Flipped Table Games provides ‘safe space’ for gamers | Business

Whether you’re a kid – or a kid at heart – if you love ‘nerdy’ games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, it’s become increasingly okay to let that nerd flag fly over the past half decade or so.

The aforementioned games, which include several kinds of tabletop games, wargames and roleplaying games, as well as a couple trading card games, have been around for decades. But for a variety of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have been seeing a growth streak.

That may be why Flipped Table Games, located at 2125 McComb Road next door to Spinners Pizza, is thriving even as it’s the second gaming store to open in Stoughton. Husband and wife Christopher Tyrrell and Trisha Massia opened the store with friend Jeremy Neumann in October 2020.

Tyrrell was the former general manager of Pizza Hut and every other Tuesday, he’d shut down the party room for his core group of friends he went to college with at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to come game together.

Others started to join in, including Stoughton police officer Christopher Stachel.

The group joked that they should begin selling trading cards, but Massia and Neumann became genuine fans of the idea.

They began online at first, but decided they wanted an actual brick and mortar location.

Neumann and Tyrell each sold eight of their trading cards worth around $1,000 per card to help cover the initial investment to launch their dream.

The store was pretty much an instant success, Tyrrell told the Hub. They weren’t even open or finished loading the shelves yet and someone popped in and bought them out, he said.

During the pandemic, gaming saw an increase in popularity, and was playable even from afar through websites and apps that made it possible. Among those are Discord, which allows people to create online communities or chat rooms where they can send each other voice and text messages, as well as Roll20, which provides a virtual tabletop for gamers.

But despite stereotypes that gamers are shut-ins in dark basements, Tyrrell said they want to meet up for swapping and trading or to paint miniatures together – physical characters that are used typically in wargaming to represent military units on a model battlefield, often painted to the gamer’s own liking.

“For some games you have to put the miniature together and it’s a whole experience – not just showing up and playing the game,” Tyrrell said. “You paint it the way you want to see it, your own unique touch.”

Growing fanbase

“This has always been my hobby and my community got bigger and bigger,” Tyrrell said. “The Marvel superhero movies kicked off the idea of nerd is cool again – that, hey, we can bring this back, it’s socially acceptable. Between YouTube, TikTok and Instagram it’s so much easier to embrace your fandom now.”

“It’s the opposite of cyber bullying, it’s cyber support,” Neumann added.

But there is a cost barrier for some people to get into gaming, Tyrrell admits. Some board games cost over $100 and people cannot afford to buy those only to find out they don’t like the game.

“It’s hard to ask someone to spend $100 on a game if that person doesn’t know if it may become their new favorite game,” he said. “We like to give people the experience without it costing money first.”

Which is why his store offers several dozen of the most popular board and card games for people to come in and try out with friends or family at any time or join in on Friday open game nights.

Even for people who don’t know anyone else to play with, Tyrrell said they can come to Flipped Table to find like-minded people.

People who work at Epic Software in Verona, for instance, who’ve just moved to the area, sometimes meet coworkers for the first time not at the company campus, but at Flipped Table.

Every night of the week has different themed game events, so people can stop by to join in a pod of people playing the game of the night.

“It’s a bar without the bar,” Tyrrell said. “Like the show ‘Cheers’ we’re here to just have fun and a good time. I don’t care who you are, you belong – even if you have an inkling you want to game, come here.”

Though not every game is expensive. One of the most fun and accessible games, in Tyrrell’s opinion, is the card game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, which only costs $10.

Creating community

As someone who grew up reading comic books, he said he knows not every kid wants to play sports. So he wants to create a safe space for kids.

“No matter your race, creed or sexual orientation, you should feel welcome here. We’re supporting each other and just having fun,” he said – which is why discussion of politics isn’t allowed. “It’s turned into a hangout space where it’s safe to talk about things you like. It’s nice to have that escape – just get away from it all in a fantasy realm.”

It was especially important to provide that space during the pandemic, he said, as he knows at least five kids through the store who moved to Stoughton while there was still virtual schooling, and it provided a way for them to make friends.

As gaming has taken off, so has its monetization. Trading cards are almost like a lottery, Tyrrell said, where a $4 pack of cards may contain a single card with $30. Some cards are worth thousands, he said.

This has led to scalpers and supply issues. Tyrrell said he finds joy in holding back some packages of cards for games like Pokémon so that when a tired mom and her kid come in who’ve looked all over and can’t find any cards, he can pull out some that weren’t snatched up by collectors or resellers.

It’s hard for some older adults to understand the appeal of roleplaying or wargames, but Tyrrell finds it ironic since they still play Rummy or Gin.

His own mom finally understood her son’s interest when he returned home from a Magic: The Gathering tournament with $1,000-worth of prizes he’d won.

People can begin a path to national tournaments right here in Stoughton, he said.

While some games have been around decades such as Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons, others are just starting to take off such as Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Legion.

At Flipped Table, people can buy cards, guidebooks or figures for all the major games including Pokémon, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering, as well as paints and modeling kits.

There are other models. too, such as from the Transformers and My Little Pony cartoons or the Gundam anime franchise.

Board games these days gamify all sorts of franchises from movies like Ghostbusters or Men in Black to video games such as Fallout or Skyrim.

Tyrrell hopes that the video game-based board games might help bring families together.

“It’s hard to pull people away from their video games, but you can say, ‘Let’s do this as a family.” That goes a long way – putting down the controller and interacting one on one,” he said.

As he grew up on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and moved around a lot as a kid, he had a hard time making friends, which is why he got into comic books and trading cards.

With his business management degree from UW-Whitewater, it just made sense to spread the love of his hobby, he said.

That’s why he now loves offering a safe space for people to come in, enjoy some snacks and play some games together.

While he and Neumann started off running the place continuing to work other jobs, they eventually realized that they needed to leave those jobs to work at Flipped Table full time as it continued to grow.

“Instead of making corporations rich, it’s a job you can be happy about,” he said. “It’s never about, ‘Oh my God, I have to go into work today.’ They say do what you love. We’ve built a super community here. We have a close-knit family. I hate to say it because it sounds so corny, but that’s what it is.”