The Gamers Guild started as ‘game night’ in Brandon Nimz’s dormitory room at Fort Hays State University back around 2004 or 2005. Brandon (our owner) used to have friends over every week to play board games or card games. Over time, too many people came over, so he moved it to Agnew Hall’s North lobby (old Agnew Hall–not the current one). Eventually it grew too big and moved to the main lobby, with attendance ranging from a few friends to dozens of people. After Brandon graduated in 2009, game night moved to the Protestant Campus Center (which later became the United Methodist Student Center). It was run under Unite, a Christian ministry that Brandon founded around that time, and it was meant to be a place that people could come together and have fun in a safe environment as an alternative to other options in the area. In that era, it also had ‘Common Grounds Coffee House’, which was also run by Unite, on-site. Eventually the center needed renovations and a new air conditioner, so the director of the United Methodist Student Center asked Brandon to move it off-site during construction. It bounced around between churches that were willing to host it, but attendance largely died off because it had to move all the time and was not in a central location. Brandon also ran Aikido of Northwest Kansas at the time, and there was a vacant space in roughly the same area he rented. After praying and thinking about it, he moved game night to that location at a loss for the summer so that it could continue more successfully. Game night actually flourished and did much better at that location, so Brandon used the retails sales license from Aikido of Northwest Kansas to purchase Magic the Gathering cards to sell to help pay for the rent; over time the space transformed from card tables and furniture from thrift stores with a cash box for occasional sales to a mostly hangout space with a simple register. It then moved to a full sales desk area with more offerings and greater shelving space for products while still keeping a lot of hangout space; it also expanded what it offered and carried new products and games that community members had requested. In this era, Brandon ran it after teaching Aikido, so sales hours were limited to when he was there after class, although people could hang out and have ‘game night’ type events all evening, even when he was teaching. Eventually, when Brandon knew he was going to have his first son, he ran the risk of hiring an employee and hoping it made enough to pay all of its expenses while also expanding hours and offering sales whenever The Gamers Guild was open. This was a big leap of faith done after much prayer, and it succeeded. Now The Gamers Guild has multiple employees, full concessions, sales and trades whenever we are open, and yet it still has lots of table space and maintains its primarily community hang-out vision and mission; it is another home for the community that is regularly there and is also open to anyone else who wants to come by.
Our Gamers Guild Community Value and some pictures of Game Night evolving into The Gamers Guild are below:
