"It's kind of a weird thing to watch," Sacks says."Some of my peers and stuff like that who were struggling through the pandemic when our community was consistently showing up and turning out for us and people were telling their friends, 'Hey, go buy games here.' By default, we became Dallas' premier game store because most of them are out in the suburbs.
"When a business moves in this specialty retail kind of thing, it doesn't matter how much signage you have," Hanson says."If you're not there and people drive up, they just assume you've closed." Common Ground Games co-owner DR Hanson says they've installed game demo areas in his store so players can test games before they buy them, like this topographic version of the popular territory gaining strategy gameCommon Ground Games had to adjust to a complete digital retail model during the pandemic. Sacks and Hanson even worked a way to arrange for curbside, contactless pickups and home game deliveries up to 50 miles away from the shopping center.
The store started to allow masked, in-store traffic the following June, and the owners revisited plans to move to the new space. It took almost two more years to complete all the steps needed to reach its grand opening last month.