Meet The Boss Behind Top 8 Gaming
What’s your name and what’s your role at Top 8 Gaming?
Barry Riddell, and if I was to give myself a title I would say business manager, because it’s an umbrella term for pretty much everything that happens – and a lot happens.
How did Top 8 Gaming get started?
I’ll answer this two ways – from a business standpoint, as an entrepreneur you always look for something that’s under-serviced. I ran Magic get-togethers out of my garage, traveled all over the area to stores renting out spaces and other situations, and it became obvious that this was an under-served market that I knew something about and could help grow. From a personal standpoint, it was a challenge to do something more or less completely different from anything I’d ever done in my career up until now. I’ve managed a lot of places in my career, but the retail side, the gaming side, these are newer, exciting things for me to be a part of.
Why did you choose to open a card store in Niagara Falls? Why not somewhere else?
Couple factors – one is that my family is here in Niagara Falls, and because of that I love this city more than anywhere else in the Niagara region. I really think that in the type of business we’re in, the proximity to the United States border is also a bonus – it offers a wider playerbase. We have a lot of visitors to Niagara Falls who happen upon the store and spend a few hours with us learning a new game or buying Magic singles, and we wouldn’t get that kind of interaction further away from the border.
Do you play cards yourself? If so, which ones?
I only play Magic right now, but I am trying to learn how to play Pokemon with my daughter as well. The problem is, she’s way better than me, and she won’t take it easy on me enough to help me learn yet! I’d love to try and play more Magic, too, but unfortunately running a Magic store actually makes it a lot more difficult to actually play Magic.
Outside of trading card games, I play a lot of poker. There’s a lot of crossover between Magic and poker, as well, and I think that’s something that a lot of poker players know that some Magic players don’t. By that I mean Magic players aren’t always interested in calculating the odds of finding a specific card. The biggest difference I find between Magic and poker is that in Magic, the game is designed in such a way that making a mistake isn’t the end of the world – you don’t get punished quite as badly for making a play error as you would in poker, where you’d likely lose most of your chips or your whole bankroll.
One of the biggest similarities, consequently, between poker and Magic, is that both player groups don’t like to self-reflect on their own mistakes. Those who do get way better, much quicker. People often blame luck, but there’s almost always a way to improve their own skills – “my deck hated me tonight” or “the other guy drew everything” are usually solved by keeping better hands or sideboarding correctly, not that I’m claiming I can do either of those things myself *laughs*.
What’s been the most rewarding part of running a store so far?
I’ve been in the business now for 2 and a half years, and it’s always been the same – I love when I hear other players talk about our store positively, whether it’s on Facebook or at a Grand Prix. People come here from out of town to play in our GPTs or PPTQs, and whenever they come all the way here and compliment what they see, it always makes me feel I’m doing something right. People who drove an hour and a half to come play at our store had a lot of options, but they chose us. That feels really good.
Of course, our local players are the lifeblood of our store. They’re incredibly loyal, and go to bat for us whenever someone asks about places to play or asks where to find the best prices in the area. When we moved this past year, a lot of our players came out to help paint the store and clean up the rooms, and that was incredible. We didn’t ask them to – they just did. It feels like we’re definitely doing something right.
What’s one moment that made you question whether or not this was for you?
The business is a real grind, don’t get me wrong – but I can’t think of a single time I thought I wasn’t suited for this or that I was in the wrong business. There have been times I’ve wanted to throw in the towel because that grind really gets to you, but there’s nothing in this business I think I can’t do with the help of our playerbase and the other employees. I think we have a lot of great people either working for or playing at the store, and things are always easier when you’re surrounded by that kind of positivity.
What would you like to see Top 8 Gaming become in the future? Do you have any plans?
First off, we want to have a strong online presence – we’re in the middle of designing a website that will be live soon, and that will go a long way to take us to the next level. We also want to draw a bigger competitive scene – not to knock the casual scene, because we love those players – but we want to offer competition that will draw players from all over Canada and the Eastern United States.
Secondly, we want to start streaming our events for players so that people know who we are who might not find out about us just through word of mouth or social media advertising. We don’t have the luxury of putting up an ad on the local cable station or through a newspaper – Magic players hear about things through word of mouth or viral marketing campaigns, and we’re well aware of what we need to do to keep our name in that discussion. Streaming events, showing off our player’s decks, making every event feel important to those playing in it – that’s what we want.
How do you feel about the tournament scene right now as it is in the Niagara /GTA?
Eventually we want to make our tournaments more centralized – if the GO Train comes to Niagara Falls, for instance, we can start entertaining the idea of bigger tournaments that are specifically more appealing to players in Toronto as well as our local players. The tournament scene as a whole, however, feels pretty saturated – there’s a ton of GPTs and PPTQs almost every weekend, so to hold an impressive GPT, for instance, is a difficult thing. GPTs with 60 to 100 people don’t happen much anymore.
For that reason, we want to start doing something more – like streaming – with our tournaments, to make them more prestigious and stand out. We want to start a tournament series that also offers a bit more than GPTs and PPTQs in the way of prizes and planeswalker points as well, so keep an eye out for that.
How do you communicate with your playerbase? How important is it to remain honest and transparent with them when it comes to tournaments and plans for other events?
We miss getting more feedback – specifically more negative feedback, which happened a lot during the early days – from our players. It’s nice when players come in and tell us we’re doing a great job, but you can build better, faster, on negative feedback than on positive feedback. We know we don’t do everything right and we make mistakes, so we don’t want people to think they can’t talk to us about that and voice our issues. We want to make mistakes and learn from them, not continue to make them. It’s a big difference and it’s something we actively encourage our players to bring up. So please, if anyone has any feedback, don’t hesitate to tell us! We want to be the best store experience possible.
