OTR: What drives us
OTR is a local game shop that seeks to provide a comfortable, fun, and safe space to enjoy games with new and timeless friends.
OTR values
Our values were not something we necessarily started with, at least not in a spoken and explicit way. Over time, through discussions, arguments, and consideration, our values emerged. These three values, community, fair pricing, and fun, now guide our decision making and provide a North Star to our strategery.
Value #1: Community
Community is a human need, like food, water, and shelter. Without community, life becomes difficult. Many of our customers see OTR as their place away from home, a place to meet friends and enjoy hobbies together. We cherish this reality and realize that without our community, OTR would be little more than your average retailer. As such, we seek to help, reward, and grow our community in responsible ways.
Value #2: Fair pricing
Market forces can be used for good, as many strong economies attest. However, markets can also become toxic, as economic crashes reveal. The gaming community is also a collector's community, which gives rise to chase items and scalping. At OTR, we don't want to serve just the high-end collectors, our community deserves more. So we make sure that our prices are not victim to secondary market forces. Instead, we endeavor to price everything we sell at or below MSRP. Sometimes this decision requires us to put purchase limits on hot items, but that helps us to serve the broader community.
This value is the reason we now offer a price match guarantee to major, national retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon.com.* We try to make sure that our pricing is always competitive, but once in a while we miss something, like a board game that has dropped in price over time. So if you find anything on our shelves for sale cheaper at one of the major retailers, we'll match it.
Value #3: Fun
Life is short and as far as we know, we get one ride on this space rock. So let's make the best of it!
At OTR we embrace experimenting with new and fun events. Want to transform the store into an epic showdown for Warhammer? Yes! Want to plan a learn-to-play for a game to get new players? Let us help! Thinking about a league for a game? We'd love to make that happen!
This value is why we now offer free play on our demo games, so you can try games for free to see if you like them long before you buy anything. Or, just come in with friends and play a game for free to kill time.
All three of our values are why we typically run our events at or near cost, by either using entry fees as prize support or event enhancement.