So the idea was starting to become very real. Money was discussed. The Barrister attempted to get a bank loan to cover a large percentage of the start-up costs but the banks declined to fund a business that was seen as unprofitable, unsuccessful, and unproven. Dollar Bill had agreed to put up a substantial amount of money to bankroll the store, likely the result of counting his spilled change in the floorboard of either his Mercedes or his Jaguar. With my meager job as a contract archivist in a labyrinthine government organization, I had no money to put up whatsoever at that point so most of my commitment was going to be “sweat equity”, brains, and heart. Any work on, for, or toward the store that I did was toward my share of the business. We had one meeting over at the Barrister’s place where we were supposed to meet with his mother-in-law to see about borrowing money from her but nothing came out of it. So The Barrister decided to finance his share in other ways, and thus the seeds of our destruction were sewn.

So now, we were stakeholders in addition to friends and fellow gamers. In addition, The Barrister was still Dollar Bill’s attorney so we had a pretty strong bond between us beyond just being gaming buddies. The real planning began in earnest and somewhere there is an e-mail paper trail accounting for almost every part of the planning. We visited potential store sites, driving around all over town looking for the perfect central place, which we pretty much realized was impossible in a city like Atlanta where “out of perimeter” folks seldom mingle with “in the perimeter” denizens. We talked product mix, discussed concepts for the store, and started to work out all these little details like hours, what point-of-sale system we were going to use, and what sort of fixtures we wanted. Dollar Bill’s experience in retail helped us tremendously and a lot of these things- particularly the logistics of setting up a retail storefront- were made infinitely easier by his involvement. It was both really amazing to start to see it all come together as well as tremendously disappointing; when you see that your grandest ideas are just not feasible from a financial perspective your store suddenly doesn’t look as special or unique as you imagined it.

We had big ideas. My platform was that the store should something very modern-cutting-edge in graphic design, layout, and concept. I threw out some ideas inspired by high-end restaurants- you know, the ones with one-word names like “Salt” or “Toast”. I wanted us to look like a very trendy, clean, upscale store where cool people would shop. We could have called it “Hex” or “Cardboard”. Dollar Bill was a little more realistic, but only slightly so- at one point he pitched a retro-futurist concept that would have been rooted in SOLARIS and 2001. The Barrister was one of those kinds of people who just couldn’t think in those kinds of terms and was satisfied with glass cases, slat-wall shelving, and industrial carpet. Which, quite frankly, is probably the way hobby game stores are doomed to look from now until the last one closes its doors, presumably sometime in the next ten years at the rate of closure such businesses face.

The names we tossed around were often hilarious and it became something of a joke to outdo each other with something more absurd than the last, usually some reference to Nazis or devil worship coloring the joke monikers. We all agreed that we wanted to avoid the usual fantasy nerd names like “The Wizard’s Tower”, “Android’s Dungeon”, “Excalibur” toward which pandering, lowbrow retailers often tend. At one point I hit upon an idea to do something inspired by Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s CITY OF LOST CHILDREN and somehow that got mixed up with another idea of using Soviet-styled artwork and graphics and that mix of industrialism and constructivism gave birth to our name. Dollar Bill insisted on Atlanta being the first word since he was convinced that appearing first in a phone book or on Google would lead to success. Since he was already rich who were we to argue with that logic?

So it was that we became The Atlanta Game Factory.

TO BE CONTINUED

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

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