Hey there folks! We’ve reviewed your feedback and heard you loud and clear. Let’s talk about what we heard, good and bad, and how we’re working with your feedback to make our events even better than before.

Phoenix Feedback: Takeaways and Changes

Let me start off by saying thank you to everyone who participated. Your feedback was really encouraging and constructive, and even where there were places for us to improve, it was given with grace. I really appreciate that, and it made looking over all the reviews a lot easier. Before we get into all of that though - if you'd prefer to skip ahead, there's a summary / TL:DR section at the very bottom that summarizes those changes.

So having said all that, let’s talk takeaways, shall we? We had three surveys, so we’ll go over each in turn. The first few questions of all three surveys though, that we’ll cover here. They pertained to how folks heard about our events. 

The vast majority of respondents said that they got information from a combination of our web blog, discord server, word of mouth, and in-store advertising. Facebook played a minor role, and almost no-one got info from twitter (or ‘X’ these days I guess?). We got several requests to add a few other social media lanes, so you can now find us on both Instagram and Mastodon. We’ll add Bluesky to the feeds if/when I can get ahold of an invite. And we’ll be rolling out a monthly newsletter here starting in October.

A quick note on our social media feeds for folks. These are primarily going to be outward facing feeds aimed at reminding those subscribed about cool new comics, games, events, etc. that are available / happening at the store. They are not going to be good ways to reach us. For that, you’ll want to email the store if you have an order request, or if you’ve got questions go ahead and ask around in the discord server. Doug and Isaiah are in there a lot, and I’m starting to be more active there as well. One of us will respond pretty darn quick.

Now that the initial questions are dealt with, let’s dive into some takeaways, shall we?

RPG Events - Takeaways, Challenges, and Changes

This survey was one of the trickier surveys to review. Not because the data was bad, but more that there wasn’t any consistent feedback. I loved it all, and folks had so many ideas! I just didn’t hear any one idea that seemed to consistently crop up. That meant listening more for general themes rather than specific tangible things. With that in mind, here’s what I heard:

• Folks love the RPG Faire and we should lean into it.
• There’s room for another couple of quarterly or biannual specialized RPG events
• There’s a lot of love for independent and smaller press RPGs that folks would like to see spotlighted.
• Challenge: I heard a call for more organization when it comes to allocating table space for events vs RPG meetups and such.

Challenge - Space Allocations

As big as the store is now, space always seems to be at a premium on certain nights. And a big challenge with RPG meetups is making sure that space is consistently available, despite variable attendance from some of our other meetups. 

A good example of this is Monday nights. On any given Monday we might have 1-2 large Adventurer’s League tables, and we’ve got the pauper Magic crowd that draws in another 3-4 more tables on top of that. This usually means we’ve still got tables to spare. But every so often, we’ll have another weekly event on top of it (say like our Feminist Comic Club or Narrative Games NW) that takes up another 2-4 tables. So how do we make room for an extra group or two on a night like that?

Changes

The answer comes in the form of some sort of reservation system. Some sort of system that sits at the intersection of our current calendar of organized play events and a calendar that tracks requested or reserved table usage on any given night. And no, this won’t cost anything if we can help it. In addition, unused or unspoken-for tables will always still be available for anyone to use, same as always.

This reservation system is gonna take a little bit of time to implement (I’m going to aim for sometime early 2024), but for now we’re going to start by reviewing attendance for some of our week night events and finding out how many tables we can really reliably set aside. Once we have a good idea as to what’s readily available on any given night, we can start talking about ways to implement it. It might be as simple initially as a pen and paper, and it might eventually evolve into something you can do online. We’ll definitely keep you posted.

Regarding some of the other feedback - we hear you and we’ll keep it up with the RPG Faires. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for ways to showcase local or indie TTRPGs as well. I’d love to see the RPG Faire and another spotlight event start happening as we can make it happen. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Board Game Meetups - Takeaways, Challenges, and Changes

In contrast to our RPG survey, our board game respondents where very clear - board games good! In fact, they were absolutely unanimous in their support for a weekly board game meetup (which in and of itself is a challenge we’ll talk about shortly). So beginning September 9th at 12 PM, Phoenix will be hosting a weekly board game open play event. 

Said open play event will be happening weekly at noon unless there’s another event that needs to take precedence such as a Magic prerelease, RCQ, etc. If another meetup crosses over with the weekly board game event, so much the better! 

Challenge - Weekly Board Game Open Play

One of the challenges that I foresee with running a weekly meetup like this is a lack of organizers. Part of the reason the group-specific meetups work as well as they do is a consistent presence of organizing folks. These individuals hold space, invite people from their friends groups, make facebook events, and so much more. They’re ambassadors not just for the meetup, but the larger groups that they organize for.

In contrast, what we have here at Phoenix is a team of avid board gamers who each have a good solid knowledge of a variety of board games, but we’re also here to work and help customers. To ask my team to try to juggle both responsibilities is a lot, so we’re gonna try out a compromise courtesy of our amazing graphic designer, Keet. 

They’re in the process of putting together helpful little ‘looking for players’ signage that we’ll make available during the day for folks to use. Want to put together a pickup game of Catan? Grab it from the shelf, grab a looking for players sign and start putting the game together at one of the tables. If our team members catch anyone asking around for players to game with, we’ll direct them your way and help with some of the introductions. We can also be on hand to answer questions about the games as best we can.

Changes

So real quick to summarize:

• Weekly Board Game Meetups at 12 PM, starting September 9
• New looking for group signage available to help you find games
• Our team will help with introductions!

