OBSERVER Photo by Anthony Dolce Tristen Larson stands behind the counter of her store, Critical Gaming, in Fredonia. Larson, along with Dennis Thomas and Chris Shoemaker, all operate the business, which opened near the begging of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fredonia has always had a good scene for gaming. Being a college town lends itself to the proper demographic of games.

This isn’t just limited to video games either, Fredonia and the surrounding area have a large population of those who enjoy tabletop games, from traditional board games like Settlers of Catan to the more niche games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: the Gathering.

While a lot of traditional games can be found at the big retailers in the area, Fredonia also has a history of local game stores in the area, from Two Guys Card Shop in the early 2000s, to Power 9, Gamerz Haven, and Blue Dragon Inn in more recent years. Blue Dragon Inn and Dunkirk’s location of Gamerz Haven closing at the end of 2019 left Fredonia without a place to go for it’s pivotal part of the community, but thankfully, that void wasn’t left open very long.

Tristen Larson, originally from Clymer, and her fiance Dennis Thomas from Dunkirk were quick to take up the mantle of store owner, giving the well established community a close place to go to participate in their hobbies. The two were later joined by Chris Shoemaker of Fredonia in the venture.

“When we heard the other store in town was closing down, we decided we were going to jump on it really fast,” Larson said. “The community was all our friends, and we didn’t really have any other friends outside of our community, so we really didn’t want to lose that.”

While there are other stores that serve a similar purpose in Jamestown, Eden and Hamburg, not all of the customers in the Fredonia area have the means to reliably get to those places. With the last store closing, there wasn’t a tabletop exclusive gaming store in all of Chautauqua County.

While there was a gap of a couple months between the closing of Blue Dragon Inn and the opening of what is now Critical Gaming, the new owners wasted no time trying to get the new store set up. They got their new location picked out and were all set for a true soft open in the middle of March 2020.

But like many other things, COVID-19 threw Larson a curveball. “We looked into everything getting done. as soon as we got enough money together, we talked to the land lady on a Friday and the Monday after, the big shutdown happened,” Larson said.

From then on, they decided to wait. Larson took care of a lot of the behind the scenes work during the waiting period, such as filing paperwork and setting up affiliations with distributors, and the couple saved up more money. Finally, in May of 2020, they decided to open up for some business.

“When we felt comfortable enough and when they started being more lenient on COVID regulations, we decided to jump on it,” Larson said. “We opened up and made sure we fell under essential guidelines to be open for one or two people to come in.”

And despite opening a more niche business, Critical Gaming, in under a year, is already a pretty big success. There have been a few challenges that Larson, Thomas, and Shoemaker have gone through, but for the most part, they’ve handled a potentially disastrous situation as best they can. In large part, they were able to manage because of Larson’s background.

Larson has been involved in business since she was a child. Her mother used to own her own jewelry business and Larson would accompany her going to craft shows. Those early experiences led Larson to several different jobs in retail, as well as to Jamestown Business College, where she recently completed her associate’s degree in marketing and management, and is currently working on her bachelor’s in business management. When the opportunity to open her own place emerged, she was between jobs and out of retail, and felt it was a good opportunity to go back to where she was comfortable.

“It was weird not being in retail,” Larson said. “Something business related was always in the cards. I’ve always been in it.”

Critical Gaming has taken many steps to make sure they are able to stay afloat in a time that’s been so difficult for many. For starters, they are the only carrier of supplies for the game Warhammer in all of Chautauqua County, and that’s not even a game you can get at big box stores. That game has been a big contributor for their sales, with Larson saying it’s roughly a third of the store’s sales.

“We get phone calls all the time asking if we actually sell it,” Larson said. “We’re trying really hard to get in as much as people want and we’d like to expand that further because we are the only ones.”

While Critical Gaming started out small, only getting the things that were necessary, Larson has her mind on expansion, and that isn’t limited to just Warhammer. She has ideas of putting painted canvas on the wall to help decorate the place, along with having a wider array of products in stock, including a rack of board games, which as of now are only available at Critical Gaming on special order. While the ideas are nice, it won’t really be possible until the store can start holding in person events, which has been the primary suppression of income the store would normally have.

“Not being able to hold events definitely decreases our profit,” Larson said. “Our weekends especially would be a lot better if we could hold events. We’d love to be able to advertise Warhammer tournaments but we obviously can’t.”

But for now, Larson, Thomas, and Shoemaker are biding their time until they can hold the larger events that have helped out game stores so many times in the past. And for a store that opened in the middle of a pandemic and isn’t able to function at full capacity, the store is already doing well. Larson said the store is able to sustain itself and pay it’s own bills, and they also received a small loan from the Small Business Revolution to help upgrade some of the amenities the store needs. In addition to help from the Small Business Revolution, Critical Gaming also received helpful advice from some of the other store owners in Western New York, with a lot of advice coming from Genesis Gaming and Hobby in Eden.

“We’re having a good time with associates from other game shops in Erie county,” Larson said. “We sit around and collaborate with them, trying not to step on each other’s toes with things. It’s great to get opinions of people who have been doing this longer than us.”

The gaming community in Fredonia has been thriving for several years, and having a store so niche in town is important to the many people in the area that enjoy these hobbies. And although the people in the area are without a place to play games with their friends, they still have a local place to go to pick up the supplies they need. And when COVID-19 is less severe and restrictions are opened, Critical Gaming plans on having a full opening for people to come in and play.

For more information on Critical Gaming, visit https://criticalgamingfredonia.square.site/.