorded. Vinyl captured everything, while CD audio captured a narrower frequency range to save on space on the CD. Don't know if that's strictly true anymore, but it wouldn't surprise me.

    CD sampling rate is 44.1 kHz. That gives a Nyquist frequncy of 22.05kHz, which is higher than the human ear can detect. Meaning CD's already can reproduce higher frequencies than you can hear. So even if vinyl had a bigger frequency range, well, I guess you could play it for your dog or something, but it's wasted on humans.

    If the upstream source was recorded in lower fidelity, and then upsampled to CD-rate, you wouldn't get the full range. But that's true of vinyl too.

    Here's a ton of stuff on frequency, sampling, and digital audio if you're into that kind of thing. Monty really is a great talker.
    24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
    A Digital Media Primer for Geeks
    Digital Show & Tell
  • Only two WA locations and both are too far, even for freebies. Even if I could get to one on a Thursday evening (after work), the traffic in the area getting there, and the extra miles home afterwards would probably negate any real value of the free stuff. It doesn't help that I carpool with a couple of non-gaming guys. I can always look for the promos on BGG. The playmat for Splendor is pretty awesome though.
  • Yep. I'm surprised it's not in our area. We're like a midway between 2 major cities.
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