And just to clarify - I’ve spoken with the organizers for most if not all of the board game meetups at the store. Allies are welcome to join in the board gaming for the group-specific events. Just because you’re not a POC or member of the LGBTQ community won’t stop you from playing in the Queer Geek board game meetup, and the POC board game meetup organizers have explicitly said that accompanied allies are welcome too.

Magic Weekly Events - Takeaways, Challenges, and Changes

Alright folks, here’s the big one. The Magic survey got more responses than both other surveys combined, so there was a lot of feedback to comb through and review. Some of the big areas pointed out by the data were as follows:

• Start Times 
• Desire for Competitive Play
• Canadian Highlander
• Getting events to ‘critical mass’

Of these four areas, we’re gonna address three of them now with a promise to work on the fourth later this year. Sorry Canlander fans, that means you (but please dont’ worry - Doug is a big fan and he and I will be talking more about getting a night going for this soon).

Challenges - Start times, Comp Play, and the ‘critical mass’ problem

Alrighty, let’s tackle these in order shall we? I’m gonna go through the challenges here, then talk changes below all at once. There’s a cohesive strategy here, I promise. I just want to acknowledge the tricky parts up front before we talk solutions so that anyone interested can see my reasoning.

Start Times -  A decent chunk of the folks who we surveyed told us that a 6 PM start time is cutting things just a little close. Conversely, going back to starting at  7 PM is too late, and means that a lot of events will finish up at closer to 11-11:30 PM. 

Competitive Play -  I heard a LOT of feedback that folks wanted more competitive play here at Phoenix. Seattle has a huge competitive scene with a lot of gifted players and stores that set the bar for competitive events very high. At the same time, we also have a lot of other non-magic events vying for the same weekends and similar timeslots. How do we make room for everything that wants to happen here?

The Critical Mass Problem - This is really 2 problems in a trenchcoat - getting events to that critical mass point where they fire consistently every week night and keeping them going after they start to fire on a regular basis. As has been observed with the pioneer format on Friday nights, if there’s not enough interest in a format to make it happen consistently, how do we support the players who want to play or practice said format?

Changes

Starting Times

The first issue of start times is pretty easy to solve for. Beginning in September, the following weekly magic events will have their start times moved to 6:30 PM:

• Tuesday Night Drafts & Modern
• Thursday Night Legacy
• Friday Night Magic

The only events that won’t have their start time changed for now are the Monday Night pauper events and the Wednesday Night commander events. Pauper will (for now) also remain at $10 and continue to go 4 rounds. We’ll be keeping an eye on that event though, and if we have enough feedback to change it we will.

Competitive Play

Competitive play requires a little more finessing, but I am here for it and I am going to try my best to give that to you! For starters, our next round of RCQ’s is coming up in September and October. We’re aiming to have both of them back-to-back, one whole weekend of comp REL goodness. We’re also going to be holding a team trios event sometime in the October - December time frame, along with store championships for Magic sets where the sanctioning window is open and works with our schedule. Assuming these events attract the right levels of attention, we’ll keep at them!

To better balance the competitive events against the other meetups and groups using the store, we’ll be instituting player caps for some of these events. This will give the meetups and playgroups space, while still allowing that competitive thirst to be quenched. 

Getting to Critical Mass

This has got to be the trickiest of the lot to address. For starters I can’t ever promise that a draft will fire, or a constructed event will happen as scheduled (looking at you there, Pioneer on Fridays). What we can do is hold space for players interested in that format, and encourage others to join in. When we reach that critical mass moment of 6-8 players consistently then we can start talking about firing actual events. And we can support getting to that critical mass by encouraging and incentivizing players to try out the formats in question.

So we’re going to be putting forth a new event on Fridays - the Practice Range. 

Simply put - we’re going to have a player-list only event every Friday starting late September or early October. There’s no entry fee for this event, but there will be a rotating format based on the competitive seasons (Standard, Modern, Pioneer). This event will be supported with promo packs and participation prizes similar to the way our commander events currently are, and is intended to be a thing you can do alongside the regular FNM Drafts that we host. 

Doug volunteered to help me figure out when these change, so we will endeavor to be fairly on top of things. In addition to the prize support, we’ll be supporting these events with loaner decks of popular versions of competitive decks from each format. Our goal here is to help our player base get better, grow, and be the best Magic players they can be, and to help you find the right deck that suits your playstyle.

Now, once we get to that critical mass of players, (say hopefully by the end of a season), we’ll start to have constructed events again on Friday Nights. Ultimately I would love to finish up each season with a true store championship style event  (not the WotC ones with the very cool promos, though the unused ones will certainly be incorporated into the prize pool). I think that would be a nice way to cap a long season of practice for competitive play.

TL:DR - The Changes

Wow, that was a lottttta text. So, for those of you whose eyes have glazed over and you just want to know the deets for everything, I’ve prepared a little summary of everything changing. It looks a bit like this:

• New social media happening now (Instagram + Mastodon)
• Monthly Newsletter Coming Soon (October)
• Ways to reserve tables coming soon! (September/October - fully implemented sometime in 2024)
• New weekly board game meetup (starts September 9 @ 12 PM)
• Tuesday / Thursday / Friday events starting at 6:30 (September)
• More competitive play starting soon!
• The Practice Range coming Fridays late September

Thank you all for participating in the surveys. It was a lot of fun to read what you thought of the store, and it was incredibly insightful. I really appreciate the communities that make up the store, and I hope that these changes will help them flourish and grow in the years to come.

Nick Nazar

Owner, Manager

Phoenix Comics & Games