Editor's Note: Catch up on our TWBG series by checking out the first five episodes: Part I , Part II , Part III , Part IV , Part V . Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part X

I’m standing in the parking lot of a gas station some twenty miles from my house waiting for this guy to come and pick up the order of several crummy Eurogames that he placed via email. I’m a little bit nervous not only because I feel like I’m making a drug drop but also because the distributor packed the games poorly and on one of the boxes there’s a dinged-up corner. And I know how anal gamers can be.

This frumpy, middle-aged man in the classic boardgamer uniform of polo shirt (tucked in over a protruding paunch), khaki shorts, and white 1988 Reeboks waddles up. I know right away that he’s my mark.

“Are you Factory Games?”

Money is exchanged, and he proceeds to ramble on for at least fifteen minutes about some game or another he played at the Atlanta Game Fest, could I get it, how much is it, have I played it, and on and on and on. I just want to go home and I’m regretting my offer to meet folks to give them their orders.

Then, he notices the dinged-up corner. “Hey, I want to exchange this for another copy.”

And of course, I couldn’t really do that. I wasn’t a big game store and I was paying for everything pretty much out of pocket until I had the customer’s money in hand. I had ordered one copy of the game specifically for this guy and I didn’t have a standing inventory so for me to be able to exchange would mean that I would have to put the game on the next order and either sell the dinged-up copy at below cost or keep it. And I didn’t want it. I think it was NOTRE DAME.

“Alright, I’ll have it next week.”

That was how a typical transaction went for Factory Games, my one-man attempt to preserve the legacy of Atlanta Game Factory and to keep the dying light of the last Friendly Local Game Store in town alive. My total profit on a sale such as this particular one after accounting for the cost of gas, shipping, and time? Well, I think I wound up paying five or six bucks to sell those games to that guy and many others.

I cooked up the idea for Factory Games after realizing that I couldn’t buy games anywhere in Atlanta and I had this idea that I would offer almost everything AGF did- at least in terms of service, expertise, and value- but on a personal, one-to-one level with my customers. I would operate with no overhead and no inventory, placing orders with distributors strictly to fill customer requests. I would sell games through a blog, at gaming events, and to my old AGF customers so even if I couldn’t run the best FLGS in town at least I could remain the fixer for Atlanta’s gaming addicts. I even offered home delivery and parking lot rendezvous like the one described above to local customers if you didn’t want your stuff mailed to you or if you couldn’t make it to one of the game events at which I would set up shop.