The Game-Route Project

TL;DR

The Game-Route Project is now Live. The Game-Route Project seeks to document independent video game stores in the USA through a map and the first-hand insights and experiences of local video game store owners.

Video Game Stores Map of the USA

I am so incredibly happy to announce that The Game-Route Project is now Live! It has been almost a year since I undertook this journey. For better and worse, it has gone through several iterations and changes along the way. Getting here has definitely taken me longer than originally expected.

On the Road to Gaming

With a fair amount of surprise, I can’t believe the site went live back in December. That was only after a focused late-year push, with work starting last summer. I knew things wouldn’t necessarily go quickly, fitting in this passion project whenever time allowed. Consciously I set small goals and created a little roadmap to counter my natural tendency of allowing scope creep. A little phrase I have quite taken to over time is “don’t let best be the enemy of better”. And I really did try to walk that walk, with varying degrees of success.

Looking back, I definitely think I could have moved much quicker with everything. After spinning up the site, I really thought this part of the project would launch very shortly afterwards. But continually I had new ideas to try or little things here and there I wanted to change. Ideas are literally coming to mind as I write this.

Still, there’s a version of me that would be working on this until eternity, never going live with anything but instead privately tweaking and improving ad infinitum. I think in the end a fair amount of balance was achieved.

Hope You Like It

With some pride I can say I knew nothing of building a website before I started. The tools available to amateur content creators today are simply amazing. Saying I’m not sure I could have done this prior to their existence is probably an understatement. Believe it when people say anyone out there today who has it in their mind to do some form of content creation really does have the ability to do so.

That being said, I personally still had to traverse a sizeable learning curve given what I was aiming for. Seeing what’s been done so far definitely provides a sense of accomplishment.

And I suppose I can look back knowing previous me understood, correctly, that the journey here would probably look vastly different than what I’d originally expected.

I’m not entirely sure there are others out there to whom this new part of the site will be interesting. Hopefully there are even just a few people who, like me, want to learn more about what I feel has been and continues to be an extremely important part of the video game ecosystem.

Whether that be insights from the people that bring our local video game watering holes into existence or discovering new stores in a more community driven way. Perhaps perusing the map to get an idea of where you’d like to try and find a new game haul on your next out-of-town trip, which is actually where this idea started. Or even simply taking a step back and appreciating what a vibrant ecosystem we’re all a part of.

More to Come

Take a look and I hope you enjoy what’s been done so far. While not wanting to get ahead of myself, my expectation is to make continual improvements not only to the map but the entire site. Please Subscribe if you’d like to be kept up to date on what’s going on around here. And reach out if you’re either a video game store owner/operator who would like to be featured on the site or a community member with new information to be incorporated into the map.