« EVO Roadtrip Day 4 - Springfield, MO »

EVO Roadtrip is a series of articles detailing the trip of long-time fight fan and upcoming freelance journalist, Vince "W.K." Ingenito.  After a difficult year, both personally and professionally, he decided to pack as much of his stuff into the back of his Jeep as he could and drive across the country from New York to California to make a new life.  On the way, he takes a look at how the fighting game community has grown and spread, both in huge metropolises and small one-light towns. 

The trip reaches it's climax at the 2011 Evolution World Championship in Las Vegas. Check back regularly to get more and more pieces of this unique, personal look at fighting game culture.

No, you didn't miss a day. I spent day 3 driving, eating Popeye's and subsequently slipping into a food coma by the time I reached St. Louis. Aside from maybe the bit about Popeye's, none of that seems relevant to the FGC so here we are on day 4.

This was by far, the most jam packed day of my trip to Vegas. The plan was to start in St. Louis, head southwest through Springfield, stop in Vinita, OK for lunch at Clanton's Cafe, and hopefully reach Oklahoma City in time for dinner at Mama E's. With that much ground to cover, and two big food stops planned, I was considering skipping the game related portion of my day in Springfield. Ultimately I decided to follow through, telling myself I would be in and out of town in under thirty minutes. I hadn't expected to be so taken in by Next Level Games and its intrepid owner, Fred Stark.

Located inside a strip center at 1914 South Glenstone, Next Level is easy to miss from the outside, and even easier to underestimate. Despite being located on a main thoroughfare, the parking lot was practically empty, and not in a pleasantly quiet and peaceful way so much as an “every business here is about to go under” kind of way. As I walked up to the storefront I was half expecting to find the owner passed out on the floor with an empty bottle of Jack in his hand and buried under a thousand copies of Madden '94 that had overflown from a nearby clearance bin labeled “please buy me!” I was pleased as punch to be wrong.

Thankfully, Fred was rather upright and not entombed beneath a landfill of old Genesis cartridges. He was both friendly and knowledgeable and it didn't take long for us to start talking shop. While we discussed our collections, I peered into the display case beneath the counter and spied a boxed copy of Castlevania and an original Mega Man cartridge. As an ex-Gamestop employee, the layout was familiar to me in it's traffic flow and clean look, but the product on display was far more interesting. Most game stores either have the selection OR the presentation, but Next Level sports both.

When the conversation moved to how I knew about his shop, I mentioned the regional matchmaking thread over at Shoryuken.com and his eyes widened with recognition. Once I told him I was big fan of fighters and of the fighting game community, he started to explain to me what he feels is the key to the long term success of his business. In a word, that key is “community”.

Fred led me into a room at the back of his store where long tables lined the walls. He was in the process of renovating the room and acquiring enough flat screen monitors to cover the whole perimeter. Then he would fill it with systems and use his presence on the SRK forums to encourage members of the FGC to come out and play. It's been three months since my initial visit and while the room (affectionately referred to as “The Arena”) is still a work in progress, he's held 3 successful monthly tournaments at Next Level, with no plans of stopping.

Every Saturday from 2pm to 8pm there's an open invite to anyone who wants to come down and get matches going on any fighting game, absolutely free of cost. By making himself available to enthusiasts via the internet and offering freeplay time for nothing, Fred has made his store a destination in a town where there are no less than three Gamestops to compete with. The crazy thing about it is that Fred isn't even done. Not by a long shot.

In addition to the burgeoning community that's thriving around his establishment, he has big things in the works that will allow him to capitalize on the huge shift that's occurred in the arcade scene over the last decade. As we speak, he's in the process of acquiring arcade cabinets from the many chain amusement centers that are beginning to go under in Middle America. The goal is to get classic fighting game cabs such as MvC2 in his store for people to play. He's also planning on becoming a dealer in arcade cabinet and stick parts once he finds the right suppliers. Perhaps his most ambitious idea is a planned collaboration with a local custom cabinet maker. If all goes as planned, customers will be able to browse a catalog of different designs, or come with their own design idea and pay to have it built with whatever consoles or arcade boards they want inside. It's an extremely ambitious vision overall, one that would make Next Level Games a cross between a modern and vintage video game store, a tournament/training space, an arcade and a custom stick and cabinet boutique.

The timing for all of this couldn't be more perfect. Since the public offering and subsequent acquisition of EB Games and the slow death of the arcade scene, it's become really tough for gamers and fighting game fans to find a place to go, hang out, make friends and compete face to face with one another. Back before EB/Gamestop was run by middle managers farmed from Radioshack and Payless Shoes, you could walk into a game store and actually feel like you belonged there.

In those days, during the beginning of my run with the them, EB/Gamestop understood that encouraging customers to come in, ask questions, talk and just hang out was good for business. In an enthusiast driven market like video games, and particularly with the FGC, fostering a community can drive business and make you money (just ask Capcom). Fred Stark's strategy of using the web to reach out to neglected enthusiast markets and then take steps to create a catered experience for them makes Gamestop's business practices look archaic by comparison. The fact that they can compete with him surprises me more than the fact that he can compete with them, quite frankly.

With arcades all but extinct in the midwest, places like Next Level are the future. Stand alone arcades really struggle to make money but if you can attach an arcade experience to a retail model, you get something synergistic that plays to the strengths of both. Game store backrooms are fast becoming the new arcades. If you're in the Springfield, MO area, head on down to The Arena at Next Level Games and get bodied. And if you live somewhere that has a potential scene but no venue, get at your local indie retailer and tell them to give Fred a call to find out how it's done. New arcades aren't exactly growing on trees.

Next up: Day 5 – Albuquerque, NM

Vince "W.K." Ingenito currently lives in San Francisco while writing his blog, More Than "Just" A Game and doing freelance game journalism. He is free to Dante, Magneto and sardines smothered with Frank's Red Hot.