Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Subscription delivery services are all the rage right now. There’s Blue Apron for fresh food, Stitch Fix for stylish clothes, and Dollar Shave Club for cheap razors. The best of these boxes introduce customers to products they wouldn’t have found otherwise or provide much-needed convenience for our ever-busy lives. But in a weird way, they also enable one to become a high-tech hermit, with no need to ever leave the house. Now, one local entrepreneur has launched a subscription business that requires consumers to interact with at least one other real-life human being—and maybe two or three.
Each month, Game Night Gear sends subscribers a new board game. “With all the social media, you have access to everyone all the time, but I think people crave the face-to-face,” says founder Richard Lamora. “This forces conversation, hanging out. It’s a good time.” Though most of the games Lamora has shipped since the service’s launch in May would be fun for the whole family, he picks them with adult gamers in mind. (Think Settlers of Catan, not Candy Land.) He looks for games that are complex enough to require strategy but not so complicated that you’ll spend all night reading the directions. And he places heavy emphasis on “replayability.”
The subscription costs $30 per month, less than the retail value of each game. Lamora has worked with manufacturers to include special pieces or cards that aren’t available to the public. If a new game every month seems like a little much, subscriptions for every second or third month are available. The games are yours to keep. Lamora has a friend who won’t play the wildly popular game Ticket to Ride simply because he doesn’t like trains, so to encourage subscribers to keep an open mind, each new game comes as a surprise. Recent boxes have included King of Tokyo, a dice game in which players act as monsters trying to conquer the city, and Sheriff of Nottingham, Lamora’s favorite, which pits the sheriff against merchants of varying honesty. To promote the company, Lamora has hosted events around town at which folks can try out one of the 100 or so games in his collection.
Win or lose, nothing builds friendships like a little healthy competition.
